Every missionary saw them. LEADERSHIP whores in the mission field. Their only real goal was Assistant to the President.
DL, ZL, AP and home to become Bishop, StPrez and Apostle.

Not one of these types I knew from the mission field ever made it to Stake Prez. One I know was a Bishop. Only found out in passing as I never kept up with any of them after getting back home. Military service and career was more important to me than the silly games of missions - and I ended up baptizing more into the church the first 5 years of military service than during the mission.

What happened to those you saw on the "fast track to Apostle" route from your mission?

I have no idea.

I'm hoping that they have moved on to bigger and better things rather than climbing the church ladder. My MP made his goal of becoming a member of the 70 until the church gave him emeritus status.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/14/2018 02:13PM by messygoop.

At my exit interview with the MP--and this was early seventies-- he told me to guard my testimony and in fact said that 80% of the AP's would go inactive within six months of returning. I don't know where he got that figure or if it was true ,but I was shocked. I couldn't imagine at the time any missionary at all going inactive upon return. He seemed to be warning us, I guess, that the Adversary worked hardest on the elite. So why he bothered to tell me who never even made DL is the mystery. :)

I had all those assignments..DL, ZL, AP. I certified the discussions (memorized them) in one month, was training new missionaries at two months, and so on.

I didn't aspire to any of these assignments. I moved up because I was older (22), more mature, and quite intelligent. I was there to find myself, not be a perfect rule keeper and move up the ladder. I bent rules, but wasn't much of a breaker and I had a lot of baptisms...I knew how to sell the church.

I was inactive all through my teens and only got active about 6 months before I went. I was quite worldly during those years.

I came home, got married, started college, and stopped church completely within a few years of returning. I found some material by the Tanner's and that was it. Never had any priesthood leadership callings because I quit before that point.

That's the answer: they're here on this site.

Welcome former mission leadership!

Great post /inquiry. I will be back later with a response.

Didn't care then, care even less now. I've gone to no reunions, am not on social media. I couldn't even tell you what their names were.

I know what happened to two APs from my mission. They were friends when they returned and attended BYU together. One became a successful plastic surgeon. He had an affair with his AP friend's wife. His friend was devastated.

I don't think plastic surgeon AP is active in church but has an active sex life outside of church. His AP fried whose wife he slept with, remained active in church, remarried and had two children. He recently died, just in his 50s.

Looking back, the mission president must have been truly inspired to call arrogant cheating future plastic surgeon to be his AP. I'm sure there were more humble and faithful choices for AP, but the mission president was attracted to arrogant s.o.b's like future plastic surgeon.

I was an AP. Check out John Andersen 33 reasons for leaving the Mormon Church to catch you up to around 15 years ago. I have been away for years and have never been happier. My wife left with me as well.

The LDS church is not true. That's the only reason I need. No need for 33 reasons.

My first mission companion, my trainer, rose to be an AP. I really respected him because he walked the walk. I tried keeping up and that apparently satisfied him. He wrote a book about his mission and couldn't find me, to ask to use my real name, so he gave me a pseudonym. Actually, he and his twin brother wrote the book together; the twin was in the next mission over, the SouthEast Mexican mission. So I had three months with him and it was good. Then the next thing I heard, he was an AP. I was in DF (Mexico City) when he left so I went to his farewell and met his twin. There was ZERO indication regarding what was about to happen...

About two months after he left, the scandal ran through the mission (and probably the SE mission, too). The brothers left the church. Their book about the mission turned out to be a sociological treatise on 'why do they do it?' It wasn't in popular print, but I got a copy with my middle son's help when he was working in the library at CSULB. All I bothered to read was the part I was in, and it was boring.

My last senior companion was a NorCal mormon, with lots or worldly experience, like having sex in a swimming pool while he hung on to the diving board and she did all the work. How's an Elder not going to masturbate after hearing a story like that?! He came back down to DF after his release and my last Junior and I partied hard with him for a week. He got married the same day I did, the first Saturday after school was out, in late May, him in the SLC temple and me in St. George.

