Four missionaries, one devoted mom

It's a four-letter world for Kathy Nielsen as she keeps tabs on a quartet of sons around the globe
By Mark Eddington
The Salt Lake Tribune

TAYLORSVILLE - Christopher is in England, Weston is in Uruguay and twins Jonathan and Joseph are in Florida and Georgia, respectively. And their mom is tired - of writing.
She must be. Still, Kathy Nielsen does so, religiously, firing off four e-mails and four separate letters every week to her four sons serving LDS missions.
"Jonathan and Chris e-mail me on Mondays, Joseph e-mails me on Wednesdays and Weston on Thursdays," Nielsen explains. "I need to be very organized and make sure I [e-mail] all of them before those days. So on Fridays I do Mondays, and on Tuesdays I do the e-mails for Wednesday and Thursday. I do two at a time, but no two of them are the same."
On Sundays, Nielsen pens four separate epistles because "mailed letters are important to missionaries."
Welcome to Kathy Nielsen's four-letter world.
A single mother of six sons, the 48-year-old Taylorsville resident juggles letter-writing with her full-time job as an executive assistant in the securities and insurance business, her part-time chorister duties in her LDS ward and her daily chores.
How does she manage?
Her oldest missionary son, 25-year-old Chris, says the Brits he meets in the England Leeds Mission have the same question.
"First their jaws drop because we have six boys in our family and their families tend to be smaller," he says in a phone interview. "Then, when they learn four of us are serving missions at the same time, they wonder how Mom does it."
So does Scott Parkin, Kathy Nielsen's younger brother.
"She's been the glue that has kept those young men together," says the Riverton resident. "When she told me about the twins' mission calls, I mentioned to her, 'I don't know if that has ever happened before - a mother to have four sons out on missions at the same time.' "
LDS Church officials agree it is unusual, but are uncertain if it's a first.
"The church does not track the number of members of the same family serving missions," church spokesman Dale Bills says. "Finding joy in sharing the gospel message, Latter-day Saint families make considerable sacrifices to support missionary sons, daughters and even parents."
For her part, Nielsen sees being a missionary mom as a labor of love and doesn't belabor the accompanying hardships - the anxiety, the loneliness, the letter-writing, even the $1,600-a-month tab to support four missionaries.
Their missions "have been such a blessing in my life," she says. "I've had harder things in my life."
Even so, she was stressed at the outset. Son Ryan, now 24, was back from his mission in California and Weston was preparing to go when Chris told her she "now had two going."
The two submitted their papers and received their assignments the same day - Weston, now 20, to the Uruguay Montevideo Mission and Chris to England. They are more than a year into their missions.
Then Jonathan and Joseph, both 19, announced they were leaving.
"I was so worried I went to my bishop and asked how I was going to do this," Nielsen recalls. "He said, 'Sister Nielsen, don't worry about it. This is something we want to happen.' "
It has - but not without help.
Ward members pitch in to the Nielsen missionary fund. So do friends and extended family, including aunts and uncles and grandparents. The Nielsen brothers also did all they could before leaving. Chris sold his truck. Jonathan and Joseph sold the car they shared. All four worked full time and saved virtually every penny.
"They gave up everything to go," their mom says. "I'm so proud of them."
And plenty are proud of their mom, who was divorced in 1993 and reared her boys on her own and in an apartment until moving into their Taylorsville home two years ago.
"I spent a lot of time with her twins . . . until they left for their missions," says Andrea Nelson, a family friend. "They were always cognizant of their mother's sacrifices for them . . . and they would argue between themselves about which one should call Mom to let her know of their whereabouts. They didn't want to worry her.
"Kathy always tried to make life better for her boys without taking away their responsibility to pitch in and help financially and otherwise," Nelson adds. "I remember Joe and Jon calmly consigning themselves to the fact that there were some things they couldn't afford to do - school dances, etc. - but they never blamed this on their mother."
Nielsen's twins, now about two months into their missions, still regularly check in with Mom by e-mail - Jonathan from the Florida Jacksonville Mission and Joseph from the Georgia Atlanta Mission. So do Chris and Weston.
Apart from some separation anxiety, Nielsen copes quite well with her sons' absence once she gets past the moping stage. Her eldest son, 26-year-old Lee, already lives on his own. And Ryan is preparing to follow suit.
"I don't think Mom has ever experienced a time since she's had kids when all of them have been gone," Ryan says.
Empty nesters, though, have other ways of feathering their nest. Nielsen now has time to exercise and is even thinking about giving dating a go. And her monthly grocery bills have plunged from $600 to about $250.
"My house stays clean and there's not quite so much laundry," she says with a chuckle.
But Nielsen is eager for a return to buying more butter and seeing more clutter. She misses Chris taking out the trash, watching movies with Joseph, and heart-to-heart chats with Weston and Jonathan. She longs for those Sunday dinners and family singalongs with piano and guitar accompaniments. And she can scarcely wait for the dates her boys will bring home once again.
Not that Nielsen wants her sons to get too comfortable. In fact, she already is steeling herself to send them out a second time - this time for marriage, not missions.
"I'm looking forward to having some daughters," she says, laughing. "That's my assignment for them when they get home."