There might have been some good come out of that, like in my instance of serving a FOOL time MORmON mission, as I sold the MORmON garbage I began to catch the real smell of the MORmON garbage and with the help of my convert and Gordon BS HinckLIEy, I ended up quitting the MORmONISM cult.
The theory is that there are ever so many countries, situations, whatever, so that ghawd, in his infinite wisdom, decided that since some missions cost peanuts (poor countries) and some are WAAAAY expensive (rich countries) that the church would collect $400/month/missionary and then pay the expenses of each missionary. One of the things that made this palatable was that since the check is made out to the church, it is a donation, and thus deductible. I don't know how the recent tax reform affects this...
So the out of pocket for the church in Honduras is $210/month, with the missionary getting part of that amount to eat on, and take care of ordinary expenses. In Japan, it costs $800/month, with the missionary getting a fixed sum per month, with that amount being way more than the Honduran missionary gets.
There are lots of stories about missionaries frivoling their money away and eating beans, rice and tortillas for the last ten days of the money, etc., etc.
Missionaries from more well-to-do situations get extra money sent to them by family. I've sent the occasional frivoling money to my grandson.
Supposedly, the honorable missionary refunds any left over money at the end of the month to his MP. It boggles the mind that a missionary would do that a second time!
And then there is a fund, about which I do not have all the details, that faithful rich mormons contribute to so that the church can pay young men and women in very poor countries to go on missions. It has been said (by me, in recounting an apocryphal story) that it is at times the best job the young person will have in his entire life. Another apocryphal story has young African men being followed from posting to posting by their girlfriends, who also live off that stipend.
When I left in 1968, my parents paid $100 a month. to the bishop and the fee was raised to $120 before I got home. They never said so much in front of me, but I always worried that they would be able to pay every month. My mom told me later that they never had trouble making the payment.
One guy I knew was there, being supported by his stake members back east, Vermont? Maine? don't remember.
By the time I was the finance clerk in the mid 90's, the monthly was $200+ and several families didn't make it each month. (the ward had lots of missionaries out all the time). Not sure who paid the difference.
Let's keep in mind also the rest of the story. While they are out preaching the so-called Gospel, the rest of their cohort are going to college and establishing themselves in a career. Mormons learn to do one thing and one thing only, and that is to tell other people that they need to be Mormons. So when a great many of these young people come home, not only are they behind in all those years of career development, but they are stuck in the minor leagues for many more years as they try to figure out life in the terms that their employers want and automatically assume everybody intuitively knows. That was my experience, anyway. So totaling up the full cost of a mission would reach to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
My never-mo son went to college while his friends went on missions. He had such a head start in life. He graduated, went to work in his field, established a solid relationship with his lovely GF and is having a great life
His TBM RM friends are still trying to figure out what to do with their lives.
Finding peace with the fact that I spent 2 years of my life trying to convert Filipinos the the cult has been difficult. I want to think it wasn't all a huge waste of time and money but...it was.
All of the guilt I shoveled over there has found its way back to me. I feel guilty for converting people who were looking for any kind of help and I gave them mormonism. I've told a couple of them on facebook that I'm out of the cult now but they are still in.
My belief in the cult has derailed my life in a big way. Aside from the waste of going on a mission and not focusing on education or any sort of career, I ended up rushing to get married to the first woman who gave me the time of day and that was a colossal mistake. Had I just lived with her for a year (like a normal person) I would have figured out that she had a personality disorder and I would have left her 13 years sooner.
I suppose what I'm saying is that a mission is just one in a series of bad decisions I made that crippled my progress.
That said, I did learn a lot of what not to do, so there's that.
I (foolishly) sold my '67 Mustang to finance (in part) my mission. I bought it in 1976 for $800. Spent almost two years and about $1500 fixing it up, fully restoring it, painting it (did it myself, in my garage covered in plastic and with a rented sprayer/compressor, and spent two weeks color sanding, buffing, and polishing...). When I was done, it was *perfect.* I was so proud of it, and I was the envy of all my buddies.
Sold it in late 1978 for $6,000. That covered about 14 months of my mission in relatively-expensive France. TBM step-dad picked up the rest.
I wish I'd kept the thing. Maintained over the years, it would be worth about $80,000 today (not that I'd sell it ever again). I actually ran into the guy I sold it to about 4 years after my mission, when I saw "my" car in a grocery store parking lot. He was taking good care of it, and said he'd never sell it -- and wondered why I ever did. Yeah, I was stupid, that's why. I sold it to pay for me trying to sell an American cult in Europe for two years. I was a dope :(
Now you can bring food that missionaries can use for breakfast and lunch and drop it off in the box. Members are still expected to provide dinner on a regular basis.I was told that the missionaries are going hungry.
I have yet to see them have any potential new members at Church and was told it has been 4 years since the ward I am in has baptized a new member. So I guess they are going hungry that way too.
Come to think of it I hardly see the missionaries out and about anymore. So what are they doing? This sure is a different Church than I knew when I was growing up.
But the Church keeps telling us it is moving forward.
I had one person try to tax-deduct meals for missionaries as a charitable contribution. I explained you can't do that. Gifts to individuals are not charitable contributions under the tax law. She was put out.
BTW, as was pointed out earlier, that is one of the main reasons missionary support payments go to LDS Inc rather than directly to the missionaries. That way it is tax deductible in the US.
The new tax law with its higher standard deduction means fewer people will be able to itemize, and those that do will get less benefit from itemizing (since, for a married couple, the first $24K would be deductible anyway as standard deduction, so they only benefit from itemized deductions over $24K, and that's a fairly high bar to clear)
Missionaries are on the internet, finding new ways to ensnare people. Or at least trying.
In my area, the only door-knocking religion now is the Jehovah's Witnesses. No ward, no branch. 25 miles away, there is a shrinking ward--the young and internet-savvy are not staying. Occasionally there is a new convert that needs welfare help. You can imagine how long they stay. I remember a time when "Lamanite" converts were welcomed warmly and generously, for they were the People of the Book. Now they are just more poor people draining funds. The kind of people that the LDS need--upper middle class and well educated--are not buying in to the foolishness of Mormonism.
+1000 Even if you were paid to go on a mission, you still lose your time, self respect, and become so horny you want to marry the first girl that says "yes". It is a lose, lose, lose situation. I went on one because I was brainwashed into thinking that no decent girl would want me. What a piece of crap lie!
I've seen the figure of $400 per month, per missionary for years, but lately I've seen a few reports of $450. So I don't know if it's gone up or if those people are reporting incorrect information.