My fellow Exmo’s. I have posted many times about the last day of my mission and how happy I was to be done with it all. That post was on April 13.

Today I thought that I should post this narrative about the beginnings of my mission, and the misery I endured as a missionary. This will give a glimpse into why I was so happy when my mission ended.

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My path in life as a Mormon boy consisted of reaching the typical male Mormon milestones; Primary, Cub Scouts, MIA, Boy Scouts, Deacon, Teacher, Priest, Elder, and four years of early morning seminary. All of which left me with no energy, time, or opportunities to pursue the things I wanted to do. No one ever asked me what I wanted to do. I wanted to learn to play the piano. I wanted to continue to bowl in the leagues and maybe become good enough to go professional someday as I was averaging around 220. I wanted to get involved in television studio productions through the high school career programs and other activities.

In high school, I also wanted to pursue a few young women that were non-members. I once took a non-member girl to the beach for the day, and by the reaction I got from my parents, you would have thought that I had spent the day at a brothel. You see, in their eyes, non-Mormon girls were evil and unclean and would lead me into the gutter of life and nothing but bitter dregs awaited me.

From childhood through my teenage years the focus was going on a mission. That was the plan and nothing else held any importance. Got educational opportunities awaiting you during and after high school? Got a girlfriend Mormon or not? Tough! Those things were not part of the mission plan as those opportunities and girlfriends were to be forfeited for a mission. A mission was the only goal that my parents and grandparents gave any value.

All throughout my life I was taught over and over and over again that serving a mission would be this wonderful spiritual experience of serving with my fellow young brethren while having the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost guiding you to honest seekers of the gospel and testifying to you daily that the gospel was true. You could have angels administer to you to help you in the work and the MP and his wife would be like a 2nd set of parents to you. They would be kind, loving, and willing to lift your spirits when you would become discouraged and downcast.

I was also taught that a mission would be such a wonderful experience that, once you returned home, you would be like a saturated sponge dripping with spiritual knowledge and with wisdom beyond your years preparing you for a dedicated life to the Mormon Collective. The very first day of my mission and every subsequent day of my missionary experience showed me that these teachings were all lies. Lies that were spoon fed to me from the first time I could form sentient thoughts.

At 18 my parents and grandparents were always saying to me how a mission would be the next goal to accomplish on the Mormon conveyer belt of happiness. I don't recall them ever asking me whether I want to go or not. It seemed like any dreams or wants or aspirations I had were things of naught and were of no value. All the focus was mission-mission-mission.

I had graduated a year early from high school before I turned 18 and was fully involved in attending local college classes. I was so happy to be out of the day-care environment of high school and to be in the college environment. I could call my own shots on what classes I wanted, when to take them, and I no longer needed to have a hall pass to use the can. It was so refreshing to be treated like an adult. I had my own car that I refurbished into a virtual new condition and had an interesting gas-price marketing survey job to supply me with enough spending money.

However, the expectation from parents, grand-parents, and the ward leadership that I would be serving a mission at 19 hung around my neck like a millstone. I had absolutely no desire to go whatsoever. I was on a good college path with my education in electrical engineering and I was happy with life and I really did not want to interrupt it to do something I already knew I detested.

Around 18, I had fallen deeply in love with a beautiful Japanese girl Mormon convert named Kathy. She was not the typical Mormon girl I was used to and I enjoyed being with her more than any girl I had ever been with. I fell in love with her as deeply as one could at 18 and I couldn't imagine myself leaving her for 2 long years. The thought of being away from her made me sick inside.

My parents and my grandparents were not happy that I had a girlfriend now. My grandparents were especially upset as they still harbored prejudices from their World War 2 experiences toward the Japanese people. More than once I had to remind my grandparents that WW2 was their war, and not mine. I felt so trapped on this Mormon conveyer belt speeding me toward a mission and I could see no way to get off. I felt as though my life was coming to a dead end at 19.

MY OWN ENDOWMENT
Another glorious milestone on the conveyer belt of Mormonism to prepare me for a mission was for me to receive my own endowment at the Oakland Temple. This was to be a crowning spiritual experience to sustain me throughout my mission and to give me great insight and a testimony of the workings of the almighty God. At last, I thought, I would be able to feel the real power of the Holy Spirit. Maybe I would see something extraordinary to bolster my faith. Maybe a spirit would manifest itself from the other side or maybe a whisper of encouragement from a dear departed relative? All I can say is that the endowment ceremony was an eye opener to say the least. To say the most, bizarre, as nothing prepared me for what I was getting into and I thought I knew what the church was all about. How wrong I was!

While going through the bizarre experience of an endowment session, questions kept popping into my mind:

Why is this old man with PolyGrip breath touching me under my togo?
Why am I learning secret combinations and handshakes while dressed up as the Pillsbury Doughboy?
Was not secret combinations forbidden by the Lord?
There is a true order of prayer?
You mean in church, we are using a false order of prayer?
I am promising to slice my throat or disembowel myself to keep secrets?
Oh God, that old man in front of me just passed gas and my eyes are watering.
Satan is the best character in this incredibly boring movie.
Where are the spiritual experiences to testify to me that the Church is true?
Where are the angels?
Where’s the burning in my bosom?
Where's the Holy Ghost descending like a dove to confirm my faith?
Where's the exit?

I found the exit and now I was wearing some kind of long-johns under my clothes that were climbing up my butt all the way home. I am supposed to wear these for life? I am so hot wearing these things. I hate being hot.


PREPARING FOR THE MISSION
The Bishop requested that I spend a week with a full time Elder to help me see what the mission experience would be like. For that week, I lived the restricted missionary and I detested it. I learned first-hand how much I hated knocking on doors all day. At least was able to get around using my car and not some damn bicycle. The moment that week was over and I no longer had to be with this missionary, I got into my car, cranked up the stereo, ripped off my tie and suit coat, and drove to the nearest A&W for some decent food after a week of eating the crap this missionary ate. That Papa Burger combo never tasted so good. I sat at the drive-in for an hour relishing the food and the music. I should have put my foot down after that fiasco and just told everyone that I was not going to do that for 2 years but the social & family pressures was too great for me to overcome at 19.

The Mormon conveyer belt continued to move on with me on it and my mission application papers were sent in. I took the church's intelligent tests to see if I had the aptitude for learning languages. I guess I failed because the call came in January of 1977 that I would be serving in the Virginia Roanoke Mission and I was to report to the Salt Lake mission home on April 23, 1977. The prophet's auto-pen signature machine had spoken.

Everyone was so happy for me but I wasn't. I looked upon that April date with dread and foreboding. It was the date that my life as I knew it would end and that I would end up forfeiting everything that made my life worth living. I say forfeited and not sacrificed because to sacrifice means to give up something good for something better. But to forfeit means to give up something good for nothing.

