Yes, I too felt sympathy for those young men still in their teens, sent off into a world unprepared with an answer, and unaided by the Holy Spirit.
My father was once such a man. His missionary journal is sad to read. It is full of hunger, fatigue, doubt, and sacrifice....and to what end? He was in the Northern Mexico, Southern California region....a Spanish speaking mission, where the only converts joined the LDS as a means to an end, and when they discovered that their membership didn’t bring automatic citizenship, they promptly abandoned their new “faith.”
It makes my spirit weep.