My VT's came over last night. The subject of missions came up and they both told me how when their older children went on their foreign missions the phone call home for Mothers Day cost one $500 and the other $1500!

I expressed my shock and outrage that the church doesn't cover those costs! That means some poor families probably had to cut their calls shorter than a rich family.

This was before Skype and email on missions. Seems completely unfair to me. Do any of you have similar stories?

I never got to call home.

Served '74-'76.

Really? Was that the norm back then? I have a friend whose son just left for a mission in South America. She is somewhat active, more of a cafeteria style member, but she had such a difficut time dealing with him leaving. She was an emotional wreck!

I'm glad she will at least have email and skype. I just really felt it was an injustice that the church doesn't pick up the phone bill for Mother's Day. The families are already paying for the mission and agreeing to only speak twice a year. They have no choice in where the person goes.

I was amazed at how it just never occurred to my VT's that this was wrong. It just reinforced to me how TBMs will accept almost anything the church does

I always assumed that the phone calls home are paid for by the church. Silly me!

Other than the flight home after an honorable mission, the church pays nothing. Really. We bought our food. Payed rent and utilities. We payed for our bus passes, or bicycles, or payed extra to the mission office for cars/gas (just like renting). We had to buy the BoMs to "sell" to investigators. Audio tapes. Teaching props. Yeah, we payed for it all.

Perhaps they failed to tell you the part about all the blessings they received from having a son on a Mormon mission. That part of the story justifies the absurd sacrifice and expense, he just failed to go over that with you. Perhaps if his immediate priesthood authority were in the room he would remember better?!?

I am a NeverMo, but have a lot of friends in Europe as the result of having been in Holland as an AFS exchange student in the early 1970s. I remember calling my host family on Christmas 1973. It had to be placed by an operator and the cost was $5 for three minutes---and only after 11 pm (I called at 11 pm, it was 8 am in Holland Christmas Day). Even domestic long distance phone calls in those days cost 18-20 cents/minute.

Direct overseas dialing (011 + country code + city code + phone number + #) was rolled out in 1974. It no longer required an operator, but the cost was still $5/three minutes for many years. The costs did not begin to drop until the phone companies were deregulated.

Aside from free net services like Skype, I can call overseas using PennyTalk from any phone (no computer or smartphone needed) for 2 cents/minute to Western Europe.

So an hour long phone call back to USA in the 1970s could have cost several hundred dollars. I might add that the $5 rate above was to Europe----other continents were more costly, including Australia/New Zealand (pre-satellite----they had only limited cable capacity). Today, most overseas phone calls go via underwater optical cables with a lot more carrying capacity than the old coaxials.

Your VT is lying to you or really stupid, most likely lying.

Even at $5.00 a minute, that call would be 300 minutes (5 hours!).

Agree. A one hour phone call might have run $200 in the 1970s. I don't have information on the costs back in the 1960s, but my understanding was that the late-night $5.10/3 minutes (and $1.70/minute beyond three minutes) was a price break-through in the early 1970s. I believe the costs were even higher in the 1960s.

The one who said they paid $1500 said her son couldn't get through on a regular line and had to call collect which I guess would account for the higher rate.

I just felt like the church should have covered the cost for those phone calls. Silly me.

I don't know why those charges for a phone call were so astronomical. We had one in So. America and one State-side and calls were made but not that high, that was in the late 80's before the Internet and cell phones were so prevalent.
(Must have been during the times PtLoma listed.)

Now days, as we all know, calls are very easy, and cheap if the phone system is set up correctly for them.
There are going to be a few missionaries that follow the little "white bible".. do they still have that? perfectly. My experiences that most do not.
I knew elders that phoned home and asked for all kinds of things which their parents willingly sent.

We did have a problem sending stuff to Argentina as the postal people would open the mail and take what they want: shoes, coats, clothes, personal items. So I just labelled every package: Personal Hygiene and it went through! I sent one shoe in a package at a time. Also the pickpockets are amazingly good. They follow the missionaries to the bank as they know that they are getting cash from the US (all our money want in the church mail system) and then they robbed the missionaries while on a bus or walking.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/05/2014 12:18PM by SusieQ#1.

LOL @ SusieQ - My mom did the same thing when I was in Argentina. I told her to put "personal hygiene" on the package label. And she sent me one shoe at a time also.

I called home twice (1958-59)

If the VT figures are correct, there are two possibilities:

These were the 'old days' (when the rates were much higher than now) and the calls were placed 'Collect' by the missionaries,

and/or they were called from countries that had very high rates (such as east European countries)...

Now that you mention it, one of the countries was Russia.

They could have flown home for that. Just ridiculous! ChurchCo wants it to be hard on the mishies, families and the poor door answering public. Surely they had to call collect, because the CHURCH-MP didn't want a $20 phone bill. Sick - breaking families.

I called home once at the end of my mission, england south 72-73, to say I would be home one week early, my dad answered, and asked why am I calling?

I am surprised LDS Inc does not use some type of super costly, profitable phone call system like are used in jails.

It would be a win win situation as the families would be paying the church, the church would profit, calls could be monitored, and it would give the missionary a feel of incarceration like the church wants.

I am shocked this system is not in place.

Now that you suggested it, maybe in 6 months. LOL!

There's nothing fair about the mormon church. It's a one way street which is never headed in the members direction.

I'm still calling BS on the stories. Even collect calls would not run that expensive. Let's say they cost $10 a minute, which is impossibly high. Who the hell would talk for 150 minutes (more than 2 hours!) on a collect call?

especially if they only get to talk twice per year.
On the other hand, if they knew how expensive it was, maybe the wouldn't talk so long. Maybe they didn't know until the bill arrived what it was actually costing.

I frequently called to and from the U.S. and countries in central and south America during the 80s snd 90s. Highest rates were just shy of $4.00

Per minute

I was in Brasil from 1968-70 and I recall calling home for Mother's day one year, probably 1970. We went to the home of an American guy who lived in Sao Paulo and he had a radio system, where he was able to contact someone he knew, in Elko, NV. Then that guy patched a phone call to my parents in Salt Lake City.

I remember nothing about the call except that we had to do that "over" before actually speaking to my family. I do recall that my mom told me later they sent a check for $25.00 or so to the guy in Elko. I don't remember if we paid anything to the American guy, but he did it for several missionaries. Then we got told it was against church policy :)

My son was in Finland just a few years ago. There was a long complicated number that we were supposed to be able to use that would make the call much cheaper - and it worked for our first call - but after that we couldn't get it to work. So we finally went the "standard" route. We spoke just over an hour (between my husband & I) & it cost over $300.00.

I thought it was way too much money - but I missed my son.

PennyTalk has been around for years. You dial a toll free number. You may register up to five numbers from which you frequently call (work, mobile, home numbers) and PennyTalk recognizes those numbers and you are ready to dial. If you call from a number that is not registered (e.g. from the landline or mobile of a friend or relative), you enter the phone number you used in your registration as the username, and a four digit PIN of your choosing as password. It can be used from any phone, landline or mobile, and the cost is 2 cents/minute for Western Europe. And you can call to any phone, landline, smartphone, standard mobile. No computer needed and the person you are calling just needs to be able to answer the phone you call.

You can "pay as you go" (replenish from credit card or bank acct), or you can authorize them to auto-refill the account with an amount of your choosing ($15 is the minimum) whenever your balance drops below $5. I use auto-refill and they have a credit card on file which gets automatically charged for $15 when the balance falls below $5.