My son has a good friend who went on a mission, despite knowing the church wasn't true, just to please his family. The kid has really studied MormonThink and other similar websites before leaving and is intellectually convinced Mormonism is a fraud. As a result, his mission has been a nightmare for him. He's only been out a few months but is seriously thinking of coming home, something he has been discussing in letters to my son. This elder wrote that he has heard nowadays, 25 percent of missionaries called return home early for some reason. My son wasn't sure if this was correct and asked me to ask you all if you know - or if you can at least give an educated guesstimate. What percentage of missionaries would you say return home early, without completing their missions? Thanks in advance for your help.

Low "N" but hard stats.


Relative's family in Utah. Three went.

Of those three, three became depressed.

One stuck it out (USA) but required antidepressant medication.
One (north of the border) required 18 months to complete so made it.
One (south of the border) came home early after started sawing on himself.

It's not healthy.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/11/2016 07:11PM by zenjamin.

I have nephew who went to Africa. In six weeks he was back home.
Stories ranged from medical/dietary problems to administrative.
I still don't know the real story, but I'm guessing he just didn't like it there and had the fortitude to make up a story that would get him sent home.
Now he's going to school, working, getting on with life. He talks about getting it together and going back to Africa. His current lifestyle doesn't bear that out.

I don't have any numbers, but based solely on anecdotal evidence, the number of missionaries coming home early is definitely on the increase. It seemed to sync with the lowering of the missionary ages.

I left on my mission knowing for 80% it was not true, read heaps online befor going. Tell him to come home. I had high and lows on my mission. Even times when I believed but in the end it can send you nuts been around all them guys who are do so into it. And having no one around you who understands you.


He needs to ask himself will he be active when he comes home. If no. Come now and get on with his life


Hope this helps

If any of them are coming home early, then most likely the missionaries families must be keeping it hush hush...

I have discussed this at some length with several members of multiple Stake Presidencies. The official number is 10 % worldwide . Rates are somewhat higher for missionaries from North America because they have more of an adjustment than missionaries from third world countries . I know some stakes in AZ where the early return rate is 40%, 50% of missionaries who serve their full term will become inactive at some point in their lives

According to another thread here, TSM received a revelation from the Lord to lower the age for missionaries. So why are they returning. Does the Lord not know the future? I was taught He does. So something does not make sense.

TSM is lying

The speaker who made the comment is lying

This is a test the Lord gives the youth and they are failing it

None of the above. It was a move to try and keep the youth in the Church

I know of one elder who went home the entire two years of my mission. I knew of no one in the whole county I grew up in who came home early. There may have been some I didn't know about way back then, but I doubt it. Gossip is still faster than anything.

I am hearing constantly of kids coming home early now. My niece did after six months. Some mysterious illness. The illness however didn't stop her from getting right back into school, getting a part time job, getting married and popping out a kid in record time.

I asked family if she was upset about "being forced" to come home and was told she had "accomplished what she needed to." ???

well heck, that explains everything! Good ol' ghawd used me for 24 years and then let me go because I'd "...accomplished what (I'd) needed to..." That freaking explains everything!!

I don't dare ask, but my grandson, who is now 19, came home after less than a week in the MTC (Feb. 2015) and at that time I was told that he'd be going back in "...the Fall."

I did ask her brother, who is now living in Utah county, and he said he was told that my grandson couldn't handle the 'homesickness'... I'm just happy he's being happy! A mission is not 'happy'.

The 10% was back when I was in the field in the late 90's.

About 1/2 of them where for mental or physical reasons. The others where for banging a local.

The mission presidents all gave a strict instructions not to discuss people going home with others. It was commonly done after transferring somebody to the mission presidents district to live with the clerks. This hid the numbers going home. Until the next all mission conference that is. Since there was only two of these in 2 years it pretty effectively hid it.

Anyone who discussed it was given a chewing out by all of their leaders.

