I know this comes up a lot, and for soooooo many good reasons. I have learned a ton about what those missions were like in reality and how you were pressured to hide the truth of your experiences for the "benefit" of all the rest of the members. I just wanted to say that I'm so sorry that happened to you. After all these years, I had no idea until I began reading this board that the experience was typically demeaning, depressing, and dehumanizing.

Most of us had no idea. I think I would have made more of an effort to befriend RMs had I known what you were all experiencing when you returned from that horrific brain-washing experience. I'm so, so sorry.

well guess what, stupidity is always its own reward, and going out to sell the BOM scam for the @$$e$ at LDS INC is really really really stupid ! I say that as some one who had to learn the hard way by going on an LDS mission.

Most are there out of coercion.
Keep in mind these are young kids. Most of them have been under tight church control all of their lives. They have had the ability to make decisions taken away from them.

If they do voice an objection, the price will most likely be higher than what they can endure. The fall out will continue for the rest of their lives. They can lose their support for education. They could lose their families. They could lose their entire community.

For most missionaries, being on a mission has nothing to do with their intelligence.

Lucky, do you live in Boise by chance?

I don't think you missionaries we stupid for doing that. (Maybe stupid for other reasons; I don't know you all! ;)

I think most of you were conned. Getting conned doesn't mean you're stupid.

Thank you!

If they man or woman up to those reasons and reach beyond them, they do themselves and the world a favor.

Finding the reasons for a problem doesn't solve it. That takes insight and guts.

Missionaries are pushed, pulled, and prodded. Some eventually man up.

Every person in a bad situation can choose to grow beyond peer pressure and intense emotional manipulation or they can cave in to it. It's about having the courage to buck the system or continuing to be part of the problem.

Rosemary, thanks for your kind words. Your kind words are more than what I received when the Stake President released me when I returned home from my mission. All he did was sign the release. No thank you, and no congratulations for working so hard and suffering so much.

All he asked me was if I wanted to speak in different wards to encourage the young men to serve missions. I almost blurted out "F*** No!!". I was so fed up with the church at that time. I just told him to forget it and walked out of his office.

Yes, you are correct that most members have no idea how bad the mission experience is and how badly the missionaries are treated. This was in the days of Spencer Kimball and all young men will serve missions and like it and no one could possibly have a bad mission.

My mother was also that naive until I returned home. One night she was asking me about my mission experiences. I could not get 2 minutes into explaining before I fell into her arms and brokedown and sobbed trying to tell her about the "best two years of my life".

I went.

Didn't want to, but what do you do when you believe in the church and have tried your bestest to "keep yourself worthy" and the only thing you've ever heard is "every worthy young man will serve a mission"?

And you live in an area where it is social suicide to not go?

Well, you go.

And my god did I annoy the shit out of people when I was a missionary.

While tracting is one way of annoying people - it's not as bad as "street preaches." People can either not answer the door, or say no, or slam the door in your face.

Sure, you are still being annoying - but the street preaches.

Good lord.

All everyone else is trying to do is run errands, or hang out with friends, and we come along and bug everyone that we see.

And we sing to them to!

That's really annoying.

I would say that I felt bad for teaching lies, but I went to Germany - so I didn't really teach anybody.

Street proselyting... That was the worst! I was in Korea and that's all we did all the time... Find a busy corner and annoy everyone we could.

We got to know the "homeless people" in the area very well and were usually there long enough to see them pack up for the day, put on some expensive shoes and drive off in their convertibles that was parked around the corner ("homeless people" in Korea are professionals and often make more money than the working class, owning your own car was difficult, a convertible was unheard of.)

We knew we were annoying but told ourselves it was for a good cause, we were in the right.

In the end... I'll never forget the exit interview with my mission president. Everyone before me was taking a long time. He was Korean and had a very basic understanding of English, but insisted on never using a translator. We all knew that he couldn't understand us, but assumed he knew us "though the spirit"....

Anyway, the first thing he said was "Your sacrifice was worth it"... At those words, after everything that happened to me, I burst in to tears and something to the effect of "Thank you!!!" because I had been through hell those two years and he had validated all of it somehow. Then, with what I know think of as a confused look on his face, that was the end of the interview. Mine was the shortest he had ever done according to the office elders. I think he was just glad that I felt the spirit so quickly.