That April date felt like a death sentence. Little did I know that this date would mark the beginning of the end of any belief I had in the divinity of the Mormon Church or its leaders, and the beginning of the end in any belief that the Lord cared about me. That April day, the warm loving “Jesus loves me” church I grew up in warped into a mean-spirited adult church.


THE TRIP TO THE SLC MISSION HOME (pre-MTC days)
I had to get up early in order to get to the airport to catch my flight to Salt Lake City. I was very depressed inside as I looked around at my room and my home knowing that I would not see it again until I was 21. I looked at a picture of Kathy and began to cry knowing I would not be able to see here anymore. I would not enjoy our pool; enjoy two Christmas’, or any other family events for two whole years. It was hard to comprehend that I would be gone and doing something I already knew I would hate to the fullest. I felt like a man who was reporting to prison for the beginning of his sentence of hard labor convicted of a crime that I did not commit. I had only a Pop-Tart and a glass of juice for breakfast as I was in no mood to eat a large meal.

In addition to my family, my girlfriend and our other friends came to the airport to see me off. It was a very tearful and gut wrenching feeling to kiss my family goodbye and especially to kiss Kathy goodbye. The last boarding call was being made and I was compelled to let go of Kathy and walk down the jet way. I found a seat near the back of the plane and just sobbed quietly into a blanket.

Such bitterness and sadness gushed out as I soaked the airline blanket with my tears. I understood now what those children in the Old Testament must have felt, as their parents sacrificed them into the ovens of the idol Moloch. I hoped in vain that this day would never come, but it did.

After the plane was in the air, a flight attendant noticed my anguish and sat by me to ask if she could do something for me. I could hardly talk but somehow was able to ask her for a soda. She was kind enough to get me one and I thanked her for it. Little did I know that this would be the last act of kindness I would receive from anyone for two more years.

I sobbed for most of the journey and I was running out of dry areas of the airline blanket to wipe my tears. Fortunately, the plane’s engines drowned out my sobbing. The plane was only a third full so I could be somewhat alone in my grief. Somehow I just knew that this two year experience was not going to be a good at any level. My intuition soon proved to be correct.


THE SALT LAKE MISSION HOME
The start of my mission pre-dated the existence of the MTC in Provo so I spent a week in the SL Mission Home in Salt Lake City before flying off to Virginia to be a door to door sales associate for Joe Smith. I never had a worse week in my life. As I said earlier, the warm loving “Jesus loves me” church I grew up in, warped into a mean-spirited adult church boot camp.

I saw the mission home leaders dish out many acts of incredible emotional cruelty and I began to wonder if I was at the right place. The first set of emotional cruelties was witnessing the scene of missionaries being separated from their families and girlfriends. I had never seen so much anguish and sadness erupt in so many people all at once when the families & girlfriends were told to say goodbye to their missionary and to immediately get out while callously reminding them that they would not see them again for two years.

Since I was from California, I had already experienced my own tearful goodbyes to my family and Kathy two hours prior and I was still reeling from that. How gut wrenching it was to witness again, people having their hearts broken, and while this ugly scene was transpiring, watching the mission home leaders smile with a sanctimonious glee of sick satisfaction. I wanted to punch them so badly. This scene looked like a WWII movie where families are ripped apart to be sent to Nazi death camps. Oh, remember, families are forever...yea, right.

The mission home nightmare week progressed as the mission home leaders attempted to brainwash me, along with the rest of the Elders, with their non-stop scripture and discussion memorization, multiple temple sessions, endless boring meetings, horrible food, no down time, and sleep deprivation. It was like a week-long Sunday with everyday being not just a 3 hour block of boring meetings and nonsense, but an 18 hour block of boring meetings and nonsense with no breaks. I got so fed up with all the berating talks from mission home leaders or some pinhead General Authority. They constantly said that I (we) did not or could not be worthy in any way to God, that we were not much better than pond scum, and cruelly chastised any Elder publicly when they asked any tough doctrinal questions. The GA’s were the meanest, coldest, and cruelest SOBs I have ever seen. Any respect I had for the General Authorities of the church was now gone. I saw that they had no more inspiration than that of a fence post and no more compassion than someone dripping hot wax into your eyes. If Jesus Christ was like them, I would rather be in outer darkness.

Each day this SLC mission home experience was becoming more and more of a “Bad Boys Reform School” nightmare. I remember one particular day when everyone was gathered in the main meeting room, the GA speaker asked what our jobs as missionaries was to be. Some poor elder raised his hand, stood up and said "...to teach the gospel of Jesus Christ and fellowship people into the church." The response from the GA was, "No Elder, you are totally wrong. Your job is to not teach the gospel but to be obedient and tract out people and baptize."

That elder was so humiliated and stunned. I was stunned. Everyone else was stunned. I sat there and thought, "This is not what I signed up for. This is not what I was taught since my early childhood of what a mission was all about.” This was a major damage moment to whatever testimony I thought I possessed. It seemed like I could almost hear that testimony fracturing like a glass window being over-stressed. I kept thinking over & over, "I left behind Kathy, the love of my life, scuttled my college educational opportunities, sold my car, and gave up my good life to endure this emotional brutality?" It finally occurred to me that I had been lied to during my growing up years.

Oh how I wish that I possessed the courage then to just get up, pack my bags, and hail a cab back to the airport. But at 19, I was too much of a coward to do so. To this day, I regret not taking charge of my life’s direction and just fly back home before suffering two long years of similar shit.

Being a cynical person by nature, I inquired at the front desk of the mission home one day and asked if this was really the LDS mission home. They said "yes, why do you ask?" I replied that I have yet to witness any manifestation of Christ-like love from anyone. That raised their eyebrows and after that I seemed to be watched more closely than before.


NOT DRINKING THEIR KOOL-AID
I was able to not succumb to the brainwashing but by the end of that god-awful week, I was exhausted and shaken from what I experienced. I was still "Flash" and would not allow myself to turn into a mindless Morgbot named "Elder Flash". I still had my self-respect and identity intact after all the ugliness I endured and witnessed. I would not drink their Kool-Aid. Others around me were drinking the Kool-Aid, and heavily, and it was scary but interesting to watch as people became brainwashed and changed before your eyes into mindless missionary Morgbots.

Critical thinking skills had evaporated from most of the Elders. I did talk to a few who were seeing things as I saw them, and they too, wished they had never signed up for missionary service. One of these Elders I talked with did escape because one morning he was gone, bags and all, and no one knew when he left. I wished that he would have taken me with him.

Every night, lying on my bed, my thoughts went around in endless circles for hours thinking: Where was the brotherhood in this nightmare? Where were the spiritual experiences to confirm my testimony as promised? Where was the Christ-like love and appreciation from the Church and its leaders for their "volunteers" that gave up so much to be here? Where was any ounce of compassion for the Elders shaken from being separated from their loved ones?

