When recently called missionaries used to have their farewells (and when they were permitted to plan them~ choose their own speakers and favorite church hymns), a popular song was "I'll go where you want me to go".

Why do I bring up such an icky song?

Because some of us that went on missions have suffered nightmares that we have been called again to serve a mission. Of course it makes no sense (being married, jobs and families), but what if the top 15 becomes overly delirious? Not too hard to imagine with Rusty and his magic pen.

Suppose church leaders think the answer to the current faith crisis is to resend middle-aged men/women out to serve another mission. How many would accept the challenge of the profit and leave their families to go on a crusade for the Mormon church?

Yea, probably a crazy idea, but for those still attending the temple, aren't they still promising to support the church no matter what?

I was the pianist in primary (when it was after school) and I loved playing that song as it was "easy." Many of them were. The baptism song was horrible to play for me. But most of them were easy songs and so I loved playing them. I haven't thought of this song in YEARS.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/26/2019 11:33PM by cl2.

Sorry about that cl2.

Last week I had yet another dream about getting called back to serve a mission and this time around everyone around me was angry. My wife was upset that the church had sent me a letter. "We don't even believe anymore. Why are they bothering you?"

My Mom was upset and worried about what other members would think. "Messy, you're not paying tithing. You don't have a current TR. You're setting a poor example for the church. How will I explain this to the ward?"

And I got a phone call from my former MP. "You were such a screw up the first time. Maybe you can do it right this time. And I know that you enjoy cussing so that's going to stop. We've got a special program to straighten you out and you're gonna thank me later. Trust me."

morning.

I used to have dreams about being back in high school (not a pleasant experience either) and I was supposed to have graduated and I couldn't figure out why I hadn't. Then my son graduated (I worried about him graduating) and I've never had the dreams again.

I also used to dream that my husband had left me and then by the end of the dream, I'd realized he was still there. Well, once he left, I never had the dream again.

I could NEVER have gone on a mission. Not in a million years. At the time, I can't be too far from home as I get extremely homesick, but I also couldn't be that social. I never was into missionary work and didn't find it a good thing. I'm sorry for every missionary who went out including the one I helped to talk into going.

I was always perplexed when I would dream about being back on a mission because in the dream they knew that I was an atheist, and still they wanted me.

For some reason there were maps of Mexico to be consulted in the dreams...

These dreams did not bother me all that much. The human mind is full of surprises; some good, some not so good.

Funny, I have the same dreams, even now. I am back on a mission, wondering what the heck I am doing there. They all know that I am an atheist and deplore the church. I am looking for ways to escape...weird.

I had those dreams for many, many years. I'll bet they are a symptom of some form and some degree of PTSD. The vets on RfM may be able to offer insights there.

I thought the dreams would never stop, but eventually they did. I'm not sure why--perhaps the birth of my children, who provided a level of emotional involvement and acceptance that may have displaced the missionary nightmares; or maybe the events that revealed to me rather suddenly that the church is an emperor, an astoundingly unsightly emperor, with no clothes.

It is strange, though, because those demons no longer have a hold on me. I'm sorry you and others are still visited by them.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I thought the dreams would never stop, but
> eventually they did.

I don't know if they ever truly stop. We have a decade between 15-25 years old where our pruning brain creates our most vivid memories. And right in the middle of it Mormonism sends us off to have experiences with authoritarian rulers, a series of individuals to live with 24/7, and hopeless goals unless you are good at salesmanship.

I can't think of these memories stopping their haunting you even in your dreams. I think they may recede into being recalled vividly upon waking but I doubt they are truly gone.

I never dreamed anything about actually receiving a second mission call, but I did dream repeatedly of being back in the mission field. For me, the dreams stopped with the birth of my first child.

I also had a recurring dream about a dog my family had for sixteen years. The dog wandered away when he was outside with my dad while my dad was doing yard work. We searched exhaustively and never found the dog. We assumed he must have died, but never knew and never had closure in that regard. I dreamed for the next thirteen years that the dog returned. That recurring dream, too, stopped once my first child was born.

Perhaps something happens to many of us upon becoming parents that effectively seals off earlier conflicted parts of our lives.

You see, this is interesting to me. I had those damned dreams for a very long time, and then they stopped. It wasn't right after my first child's birth, but it was within a few years of that.

