Preferential treatment? No 3rd world dangerous country for children of mormon royalty?

He lived in the MP's mansion as well. He was the driver for the MP and was involved in a fatal car crash.

Plus, Ann moved to France and they were able to see each other several times.

So, basically nothing like my mission,



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/23/2012 03:43PM by Samantha Baker.

Wow, you're right...not a bad way to spend your mission, well except for the fatal car accident:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/us-election/8959440/US-election-2012-Mitt-Romneys-life-as-a-poor-Mormon-missionary-in-France-questioned.html

Do you have a reference for this??????

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Romney

This is not where I originally read this, I can not remember now where that was.


*Ann graduated from high school in 1967 and began attending Brigham Young University (BYU).[3] She also spent a semester at the University of Grenoble in France during her freshman year and was there during the 1968 Winter Olympics.[4] The Mormon missionary rules allowed her only two brief visits with Mitt and very rare telephone calls with him.[16]

Samantha Baker Wrote:
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> She also spent a semester at the University of Grenoble in France during her freshman year...

I know that program. I was studying French in my first semester in college and my professor was really urging us to consider it. It was a program specifically designed for second-semester freshman. I'm still kicking myself for not going, but at the time I didn't want to uproot myself from my collegiate environment so quickly after having just arrived.

It's skiing nirvana in that area. I bet that she had a very good time.

Wow!!! I was a missionary in the 70s and the rules were much tighter. My mission president would have executed him. I know an elder who was sent home for just meeting a girl he had met in another area. Our Mission president wanted to be known as the strictest in the Church. His wife was hoping to get the attention to make him a GA. It worked.

I bet this guy would have made a Romney exception as well. Royalty is royalty for these types of organizations.

Well, I served in a French speaking mission 20 years after mittens and I had a companion for about 2 months that was a romney. I have no idea how closely related my companion was to mittens, I think he was a grandson of marion though. Anyway the city we were in while companions was not a very nice one and I don't think the mission would have been seen as absolute top notch.

However,

This guy was on the phone minimum weekly with his girlfriend. It woke me up every week and then I would have to go sit in the bathroom or the unused room with the massive mold problem until he was done, because he sounded like he was going to come apart hearing she was dating other guys. This in contrast to me who had a girlfriend that studied in Poities and told her that we would need to stay in touch by letter still (no phone calls and no visit).

This companion was completely unaffected by the double bind that it would affect our work. Somehow mittens and other romneys have the gift of discernment of when it is appropriate to break rules and know that doG is on our side.

I cannot believe what a total rube I was for so long trying to be righteous. Even while the royalty was showing me it was a sham.

Going to France isn't "preferential" treatment. My Brother in law, son of a single mother (dad killed in car accident) went to France. Nothing preferential about it.

I was inactive my entire teen years and early 20's....got active and went on a mission to the Caribbean Islands? Was that preferential? I prefered it, but no one gave me special consideration for it.

I'm sure there are strings pulled for some people in the church, but just going to France doesn't imply anything in my opinion.

And I don't support Mitt's run for president either.

I'm a convert and I went to France/Switzerland. So?

We had all types in the mission field, like probably everywhere else.

I went to your mission, too: La Mission Francaise de l'Est. The name changed twice while I was there.

My dad was a US Diplomat, so that must be why. JUST KIDDING. But I do think that knowing French & German could have played a role in the decision.

I'd say it wasn't "preferrential" but it was a lot of fun.

When were you there?

'86-'87. La Mission Suisse de Geneve which is now defunct. Again, I guess from what you stated.

This thread has really been bugging me because I've been racking my brain trying to think of Mormon Royalty and where they went on their missions.

Elders' apartments really sucked in France. I mean, bad. Sisters were installed in Toulon to replace the elders, just a few months before I was transferred there (I was the second senior comp, there) and we were in a previously-elder-tenantable apartment that sucked. Sisters had it way better than elders in terms of housing, I must say.

How did you feel about housing? Also, did you score on your mission? (Was that term used then?)

The housing in France was "comme ci, comme ca." In Nice, we had a bedroom in an old lady's apartment in a high-rise. Marble floors and a really nice view.

But when I was transfered to Beziers (also in the Midi), we lived in a "barn" - seriously. It was a large open room with sparse furnishings, and the front door actually did look like a barn door. A previous elder had actually made an easy chair for the place. I guess he didn't like tracting so much. It was REALLY cold in that place in the Winter. No heat and ho indoor plumbing. We used to huddle up by a small space heater at night.

When President Charles Didier arrived, he made the elders move out of the Beziers "barn" and into a regular apartment. Most of the other places I lived in were like that, meaning not bad.

But then, being "good mishies," we were almost always gone anyway, so it was really just a place to sleep.

The sisters did have it much better - one of their apartments even had a phone & a TV.

Yeah, unfortunately I "scored" 5 times in France & Switzerland. Glad then, but embarrassed now.

When I was there (just after Romney left, I think), there were a few "royalty" missionaries I knew of. There were some twins named Bennion (one in our mission, one in Paris), and there was Elder Hanks, a nephew of Marion D. Hanks.

I only scored once and was horrified. It was at the tail end of my mission and I was bummed. OK, what did score mean to you guys in your time? Maybe that's the difference in our feelings about it.

Interesting about the Royalty dudes who were in your/our mission. I had no clue. Around the time I was there, no one was royal in ours or neighboring Paris'.