At the conclusion of this nightmare week, I discovered that whatever testimony I thought I possessed had evaporated. All that I was taught prior to this experience of what a mission would be like was false. I could not believe that I had been deceived my whole life and that I could not see through the lies. I felt so wronged and trapped and now I could no longer trust anyone anymore.

On the cross country flight from Utah to Virginia, feelings of great emptiness, deep sadness, and foreboding overcame me with such intensity that I could not speak to anyone the whole way there. My thoughts only consisted of saying to myself, "What have I done? How did I end up here? Why was I such a coward for not putting my foot down and telling everyone, No, I do not want to serve a mission? I don't want to be here! How could I have been so foolish to get succored into this shit? I should be in college now. I miss Kathy so much it hurts."


THE VIRGINIA ROANOKE MISSION (Hell on Earth)
The Virginia Roanoke mission was nothing more than a tracting mission with few, if any people there, wanting to know about Joe Smith and his damn church.

If there is anything I hate more than going door to door selling, I don't know what it could be. I hated tracting with a passion and that is all I ever seemed to do. The drudgery of spending all day, every day, weekends and holidays, knocking on doors and being told to "get lost" over and over again drove me into the ground. The degree of being told to get lost varied widely from a polite "no thanks" to having guns shoved into my face, but rejection is rejection no matter how it is dished out. A person cannot receive daily non-stop rejection and be immune to it. I certainly was not immune to it.

Coupled with this daily all day tracting drudgery was the constant harassment of the mission leaders with their false sense of urgency for higher baptism numbers, more tracting hours, and more teaching appointments. The quarterly Zone conferences provided no relief from the mission drudgery as they turned out to be nothing more than day-long reaming sessions by our "numbers-pushing" clown of a mission president and by whatever pin head GA that came to speak. "Work harder" they would always say, "Tract more hours and don't waste any time". If you're not finding people to teach, it was because of your unworthiness".

Did I ever receive any praise for my efforts, or encouragement for enduring daily rejection, or gratitude for giving so much of my time from my young life to bring souls into this church? Never!

Did I ever receive any encouragement to keep going and just hang in there? Not once!

All I ever got (as well as the other missionaries) was unjustified condemnation for not working hard enough, for being slothful, or being nit-picked on the way were dressed, or condemned for random bad luck, or for breaking mission rules; rules that often contradicted each other so you were damned either way.

No matter how much success you had, it was never good enough.

I found out the hard way that if you ever let it be known that you were having a bad day or that you were tired or depressed or just needed a break, you were rebuked harshly for not having "The Spirit". The responses received for feeling down or for feeling depressed were "You don't have the spirit, Elder.” “You must have some un-repented grievous sin in your past, Elder.” “Are you worthy to be here, Elder?” “Are you masturbating, Elder?"

Empathy and compassion for one another were foreign concepts especially to the MP and to the Elders that came from the ‘factory’ of Utah or Idaho. I found them to be the most intolerant, arrogant, selfish, compassionless, and ignorant bunch of oxygen wasters that I have ever been forced to associate with. Their treatment of non-members was embarrassing to me. I found out later that the Elders and Sister Missionaries that were not from Utah or Idaho felt the same way about their Utah and Idaho counterparts.

I never went away from any Zone Conference uplifted and rejuvenated. I always went away feeling depressed. Driving back to our place after any Zone conference, I was counting the days I had left before I could go home.


NUMBERS, HOURS, CHARTS, & GRAPHS
I saw firsthand how the gospel of Jesus Christ took a back seat in favor of just getting higher numbers of tracting hours and baptisms for meaningless reports. During my first few months of my mission, there was a woman we began teaching that was married with a young daughter and her husband wanted no part of Mormonism. Our presence and our constant visits were really irritating the husband and was causing a lot of marital unrest in this once happy marriage.

I voiced my concern that maybe we should not pursue this family as we were becoming more and more unwelcome to the husband. I resisted my companion’s eagerness to continue teaching this woman and it became such an issue between us that my companion called the ZLs to come and straighten out my “bad attitude”. According to the ZLs, we needed the baptism stats higher and I was standing in the way.

Well, being the junior companion and having my concerns swept aside, we ended up going several more times to teach this woman and she was agreed to be baptized without her husband’s blessing. Afterwards we found out that they began some serious arguing and fighting over her being a member and eventually she filed for divorce. She left with the young daughter and moved to Utah and the husband stayed in Virginia vowing to do what he could to destroy the Mormon church.

So a once happy home and marriage was systematically destroyed and a little girl had her world turned upside down for the sake of baptism numbers. It was the saddest thing I ever had to be part of.

On and on and on did the days of being a missionary drag on. I found myself just merely existing to get up in the morning and going tracting, maybe eating some lunch if I could afford it, then go do more tracting, have some swill quality dinner, then doing even more tracting and then maybe, if I was lucky, go to a teaching appointment that, almost without fail, fell through. The next day I would do the same thing, and the next day, and the next day, and the next day, and the next day...all week...week after week...month after month. Work without end, toil without reward.

The yearly holidays would come and I would find myself out tracting. It's my birthday and instead of celebrating, where am I? I am out tracting. It's Thanksgiving Day, and where am I? Out tracting and interrupting someone's family gathering. It's Christmas time; that depressing time of year deserves its own section.


THE DEPRESSING MISSIONARY CHRISTMASES
Christmas time was the most depressing holiday for me as a missionary. Knocking on door after endless door in the December bone chilling Virginia winter was so depressing. I was always thinking of my family buying gifts for each other and thinking about being with Kathy.

When some people would open their door, I would see their lighted Christmas trees with presents under them and see them enjoying the holiday time. These scenes would make my heart almost stop from the flood of depression that would wash over me. How I longed to be with my family and Kathy. How I missed the fun of Christmas shopping. How I missed watching football while a fire burned in the fireplace. How I missed listening to Christmas music and enjoying all the fun things of the Christmas season that were now, as a missionary, considered evil, taboo, slothful activities, and a waste of time.

No one, and I repeat, no one who answered their door at this time of year were ever interested in knowing about Joe Smith, especially from two depressed 20 year olds who didn't even want what they were selling. I remember some people wishing us a "Merry Smithmas" because they believed Mormons worshipped old Joe and looking back now I understand why due to all the emphasis on Joseph Smith, Joseph Smith, Joseph Smith, and more Joseph Smith.

What kind of church sings a song like "Praise to the Man" at Christmas time? And don't get me started on the un-Christmas like services the Mormon Church has. I was always grateful that no investigators ever showed up at church at Christmas.

I did call home a few times at each Christmas and also called Kathy. I was so happy to hear their voices that I cried and cried and could hardly talk. I did not want to hang up because I knew I would sink even further into depression (if that was possible). When the calls ended, I sat there and cried until there were no more tears left thinking to myself over and over again how could I have been so stupid in my choices to end up in this god-forsaken place and condition?

