PROVO, Utah (Dec. 14, 2010) — All of the players on the BYU men’s soccer team are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and choose to serve missions. As a sponsor of Brigham Young University, the Church fully supports athletics and subsequent missions for young men who wish to pause their academic and athletic experience to serve domestically or internationally. Every player will serve, is serving, or served a full-time two year church mission.

What is a mission?
The Church’s missionary program is one of its most recognized characteristics. “Mormon” missionaries can be seen on the streets of hundreds of major cities in the world as well as in thousands of smaller communities. More than 50,000 missionaries are serving missions for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at any one time. Most are young people under the age of 25, serving in nearly 350 missions throughout the world. Missionaries can be single men between the ages of 19 and 25, single women over the age of 21 or retired couples. Missionaries receive their assignment from Church headquarters and are sent only to countries where governments allow the Church to operate.

Matt Rider (L) is in Lima, Peru. Pedro Vasconcelos (R) will serve in Santa Rosa, California.

Missionaries do not request their area of assignment and do not know beforehand whether they will be required to learn a language. Prior to going to their assigned area, missionaries spend a short period of time at one of 17 missionary training centers throughout the world. There they learn how to teach the gospel in an orderly and clear way and, if necessary, they begin to learn the language of the people they will be teaching. The largest training center is in Provo, Utah, with additional centers in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Dominican Republic, England, Guatemala, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, the Philippines, Spain and South Korea. A typical missionary day begins by waking at 6:30 a.m. for personal study. The day is spent proselytizing by following up on appointments, visiting homes or meeting people in the street or other public places. Missionaries end their day by 10:30 p.m. In some parts of the world, missionaries are sent only to serve humanitarian or other specialized missions.

Those missionaries do not proselytize. Missionary work is voluntary. Missionaries fund their own missions — except for their transportation to and from their field of labor — and are not paid for their services. Contacts with family and friends during this time of service are limited to letters and occasional phone calls to family at special times. Missionaries avoid entertainment, parties or other activities common to this age-group as long as they are on their missions, so they can focus entirely on the work of serving and of teaching others the gospel of Jesus Christ.

20 players from the 2010 Premier Development League roster served missions.

Name-State / Country Mission
Tyler Arens – Texas Fort Worth
Conner Bassett – Russia Yekaterinburg
James Bindrup – Russia, Siberia Novosibirsk
Bryan Black – Minnesota Minneapolis
Tyler Christiansen – Peru Trujillo
Doug Clark – Texas McAllen
Cory Cosgrave – Michigan Detroit
Zach De Francis – Germany Frankfurt
Zach Dupaix – Kentucky Louisville
Brent Jensen – Norway Oslo
Cameron Lamb – India, New Delhi Bangalore
Brady Marshall – West Virginia Charleston
Toni Niccoli – Italy Catania
Britton Osborne – Sweden Stockholm
Josh Patino – Nevada Las Vegas
BJ Pugmire – Mexico Guadalajara South
Jantzen Romney – Texas Houston
Blake Tillotson – Argentina Bahia Blanca
Drew Van Wagenen – Spain Barcelona
KC Whitworth – Brazil Ribeirao Preto

Current Cougars on Missions
Brian Hale – Germany
Richard Harrison – Accra, Ghana
Jordan Layton – Zurich, Switzerland
Nils Lofgren – Prague, Czech Republic
Bryson Pope – Taiwan
Jake Peterson – Leeds, England
Trevor Henderson – Toronto, Canada (East)
Pedro Vasconcelos – Santa Rosa, California
Will Burton – Puebla, Mexico
McKay Steggell – Yereva, Armenia
Nate Stoven – Charleston, West Virginia
McKay Corbett
Jace Green
Jon Junca
Colby Bauer

Recently Returned Missionaries
Easton Folster – Argentina
Garrett Losee – Puerto Rico
Derek Taylor – New Jersey

The following three players will leave for missionary service in the coming months.

Current Cougars with Mission Calls Waiting to Leave

Kip Critchlow
Cordoba, Argentina
February 9, 2011

Corey Krewson
Santiago Chile (East)
March 16, 2011

For more information on the LDS or “Mormon” church, visit www.mormon.org.  For more info on Brigham Young University, visit www.byu.edu.  Parts of the text above were contributed by Carey Hoki and Brett Pyne from BYU Sports Information.Tweet