Have no idea of a percentage number, but I sincerely hope that it is huge and growing. I so detest the program of Let's
Get Those Kids Before They Unlearn Our Bullshit at College and Won't Give us Our 10%.

Over my life time there has been a pretty steady amount of missionaries who have returned early, some I have first hand knowledge of and others gossiped about. A few have broken my heart to hear about, such as one who nearly took his own life, another severely depressed and underweight from illness but would not tell the folks about it, a few hating every minute of their mission but not willing to go through the hell of being labeled failures who came home early.

My good friend's daughter came home early some years ago and she struggled for a long, long time with depression because of coming home.

My disabled brother, who never should have been sent on a mission, said he used to try to get injured so he could go home. I know my mother never knew that. He had almost died twice as a child and if she knew he was trying to get injured, it would have been horrible for her.

My kids when they were closer to the missionary age had a lot of friends who came home early. One walked out of the MTC a week after he got there and disappeared for a month. My daughter's recent ex-fiance came home after a month out in the field. It was a foreign mission, so he must have been in the MTC for a while.

My neighbor from my childhood was bragging on fb a year ago about how all her children would have served missions including her only daughter who had just received her call to a wonderful place! Most people would die to go where she was called. She bragged on fb about shopping for clothes, etc., and next thing I knew, her daughter was going to movies with her just a few weeks after she was supposed to show up for her mission. I have no clue why she didn't stay out or even go.

The fallout for coming home is going to be huge if he comes home early. He has to decide if he is up for it.

Last year I heard early returns were running 40% in northern east bench area of Cache valley.

She was serving in Costa Rica and had been out for eight months. She fell into an open sewer drain and severely injured her foot. Her recovery time was going to be at least six weeks and she wrote that the church policy is that if an injury took more than two weeks to heal then the missionary would be sent home to heal and then be able to return to their mission.

The really horrible part is that immediately after she returned home her stake president came over to her house and asked that she remove her missionary badge! WTH! WTF!

SNIP:

"After getting home, eating a beautiful Italian dinner, and spending a little time with the fam, the moment that Id been dreading came…. My stake president came over and asked me to remove my plaque... That was hard; I mean talk about an identity crisis! I’d put that badge on every morning for the last 8 months and now they wanted me to take it off? I didn’t cooperate easily, but finally I was able to do it with the promise that one day I’d get to put it back on."

http://aleenakugathmission.blogspot.com/

A mission president can make or break a missionary's experience. There are some real asshat GA wannabes out there fuc*ing with these kids heads.

In my mission experience it wasn't being on a mission that caused me stress, it was the church leadership and its unrealistic desire for numbers that made it unpleasant. I couldn't believe how mean and nasty the church revealed itself to be the moment I stepped into the MTC.

Despite the disillusionment and doubts there was no way I would go home early. I'm sure that for every missionary who does have the guts to leave early there are twice as many who fear the unpleasant consequences if they were to do so.

Big numbers equal big promotions? The pressure from the church is relentless. No missionary really wants to go home in disgrace or even go home empty handed--meaning zero baptisms.

And, no mission president wants to be the one who's mission didn't produce, otherwise, how is he going to get that Area Seventy calling when he's done?

I will never forget the focus on numbers when I was on my mission. You'd swear the MP was getting a commission or something. The whole experience so rarely felt like spreading some gospel.

I think I've shared this here before. It's a thread on another site. The thread is titled "Mission Presidents from Hell"

http://www.postmormon.org/exp_e/index.php/discussions/viewthread/26983/

Thanks everyone - I will have my son read this and he can pass along the information when he writes his friend.

Speaking of bad MPs, this elder has one. Apparently if he wants to discuss leaving the mission, his whole district has to travel with him to the mission home to talk to the mission president. Or at least that is what the MP threatened the elder with when he discussed his doubts about staying when he first arrived. Public shaming at it's finest. No wonder he keeps putting off making a final decision about going home. The MP has done other stunts too but I don't want to mention them in case it is too much IRL. He's come up with some real original nonsense that most other MPs would think is ridiculous.