The first mission Christmas I experienced was worst of all because I knew that when Christmas rolled around again, I would still be trapped in Virginia doing the same exact thing, more endless mind-numbing tracting with 4 more months to go. Sure enough, when the 2nd Christmas came, I found myself still stuck in Virginia and still saddled with a smothering religious duty of endless tracting to perform. My depression had reached such depths; I was in an unknown territory lifetime low.


PLANS FOR TERMINATING MYSELF
In a desperate attempt to deal with the pain of my loneliness and hopelessness, I decided to just shut myself down and do the physical motions of the job to just get the tracting hours to go on the weekly report. Some people commented to me that my countenance had become so joyless but I had run out of energy to fake it anymore. I just didn't care. My prayers were never answered. My leaders just constantly condemned me unjustly and my family seemed oblivious to my suffering.

The mission drudgery continued relentlessly on and on. More & more lonely thoughts would swirl together endlessly in my mind with ever increasing intensity. "I could be in school now finishing my degree…I wish I had my car instead of this damn bicycle…I am so cold or so miserably hot…I am so lonely and I miss Kathy and her soothing presence…How could I have been so stupid to allow myself to end up in this hellhole place?"

I did not realize it at the time how dangerously depressed I was. I found myself having no hopes, no dreams, no joy, and no real reason for living anymore. How down and out I was. "Could I do anything at all to change this joyless existence?" I thought to myself. “Was there any way to put an end to this? Could I do anything? What options are open to me? There must be some solution to end this pain.” I have been depressed before just like anyone else and had bounced back. But this was intense depression and I actually had pain in my chest from it. This was a first.


A solution did creep into my mind; a solution that would definitely put an end to this miserable existence; a solution that had a compelling sweetness to it.


THOUGHTS OF TERMINATING MYSELF
For the first time in my life, the thought of suicide presented itself as a sweet and practical way for ending my joyless existence. It was such a shock to me that I would even seriously consider such a course of action, but I had reached absolute rock bottom and I truly felt that I had nothing to lose.

Here I was, a missionary of the Lord's supposedly true church, who was supposed to be blessed by the Lord for sacrificing all to serve him, who was promised the blessings of success for following all the ridiculous & uncountable amount of double-bind rules, who was promised the ministering of angels for support and encouragement.

But instead, I was a missionary that was planning out my own murder in order to end the pain of depression generated from the drudgery of missionary life and to end the lonely horror of having nowhere to go and escape, of having no tears left to cry, of having no one to talk to, and of being unable to produce the courage or money or family support to just walk away. "My yoke is easy, my burden is light"…The Lord was apparently out to lunch when the missionary program was enacted by his church.

Several circumstances offered me the chance to end it all but I never fulfilled them. One opportunity came one day I was riding my bike on a narrow busy road against traffic and I saw a large semi-truck approaching. Without any sense of self-preservation, I found myself on a collision course. Thoughts of how quick and sweet the end could come, kept me there in that lane. Some people slowed down and yelled at me to get out of the way and the horn of the truck was blaring loudly. But I did not care. Why should I?

Sweet relief from the horror of being a missionary was coming fast. Only when the thoughts of the sadness Kathy would feel upon hearing of my death entered my mind, did I swerve back to the shoulder and barely in time. What a bizarre feeling it was to not have anything to lose and where even your own life means nothing to you.

After I pulled back onto the shoulder, I stopped and looked back at the truck fading into the distance and then something bizarre happened. I actually heard in my head a loud snap sound like two pieces of wood slapping together and then I felt some strange sensation I cannot describe. The fear of man seemed to be leaving me and I felt a strange sense of empowerment and courage that I never had before. I believed my brain was saying "Enough of this mission bullshit. Quit taking shit anymore from anybody.” Unknown to me, I would use this new courage at my last Zone Conference.


THE DROOLING ANGRY MISSION PRESIDENT
Four months before I was to go home, at my last Zone Conference, I had the usual interview with the MP as every missionary did. But as the usual "blame the Elder" one sided interview commenced, the MP became unusually hateful and vindictive toward me because this time he stood up from behind the desk and proceeded to yell into my face saying point blank that "…I was a failure as a missionary…" as he pointed out my lack of baptisms and the low number of investigator discussions indicated on my weekly reports. A week before this Zone Conference, we had baptized a young couple.

Every Zone conference always produced a similar tirade but for me, this time was the last straw with this GA-wannabe pin head. Too many times did I sit through similar interviews enduring his phony self-righteous indignation and said nothing. But now, with my new found courage, I fired back at him with everything I had.

I stood up from my chair, leaned over his desk and yelled back into his face saying, using several colorful metaphors at a high audio volume, that he was a f***ing failure of a mission president for blaming me for things I had no control over and I was not someone who was motivated by his threats. I continued yelling into his face saying that if he was incapable of offering any kind of encouragement, support, or compassion for me or any other missionary who gave up everything to be in this armpit of a place, he was unfit to be here and should go pack his bags, take his clueless wife with his dumb-ass children, and get the hell out of our lives so someone qualified with Christ-like attributes could take his place. I also told him that most of the Elders despised him and wished that they could be transferred to another mission. This man was not the kind of man used to being put in his place by anyone let alone a lowly elder.

In all my days there, I have never seen him madder but I did not care anymore. He went beyond red faced to purple and began to drool onto the desk. He was so angry he could not speak anymore and I had run out of colorful metaphors to continue. We stared at each other for a few moments then I turned around and began walking out the room. My last words to him, before I left the room, were that I would never speak with him again for any reason. I walked out and left him sitting there with his puddle of drool on the desk and I never did speak to him again for the remainder of my mission.

After that heated exchange, I went outside the church building for the remainder of the Zone Conference and fed squirrels from a jar of Planters Peanuts. I was drained body and soul and that was the last time I ever took lip from him or anyone again.

Any belief I had left of the divinity of the Mormon Church and any belief I had left that God cared about me ended. I now saw with high clarity that the whole Mormon Church was a bowl of excrement and that I had been fooled and swindled out of two years of my young life, tricked into laying on the fools "Alter of Forfeit" my girl, my education, my car, and my freedom. Now what do I do? I have 4 months left. Should I end my existence? Do I have the strength see this hell hole through? Should I just go home?

I decided to finish the mission so my parents could at least have their bragging rights in the ward of having an RM son. That last 4 months was the hardest time I ever had to go through but my thoughts and desire to commit suicide slowly evaporated. I knew I was going home soon and Kathy was still there writing weekly letters keeping me going.

I do wish to say that had it not been for Kathy's love and her weekly letters & tapes, I would have gone over the edge and self-terminated. Unknown to her, she was the only anchor that kept me tethered to the world of the living.

My day of release from the "best two years of my life" was getting closer every day. For the remaining 16 weeks, I just did the mechanics of the job. I did not fill out any weekly reports and I did not care what the members of the branch thought anymore. Mentally, I had checked out.

