So let me get this straight..... The current policy with missionaries is that they can email in the MTC as much as they have downtime for? They have an email account and the parents get the password? They are also able to do instant messaging type chat on their P day, depending on the technology in their area...?

So basically the church realized they couldn't really police the missionaries to the extent of preventing them from all the ways there are to be in touch with current technology. They let the missionaries parent's police the emails. I just don't understand what the major difference is between instant messaging and talking on the phone.

I still believe they are monitoring/tracking what is typed/said through church controlled accounts/devices.

As a mishie, I wrote letters (and I used my stateside address) to specific addresses to a friend serving in South America. Unknown to me, they were intercepted by my friend's mission office and mission prez. My friend's MP sent a small bundle of 3-4 letters that I had written to my MP (stateside). During an interview, my MP instructed me read the part in the white missionary bible that stated mishies were to make no unauthorized contact outside of my family. He then asked me if I was truly obedient to that rule. When I said "yes," he caught me in a lie. He slammed down the bundle of my unopened letters and began a tirade. Finally, I told him that I honestly couldn't remember writing those because I was corresponding with so many people. That caused him to become even more furious with me. I think letter writing saved my sanity while serving a mission.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/14/2017 11:43PM by messygoop.

"We're not a cult! We're not a cult! We're not a cult! We're..."

Wait... you weren't supposed to correspond with people not in your family? When did this become a thing? It wasn't during my time in the 90's.

edit - this was supposed to be a response to messygoop



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/15/2017 03:26AM by ehemaliger.

I served in the 90s as well.

It stated that in the handbook at the time (mine was auto penned by ETB). I had to read it in front of my MP, but I had no idea that my letters had been confiscated in South America because I was writing to an actual address and not the mission home nor office. Since I was always in trouble, he would pick out any missionary rule-policy or edict that he believed that I was breaking at every zone conference. If the letters hadn't been returned to my mission office with an angry correspondence from the SA MP, then I would have never paid any attention to what the white bible said.

When I returned home, the friend that I was corresponding with shared an interesting tidbit about serving in Brazil. About the same time we were writing letters, he received a terrible transfer out to a god-forsaken hole in the jungle. His own words were "it was the shittiest place they could send a missionary." He became so ill that he had to finish serving stateside after a 2 month hospital stay. He had a native MP and that guy was just as much of an asshole as mine was.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/15/2017 12:23PM by messygoop.

Current LDS Expectations

Communicating with Family

Write to your family each week on preparation day. Limit correspondence with others. Share your spiritual experiences. Never include anything confidential, sensitive, or negative about the areas where you serve.

E-Mail. You may communicate with your family and mission president by e-mail, according to approved guidelines. Use only MyLDSMail.net, the filtered service established by the Church. Do not use any other e-mail service or any other Internet service or site that has not been authorized.

Use e-mail only on preparation day. You may use computers in public places, such as libraries or appropriate businesses that offer Internet access. While using computers, always stay next to your companion so that you can see each other’s monitors. Do not use members’ computers. If you misuse e-mail or computers, you may lose the privilege of using e-mail.

This is very wise. They should extend it to all the members. Your church membership number should be your myLDSmail email address. Therefore all will be equal before the lord. Knowing that ghawd is watching what you type will be very faith promoting.

All Mormons ought to resign from Facebook, and join the church's new social media, Faithbook...

No sacrifice is too great with celestial glory as our reward.

Plus give me all your money!

Too funny EOD!

"Limit correspondence with others."

That certainly doesn't mean completely banned. If that was your MP's interpretation of it, he was an a**hole on a power trip.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/15/2017 01:12PM by ehemaliger.

ehemaliger Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> "Limit correspondence with others."
>
> That certainly doesn't mean completely banned. If
> that was your MP's interpretation of it, he was an
> a**hole on a power trip.

There were a lot of those (a**holes on a power trip as MPs).
And the current rules didn't apply in the pre-internet days.

A friend I grew up with left for his mission 2 months after me (we briefly saw each other in the MTC). He went to Italy, I went to France.
I, like messygoop, wanted to stay in touch. My mom had included his address in Italy in one of her letters, and so I wrote him. Weeks went by, and I didn't hear anything back.

Then the ZLs came by on a visit. During which I was handed the opened and re-sealed) letter I had sent to my friend, which had made it to Italy only to be intercepted by some mormon watchdog, opened, read, and sent to my MP.

I was admonished to leave my friend alone to concentrate on missionary work, and not distract him or me from our important work. And besides, my letter had been far too "worldly" and not at all spiritual (I talked about missing our cars, he and I used to work on them together, and asked if he'd heard from friends back home).

So yeah, even before the internet they were intercepting the mail.

Asshats.

Thanks Hie, for your story. It was a familiar tune. :D

messygoop Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Thanks Hie, for your story. It was a familiar
> tune. :D

That's exactly what I thought when I read your story!

My dad was not a member and my mother never lived the church rules. Neither of them en ouraged me to go on a mission. If it were up to my parents to monitor my e-mail use while on my mission, there would have been no oversight at all. But then again, in the early 1980s, this wasn't even an issue.

I served 83-85 and same thing, parents were both far Left and wouldnt care whst my letters said even if it was negative about my asshole leaders.

I imagine now if a FB post could get you fired a FB post by a Missionary could really get you sent home, which aint the end of the world.
Might be a blessing in disquise.

