OK, Christmas and missionaries "are allowed" to call home. Another element of control that is ridiculous, yet LDS faithful think nothing of it.

I learn late this morning that my son can call at 2:00pm. OK, we've bought tickets for a movie that starts at 1:00pm. Great.

Then my daughter gets a text during the movie (from my ex) saying that it's not a call, only Skype. WTF??? Not only do they have to control when a call can take place, but by what medium?

We are walking out of the theater and my daughter gets a facetime call on her phone, from her mother (my ex), showing the video of my son on Skype. Enough time to say, "Hello" and then we get disconnected.

What bullshit. Let the boy call his father, whenever he wants. I still can't believe he decided to go because he never indicated any desire to do any of this.

Found this online from a mission website..."rules" for calling home.


1. Missionaries "may telephone their parents or guardians on Christmas and one other occasion during the year, usually Mothers Day or another significant holiday" (Mission President's Handbook, p. 22).
2. Calls are to be "short (... no longer than 30 to 40 minutes) and should not distract missionaries from their service" (Missionary Handbook, p 37).
3. Rather than make a video-call, some missionaries are asking if they can make a traditional audio call from their cell phone.
4. If a missionary's parents are divorced or separated, they are allowed to divide up their 30 to 40 minutes among the parents as they chose.
5. Missionaries are not to place additional calls to other immediate or extended family members or friends, including siblings serving full-time missions.
6. Missionaries are not to use other video-calling services, including Google apps such as Google Chat and Google Hangout.

So impressive that if the parents are divorced or separated, the missionary can "divide up their 30 to 40 minutes among the parents".

Screw you, too, LDS church.

...idiots.

"Hi, I want to turn over my entire life to you!. No...it's really OK if you manipulate me, and make me a total basket case, no... really! I know I'm doing this for a higher purpose...that is, my eternal salvation! Plus, I'll pay for it all! I believe that Monson's Audi was a Godsend for humanity!! I'm glad I could help pay for that too........

IDIOT!!!.....

On my mission, a bunch of us missionaries still seemed to have "the Spirit" to find and baptize converts. Many of them broke all kinds of little archaic mission rules; getting up at 8am, coming in early at 7 or 8pm, not proselytizing on Sunday, and playing all types of outlawed sports. I decided early on that I would call my family as often as I needed. I had a phone card and my calls would last about an hour. It helped me maintain a sense of sanity in the middle of a three-ring circus with a major asshat MP.

Did some of my companions tattle or write me up for making unauthorized communications?

You betcha!

I stopped worrying about trying to impress my MP. I was always on his shit-list anyways.

This Christmas was one of the first in the last several years when we didn’t have to Skype a missionary. Here’s what I experienced—the missionaries were at members’ homes using members’ computers. The members were very close by, undoubtedly listening n on conversations.

Many times, the technology didn’t work well. My kids were as stiff as boards. We spent hours on Christmas and Mothers’Day waiting for calls. Our days were centered around the calls.

Fuck the Mormon Church for not allowing us access to our children. Fuck the missionary program! And most of all, fuck the Mormon leaders who don’t give a shit about these kids!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/26/2017 12:35AM by BYU Boner.

Cracks me up how mormons love the story about putting a frog in boiling water and how he will jump out immediately, but if you warm it up slowly, they'll stay in until they are frog soup. They think it's about Satan and how he leads them astray slowly.

But for some reason they don't see how it's really dyed-in-the-wool TBMs who are the frogs and TSCC who is controlling the heat. Back in the day, when kids my age were on missions, they weren't supposed to call other than holidays unless it was very important, and then only to discuss whatever business-type stuff they needed to with their parents. Of course, even in the states, long-distance was pricey so maybe it was more under control.

But now it seems like every year I hear on this board that the rules are getting stricter and stricter. No more holidays off, and only phone calls on Christmas and Mother's Day. No Father's Day even. Then it was only certain people they could talk to--no girlfriends. Then it was only an hour. Now it's less?

The good thing is that it's the parents who are slowly simmering and stick their fingers in their ears and go "la la la la la." But the mishies get thrown into that boiling pot of the mission and are jumping. Every narcicissist who gets made a G.A. (and it's a requirement to be one), has to have a new rule to their name. The more new rules they can come up with, the higher up the ladder they climb. There are just so few things left that aren't restricted and so little control of your life that they don't already have, that they really have to resort to stupid things to have something new to assert their power and authority over the bleating members.