But the last day of my mission did arrive.

Very powerful writing, Flash. I've read your other story a number of times.

Thank you, flash, I enjoyed your story very much. I hope you never again think of yourself as a coward. You were not a coward, you were just railroaded by the adults in your life.

Curious—did your parents and grandparents serve missions, since they were so eager for you to do so? If theirs were as bad as yours I can’t see why they would have pushed you to go.

Glad you survived. Thank you for sharing your story.

-Melanie

This a such a well written piece, I felt every emotion you experienced. I am SO sorry you had to go through so much but am SO proud of you as a fellow exmormon, that you stood up to the MP and also followed your own path once you returned.

GOOD for YOU!!

I'm so sorry you went through that Hell--for nothing. Thanks for posting this again. I never went on a mission, but your descriptions had me right there with you.

I liked your description of the Utah missionaries. I married one of them, in the temple. He was the son of a mission president and had been the Zone Leader. He was full of himself, and I was fascinated with people who had self-esteem. He had all the necessary credentials and bloodlines for perfect RM Mormon marriage material. He and his family hid his past from me, and the day of our marriage, he showed me his true self. He was nothing but a psychopath--an abusive, phony thug, who had beaten his sister, and his neighbors. He was not a BYU scholarship student at all, and had been looking for a stupid Mormon wife who had family money and a career, to put him through school and provide him with a home. He raped me the afternoon of the wedding, before our reception. He beat me almost every day, and broke several of my bones, and strangled me until I stopped breathing, and went unconscious. The worst of losing your life like that--suddenly and also slowly, like having your life sucked away on a mission--is that terrible, relentless despair and hopelessness.

I know that "SNAP!" that happens in your head! You described it perfectly. It happened to me when I was contemplating suicide to make the pain and beatings stop, forever. SNAP! There was another way out--divorce! I was terrified that he would actually kill me, and maybe assault members of my family, so I got restraining orders, and ran away to another city, to establish residency, and get a quick divorce. The creep found someone else, and was married again, in the temple, the day the divorce was final.

I felt like you did, in that I wondered WHY I suffered all that pain and those broken bones, on a principle that was false. Our marriage was not sealed by God for all eternity. I was not my husband's "possession" as my husband had always quoted in the D&C 132. The Mormon church was a hoax!

With a court trial, witnesses, ex-rays, and doctors' reports, I was granted a legal divorce on the grounds of extreme physical cruelty. Even with all that, the Mormon cult never granted me a temple divorce, and until I resigned, I was considered to be one of that thug's eternal temple Mormon wives. I have PTSD, but it is less severe, thanks to therapy.

Sorry to ramble, but the point is, that there will never be a good reason WHY we went through all this Mormon-related pain and agony.

Sometimes, do Mormons tell you that "some good came out of your experience"?

Do they sometimes say, "You are a better person because of it"?

How about, "Your experience made you the person you are today"?

No! Hogwash! It was for NOTHING! There's no such person as Joseph Smith, except an evil con-man. Mormonism has nothing to do with God or Christ. Missions and temple marriages are just made up, for free labor and for sex, and the bottom line for all of it is money. The cult isn't about isn't about Love, or Heart, or serving humanity. It is about nothing but empty greed.

All we can do is forgive ourselves for being brainwashed as children, for being too obedient to our Mormon parents and leaders, and for being so blinded by a cult that we didn't listen to our OWN HEART. You and I both knew we were into something horrendous and probably evil, yet we didn't listen to our God-given survival instincts to RUN! I still haven't forgiven myself, completely, for not escaping sooner from the temple marriage and from the cult.

Perhaps we never will make sense out of the crimes that were perpetrated against us--the lies, abuse, stealing of money, stealing of our virtue and innocence, robbing of our self-esteem, threatening of our very lives.

All we can do is warn others, make sure it doesn't happen again, and move on. You seem to have done that very well. I warn others, probably too much, and I got married a few years later, and had children who are out of the cult.

What happened with you and Kathy? Did you leave Mormonism immediately after you got home? Did you go back to school?
Are you all right?

Every young Mormon should read both of your posts, before they agree to go on a mission! Thank you!

exminion,

Thank you for posting your deeply moving account. It made me so glad I got out when I did before they could screw up my life worse and before I wasted any more time or money. Glad you got out alive.

And there is never any remorse from members... no sense looking for any even superficial thought that they are sorry for what you went through. So happy you are here to share your story and help us!

:)

Did things work out with you and Kathy?
Did you remain in LDS for any period of time after--conforming to others' expectations, or something? When and how did you make the complete break?

A minor issue I'm curious about: did you get a valid "release" from that MP you blew up at? I imagine early/unsuccessful mission departures hurt his oh-so-important stats.

Another excellent post about your experience as a missionary, Flash. You summed up so well what the majority of missionaries experienced but are not able to express so eloquently and poignantly.

My mission experience was very similar to yours, but since I was a sister missionary, going on a mission was my choice and I did not receive pressure from my half member family. My family were converts to the Mormon church and I was the very first person to serve a mission in my family. I wanted to be an example.

My first inkling that I had made a bad decision was entering the temple to take out my endowments. Like you, I had a WTF experience. I was TBM but the temple experience was anything but spiritual. It was more like a weird dream.

I too left someone I loved behind. He was a never-mo and I was crazy about him. It broke my heart to leave him behind. I was hoping he'd listen to the missionary discussions and join the church while I was on my mission.

Entering the MTC was the first time in my life I had an overwhelming sense of doom. I hated being there. I hated feeling like I was at a sales conference and not like I was preparing to share the gospel. It was anything but spiritual. I felt like I was in prison and was so happy when I finally got out after two months of hell.

The second time I was overcome with dread was after the first door I knocked on. Was that what I'd be doing for 16 months? It seemed like such a very long time. I felt so miserable. I felt like I had made the biggest mistake of my life and I could not escape. I had to tough it out though because I was leading the way for my brothers. I had to make it to the end.

I suffered from horrible stress, anxiety, night terrors, self doubt, self loathing, etc. while a missionary. I thought serving a mission would strengthen me spiritually but instead it broke my spirit and wore me down.

The never ending tracting was the biggest waste of time of my life. I must have knocked on thousands of doors without finding a single convert. The worst thing about tracting was that it taught me a terrible skill; it taught me to stick out horrible jobs when I should have quit and found something better. I became an expert at enduring to the end. I endured a horrible 7 year job that I should have quit after the first month. I was determined to stick it out though. The story of my life.

Somehow I made it to the end of my mission, never to be the same. My boyfriend was waiting for me but I was so messed up from my mission I couldn't sustain a relationship with him.

Looking back, I wish to God I had never gone but instead finished my degree and had sex with my boyfriend. My life would have been so much better.

"That April day, the warm loving “Jesus loves me” church I grew up in warped into a mean-spirited adult church."