You served when i was born koriwhore, how was the church in 1983? They were still doing the death oaths back then correct? that is crazy to think about for what my parents were doing.

Yeah, BadassAdam, they were still doing the throat slitting stuff in the temple.

I was married in the mid-1980s - first time I ever went to the temple was when I was to get married. (Back up until about the mid-1980s, women were NOT encouraged to go to the temple for anything other than baptisms for the dead until they were either going on a mission, or else getting married for time and all eternity. So I was 30 years old, BIC, going to the temple for the first time...)

Anyway, here it is my first time going to the temple - for my marriage no less - and they had me pantomiming throat cutting vows...

WTF?

Maybe someone should build some android apps to force the missionaries to keep the rules and to tell on them when they break rules. The church could buy these phones in quantity with root access, and then after installing all of their spyware and special enforcement apps, could lock the root access the way the phone carriers do. This could keep track of where they are, and alert the mission president if they leave their zone, or the mission boundries, or even to see if they get too far apart from eachother. It could even tell on them for going in to a bar or strip club. It could monitor e-mails and internet pages for decency, and to search for signs of apostacy in everything they read and write. The church could require each missionary to carry one. Make one mistake and you get an invitation from the mission president, who wants to see you. Sleep in one day, the mission president is on the phone, wanting to know why you haven't left your apartment yet. Don't answer and the District leaders show up ten minutes later to check on you. Each 18 year old kid could be told that they will be given their own free android device to use while on their mission. Oversight could be absolute.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/15/2017 06:47PM by azsteve.

Years ago my parents were assigned (called) to spy on local missionaries and check their rooms for "contraband." I thought it was shameful and still do.

Say what??? Mission pres monitoring mail? Parents monitoring mail? I never went on a mission and it's probably good for them I didn't.

When do you find out your mail is monitored? Before you put in your papers or after you are "called"?

I can't believe people play along with this!

No wonder my brothers letters were shit.

I would skim the letters for any personal info. Most went straight in the garbage. What a waste of words. If the church thinks letters like that will build up the kingdom, they're delusional.

I served in Connecticut, so I'm not familiar with how this worked for missionaries out of the country, but why weren't you folks whose mail was confiscated just putting stamps on your mail and taking it to the post office? Was there some sort of mission "diplomatic bag" where you had to give your mail to the mission authorities in order for it to be sent out of the country? Or was it just in some of the hell-holes people ended up where the regular mail was not reliable? It all feels very "war-time censorship"-ish.

I went to my local PO and contacted the local postmaster for proper postage to Brazil from my assigned area of Texas. I paid the international postal rate and waited for my ward buddy to write me back.

The debacle arose when it was somehow intercepted by another missionary; who probably got brownie points for turning the letter over to an asshat MP in Brazil. The bozo MP most likely got out my buddy's LDS file to discover that "home" was in California and not in Texas. When two more of my letters were turned into the Brazilian MP, he probably called or got his AP's to call SLC to discover which mission presided over my town. So a manila envelope was mailed (at the church's expense) from Brazil to my MP in Corpus Christi. It contained a scathing letter that told off my MP for not keeping this Elder Goop busy enough. My MP was royally pissed at me. Obviously, I had too much time on my hands to be writing to other missionaries.

***
Oh and this was how this started. The mother of my buddy wrote me a sympathy letter. He felt down because nobody was writing to him from our home ward. (I was maintaining correspondence with some 15 persons in the ward~ I had mail everyday. Woohoo!) She gave me his local address in Brazil. So I wrote to cheer him up.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/18/2017 08:22PM by messygoop.

...There is no way that the corp is going to be able to monitor all of the communications between missionaries and friends/family.

It will also become a "thing" of watching R-rated movies, sports and possibly even porn and will become an issue of Elders babysitting and snitching on each other.

Yes, you can now watch videos on watches and phones; I'm jealous because when I was out Al Gore was still inventing the internet.

I just recently learned of all this as we had relatives visiting from Utah. My husband's sister has an 18 year old daughter whose very serious boyfriend just went into the MTC a few weeks ago....
SIL was telling us how her daughter writes emails to the boyfriend a few times/week, and his parents got upset about it, deeming it 'too often' and told her to tone it down. (Since they have his email password and are clearly closely monitoring the situation) Missionary boyfriend then emailed his parents and told THEM to tone it down and that he found the emails helpful and 'inspiring'.

The whole time I'm just sitting there slightly dumbfounded, thinking, in what non-Mo family would this ever be considered normal...?? I mean, it just screams controlling!

I also have known the church monitors missionary email because that's how my husband got sent home from his mission :) So, clearly they monitor it for key words, or someone in the mission office is responsible for monitoring or some such thing as that...

In the conversation with SIL about daughter's missionary boyfriend (and soon to be missionary daughter apparently), my husband actually made a slight joke and got up and left the table. My MIL then reacted by saying something along the lines of my husband must have gotten up because he was uncomfortable since he went home early. UMMMMMMM NO - this kind of behavior is absolutely asinine and you guys talking about it like it's the most normal thing in the world is crazy, and makes any 'normal' person extremely uncomfortable because it sounds like a cult!

The point is, it's disgusting, and it amazes me that they all talk about it like it's the most normal thing in the world and apparently just don't get how kooky it sounds.....