A big thing you might want to know about is Zone leader companions. The church has a policy about placing its "troublesome" missionaries with the Zone Leaders, though they will send their worst of the worst to be a third companion to the APs. It is a way of having the Mission President's more favored guys keep a closer eye on the suspected apostate.

Now what is interesting is how the MP and his assistance figure out who the troubled Elders are. Rarely is it anyone who is really all that worse then any of the other elders. Normally, it is some poor guy who has a learning disability of some sort, serious enough that it makes it difficult for him to fit into the Morg's Mission structure, but not enough that they would consider keeping him home, though in truth there are some autistic guys who occasionally end up in the Mission field, who should never have been pressured into serving, but their Stake President gave them a priesthood blessing and it is all OK.

The thing is, Mormons believe that if you follow the rules and have enough faith, then you should have no problem learning the discussions, memorizing scriptures, or staying to the strict structure of the mission.

To make it worse, all the other elders are 19 year old boys who think the poor guy is just lazy, because they remember when they were taking Honors English or trying out for football, they were having troubles, but were able to work through it. Being young and raised in the bias of the church, they just can not understand what the poor kid is going through.

We have one mildly autistic kid in my mission, who had rich parents, and the Zone Leaders he was assigned to were always finding ways for him to use his extra money to get them stuff. Meanwhile he was wearing the same pair of crappy worn out clothes he started his mission with, because they tricked him out of using the money he was supposed to use to buy knew shoes to treat them to ice cream.

not to contradict you, I'm sure thats how it was before preach my gospel and restructuring missions, but now both companions are co-zone leaders and usually the 'most diligent/successful' missionaries. One is Sr. and one is Jr., the Sr. trains the Jr. on how to be a ZL and usually the next transfer they split so the now Sr. can train someone else.

That's right, the troubled missionaries in my mission were assigned as third companions.

It's been over a decade since my mission, and I simply forgot that detail. It may have also been something unique to my mission. I heard that San Diego was a dumping ground for these "problem" missionaries, and nearly every Zone leader companionship had a third elder who was struggling.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/28/2012 09:55AM by forbiddencokedrinker.

forbiddencokedrinker Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> That's right, the troubled missionaries in my
> mission were assigned as third companions.
>
> It's been over a decade since my mission, and I
> simply forgot that detail. It may have also been
> something unique to my mission. I heard that San
> Diego was a dumping ground for these "problem"
> missionaries, and nearly every Zone leader
> companionship had a third elder who was
> struggling.

Hey, ForbiddenCokeDrinker, you were in the CA-SD mission, right? What years/what mission president(s)? Just wondering, because I was 'called' (sent, grudgingly, without any real desire) there too.

I became a 3rd companion to the APs (I think that there were in Lemon Grove at the time?, don't remember either of their names anymore) shortly before getting sent home about 4 months early on a medical discharge. ...Which was a short way of saying, "We really don't want a missionary committing suicide, so send him home quick."

This was somewhere around '94 or '95 I think. Since I've been an atheist since around '99, I have no idea if assigning screw-ups to ZLs and/or APs is still SOP.

Well, if they exile the bad kids to SD, then that must mean they make the determination of who will be a good kid or problem child from the get-go, huh? Do they make these projections based on your pre-mission interview?

And why is SD the Land of Misfit Mishies? Is there an underlying history or reason why this is?

Personally, if I were worried about a kid screwing up, I'd send him to a place where there is less temptation...like, say, New Hampshire or Wyoming.

And if I knew I got sent to a place like San Diego because I was a f*** up, I'd fulfill the prophesy by going down to Tijuana...and have me some tequila, sexo, y marijuana.

I was there 96 to 97. I need to rephrase that. It was never a place for elders who were borderline apostate, but for guys who had health issues, or a history of minor psychological issues. John S. Boyden, my mission president, was both an MD and a lawyer, who had specialized in writing patent applications for drug companies. He had another full time MD on staff, and we had both a psychologist and a psychiatrist.

Holy shit. Boyden was the guy that sent me back to Ohio after I crashed, burned, and was borderline suicidal. The only reason I remember that is because of the dual degrees. (That's still impressive. Or insane.) I think that he came in when I had about 12 months left to go, something like that? I'm pretty bad with dates though.

FWIW: I was 'Elder' Griffin at the time.

He sent half the mission home his first few months. Him and the brethren were convinced that San Diego had become a party mission, and he was there to clean house.

Did you know he Daddy was the Utah DA who set up all the federal raids on the Short Creek Mormons back in the 1940s?

I think they still do it both ways, but I think that it is mostly co-zone leaders now. That's how they did it in my mission, but it's the mission president's call, so it varies from place to place.

This is great. Thank you guys so very much. I'm going to have to sit on the publication of this until I get out of BYU...but in the meantime, I have two years to WORK!

Giving the Zone Leader an extra companion who is struggling, and whom he takes advantage, would be a great way to establish that the guy is evil. That was why I shared the story with you.