YES! My first inkling of this was when I went to BYU but Holy Hell I was not prepared for the what the church revealed itself to be when I went to the temple and then on a mission!

It still amazes me that the church thinks that by berating and humiliating their missionaries somehow turns them into effective conversion machines. Zone Conferences were always anything but uplifting. It was about making you feel like shit. We had a 70 and his wife speak to us once and it was nothing but negative hate vomiting from their mouths. Love of Christ, indeed.

Missions are a funny thing... a lot of it depends on the type of mission president you get as they are the ones that set the tone for your mission. If you get a GA wannabe asshat then you are pretty much screwed. My biggest surprise was how mean mission leadership could be. It was always about the numbers, never about actually loving the people (unless you baptized them, that is).

I also felt all your emotions. You should write a book about your mission!!

I agree with the mean-spirited church and all the things you said about the GAs, etc. Boyd Packer's letter I received was the most horrible, DARK thing that I've ever experienced.

The temple. Again, you did the experience "justice." How much hope I had going there that there would be answers for my own situation and it was how you described it.

I guess I need to find your other post. I've read it before, but I don't know what happened with Kathy. WE all want to know NOW! Here in this thread!!

Myself, I gave up the nonmormon guy I wanted to marry and ended up in my gay/straight marriage to save him from being gay. After all, he was damned according to what they told me then. (But I'm with that nonmormon guy now--for 14 years--longer than my marriage lasted.)

We must be close to the same age. I hate to say I encouraged a guy to go on a mission and he left in May of 1977. May 7th I believe!!! No, that didn't last. He was so miserable and I didn't really recognize it. I feel like writing him and apologizing for encouraging him to serve a mission. He didn't want to. He went a year late. It wasn't just me though, encouraging him to go.

I got a good idea of what a mission is like when my disabled brother walked off the plane. He was a CHANGED person. Never been the same and he is 53. I started telling my 2-year-old son THAT DAY that he would NOT be serving a mission. He tells me now he used to think when singing I hope they call me on a mission in primary that HE KNEW he didn't have to go and how relieved he was. Well, I took him out of the church at age 8.

Your words really need to be in at least a pamphlet and put on every windshield in stake center parking lots during church on Sunday.

Most of the mothers HAVE NO CLUE what a mission is like. The fathers don't have an excuse for sending their children out on a mission. BUT most mormon mothers I know would send their kids anyway just for the pats on the back that they had a child who served a mission.

___________

So you married Kathy! I'm so happy that you did!! But, I'm so very sorry that she has passed away. As I sit here crying. Again, WRITE A BOOK. It is important that these stories be told.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 04/24/2019 10:44AM by cl2.

Ronoake mission. That's similar to mine that covered parts of both Carolinas, Georgia, Virginia, Tennessee. Sounds like you hated tracting. I thought it was kind of interesting all those strange people. What stood out to me was that few down south could read. Everyone was basically illiterate, but boy they sure knew the bible was true!

What scared the s*** out of me was when the Clan would come walking down the roads at night. I never could feel easy with those white head dresses and crosses that they'd put on when they'd see us. All the roads were dirt and we couldn't get out of there fast enough. They'd come peaking in the windows at night too. Sometimes we were never sure if it was the clan or other sorcery or goblins. Because they wore different colored cloaks. and would glide across the country at night. The South can be a scary place.

So much of what you wrote is cringe-worthy and anger-inducing. One that jumped out at me was the family where the husband wanted nothing to do with Mormonism. It reminded me of the stories my wife told me of her sister's conversion, and I wonder whether their marriage would have survived and he would still be alive if it weren't for the Mormon church.

It's hard to say what drove him to drink himself to death, but that's literally what he did. From everything I've heard, he was a nice, easy-going fellow with a wonderful sense of humor. He loved his wife and young children, and put them at the top of his priority list.

He had a high-stress job, but he had a loving family at home and activities that he enjoyed on weekends. He had found, what I can glean from the stories, a healthy balance.

His wife got it in her head to convert after her mother put some missionaries on her scent. Her sister (my wife) had already converted a few months earlier and was still enjoying the early glow of conversion.

He recognized early on that Mormonism was a scam and refused to have anything to do with the missionaries whenever they came over to the house. Whenever they came over, he would leave; either back to the office or to the bar. His wife continued to take discussions with the missionaries and was soon baptized.

Over the next few years, the husband stayed away from home more and more during the week, and no longer had weekend activities that he could share with his family because they were at SM or some other church function. His drinking got worse and worse, with disastrous affects on both his work and his health.

His wife eventually kicked him out and divorced him, and he died soon afterwards from his excessive drinking, the damage having already been done.

I realize its just conjecture to say that Mormonism ruined his marriage and ended his life; but just hearing the stories from my wife's and SIL's perspectives (I never met the husband), his happy life didn't fall apart around him until after the Mormon church laid claim on the family everybody says he loved til he died.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/24/2019 11:33AM by GregS.

the one in flash's post and the story you just told. AND the damage being caused to your marriage.

in terms of how you felt about the temple, staying in the church, (not the mission, but you and others have educated me on how horrible a mission is), and then my marriage.

During my hellish years, including finding out my boyfriend (eventual husband) was gay, it was this old boyfriend of mine who kept me going. I NEVER EVER thought he would become available again. He married his college sweetheart, even though he had asked me to marry him in between dating her in college and after he moved back to his home state, but he did become available 27 years after he left. I was watching. I knew I had to go after him or I'd lose him AGAIN.

But it was the memory of him that kept me going, knowing that he loved me. I told everyone I'd never date again unless he became available. I was going to say I couldn't have been shocked, but I had had premonitions that he would come back and I looked for him when I had been told to look for him. His wife was just moving out. I had our old boss (a good mormon) call him and he said, "Tell Colleen to call me." My old boss, even after I got married (and he didn't know my husband was gay) would stop at my desk and say, "You know, I know you are happily married now, but YOU SHOULD HAVE MARRIED MIKE." Well, I'm with Mike. I don't plan on ever marrying again. We are both in our 60s now as it is.

My therapist always tells me, "We tested mormonism to its very limits and IT FAILED US."

I'm shocked you stayed mormon after THAT MISSION. BUT mormon guys never liked me and I hardly ever dated them, and I hesitated to date nonmormons, but I had nonmormons asking me out all the time. I worked at Thiokol and there were a lot of nonmormons who worked there. I was asked 3 times by nonmormons to marry them before I got married at age 27. And then I ended up married to someone gay.

I'm so sorry for what you suffered through. I agree with all your statements about mormonism. I rejoice on Sundays even if I have to work. My "ex" told our TBM daughter, "Your mother was never happy mormon." I didn't realize it until he said it, but he is 100% correct. I tried. I gave it all I had. AND IT FAILED ME, just like it did you.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/25/2019 01:30PM by cl2.

