Originally, I intended to write this under the thread about missionaries coming home early, but thought this story should merit its own thread. See https://www.exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,2160373

I had the good fortune of being trained by a ZL. It really opened my eyes to the comings and goings of the zone. We had a car, the first pick of media referrals to the zone and how to poach other missionary's golden baptisms. We also dealt with the problems.

The sister missionaries were fortunate to have always been assigned a church-owned mission vehicle; mostly for their safety. One Tuesday afternoon, there was a message requesting us to swing by a busy corner in the city.

We drove over to the intersection and saw the familiar red Chevrolet Cavalier with a dent in the passenger rear fender. A car changing lanes had bumped into their car, then fled the scene. It was a common occurrence in Laredo Texas. Neither of the sisters were injured, but the sister that was driving was visibly shaken up from the accident. The ZL ended up having to drive both sisters in one car, while I drove the the sisters' car back to their apartment.

Unknown to anyone, the sister suffered a mental break down and lost her nerve to drive. The other sister did not have a driver's license. On Saturday, there was another peculiar message on the answering machine. We had to reschedule a teaching appointment to drop by their apartment. We couldn't believe our eyes.

It looked like a tornado had attacked the apartment complex. A covered parking roof had collapsed. A small brick wall with garden planters had a gaping hole in it. The wooden wall that formed a perimeter around the apartment complex had tumbled over. What was not immediately seen was the red car, but it was eventually spotted in the backyard of someone's house!

The sister that was suffering from nerves was walking in circles, babbling incoherently. The other sister was hiding in the apartment. It took several tries to coax her to come out and talk to us.

We finally got the story. The sisters had left the car parked and had been reporting zeros for their daily stats. The sisters finally decided to leave their apartment on Saturday to buy some emergency rations. The sister who had never driven was pressured by the other one to give it a go. She got confused in the carport and went forward. The wall with the flower gardens got creamed. In the panic, she put into reverse and sideswiped the support column, resulting in the collapse of the carport roof. Instead of hitting the break pedal, she jammed the gas and rocketed into the back fence. A big tree saved the day.

The car suffered crushed front and back bumpers, full right side scratches and a crumpled roof with both windshields shattered. It was a mess.

My mission car was declared "ringsum beschädigt" just from general use. No accidents, dents or other mishaps.

Damaged all around

A .9 liter engined Ford Fiesta. There were bigger motorcycles. Though the prior elders later confessed to me an odometer alteration that may have accounted for unrecorded wear and tear.

dogblogger Wrote:
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> Though the prior elders later
> confessed to me an odometer alteration that may
> have accounted for unrecorded wear and tear.

Messy, the visual I got of the sister's episode with the car nearly caused me to choke while eating lunch today. What a great story.

I agree. My mind played it out like a movie in slow mo(rmon.)

I was a missionary in the early '70, in Canada. We drove AMC Hornets -- probably because Bro. George Romney was CEO of AMC. The hornets were strippers. No AC, no radios, no carpeting and probably no noise insulation. They were crap. One of the common problems (besides shock absorbers falling off and seat backs collapsing) was the doors didn't like to latch. You really had to slam them a couple of times. Well, we were leaving another shaming session, er, I mean zone conference and, just as our A-hole MP walked by, I slammed the door and the window, which was rolled down, shattered. Of course, the MP jumped on the chance to chew me out for mistreating the Lord's car.

Then, the next year, as we were driving to give a discussion (yay, we finally found a sucker) obeying all traffic laws and such, a guy ran a stop sign and broadsided us. Of course, in the delusional mind of the MP, it was our fault. We had to be sinning in some way because the Lord would've prevented the accident if we had been worthy. Right. Anyway, the church self-insures and we had to get three repair estimates in a small town with only two body shops -- both of which were owned by the same person. The MP didn't want to hear our reasons for turning in only two estimates that were identical. He thought we were just being lazy and dishonest.

"The MP didn't want to hear our reasons for turning in only two estimates that were identical. He thought we were just being lazy and dishonest."