I totally lost track of him after that. I know he had a lot of kids and that the first child, a girl, rebelled pretty hard when she turned 18, because she'd been used as a Junior Mom. He became a bishop in Oklahoma and also went into insurance claims, as did I. We had one conversation about all this in 1990, when he tracked me down to ask for some help for that oldest daughter, who was living in LA at the time. He's on FB, but I have zero interest in getting in touch. I don't know if he's still married, but I formed the opinion that his wife, whom I hardly got to know at the Y (I think she didn't like Lamanites) was TBM³. My BYU bride's insistence on being mormon was bad enough; a TBM³ would have caused me to slit my wrists.

My very first companion, there in the old Salt Lake City mission home, was Melvin T. Bowler, of St. George, Utah. He's deceased now. My mom drove me up from Las Vegas and I unloaded the car and while all the other parents are saying "see you in two years or two years and three months (LTM)" my mom said, "See you next year..."

I got my room assignment and took my suitcases down to the basement and found my room, which upon inspection had 1 (one) double bed, on which a set of luggage already reposed. I left my luggage there and went up to discuss the issue of an only child (me) having to share a bed with another human being. I spoke to some adult types, but nothing ever came of it and Elder Bowler and I slept together in that double bed for a week. I did not sleep all that well... When we finally left the LTM, it was he and I flying together to DF, via LAX. When I gave my mom our itinerary, she and her best friend met us at LAX and we all ate at the flying saucer thing in the middle, which was new then and was a fine dining restaurant. Then we caught our Varig flight to DF.

Elder Bowler was a superhuman being and a super mormon. He was an AP when I was released. He could have been released a couple of weeks early like I was, but he chose to serve the full mission, for him, a total of 28 months, where I only served 27 months. We had visa-waited a month at the LTM...

Elder Bowler was killed a year after he got home when as a passenger in his girl friend's unseat-belted VW bug, the vehicle was supposedly wind sheered off the roadway and into a bridge abutment. She survived because only his side of the car hit the abutment. She sailed through the windshield, too, but then just hit the ground and rolled. Couldn't have been any fun, but it wasn't the death sentence E. Bowler got. He would have been a GA today (so say I!).

Elder P was my first Junior Companion. I played it by the book with him. He probably thought I was a stalwart in the church. He has become quite successful, importing fruits and vegetables from Mexico. But he had one failing as a mormon: he wasn't handsome, so not worthy of adulation. Per the mission webpage, he kept in touch with our MP, Jasper McClellan, and put out the word when Jasper passed on.

About MP McClellan: he was a Mexican citizen, from Colonia Juarez. He had been a construction manager for the church, a guy who wore jeans and boots on a daily basis and probably had a very practical view of the world. But that's just my guess. How he got to be an MP would probably make for and interesting tale. I hardly ever spoke with him. He never interviewed me, EVER. There was no exit interview. The only personal message I ever got from him was when I was in Guadalajara, and it came via the APs. The message was to get a haircut. When I left, I think he shook my hand, but maybe all he did was nod. He probably knew I was a fuck up, but I was orderly about it and maybe that's why he never made an issue of it. My mom did come down that next year, 1966, and the year after that, 1967. The second time she drove down from Las Vegas to DF!! Then she left her 1967 Thunderbird with me in DF for the two weeks while she and her friend did the Mayan tour thing. Elder G., my last Junior, who was a greenie, was probably spoiled for the entire mission. My last nine months of the mission, I only tracted one day, and that was to shut up Elder Bear. He didn't complain anymore when the few people in Lagos de Moreno whom we met at their doors told us that "Oh, Father Garcia said to be nice to you mormon boys because you just never had a chance to learn the truth..." Which was a lot nicer than having them yell at us or threaten us...

Elder Bear was the companion who didn't get off the bus with me when a guy challenged me to a fight. As I'm squaring up to this dude, there goes the bus, with Elder Bear and two other missionaries staring out the back window at me. The fight was a draw, as people finally separated us and told us we were crazy to take the chance of being arrested. The other elders got off at the next stop and came walking back to get me. Fuckers!