If the missionary is in the U.S. he doesn't need to inform his MP he is going home. Plane, trains, and automobiles work. There is no reason to follow something you don't believe in.

If he is out of the U.S. they are illegally withholding his passport. The local U.S. Embassy can help him out.

18 year old fresh from high school who's never had to make a decision on his own. What an evil place TSCC has become.

There really was no other reason for the Corporation to have lowered the age to 18 except to make sure the missionaries did not go to a year of college or have "world experience" among gentiles who knew things.

If a man or woman could of worked or gained knowledge and earned money and/or intelligence in debate, language, finances, etc... wouldn't this have helped them out in the mission field? What was supposedly happening though was that young millennials were exposed to truths about BoA, the internet, critical thinking, relationships, etc... So the church had to get them into the machinery earlier so they lowered the age from 19 to 18 for men and from 21 to 19 for women so that "worldliness" couldn't influence the BIC and early convert youth.

I have actually run many of the numbers reported in General Conference over the years, including missionary statistics. This is my website:

http://www.fullerconsideration.com/membershipmethodology.php

Based on my calculations, which are not presented on that webpage, the average mission length in recent years, excluding the past 3 years where the data have been skewed due to the change in missionary age, have ranged between 1.7 and 1.75 years. I'll say 1.725 as an approximate average. Based on reports that have the ratio of elders-to-sisters at approximately 5.5:1, that should yield an average mission length of approximately 1.92 years.

The major unknown is how long missionaries serve, on average, before going home early. A linear triangular distribution would yield an average of roughly 1/3 of their mission length, which is 0.64 years, but I would guess that missionaries tend to go home early disproportionately more often than later, so I'll go ahead and presume the average is 1/4 of their mission length, or 0.48 years. I'll round up to 0.5 for good measure.

So, solving for X, the number of missionaries who go home early is approximately 13.7%. Given the number of assumptions I used, I would confidently place the actual number between 10% and 15%.

What is this? Japanese?

It's alight, he's doing the thinking for you.

Illuminating site, thanks!

A keeper for continuing reference.

Question:

Where are you getting the number of missionaries from. Do they post them monthly?

Do they post the weekly intake in the MTC's?

I ask because you are logically guessing that missionaries usually return home in the first few months. However unless you know the number of missionaries entering the force per month versus active in the field it is tough to estimate attrition rates.

That's a great question! And here is your answer:

Number of missionaries called each year:
http://www.ldschurchnewsarchive.com/articles/59046/Church-History-Missionary-Statistics.html

Number of missionaries in the field at the end of each year is in the annual statistical reports. Individual links are at the top of this page:
http://www.fullerconsideration.com/membershipmethodology.php

Edit: Number of missionaries entering the field after 2008 can be extrapolated using a simple balance, but it's not necessary considering I already threw out half those years.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/12/2016 11:01AM by kimball.

I'm still a bit confused on how you extrapolated the current return rate from the official stats.

The numbers of prior to 2008 was prior to the decreasing of the age of service. The trend prior to 2008 is probably not a good indicator of the trend today.

When the ages were 19 and 21 there was a relatively steady supply of new missionaries after they turned 19. With the new age of 18 the around 75% of them are turning 18 during their senior year. They all hit the MTC at the same time in the summer and early fall. The numbers in December 31st are likely the highest in the entire year. You could have 70,000 missionaries entering the MTC every year & 30,000 of them returning early and still maintain steady numbers in December 31 ( including slush factor for sisters).

Without reporting how many are called the since 2008 and comparing the numbers to how many are active at the end of the year we can't really calculate the attrition rate.

I do agree that prior to the age dropping your calculations are probably spot on. It is the more recent events that I question.

Any one else seeing probable cause for why the reporting of "called" missionaries was stopped in 2008? It's non-faith promoting to be losing that many missionaries.

I don't know if it's that high, but it's getting up there. The sad thing is that if they want to come home "honorable," they still have to come up with some health concern. Mostly so the parents can have something to save face.