A TV?! Nope. No TV. But every apartment, elders' and sisters', had phones.

OK, define "score."

I never used that term for a baptism when I was in France. But that's what I thought you meant. So, "scored" 5 baptisms.

If you meant "score" as in had sex, then no, I never did (although there were some mishies with whom I would have, if I had had the chance).

Et alors...... a part de ca, "nous avons eu un bon temp." :)

"Score" meant stepping on poop on the sidewalk. No one wanted to score and I allllllmost made it without scoring.

But yeah, sorry about the five that were baptized.

Mon Dieu! Non, je ne savais pas tout cela.

All I can say is, MERDE!

PS, if you meant sex, then your sentence

"It was at the tail end of my mission and I was bummed"

takes on a whole new meaning. :)

...well, you know, it was late and maybe I was a little jiggy when I wrote that :o)

No one is saying that missions in locations such as France are staffed entirely with the offspring of Mormon royalty. Rather, the offspring of those who are well-connected seem to be sent somewhat disproportionately to such locations. Furthermore, they seem to be more likely to end up working in the mission office and living in cushier environments than what many of us experienced in third-world missions.

In the case of Elizabeth Smart, after what she had been through, I'm glad she went to a comfortable mission location. She'd already experienced third wold living conditions.

I don't think there was any preferential treatment either. I got to go to Italy which was really cool and I don't know anyone important. He got to live in the mansion because he was a good talker and liked working and all that so the mission president liked him. I don't think it mattered who his dad was. He seems to have the perfect personality for what a lot of MPs would want for an AP. He really needs to stop talking about his mission as an experience that gives him insight into the life of the poor. It just makes him sound silly. He doesn't even say that he lived among the poor but among the lower middle class. Oh wow Mitt it must have been so hard to live among the lower middle class. How did you ever do it?

I'm just into my second year of a medical residency. Resident physicians are paid, but not all that much. I live in a high cost-of-living community. Had I not married a trust fund baby I'd be eating ramen noodles for Sunday dinner.

So Mitt had to live among the likes of me? Gosh, how sorry I feel for him. The next time I have to deal with an indigent patient in the E.R>, I'll tell the man or woman to quit feeling sorry for himself or herself and DO SOMETHING about his or her situation, because our nation's presumptive republican presidential candidate
found his way out of poverty. so should the indigent hospital patient.

Once more . . . a disproportionate number of the offspring of influential Mormons end up in comfortable mission conditions.

Just because some of the children of commoners also end up in those missions does not negate the presence of preferential treatment.

Regarding Romney's ability to speak with ease to those in authority, more often than not such is a skill that comes with the territory of having been born and raised into privileged circumstances. Certainly, others have those skills as well, but they're disproportionately found among privileged offspring.

I went to France and I wouldn't say by any stretch of imagination that my family is mormon royalty. Nor were most of the people that I knew on my mission.

However one of the elders in my mission was the grandson of President Monson. He came at the end of my mission, so I only saw him once at zone conference.

I haven't served a mission at all, but from what I gather, yes, there is no special treatment whether he served in France or any where else. Although, I find it rather fishy that his girlfriend just happened to be in the same country he was serving a mission in. It's possible it could of just happened, but I find that a little hard to believe with Mitt "I'm rolling in money" Romney.

I understand that it doesn't have the same drawbacks as a third-world country and is a nice place to live (well, I like it anyway!), but from a "religious" point of view, I would have thought the overwhelming atheism of most French people would have made it rather tough for missionaries selling a fake religion from the US...

Any RMs who went to France care to comment?

Tom in Paris

I'm an RM from France/Switzerland.

Agreed, France is a VERY nice place to live. I'm particularly partial to Southern France, but Paris will do, too, as long as it's not Winter.

Regarding missionary work in France, I was (un)fortunate enough to find 5 people to baptize, but only one of them was actually a French person. The other 4 happened to be living in my mission area at the time.

Your post reminded me of a comment a French man made to us one day:

Your American religion doesn't interest me. Your founder slept with every woman he met, and you force people to pay tithing which all goes back to America. Go back to your own country. Leave us in peace.

Little did I know that eventually I'd agree with everything he said. But at the time, it really made me fache!!



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/24/2012 10:55AM by PapaKen.

I served in the south of France about 4 years ago.

Most people I talked to were atheists, not practicing Catholics or Muslims. The Muslims would talk to us, but only to try to convert us. People loved to yell "secte" at me when I tried to contact them. That used to depressed me, but now I see they had a point.

I had three baptisms while I was there and two of the baptisms were immigrants from Germany and Africa. The other was French.

Of the people I taught, 19 were baptized. All Frenchies including a family of four. There was a sister missionary who was known as a legend in the field who baptized 20. No one knew I'd baptized almost as many because I was a bit more quiet behind the scenes. In fact, I never even talked about it until now. Only the APs and the MP probably knew my stats. This sister mishie was the one who found the family, then left the mission and I saw them baptized. So we shared that family in our totals.

Yeah. I was in heavy depression after leaving the church knowing how many people I'd taught who were baptized in France.

Do you know if the people you baptized are still active?

The areas I was in had huge inactivity rates. The ward lists had tons of names, but the ward's attendance was minuscule in comparison.

It happened a year before I came. The real question is how many of the royalty have to go to Indianapolis/Madison/Kansas City/Little Rock? Royalty don't get to pick where they go, but they do get to go to the exotic or to the successful, not the boring.