It was in Leon, GTO that Elder Smith (who was my best man) and I slept in a single bed together, but each of us had out head opposite the other guy's head. In reviewing what I remember about him, it's likely that he was gay. But I was so oblivious to stuff like that back then, I wouldn't have noticed. Him I would like to meet up with again. If you know a Michael Smith (how generic, huh?) who grew up in Long Beach, CA, went to the Mexican mission 66-68 and became a flight attendant after BYU, tell him to call me!!!

I had a great time on my mission!!

Melvin Bowler (nickname Kip) was a great person. Maybe instead of GA he could have been governor or senator or ??. A true tragedy that he died so young.
The story of his girlfriend who survived the auto accident is tragic in its own way. She was convinced that Bowler was the one for her and chose to never date again and never married. According to local scuttlebutt, she received special permission from church headquarters to be sealed to Melvin in the St. George temple. Now in her seventies, she has lived her life alone expecting to be Melvin's wife in the next life.

Holy shit, you just sent shivers through my body!

If you were at the funeral, I was the Mexican.

He walked the walk. To suppose that Jesus is annoyed if I call him a great mormon is ludicrous.

And what a sad denouement, that I spent a week sleeping in a double bed with Kip, while she...

ETA: regarding 'politics', at the funeral, his mothers spoke, which in itself was an amazing thing... and she remarked that she was certain that one of the first things Kip did in Paradise was to start a Dixie Club. Everyone laughed...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/15/2018 01:02PM by elderolddog.

I was off on my own knocking on doors adventure at the time of the accident and funeral and first heard about it in a letter from my older brother who was Kip's age. I've crossed paths with the girlfriend a few times over the years. She had a very successful career as a school teacher but still lives in the house where she grew up. All around one of the saddest Mormon stories from southern Utah.

When I first arrived in France, one of the APs had been my brother's roommate at BYU. My brother had alerted him that I was on my way, so he kind of looked out for me, and (I was later told) helped steer me to a "cushy" first assignment in Paris itself.

That AP never showed up on the mission alumni website, and nobody seems to know what happened to him. Not even my brother.

I ran into one of the other APs coincidentally a few years after I'd left the cult. I was in Salt Lake visiting my sister, had gone to the grocery store, and we both turned into the same aisle from different directions and almost hit each other...followed by a, "hey, aren't you..." moment. He got married 3 months after coming home, was working in some kind of sales job, and had 4 kids. He seemed more tired than anything else. I hear he later got divorced, and was living in the high desert in CA, but like the first one, he never put his info on the mission alumni site, and a Facebook search for him turned up hundreds of name hits without me being able to tell which was him.

Finally, the gung-ho greenie I got as a junior when I was first made DL in Poitiers, the one who snuck off to rat me out to the MP as being a lackluster DL, never made AP. He was certain his act of informing the MP of my faithlessness would immediately vault him to the highest levels of mission leadership...instead he got a rep as a rat, and nobody wanted to companion with him (including the APs!). He is registered on the mission alumni page, and is apparently living near Payson, with his TBM wife and 3 kids, and doesn't appear to have ever reached the level of priesthood leadership he considered his due.

My MP was an egotistical thug and liar (and a convicted criminal in his post-MP life). Leaders like him made me question the church even more than I had been. I imagine the APs and others who had more contact with him saw even more of his faith-weakening nastiness.

I was in a really bad mission. Towards the end, I became a ZL because I had lasted long enough.

But I had deep doubts about how the mission was managed and brought it up in a ZL meeting. The MP took it well at first, but then one of the APs pushed him to hold a church court. He did all he could to get me kicked out of the church--effectively, he tried to damn me.

A few months later I went to the Deseret Gym to exercise and there he was. He was behind the counter checking IDs. He was all smiles, friendly, and even said we should get together socially. I was stunned beyond belief. Here was the a**hole who had done the worst thing to me that a Mormon could do to another Mormon, and now he wanted to be friends.

I don't think I'll ever forget his name or his face.