My stepson Derek recently set out for Seville, Spain, on a mission. Seeing his anticipation and anxiety took me back to 1968 and my own call. Bolivia, southern Peru, and northern Chile mad up my mission then (I tell surprised young elders, like Derek, I arrived right after Orson Pratt opened things up).

It’s been 20 years, yet the lessons I learned—and didn’t learn—still seem relevant.

This is an open letter to Derek: 10 things not to do on a mission, that I did do on mine. To the relief of many—and disappointment of others—I won’t include winking at women or sampling the local wines, though some might say the mistakes I made were just as grave.

1. Don’t think you represent a country when you represent a Kingdom.

Getting American culture and international policies scrambled with the gospel is a problem that often hampers American missionaries on foreign soil, especially those in third-world countries.

Born-and-bred American elders and sisters often get confused and annoyed at the differences found in other cultures. The coyness of the Bolivians, for instance—their gentle handshakes, their darting eyes and evasive answers—have frustrated more than a few missionaries. Including me.

It’s easy to be ethnocentric, to think the American Way is always God’s way.

I remember walking through La Paz and looking at the helter-skelter traffic, the odd color schemes, the inefficiency, and deciding if I weren’t a missionary I’d run for president, win, then set things straight—make Bolivia more like Bountiful, Utah.

At the time, it seemed like a noble thought.

It was condescending and silly. I forgot I represented a way of life, not a lifestyle. I was rendering unto God what was Caesar’s.

2. Don’t just teach people; learn from them.

I would love to serve a “learning mission,” spend two years doing nothing but meeting people and studying their culture.

I learned tidbits here and there about Bolivia, but used the information mainly to impress companions or manipulate conversations. I studied the legend of Vidacocha—an Indian Christ figure—but only because I could use the story as a door approach.

I should have studied Bolivian culture in order to love and appreciate each person more.

Many returned missionaries talk about the love that they feel for the Southern people, or the Canadians, or the Bolivians. And that’s admirable. But real love, I’m convinced, happens on a one-to-one basis. We may feel great affection or good-will toward a country and its culture, but we can only truly “love” a Brother Vargas or a Sister Yamasaki or a President Alliprandi.

Love, like justice, must be meted out case-by-case.

If I’d spent more time listening to people and less time talking to them, I’d have learned more about each one, and learned to love each more.

3. Don’t think big.

If missionaries today are anything like those in my era, they can develop a self-confidence that borders on feelings of invincibility.

I loved strapping on the whole armor of God. I reveled in being a Christian soldier taking inspiration from the Book of Mormon military martyrs. I hoped to conquer the Inca nation—for the Lord.

And each time I felt larger than life, I was whittled down to size.

My companion and I once rented a huge movie theater, posted handbills all over town and invited everyone to attend a free film. Hundreds of people came. We showed a short film on the 1969 Moon Landing (note #1), showed an LDS film, then demanded everyone’s name and address.

Nobody joined the Church because of that. In fact, 90 percent of the addresses were bogus.

Sometimes we’d organize sports extravaganzas and major musical galas, usually starring the invincible elders. I don’t remember one conversion coming from such things.

What I do remember is the heart-to-heart talk I had with Brother Iglesias about the delicate balance between Mormonism and Catholicism, just before he agreed to be baptized. I remember spending quiet afternoons discussing books with 80-year-old Julio Arroyo, who was later baptized.

The difference between shepherds and sheep-herders is the shepherd knows each of his sheep while sheep-herders drive them about in great, wooly waves.

Be a shepherd.

4. Don’t serve your mission; serve the people.

One morning as we left our La Paz apartment, the man next door, who’d never shown interest in the Church, was making adobe bricks. The process was so fascinating—the simple molds, the muddy ooze between his toes—we watched him for several minutes, then went off looking for investigators.

What if we’d taken off our shoes, helped him make his bricks, then invited him to church? What if we’d served him instead of being so intent on serving our missions?

Mission service should entail more than teaching. Serving a mission means sharing a person’s physical burdens as well as the spiritual ones.

When you’re teaching people about good-will, I’ve found they pay more attention if you’re wheeling their wheelbarrow at the time.

5. Don’t lose focus of the foe.

In Bolivia, where 99 percent of the country is Catholic, I spent a good deal of my mission thinking the Catholic Church was the Mormon missionary’s nemesis.

I made light of the Catholic penchant for pomp, laughed at notions of limbo.

It never occurred to me that it was the people in the Great and Spacious Building who pointed and laughed at those eating from the Tree of Life.

Ridiculing others for what they believe—no matter how odd—simply opens you up for ridicule. If you belittle Catholics for changing baptism from immersion to sprinkling, they’ll chide you for changing Christ’s sacrament wine back into water.

A missionary’s enemy is never other forms of heartfelt Christianity. The enemy is tougher to spot. The enemy is “spiritual homelessness”—a religious hunger and restlessness that can lead people into apathy or turn them toward hate.

Back in 1968, my military draft card read “Minister of the Gospel.” Only when I started “ministering” to the spiritual ills about me did I understand Christ’s comment that He, like a doctor, searched for the afflicted.