Because my dad was not LDS and my mother was a convert who did not believe women should go on missions, I paid for my own mission.

A few years ago I learned that my mother was telling the family that SHE paid for my mission. All I know is that just before I returned home from my mission Mom did put some money directly into my checking account but it was not much. Just a few hundred dollars. In those days you paid as you went and the church didn't require anything go into the church coffers first.

When I confronted my mother for telling people she paid for my mission she was adamant that she had paid for it. I let it go but am still scratching my head. I didn't see a dime from her except for the month of my homecoming when she deposited a couple hundred directly into my checking account.

Could it be that Mom was putting money into the missionary fund at church and thinking that I was getting it? I've tried asking her about this but she is pretty old now and just brushes me away and says "I don't remember".

That is very likely what was happening.

You're asking me? I remember less about it than she does.

Let it go. The statute of limitations has expired on that part of your life. Live in the present.

nevermind, just reread your post. She either got fleeced or is telling stories.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/26/2014 11:00AM by notnewatthisanymore.

As a former financial clerk, I can tell you that the policy for decades (and probably still is in place) in the US is that any money donated to the Missionary Fund can NOT be designated for a specific missionary according to IRS rules. If it is ever identified to a specific missionary, it cannot be deducted as a donation.

Likely your mother paid the church and they never updated you or your account with the proper funds. It's probably an accounting oversight, but, yes, I am guessing the finance dept was at the time happily avoiding dealing with it.

Your mother probably bought a square foot or two in the Jesus mall.

I am sure she will be blessed.

My wifes father is always claiming credit for everything good my wife did. He claims he paid for everything etc. He is also an abusive narcissisitic a____e.

It is hard for her to get over, especially when he tells her siblings he paid for everything etc., and she occasionally sees and aunt etc., and they tell her the same garbage.

Your mother might also be a narcissist. If so, you should distance yourself and realize its all about them all the time..

While your mother may have donated to the missionary fund, thinking this was helping you, I think the story she is telling may be a sign of dementia.

My dad had vascular dementia and this was the kind of thing he used to say before it got really bad. Like one day I found a book in my parents' attic that I had bought and left up there. I showed it to my dad and he claimed he bought that book when he was in college. The book was published more than 25 years after he graduated.

He used to tell us that the chairs in his living room were chairs that he bought when he was in college. Uh, nope. They were purchased only a few years before he started telling this story - decades after he was in college.

He told people he was the superintendent of a local school system before he retired. Well he was the assistant superintendent, but never the head guy.

It's like his brain just re-wrote history. I notice my sister doing this lately and it scares the hell out of me because I'm afraid she may be going down the same road as my dad.

Hearing your mother's story sounds so much like it that I had to wonder if that is what is behind her memory lapse.

She may have only paid for that last month and that's what she is remembering. There's a bazillion things my parents claim did or did not happen when I was growing up that they are completely wrong about, or at least they remember it a lot differently than I do. And I know there are things that my kids remember, that were big deals to them, that I have no recollection of. I'm pretty good at being able to tell the difference in the things that they legitimately remember and the things that they think they remember because it's a story their father made up and told them so many times over the years that they think it happened.

So I'm convinced that with memory, different people remember different things in a different way, depending on the effect it had in their life at the time. The rest of us have a recollection of the same thing, but maybe not nearly as clear a memory.

Essentially all members get fleeced. So I would say yes.

Everybody gets fleeced by them eventually! It's too bad that there's no warnings from the BBB or something similar! People would leave in droves if they knew before joining!

Both my parents have selective memory in their 80s, in fact always did but has gotten worse as they age. I have let it go..not worth the upset or argument a dispute would cause, though let me state there is a reason I live 1700 miles from them.

Deja vu! My parents are 79 and have very selective memories. They can't remember how cruel and abusive they were in the sixties and seventies. They live in St George, Utah, and I live near Sacramento, California. I wouldn't think of moving closer to them.

They paid full tithe, and constantly borrowed money from my sister and BIL (her parents) for house payments and other living expenses.

I love my niece dearly and have had a decent relationship with her. But I recently discovered she had 'unfriended' me over something I posted on FB. Might have been about Romney, or tax the church, or change the temple-wedding/civil ceremony.

I don't have any interest in confronting her about it. I feel she has suffered enough being part of that soul-sucking cult and I don't need to add to her depression. But I wish she recognized the double standard - sending those 5 kids out on missions to tell people they are life-losers without the church while she can't tolerate anyone making a tiny suggestion that there might be another way to live one's life.