What a dick. Now, if you guys would've driven to another town for a 3rd estimate, and taken 2 hours, that douche would've chastised you for wasting the lords time. No win situation.

Ah, mission cars. My first was a Toyota wagon on the island of St. Vincent. There were 4 of us there and we shared the car. A few times, we drove to the north end of the island to climb the volcano Mt. Soufrière. It was very "off road" once you left the main road. We would drive that thing through anything, get out and push until it absolutely would go any farther because of the terrain. Good old car.

Next was a Lada on Barbados. It was a Russian car, built like a tank. It had a hand crank you could use to start it with. We tried it and it worked. you could also shift it without using the clutch. Then we got a brand new Toyota van. That was nice.

In Jamaica, we had a Toyota van, nothing special. When I moved out to the country, we drove a Toyota Starlet. One day I made a right hand turn on a major road, which crosses the other lane like a left in the US. A guy behind us tried to pass, not seeing my blinker and that I was turning. He hit our car just in front of the driver side door (I was driving) going at least 85 mph. Spun us around, he lost a tire off his wheel and came to a stop about 100 yards away. If I was a couple seconds faster into that turn, he would have hit my door full on and I don't think we would have survived it. I wouldn't have. We suffered no injuries and it took a couple months to get the car repaired.

And for leaving our area.

This is a damaging a missionary vehicle story, but forgive me, it is a Catholic one ! Over 40 years ago I was a novice in a Rm. Catholic cloistered monastery. Cloistered essentially meant that we lived within the monastery only leaving under exceptional circumstances and life was rather regimented and severe. Aside from the usual penances of fasting, silence and long hours of prayer and work through the day there was rarely much reason to use a vehicle. The year I was a novice ( think bootcamp or even MTC training with the Mormons), the Order had a Provincial council meeting where representatives from many monasteries gathered at ours for days of administrative meetings, - something that only took place every six years. There were only two of us novices and we provide much of the labor for the behind the scenes of the meeting . I was assigned to make the simple meals in the monastery kitchen and the other brother was to wait out front by the Monastery gate to greet the arrivals and park their cars in an area just below the chapel area so cars would not be blocking the narrow road coming up the hill. Cars were something considered a major purchase and several monasteries would go in together to buy a small fleet of the most inexpensive vehicles they could negotiate and the cars would be sent out to the various houses of the Order. As funds always seemed to be extremely limited those cars had to last for quite a few years were treated with kid gloves ! Fortunately there mileage was limited and it was envisioned they should last far beyond average ownership !
Well back to Brother X.... if ever there was a screw-up, it was him. He did everything wrong or poorly, was lazy and rarely lived up to the expectations they had for us ! He was always in trouble for some infraction of the rules and was warned over and over if this continued he would never be admitted to pronounce vows as a religious ( monk). While I slaved away in the monastic kitchen trying to extend our small provisions to feed all the guests attending, Brother was out attending to their automobiles. As luck would have it four new cars had just been delivered and would leave with some of the Monks as their new house car to return home it. I don't even know if the ink was dry on the insurance policy. It goes without saying that as Brother X went to park an new arrival something caught his attention as he headed down the hill and he plowed into the four brand new Dodge Plymouths that had just come from the dealership crushing them like accordians ! He came tearing into the kitchen shrieking in terror that his life was over and they would surely send him packing for home that very day after a stern scolding on his carelessness ! He begged me to take the blame for him and go and confess to the Prior of the Monastery that I was responsible for the disaster ! He was frightened and pleading with me to help him as I had no "offenses" on my record and a model angel of a Novice ! Against my better judgement I acquiesced and threw myself on the mercy of the Council members begging their forgiveness for my dastardly deed of incompetence ! They didn't take the news as bad as I thought as they knew I was a very inept driver ! I did not even get a mild reprimand ! Meanwhile, Brother X who watched my confession to the Council in the Monastery refectory ( dining hall) thought since I got off so easily, maybe it wouldn't have been such a big deal for him after all ! So the big Stupid came forward conessing it was in fact he that caused the accident and that I had lied to cover for him ! Holy Mother did hell break lose, - not for Brother X ,- but because I had lied ! I received a severe reprimand and extra labor for my punishment and a never ending lecturing when ever any of the senior monks decided to take me to task over it ! It was then I learned the valuable lesson , " No good deed goes unpunished " ! The irony was that I left the order after 4 years and the community begged me to stay on as they never had a novice who could do some many different things,- cooking , gardening of our vegetables, care of the chapel and buildings, etc...…. while Brother X had no intention of ever quitting in spite of the fact they held him back from pronouncing his final ( perpetual ) vows hoping he would take the hint and depart ! Truly the Lord worked in mysterious ways. I hope I didn't violate any board rules by bending the thread here into a Catholic story !