I realize more and more that the ones who come home early are the ones who are probably going to be more successful in life. They're the ones who do the hard thing. It's kind of like leaving the church. The little couplet is "they leave because it's too hard being a member." No. As we all know, it's easy to just be a robot and do what you're told and play the game for family and social reasons. And that's ok. For some people it's the best answer. But it's a really hard thing to stand up for what you know is right for you when you know that just playing along is not it. And sometimes that comes with a lot of personal pain and loss.

Same for mishies who come home early. It's easy to just stay out and play along and come home to the big celebration. But to decide that you're just wasting your time and a lot of people's money and stand up for yourself and come home to shame and questions takes guts. EVERY missionary serves honorably no matter how long they're out. It's freakin volunteer work ferchrissake. Any time they give of themselves is honorable.

I doubt it's that high. The stake here has 40+ missionaries out, and I haven't heard of any returning early. Of course, I only know for sure that none have returned from 2 of the 7 wards. Some may have returned in the other wards.

I seem to recall that the nutty MP's wife in Colorado said they were losing ~25%...3-4 were asking to go home each week. Not sure if that's normal or if it had more to do with the area, MP, etc...

Prior to my mission, the stake president made me make a solemn promise to him that, no matter what, I would never under any circumstances come home early. He quoted the old Mormon saying that "I would rather have my son come home from his mission in a pine box than have him come home unworthy." To this stake president, there was never any justification for coming home early.

Well, after about a year I began to lose it, mentally. I was diagnosed by a church psychologist (over the phone in the mission president's office) with depression and a few other things. They told me to take pills and more pills. No prescription needed in the Latin American country I was in. Finally, I couldn't take it any more and I asked to come home six months early.

Right before I got on the plane to come home, the mission president's wife, with tears in her eyes, begged me not to go, and told me that I would regret it for the rest of my life--and probably for eternity. I left anyway.

On the night I flew in, I had to have an interview with the stake president (a different one by then). He told me that in the coming weeks, months, and years, people in the church would ask me if I served a mission. He then instructed me to always answer "yes." He counseled me that I should never tell anyone that I had come home early unless I was specifically asked, because church members perceived an early return home--no matter what the reason--as a sign of unworthiness.

I came to see just how real that stigma is when I applied to transfer to BYU shortly after returning home. I was told that, despite my excellent academic credentials, it was impossible for a person who had returned home early from a mission--no matter what the reason--to attend BYU until he or she had endured a mandatory six-month waiting period. No exceptions. When I told this to my psychiatrist at my next visit, he told me that his secretary had received a call from BYU asking about my treatment, progress, etc. He was flabbergasted that BYU even found out that I was seeing him--let alone that they would think that he would divulge privileged information without even notifying me or asking my consent.

That was fifteen years ago. I haven't been to church in about ten years.

Miraculously, my depression cleared up as I began to see the church for the fraud that it is. I have never looked back, and I couldn't be happier in my life now with my (also exmo) wife and two nevermo children.

I think about the parting words of my mission president's wife and think how absolutely wrong she was. I feel sorry for her.

Now whenever I see missionaries I tell them how sorry I am for them, and I urge them to go home. I tell them to go to college, to do anything but waste their life selling lies.

Thank you for that. Leaving the church is such a healing salve, isn't it?

The people of the Mormon church put an impossible pressure on their youth and then punish them when they can't live up to it. Too bad they will never understand that "not living up to it, not staying on the mission" is a sign of inner strength.

My stake was 2 for 18 missionaries finishing when I left.

I know that in central america the average for going inactive is almost 70% within a year I got that from Elder Carmack of the 70 himself.

my last ward was at 60% returning early. some returned after only 3 weeks in the MTC. A few were from high burning families whose parents were often in high leadership positions. the stake as a whole was a 30%.

my current ward is at 50% (only 2 out, 1 returned early) the current stake president is keen on only sending out those who really want to be there and are prepared. Of those approaching missionary age I bet only 1 of the 4 goes.