Posted by:
Aiden
(
)
Date: April 23, 2017 08:19PM
My brother already got off to rough start on his mission to begin with. He was adopted from Russia, still struggles with English, and was called to South America. He almost quit multiple times because he couldn't learn Spanish, but my parents were like "don't you dare come home."
So, now he's in a hot, impoverished area. He already has some anxiety/depression issues that he's struggled with since he joined our family as a teenager and I'm sure his situation isn't helping. But, in his emails, he's always happy and talking about how good the food is and how the members did this or that.
I'm not trying to rain on the parade, but I don't think he's being honest. When I directly asked him how he's doing in my personal emails to him (not the branch/locales/food, but how HE'S doing personally), he ignored the questions. I tried again last week and I finally got an interesting response. He said, "Trying to hold myself together. It's been hard."
I get the feeling that he's completely miserable and wants to come home, but my parents would make his life even worse if he quits now. I can't get him to talk about it with me, so I'm forced to read these fake emails where he acts like everything is great and my parents flaunt his pictures and stories to the ward without realizing that he's suffering.
Is there any way to do something? Would the mission president listen?