Some Elders who were into drag racing before the missions found it nearly impossible to keep a set of tires on the rear of the mission cars. Constantly getting the car up to about 15-20 mph and slamming it into reverse and flooring the gas pedal to burn rubber. They loved the smell.

After one Elder went through three sets of rear tires in as many months the MP banned both Elders from driving.

Was pretty funny to watch.

Others would go to deserted parking lots and try bootlegger turns, sliding cars and the like. "they aren't ours" was the line they gave when asked about it.

I had to deal with an abused car. Previous elders had f&%#ed up the transmission of a Ford Focus so the car would stall everywhere. It could only be serviced on a Monday (my P-day) so I spent about 6 consecutive p-days trying to get it semi-fixed. The dealership didn't want to deal with it because they couldn't replicate the problem. I finally persuaded one of the service managers to ride with us. The car acted up like a charm! It stalled when backing up, 3 more times while driving around town. The grand kicker was when the gear refused to engage and smoke-bombed while stepping on the accelerator. The guy called his own wrecker to push the turd back to the dealership. After several more visits and parts, it started working ok.

Later, the car transferred to another set of elders. While riding with them, they began treating the car like sh%t. They pulled the e-brake when making right turns and shifting into low gear on the freeway. I wanted to snitch on them, but they had lied to the MP in order to steal the car away from me and my companion. I was on the MP's sh%t-list of bad missionaries.

I did, indeed, wreck a mission car. Jumping a railroad track--getting some speed and catching air on the incline--seemed like a smart idea, but apparently when they land, it's not unusual to smack the oil pan and oops.

That's what I did. It was clear it wasn't a good idea and damage was done. Oil was leaking everywhere and it was bad. Limped to the apartment, which was a couple blocks away.

So, I called the mission home and reported it. Not my Evil Kenevil antics, just that there was damage because we hit something in the road--a 2x4 or something like that. (My companion didn't rat on me because he was all for the fun idea of jumping the car, too.)

The office wanted to look at it before it got repaired. When the office car guy showed up and before crawling under, he mentioned that he "could tell if it was from jumping railroad tracks"....apparently it was happening all over the mission, lol. Tell-tale signs of asphalt mashed into the pan was the giveaway.

Fortunately, I had crawled under and cleaned all that off before he arrived. It was labeled an accident and I was off the hook.

Three car stories:


Sadly, a mish was killed in my (Great Lakes) mission, about '68; I think his name was Elder Cherry, I've forgotten where he was from. I wasn't involved. Crashed his head on the dashboard before shoulder belts were mandatory.


I arrived at my first assignment in dead of Indiana winter, car heater wasn't working... Comp was a nice enough guy, but didn't want to spend .02 of 'Lord's Money' to fix it... Turned out to be a $ 2.35 valve to send hot water to heater core...


(MY bad) I was driving too close / too fast behind a car on highway; car ahead was stopped (2 lane). I saw I couldn't stop, so I passed the car, only to find out 2nd ahead car was turning left into a driveway... Close Call, I think that comp. peed his pants.

In our mission, we had a 'safe driving' fund included with the car fee which was refunded if we (both front seat people) didn't get in a wreck.... Luckily, I got my refund!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/05/2018 04:49PM by GNPE.