A Latter-day Saint mission is not a gap year and it is not chosen. A young man of eighteen or a young woman of nineteen submits papers to the church, and a letter arrives assigning a place, which may be the next state or a country whose language the missionary does not speak. The assignment is not negotiable and is understood as revelatory rather than administrative. Men serve two years and women eighteen months, and the cost is borne by the missionary or the family, at a flat rate that is the same for everyone regardless of where they are sent, so that a mission to Japan costs a family no more than a mission to Idaho.
Those sent abroad spend several weeks at a missionary training centre learning the language, and the standard of fluency reached in that time is high enough that the United States government and private employers have long treated returned missionaries as a language pool. Missionaries travel in pairs called companionships, assigned rather than chosen and changed every few months, and are almost never alone.
The daily rule is strict and has changed only at the edges. Missionaries rise early, study, work through the day, and keep a schedule; they do not date, do not watch television or films, use the internet only for church purposes, and until recently telephoned home twice a year, a limit relaxed in 2019 to a weekly call. They wear formal dress and a black name badge carrying the name of the church, which is why the two young men on a doorstep are the image most people outside the movement carry of it.