"Our days were centered around the calls."

Yes, I'll bet the leaders smile about that.

When I was TBM, something in Mormonism was against parents. The Mormons used to refer to the ward as "the ward family" and say that "the bishop is the father of our ward." Parents were not allowed to sit in on bishops interviews. Parents and children were separated for indoctrination sessions, Sunday school classes, Primary classes. Parents are not invited to YM/YW camps or activities. Children are taught to obey the cult over their parents.

Here are a few examples: My primary children were threatened that unless their parents were married in the temple, they would not be a "forever family," and they would "pass by as strangers" each other and their dad and me. The Primary pressured them to "encourage" us to get married in the temple and start paying tithing.

Deacons are given the priesthood. They are told that their priesthood authority has power over their own mother, who does not have the priesthood.

All of my children were physically beaten (or molested) by the Mormons, and they were all threatened to never tell me or their father. They kept the abuse secret for years! They were afraid to tell their own parents! This was the main reason we and our children resigned from the cult. I am afraid of Mormons.

Again, I find this so weird. Not just the amount of control exerted, but how it has changed so much. "Back in my day," as some of like to say, there were no such restrictions. We could call whomever we wanted whenever we wanted, but were encouraged to call home at least at Christmas and mother's day. All we had to do was contend with the price, because calling home from Italy meant going to the phone office, giving a woman at the desk a phone number, then waiting in the waiting room until the call was set up (remember that back then, a series of operators had to contact each other, and each plug in a line, until one very long connection was made). The lady would eventually call your name and send you to a booth, where you and the other party would shout at each other. Anyway, expensive though it was, we had more money in our pockets. Sometimes, you parents would send more money with a note to call them. I don't recall that anyone abused this. But we could just tell our comp one day that we planned to call dad to see how his oral surgery went.

Now they talk about a like a 40 minute call, and if your parents are divorced, dividing it into two 20 calls. Insane. But who's checking this, anyway? And if my comp threatened to tell somebody, I'd just tell him to fuck off or you would tell the MP that you found him masturbating. The problem with Mormons is that they do not stand up for themselves. Their bad.

I am the girlfriend of a missionary, I grew up in the LDS church, and have always wanted to marry a returned missionary. I love this boy with all my heart. These other posts are talking about how hard it is to be the family member or parent of thes missionaries, I get it I totally understand how upsetting it is to have your boy gone for 2 years. Personally I have known this boy for 2 years, that is a long time, having him just disappear from my life for another 2 years really really sucks. No i’m not his mom, but I am 100% in love with this boy and i can only talk to him 104 times throughout those 2 years. I understand the church wants them to be focused, but it’s harder for us on the outside not knowing anything for a whole week. I think about him everyday and I can’t even talk to him. THE MISSIONARY COMMUNICATION RULES SUCK AND IM UPSET. haa

Amen.

Phone calls were the area of my mission where I was the least honest, and the most rebellious.

When I was in France, back in the dark ages before cell phones and the internet, they had public phones everywhere. These were cool phones -- you'd drop in coins (1 or 5 franc coins), and they'd sit in a little transparent plastic stack you could see. As your call used up a coin's worth of time, one would drop from the bottom of the stack into the phone -- a visual indicator of how much time you had left.

One of the more senior elders introduced me to the quick call home using them: drop in 5 1-franc coins (about a dollar in US money), and you'd get about 2 seconds per coin, 10 seconds total, for a call to the US. It was actually kinda fun to watch, as soon as the call connected, those coins go PLOINK (2 seconds), PLOINK (2 seconds), etc.

So even though I was continually short of funds, I'd save up my loose 1-franc coins, and a couple of times a week, I'd call home. Almost never my parents (I feared my TBM mom would rat me out), I'd call my buddies and the occasional former girlfriend. You had enough time to have a very short greeting, a couple of words back, then the line would snap off as soon as all the coins had ploinked into the phone body.

So I'd usually do something like, "Hey (whomever), I'm calling from France! Miss you!" They'd reply, "Hey, great to hear your voice! How's it going?" I'd say, "Great! Outta time, bye!"

Not exactly a meaningful conversation. But just hearing friendly voices from home kept me sane. So I didn't care if it was against the rules.

...you sir, are a Church criminal. Now, having admitted that you violated Church Mission protocol, you will now be refused the Sacrament, admission to the Temple, and any foodstuffs, or benefits from the Bishop's Storehouse. You sir, have failed......