In my posts about the end of my mission and this one about the beginning of my mission, I came to realize that my condensed narratives may have misled many about my pretty Asian wife that was mentioned. This is due to the fact that the post length limitations of this board prevents me from tying it all together in one post. For this, I apologies for I did not mean to mislead anybody.

To caffiend, I did get an honorable release certificate from the mission. Telling a mission president the truth about himself broke no rules. And I did not care about an honorable release or not. An honorable release from a mission hellhole is meaningless.

To cl2, it was not Kathy I married, but my pretty Malaysian wife, and she was the one who passed away. The narrative below explains. Today, Kathy and I are good friends. She divorced the guy she married. He gave her such a crappy life, it took a physical toll on her and she suffered a massive stroke. So now she only has the use of her left arm and is totally bedridden. I visit her as often as I can. Every time I see her, she says she wishes she had married me instead. What can one say?

To mel, none of my grandparents, or my parents ever served a mission. To them, a mission had been so romanticized in their lives; they had no conception of the level of hell a mission could produce.

*******************************************************************

LOSS OF KATHY BUT BACK INTO COLLEGE
After being home for about four months, Kathy drifted away from me toward someone else and ironically, it was a non-member. It was a very bitter loss to me as I loved her more than I could ever express to anyone. For those two years, she was all I thought about, dreamed about, and she was the only person that kept me from committing suicide while serving the mission.

I can only speculate that I loved her more than she loved me and maybe being away for two years was just too long for our relationship to withstand the changes in each of us. I will never know. But it became evident to me that I was gone too long and it was everlastingly too late to make up those two years of lost time that I could not be with her.

I have often thought of what could have been if we had stayed together. I know I would have loved her, cherished her with all my heart, given her a very good living and lifestyle, and would have supported her in all the things she told me she wanted to do. It produced incredible pain and sorrow to me to know that she married a man that, from my observations of him, did not even love her and just wanted her for dipping his wick.

I felt I had lost someone of priceless value. I felt I lost someone so precious to me, I did not know if I could ever find someone else to fill the void in my life created by her absence. I was deeply depressed for many weeks. I was not able to hide my depression very well and several people asked me what was wrong but I could not really tell them as the loss was beyond my ability to put into words. I tried to get close to a few other girls later on but none of them ever seemed to measure up to Kathy. She was one of a kind and not replaceable. Well, Kathy made her decision and I wished her the best and hoped she found happiness with him.

The following September after returning from Virginia, I restarted my college path. I eventually obtained my electrical engineering degrees, and was hired by a major electronics manufacturer in Silicon Valley.

Somehow, a little over a year after I came home from Virginia, I found myself in a marriage to a TBM "white but not delightsome" woman. At the time it seemed the right thing to do, but a few years and two children down the road, the woman changed for the worse and I could see that I had made yet another very-very bad decision to marry so young because of the pressures from the Mormon Church.

Bitter quarreling began early in this marriage and it always revolved around the church whether it was tithing, church callings, or not being home because of excessive church meetings. I also could not earn enough money because she wanted and bought on credit many material things immediately that normally take years of work and savings to get. However the thing that caused the most arguments in my first marriage was the non-payment of tithing.

When my "white but not delightsome" first wife found out that I never paid, she was furious and abusive to me and railed on me to pay it. I showed her the budget and told her that the math does not lie. So I said to her to choose tithing or eating and having shelter. This made her even madder and she insisted that I pay tithing and stop paying the mortgage because we would be blessed to be able to pay our bills. However, she would never agree to go without food or her credit card shopping for her frivolous things.

To make peace, I said then let’s prove if God really cares about us. So I paid the tithing and not the mortgage and waited for God to invoke some new math on my budget that somehow the numbers would all work out. One month went by, then 2, then 3, and my budget's math remained the same. No sack of money fell from heaven and no hidden cash bonanza materialized. After the 3rd month I got a notice from my mortgage company saying my house will soon go into foreclosure if I didn't make up the missed payments.

I confronted her with the foreclosure notice and said that tithing would never be a budgeted item again. God does not care about us. I also told her that her frivolous credit card spending days have also come to an end so we can make up the delinquent mortgage payments. She blew a gasket at that and then said that I should not pay the credit cards bills and use that money for tithing instead. I then asked her “What's the difference between not paying for the charged items and shoplifting.” I got no response as she stormed off.

Despite all this, I still tried to salvage the marriage the best I knew how.

Frequently I would do things for her such as clean the house myself or volunteer to take our children for the day so she could have a day to herself and many other similar things that made the other wives in the ward jealous. It did get back to me that my wife would complain about me to the other wives of the ward and they could not understand why she would feel that way about me because their husbands would do little if any of the things I did for her. No matter what I did for her or how much I showed that I loved her, she would brush it all off as phony meaningless acts of bribes for her love.

I tried countless times to build up our relationship but soon I discovered that you cannot build or repair a relationship with someone who does not and never considered that you are a human being with feelings, wants, and rights. To them, you are an inanimate object, like a hairbrush, and the only purpose you exist is to serve them. A hairbrush does not complain when you mistreat it so "how dare you complain" about how you feel or if your needs are not being met. She was a true narcissist.

To make a long and bitter story really short, I reached the end of my rope with her arguments, her ungratefulness, and her spending us into near bankruptcy. I was giving all and doing all I knew how to do at the time to make her happy and receiving nothing in return from her but disgust. After 8+ years of this hellhole “Celestial” marriage, I decided I needed to divorce this female as quickly as possible. I walked out on her and sued for divorce.

My “white but not delightsome wife” became such a nutcase that her own family encouraged me to divorce her as quickly as possible. I even received at work a couple of death threats phone calls from the ward members over this divorce. Are the Danites back again?

During the divorce process, her own lawyer would scold her because of her unreasonableness to conclude the divorce proceedings even after I gave her everything. Her lawyer could not believe that she wanted to drag on and on the process after I gave her everything and her half of the equity of the house. I kept the house. I guess her lawyer told her to end it or she would cease to represent her because the divorce process finally ended. I was now free of that female for good. What a relief it was to not have to deal with such an unbalanced person ever again.

My ex-wife was also very successfully in poisoning my two children against me and so I have not seen them for over twenty nine years. To bring closure to this bitter chapter of my life and for keeping my sanity concerning my children, I declared them dead and moved on.

I learned later from others, that my ex-wife had privately told them, before our divorce, that she never loved me from the start of the marriage and only married me to get out of her poverty and that maybe, over time, she could "learn" to love me. Hearing this made all the pieces fall together for me as to why she never returned my love. She had none to start with. So that Spencer W. Kimball nonsense that "two people living the gospel could make a marriage" is a bowl of shiz and I have the divorce papers to prove it.

After going through this divorce and losing my children forever, any smoldering embers of faith I might have had in the divinity of the Mormon Church or faith that God cared about me, were now extinguished, never to be re-lighted.