Someday, I'd like to go back to Korea and see it for real. Someday I'll be able to look though my old journals and find the good that happened to me... but not for a while.

Why didn't he conduct the exit interview in Korean if his English was so poor?

Thank you Rosemary. I still live by the old saying, you have to taste the bitter to know the sweet.

As you say,it was dehumanizing on many levels, but for me what I received from seeing another culture, especially one who couldn't care less about mormon missionaries was worth it's weight in gold and made up for the hell of the mission.

I knew the reason they weren't interested in us wasn't because they had wool over their eyes. They clearly were focused on their own lives.

I was shocked to see that most were genuinely happy--without the gospel according to J.S--whoa! I had an envy of them that I did not recognize at the time.

It was the first bit of wool coming off my own eyes.

Now, if I had been sent to Utah or Idaho...well I doubt I would be saying that.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/16/2012 01:13PM by blueorchid.

I'm so glad that I gave my brother the "permission" he needed not to go. He was that age and under all the typical pressures to go. He had a committed girlfriend who wasn't a member, my grandparents were offering him serious money to go ahead and go on his mission, and my parents are the type of members who think it doesn't matter if you WANT to go or not. . . You go.

Add to that that he was the oldest of seven kids. He was supposed to be an example. Finally one night, very late, he got off the phone with his girlfriend and talked to me. (I know he must have been desperate to be coming to me for comfort.) When he finally said, "I don't want to go" I shrugged and said "so don't." He said "what?" and I repeated, "you don't wanna go. So don't go."

He was so relieved that he laughed out loud even though absolutely nothing funny was happening. To this day none of my four brothers has served a mission and I'm so relieved for them. They are definitely the types who would have nervous breakdowns.

Ya gotta admit: missions are the one part of the cult that made being a girl the better situation. Nobody expected us to go, so nobody judged us when we didn't.

I have a nephew on a mission. I asked my sister if there was anything that he was surprised about that he didn't expect.


He was shocked to find out that most of the boys serving missions don't want to be there. Also, how little they knew about the church doctrine.

Nothing has changed then. On my mission the majority of the missionaries knew what was in the lesson manual and that was about it. Conversation was always about home and what we would do when we got there.

I knew almost no one who couldn't tell you to the day and hour how much time they had before going home.

Then there was always one who talked about asking for an extension because they loved doing the lord's work so much. Need I say that that was so obviously a hollow ploy to 'one up' the others in the spirituality competition?

Geez, Rosemary has made me remember how awful it was again.

I feel I was lucky because I went after graduating and working for a couple of years. I think a lot of the crap that goes on in a mission is typical of bullies. These boys and girls go when they are young, naive, pressured, idealistic and really have no idea what they are walking into. It's a conspiracy of silence, where even mothers and fathers who have been on missions and KNOW the crap that goes one, still encourage their child to go because they feel the child will be better for it - that it's what God wants for their child. It never ceases to amaze me how Mormons offer their kids up for slaughter so readily. They put them in the hands of bullies without checking or listening because it's part of God's plan.

Being older made the mission a lot easier in some ways - No one really tried to bully me. By virtue of my age, I was on the side of the rulers, not the ruled. Not that I ever took advantage of that or even realized it at the time. On the other hand, a mission was harder because if you've never really had control of your life, it's easier to give up control. When you have been a college graduate, working adult with your own apartment, car payments, social circle and a good job, having to follow the rules of a mission and being forced to live with people not of your choosing is brutal. The forced socializing with no time alone also caused some lasting anxiety. But overall, I didn't have the same sort of problems that younger missionaries have and I really enjoyed living in Europe, for the most part.

Did it ever bother you that 19-20 year old District & Zone leaders where in charge of you?

CA Girl wrote: "...It never ceases to amaze me how Mormons offer their kids up for slaughter so readily."

Its not much different than when, in the Old Testiment stories, some parents offered up their children for sacrifice to the idol-god Bale and through them into the furnace. Those kids may have been better off as they only suffered for a few moments instead of 2 years.

Bale? Was he the god of neatly trussed packages?

My wife's nephew was recently called to the mission where I live. His uncle (from the other side of the family) also lives here and we are both atheists.

So, his uncle was joking that they sent M. here to reconvert his two apostate uncles. :)

He's in the MTC right now and should be showing up in a week or two. I kinda hope he gets in my ward just so we can have him over for dinner. He's a good kid.