Did you hear that former BYU athletic director Tom Holmoe and former BYU quarterback Robbie Bosco and their respective wives, Lori and Karen, have been called as mission leaders for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints?
Yeah, it’s true. Holmoe and Lori are headed, fittingly enough, to the Oakland/San Francisco mission (he played and coached for the 49ers and coached at Cal and Stanford) and Bosco and Karen to the Latter-day Saint mission in the Columbus, Ohio, area.
When I texted both of them to inquire whether that was real, joking that if it were indeed factual, then, had I’d known back then they would one day become such spiritual giants, I would have been a lot nicer to them, Holmoe answered back: “Haha. You treated me well. This wasn’t in our plans, but it’s my focus now.”
It’s rarely in anyone’s plan. And the focus is necessary. They all report in at the start of July.
Bosco, who used to be a regular guest on my radio show, appearing in segments where we’d ridicule each other no end, said he isn’t a particularly spiritual man, he never prays, and he really doesn’t want to move to Ohio.
No, that’s a lie. He did not say those things. He did not say anything. He did not say anything. … He responded with a laughing emoji.
Robbie Bosco by Rick Egan
It’s not wholly unusual for former athletes — and people from many other walks of life — to serve as mission leaders. Examples: Two-time National League MVP Dale Murphy and his spouse, Nancy, former BYU basketball coach Steve Cleveland and his wife, Kip, former Major League pitcher Jeremy Guthrie and his wife, Jenny, former BYU defensive lineman Gabe Reid and his wife, Heather, and former pro golfer Bruce Summerhays and his wife, Carolyn.
It’s a remarkable thing that individuals in the church agree to put in this kind of voluntary service. As Holmoe said, he had no intention to be a mission leader in the Bay Area. He retired from his job as athletic director a few months ago, looking forward to a whole lot of rest and relaxation. And now, he’ll get neither. Instead, he’ll get, he figures, smiles from heaven.
I have no clue how we stumbled upon the subject during lunch one day, but a friend of mine who also happens to be a general authority for the church told me over turkey sandwiches and soup that being a mission president — it’s now referred to as a mission leader — is one of the most important, most challenging and most rewarding jobs in the entirety of the religion.
And from what he described, I could understand why.
Let’s back up and get a running start at this: As most folks around here know, the church calls people to ecclesiastical positions that typically are unpaid and completely volunteer. Those who accept those “callings,” as they are known, take it on faith that such service is what God wants them to do, as indicated to them by and from and through a priesthood leader who presents the service opportunity. Individuals, men and women, can then accept or reject it, as they see fit.
Those positions range from hymn-book coordinator to Sunday school teacher to sacrament meeting chorister to women’s Relief Society president to bishop, and so many roles in between. It’s the way the church functions under the auspices of a lay clergy.
Some callings obviously require more time and effort than others.
And, as my friend indicated, the role of mission leaders registers at or near the high end of the commitment scale. Mission leaders leave their homes, their families, their friends, sometimes their professions behind, and serve at locations around the world, wherever they’re assigned, full time for three years, generally overseeing the service of up to and sometimes beyond 200 missionaries, many of whom are 18 to 21 years old.
You think playing or coaching football is tough, try this.
Those missionaries, at least generally, are eager to serve, but they also have the concerns and problems that young people of that age often carry with them. It’s not only left to mission leaders to supervise, inspire, teach, counsel and motivate those missionaries, guiding them along spiritually, mentally, emotionally and physically, but they also get to deal with the aforementioned concerns and problems in an intense service environment.
It can be and is a huge challenge.
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Tom Holmoe at BYU football media day in Provo on Wednesday, June 22, 2022.
On the other hand, according to Jeff Simmons, who played one year of basketball at BYU before serving a mission in Italy and who years later was called to lead the mission in Sydney, Australia, he put a lot of time and effort into it but found his rewards, none of which was financial.
“It’s the most work I’ve ever done in a compressed period of time,” said Simmons, who was Down Under from 2009 to 2012. “I did more in a day there than I do in a week here. That’s just what the job demanded. I loved working with the missionaries, but it was hard. The travel from one end of the mission to the other was tough.”
He said his mission boundaries spanned an area the size of Utah, Idaho, Oregon and half of Washington.
“The best thing about it is working with the missionaries,” he said. “The overwhelming love and support you feel from them, you can’t put into words. The hardest thing is the hours. I labored from 7 in the morning to 10:30 at night, working with 200 missionaries.
“Anyone willing to do what they did, even if they weren’t super dedicated, is amazing. Once I was asked to send some missionaries over to a senior center to help clean up the grounds, which had been neglected for lack of funding. They asked for a few volunteers, so we sent over 24 missionaries. We transformed that place. That was great.”
Future BYU quarterback and New Orleans Saints jack-of-all-trades Taysom Hill was one of Simmons’ missionaries. Over a short span, when Jim Harbaugh left as Stanford’s head coach, Simmons unofficially represented Hill, talking with various coaches regarding where he might play when he returned. He said coaches were respectful about Hill’s priorities while he served.
On another occasion, Simmons had two male missionaries who were assaulted by four gang members, intending to rob them. Those companions were rugby players who proceeded to “knock the assailants out.”
Those missionaries, pretty much all of them, “were out there trying to do good things for people. Some were better than others, but most of them tried,” Simmons said.
That, then, is what Holmoe and Bosco have to look forward to, along with the other nearly 1,000 mission leaders now serving in similar capacities in just more than 150 countries around the globe.
They’ll have their difficulties. But also their desserts.
Simmons summed it up thusly: “Personally, I sacrificed a lot to serve in that way, but I got a lot more than I gave in return.”