I too wonder about the cause and effect pattern. When you have children, at least when I did, you get relationships that are in many ways more intimate than anything before. Could that bring healing power? Perhaps because the intimacy one would want with God is in Mormonism conditional upon self-abnegation and sacrifice--in short, the devotion one expresses on a mission--the sense of inadequacy and tasks that must be redone expresses itself as recurrent dreams of missionary service. That would represent the desire of the RM to achieve the closeness to God that s/he failed to achieve while serving. It is the old unfulfilled dream of acceptance from divine parents.

But since the parent-child is in some senses superior to the conditional love of God; since it is unconditional devotion in which the parent senses if not realizes that it isn't impossible to do what God has not, the parenting experience relieves the adult of the driving need to seek reconciliation with a cold and distant deity. More simply, the bond between child and parent provides the emotional succor we all want. Gradually and imperceptibly, the need to earn God's favor through more self-denial in missionary service dissipates and the frequency and strength of the dreams fade away.

That may not happen to everyone, but I think it happened to me and it sounds like you may have experienced it as well.

This makes more sense than any explanation I could conjure.I was able to let go of troubling issues once I became a parent.

"since it is unconditional devotion in which the parent senses if not realizes that it isn't impossible to do what God has not, the parenting experience relieves the adult of the driving need to seek reconciliation with a cold and distant deity."

Unless the parent is still like a child. They don't express unconditional empathy for their children. They cling to an authoritarian deity who they think will bless them in their devotions to the deity over their children.

I Remember hearing a lot of the: In the hollow of thy hand... song..

Mostly 'performed' by some ambitious members who aspired a church singing carreer..

There was a lot of that actually. People aspiring singing carreers in the church.
Although I must admit, I did like to sing. Was never very good at it, and the church music is drab.. but I did love participating in the ward choir quite a bit.

Now I just stick to singing in the car when I'm driving alone..

I was on my mission a very long time ago; I got quite sick during my last year and ended up coming home early with a dishonorable discharge. ( At that point in time you were only supposed to come home early in a coffin.)

At any rate, I found the cure for the dream of being called back to finish the last months of my mission was to actually go back to the mission and poke around a bit.

The mission home where I was locked up by my mission president for three weeks is now no longer owned by the church. The worst town I served in is now a pleasant prosperous suburb commuter community. The slum I lived in my last area is not so much a slum any more. I got to visit all the places I wanted to see when I was a missionary, and I took my wife to a nice spot I knew at the top of a small mountain where you can look out to sea and down on the beautiful town that was once a medieval capital. I got together with a few native exmos (two I originally met on this webpage) and I felt all the old crap feelings of my mission going away, and the bad dream of getting called back, seems to have been exorcised.

Beautiful. So glad you had that experience.

I still occasionally have return to mission dreams. In them, I can still (try to) speak Japanese. Over the years the language gets worse and worse, but I seem to always remember how bad it is when I wake up.

I played it as a vacation then came home when I had had enough

I believe they are now using “Highway to Hell” by AC/DC.

I had the back on the mission dreams forever. It was so confusing because I was present day me in the dreams and nothing made sense and I knew it was crazy but I was doing it anyway and I didn't know how to stop, to get out of it.

It was such a relief when I found out I wasn't the only one and that those dreams were a "thing."


I haven't had one since I found RFM and did a couple other things that allowed me to unload the past and look at it in the light. I really don't want another one. They are very unsettling.

The worst for me, though, were the Devil attacking me dreams and I still get one every couple of years and wake up screaming.

And I don't need Joseph of Egypt interpreting them for me. I know what were. The legacy of a cult.


As far as the OP goes . . . I think if Rusty started calling the middle-aged to serve again it would be shooting himself in the foot so to speak. I hope he does it. Write to him and suggest it I say!

I just did a google search for the hymn's origins. "I'll go where you want me to go" was written by a Baptist named Mary Brown (1856–1918) and published in 1899. The music was composed by
Carrie E. Rounsefell (1861–1930), "a sing­ing evan­gel­ist through­out New Eng­land and New York."

The Mormon church stuck it in their hymnbook and made it their missionary farewell song. What a shame.

I too had those dreaded recurring mission nightmares. They lasted for about 20 years until they finally stopped. I was always so happy to wake up in my bedroom and know that I didn't have to spend the day knocking on doors.

Yep, I just asked a Mormon Sunday school teacher (relative):

"I hope they call me on a mission, when I have grown a foot or two. I hope by then I will be ready to teach and preach and work like missionaries do"

That just sent chills down my spine.