Episode 403: Kristen Reber, Author and Podcaster: Early Release Missionaries

Listen, Learn & Love Hosted by Richard Ostler

Richard Ostler

Religion & Spirituality

4.8 • 839 Ratings

🗓️ 25 April 2021

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

My friend Kristen Reber (active LDS, married mother of three) joins us to talk about her early release from her mission 10 years ago. Kristen talks about the myriad of feelings that accompanied that experience including anger, pain, relief, and feelings of failure and frustrations with that experience. Several years after her early return, Kristen, realizing others are walking the same road, wrote a book and started a podcast on this subject (both are called Early Homecoming). Kristen has great insights to help others walking this road find hope for the future and belonging in our congregations. Her book is available in paperback, ebook, or audiobook on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Early-Homecoming-Resource-Early-Returned-Missionaries/dp/B08NWHZP36/ You can also buy it in paperback at Deseret Book: https://deseretbook.com/p/early-homecoming-a-resource-for-early-returned-missionaries-their-church-leaders-and-family You can listen to her podcast anywhere you like to listen to podcasts, or by visiting her website at: kristenreber.com/podcast You can also contact her via her website or on her social media sites: Facebook: facebook.com/kristenreber or facebook.com/earlyhomecoming Instagram: @author_kristenreber Thank you Kristen for your great work to help love, show compassion for, and give support for early release missionaries.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome listeners to another episode of Listen, Learn, and Love hosted by Richard Osler.
0:10.7	My guest on today's podcast, I'm joining via Zoom, is Kristen Reber.
0:17.9	Or Reber, welcome to the podcast, and tell us how to say your last name correctly. No problem. It's Kristen Reber or Reber, welcome to the podcast and tell us how to say your last name correctly.
0:22.7	No problem. It's Kristen Reber.
0:25.5	All right. We're going to call you Kristen Reber, the rest of the podcast.
0:29.7	And we're going to talk about early release missionaries.
0:34.1	Kristen is an early release missionary. That may be the vocabulary she uses. She has been on this road for 10 years. So she has a lot of life perspective since coming home from her mission. She has written a book. She hosts her own podcast where many early release missionaries have been on. And so part of this podcast is really for, it's really for Kristen to share her story,
0:58.1	but connect you more of our listeners with her book and her podcast and the things that she's
1:03.7	learned.
1:04.6	Our joint hope, and we prayed before we started, is if you're an early release missionary
1:08.7	or someone walking a slightly different missionary path, that the things that Kristen shares will be helpful for you. And if you have someone in
1:17.7	your life you love that's walking this road, that you will hear things that will help you
1:22.8	better support on those missionaries. So is that okay for an introduction, Kristen? That's a great
1:29.6	introduction. Thank you, Richard. And I may have mentioned she served in the Philippines.
1:34.6	She'll tell us what mission. She's married mother with three kids. So I'll just turn it over to
1:40.7	you, Kristen, to tell your story. I appreciate it. Thank you so much for this opportunity to come on your podcast.
1:46.5	I absolutely love it.
1:47.6	I love what you're doing.
1:49.0	I'm just really grateful for this opportunity.
1:51.8	So I decided to serve a mission back in 2010, which of course, it seems like so long ago now.
1:58.8	But I managed to serve for six months, three months in the MTC and three months in the field in the Philippines-ilo-elo mission.
2:09.9	And I needed to come home early after like eight weeks of battling a parasite.
	...

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