FAMILIES ARE FOREVER !!!!!!!.................................................yeah, right.


THE END OF MY MORMON COMEDY
After my divorce was final, my mother wanted me to find another Mormon woman to marry, but looking at what my choices of Mormon women were, knowing I would most likely end up on the same old endless Mormon treadmill and a good chance of ending up with another bipolar, high conflict woman, I told her "NEVER AGAIN!" to her chagrin.

I did humor my mother just once by calling on a woman in her ward that was in her late twenties but had not married yet and still lived at home. She and I had grown up in that ward and she was 2 years younger than me. I asked her out on a date and she told me to wait a moment so she could check her calendar. But as I waited for her reply, she forgot to cover her end of the phone and I could hear her mother in the background telling her to not get involved with me in any way because I was divorced with baggage. Needles to say, she declined my offer for a date. Thanks Sister Whitmer, for voicing your vote of confidence of me to your daughter.

After she hung up the phone, I now knew that in the eyes of the church, I was "damaged and unclean and beyond redemption." As a divorced man, no one in the Mormon Church wanted anything to do with me. I never again contemplated being involved with another Mormon woman after that phone call.

MAJOR LIFE RESET
I cannot think of a more damning yard stick to hold up to the Mormon Church than the scripture "By their fruits ye shall know them". This one verse summed it up and confirmed to me that I had to jettison this toxic religion or I was going to be forever miserable.

Now that I was living alone again, I realized that I needed to perform a major reset to my life if I was going to be happy going forward. I sat down one evening and told myself that now I needed to take care of me. I needed to come first. I had spent too many calories on the Mormon Church's needs and programs before my own and never received any positive ROI. The two year mission investment returned nothing but pain & anguish and the investment into eight plus years of a loveless ‘Celestial marriage’ produced nothing but heartache & hopelessness.

I began looking back at my life and studying the episodes that went wrong. That introspection revealed that every major episode of unhappiness, strife, emotional trauma, or poor decision making was directly connected to the Mormon Church. I had done all the things that were required of me and the promised blessings never materialized. Prayers were never answered; priesthood blessing given or received did nothing. Council from the Brethren always produced the opposite of that which was promised. To sum it up, NOTHING EVER WORKED, period.

After several sessions of personal introspection, I concluded that I would never again allow any nonsense of Mormonism (or any religion) to cloud my judgment or taint my happiness in any way or come between myself and any woman I wanted a relationship with.

I began entering the dating scene again shortly after my divorce. I did not realize how awkward this was at thirty as I was out of practice but I found it fun to associate with women with whom I wanted to be with and perhaps find a woman to marry.

I was in no hurry. I would do it my way and would have a relationship with a woman I wanted. Not what the Mormon Church always said I should have and not what those 15 geriatric men in Utah always said I should have. Gone were those stupid teachings about only marrying in your own race or class or to avoid dating "evil non-member” women. I promised myself that I would never again get involved with any Mormon woman. The Mormon product had failed me, so I would try some “evil” non-Mormon imports.


FINDING ANOTHER PRETTY ASIAN
From the first days that I was interested in girls, I always wanted to have an Asian wife. To me, Asian women are more attractive. I can't explain why nor do I feel obligated to do so. It’s just my preference. I always felt more at ease around Asian women. I now had many opportunities to meet and seek after Asian women through my friends and my peers at work since my high-tech company employed many people from the Asian regions of the world. I was able to date a couple of India women, a Japanese woman, and a couple of Chinese women.

One thing that I did notice about the Asian women I dated was that all of them never exhibited any bipolar, schizophrenic, or high conflict type behavior as Mormon women did. These Asian women had their act together. They were genuine, intelligent, highly educated, knew where they were going in life, and acted their age. They were very unlike the Mormon women I knew who acted & talked like children, who were uneducated, and were clueless as to what they wanted out of life.

Through a mutual friend, I was introduced to a Malaysian girl who worked in Penang. We carried on a long distance relationship that worked quite well because we had access to the inter-company phones and to the inter-company email & chat capabilities. This was before the internet as we know it today so we had, in essence, then, the equivalent of today's email and texting. We were ahead of our time in 1990.

Being very cautious to not make a marriage mistake again, I made sure that she really loved me as much as I loved her and I could not see anything that denoted mental issues. I felt I found a soul-mate and we married a year later. How wonderful it was to be in a real marriage where real love is returned for real love given. I can say with conviction that there is nothing sweeter than the love of an Asian woman.

We had only one child, a beautiful daughter who is an academic genius and graduated from MIT, one of the most premier engineering universities in the world. I went out of my way to keep her and my pretty Asian wife untarnished by any facet of Mormonism or its nonsense.

A few years after I married my Malaysian sweetheart, I formally resigned my membership in order to stop any effort to "reactivate" me. I wanted no more love-bombs and no more invites to go back. I will never go back because it would be like going back to your dinner plate full of your vomit and trying once again to down an unpleasant meal.

The mission experience and the 8+ years of a hellish ‘Celestial marriage’ that followed, opened up my eyes and allowed me to see the rottenness of the church. As painful as all of this was, I believe the long term pain of staying in the Mormon Church would have become unbearable. I would never be given another chance to escape from living a horrible, meaningless, and hollow existence.

I have never been happier having Mormonism and all of its painful baggage out of my life. Of course, in life, there are bad days here and bad days there and nobody is immune from that but the vast majority of my days have been very happy ones. When I wake up Sunday mornings, sometimes I chuckle to myself as I think of where I could be, sitting on a hard pew in a stuffy chapel re-breathing the stale air produced by the previous ward, and listening to the same old drivel while multiple babies scream & cry & vomit. I miss it so. NOT!!!!!!!

My Malaysian wife mentioned in my posts was the one who one day just collapsed to the floor from a heart attack at 58. No signs or symptoms.

I'm so sorry that you lost your wife, Flash. It's clear that you loved her very much.

You had to fight hard for your happiness in life. Nothing was handed to you. I'm so glad that you finally chose your own happiness against anyone else's notions of "happiness."

A couple of points to which I can especially relate -- I've always been attracted to Asian men. So I get that! And my brother has multiple degrees from MIT. I spent many hours there visiting him and wandering the halls as a child and a teen. He met his future wife there, who was working as a secretary/assistant at the time. You must be very proud of your daughter.

Thanks for your well put together story. I’m very sorry to hear about your wife. You finally found “ the one” and this happened. It’s also sad what happened to Kathy.
I’ve been at MIT , about 10 years ago. We were just visiting someone there. It was in the building next to the bridge going into Boston ( in case there’s more than a few buildings)

Thanks so much for sharing your story, painful as it is. You surely tried! But you didn't escape the truth that the church is only a taker. It has nothing to give.

Very riveting story. I loved it. Sorry hearing about your wife.

I like that phrase "white but not delightsome wife". Been there and done that.