...may the Farce be with you.

Aw, heck...and I was going to go in and pay my 10% tithing for the past 35 years this weekend!
Oh, well!
:)

...unfortunately, 10% of your income will not be adequate. You must admit your sins, which will amount to at least 35% of your overall income, which will, in some way, relieve you of your some of your sins.

May God have mercy on your soul.

A truly independent- thinking parent would see to it that the mish-kid had TWO cell phones. One for authorized calls, and the other for "when-I-need-to-talk calls. The bill for the latter would go to parents.

That way, the kid could remain connected to parents, grandparents, closest friends, or anyone else who is important i his/her life.

Of course, keeping the second phone - and the use of it - hidden would be a challenge.

But many kids are already accustomed to living in a totalitarian system and have long since learned how to evade and avoid tyrannical rules. (I grew up in one, and we weren't even Mormons.)

I think a serious problem is who to trust.

First, a missionary has to get a feel of the person that he/she has been assigned. It takes awhile to discover if this person is friend or foe. A foe will use all of his/her weaknesses to stab him/her in the back.

Then you have the mission itself that has its appointed spies snooping around looking for violator's of the mission's archaic rules.

The last group are the members that take it upon themselves to set up the missionaries. There was one brother serving in the high council that made a nasty habit of calling up missionaries (with-in a big city) to invite them for dinner at a steak-seafood restaurant. We soon found out that his sole intention was only to find out if they were actively teaching and or baptizing. When the unsuspecting elders gave honest answers about finding/teaching very few people, he delighted in embarrassing them.

"Well what are you doing here when you're supposed to finding souls to save!" He would throw his napkin across his plate to make a scene. The embarrassed missionaries would leave the restaurant humiliated. He would later complain to the MP on Sunday during church about idle servants of the lord. And of course, we missionaries were told to make ourselves too busy to accept dinner appointments.

I had another bishop that was genuinely annoyed to be sharing a meal with missionaries.

That sounds like an idea for a truly stupid thinking parent.

If the missionary (and parents) aren’t aware of the mission rules for cell phones, their usage, and when communication outside of the mission is allowed, they will be made aware of those rules very early into his/hers mission. Whether the rules make sense or not, they are still the rules and have been accepted by the missionary. Sure the missionary is more than likely to skirt mission rules on their own, but to have the parent ENCOURAGE the missionary to break the rules he/she has agreed to abide by…what a GREAT parental teaching moment.

**Rolling my eyes and holding my head so it won’t shake off of my body**

Not my experience when my son was on his mission.

First off, although I disagreed with my son going on a mission (and I told him so before he made his decision to go), and I didn’t pay ONE DIME towards his mission, everyone involved was aware of the rules and parameters of his mission BEFORE he left. No contact, email once a week, phone calls twice a year, etc. That was accepted with no surprises.

I had plenty of notice as to when my son would be contacting me. In fact, it was on my son to notice me about that, not his mission leaders (and he did so in a timely fashion).

If I had bought movie tickets that just so happened to conflict with a phone call from my missionary son…I’m skipping the movie. Just sayin’.

As far as splitting the time with my ex…meh. I was able to spend as much time with my son as I wanted. The thing was though, because I had written such thorough and lengthy emails each week to him, after about 15 - 20 minutes we didn’t have much to talk about. When it evolved into talking about Aunt Bertha’s cat dying, it was time to shut it down.

I am steadfastly against the “two phone calls a year” missionary rule. I can’t think of another service organization that has such a rule. It is ridiculous. I also feel that if the church relaxed the rule and said that a missionary could call home for 10-15 minutes each month or so, the number of depressed, anxiety-ridden, and early returned missionaries that the church seems to deal with today, would drop significantly.

In Japan in the mid-seventies the policy was no calls - ever. Write home once a week. That's it.

When I was in about 14 months I got really sick. Felt like I wasn't getting the medical care I needed, and wanted to go home. So the MP "let" my parents call to talk to me and cheer me up. Didn't really work. Got physically better eventually, but was depressed for the rest of the time.

We live in the communication age -- cell phones, Skype, messaging, the internet. I don't know why any young person or family puts up with the Mormon church's ridiculous restrictions. How is it that our military service members manage to fulfil *their* important missions AND remain in regular contact with their families? If the military can figure it out, so can the Mormon church.

The abuse stops when the Mormon church members say that it stops.