My TBM Mormon "supervisor" has a son on a mission in Australia. He has been kicking to come home and is fed up with the whole church co thing. Mom is sooooo worried about his eternal salvation that she took emergency leave from work for 2 weeks to go have a pep talk with him. Is this new protocol from losing so many missionaries... that now they are allowing family members to dissuade future apostates by actually letting immediate family on sacred territory to make sure the "kids" finish out missions. This is the kind of TBM family that couldn't live down the shame of having one of their boys return dishonorable from a mission... not to mention how disappointed the HG would be! I am having a chuckle over this at work!

Mama should be more concerned about her son's mental health right now than his eternal salvation and be working on getting him home and a mental health evaluation ASAP. What the heck are these parents thinking anyway? That they're sending their children halfway across the world to be door-to-door salespeople for a cult?! and then worry that they're not okay when they want to come home?

She's the one who needs a reality check!

No wonder these kids are so messed up.

The mission thing is back firing. It has become a catalyst rather than a reinforcement. Missionary work is so vacuous and mind numbing and often embarrassing that it is forcing a lot of the kids to confront their real feelings, ie, the fact that they don't really believe in it, that they don't share their parent's fabled testimony.

Parents are using coercion on their children in order to maintain the loftiest of facades. Unconditional love and financial support are used as leverage to ensure the parents get their RM, which is another jewel in the Mormon crown.

I just hope the kids come back stronger than when they left. Cut the apron strings already.

It's sad how strong the brainwashing is; especially with the parents. Our daughter's supervisor's daughter is on a mission and it was recently discovered that she has a malignant tumor. She needs an operation asap, but the parents and the daughter decided that it is more important for her to finish out her mission! I just can't believe it!

That is really magical thinking. I hope that the young woman does not end up paying a heavy price for her decision.

Malignant tumor. Where at?

If she dies, then God just needed her on the other side.

The girl is young. She may not understand the reality of her situation. What are her parents thinking??????????



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/03/2019 02:50PM by cl2.

who was in England on his mission and pretty much had a mental breakdown. The parents didn't want him to come home, but a nonmormon psychiatrist said HE NEEDED TO GO HOME. So the church gave him a completed mission well served pat on the back, but the kid still struggles. He doesn't believe, but his parents take him to the temple a lot and they sent him to BYU. I haven't heard lately how he is doing.

Sad. Just more proof that the mission is about the parents and the church and the kids are pawns.

the call took a LONG TIME to show up. All his friends had received their's long before he did and they sent them in at the same time.

He was sent to Montana.

That is just plain irresponsible on the part of the parents and the mission not to get the daughter medical attention immediately WTF?

If they really believe in God and miracles, then let the doctors get to work on her. Let the mission take care of itself. It can survive without her. She needs divine intervention of another kind, the medical team.

A malignant tumor? Good god, doesn't she have health insurance? Is that why they're stalling? What parent in their right mind wouldn't be sending for her to come home as of yesterday?

And if she's in her right mind, she'd be doing the same.

If they value life, then value HER life. Get the medical attention first. Then deal with the mission afterwards. That is a lesser priority and can wait. Jeezus Christ. Good Lord almighty. Even Jesus healed the sick on the Sabbath. What is wrong with these people? They are INSANE!

Shows to go you that one defining example of Mormon culture as well as other more closed cultures is putting much more emphasis on the spiritual than the temporal and it is acceptable in many situations.

So this kid's mission trumps his future successes in life.

There is currently a very high number of early return missionaries -- more than a quarter of them. Church leaders might wish to consider making the missions more like they were in earlier years, where missionaries were treated like adults and not micromanaged and overworked so much. I'll bet some of the Q15 remember those days.

This is both unbelievable and incionable and in my not so humble opinion the result op a terribly mind controlled parent. And by the way EXTREMELY SINFUL


It's sad how strong the brainwashing is; especially with the parents. Our daughter's supervisor's daughter is on a mission and it was recently discovered that she has a malignant tumor. She needs an operation asap, but the parents and the daughter decided that it is more important for her to finish out her mission! I just can't believe it!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/03/2019 03:36PM by thedesertrat1.

This is so typical of the mormonistical way of thinking. It's all about "appearance" and not so much care about the mental health of the missionary. I wish that the missionaries weren't pressured so hard to go on missions like they are.

This was very prevalent 50 years ago when I went on a mission simply because it was the thing to do then. Every young man went, it was unheard of for one not to go. I too went because not going wasn't an option. I won't go into details, but I sorely hated being on that mission. I couldn't go home early, that would have brought shame to my family and the repercussions would have been unfathomable. There was one kid around my age who refused to go on a mission and he was so mistreated by his family and community that he enlisted in the military to escape home life.

On my mission I divided a sheet of paper into squares that had enough squares for each day. At the end of every day I drew in a shape or pattern or somehow decorated that small square. Then used colored pencils to shade a color for it. This sheet of paper helped me to maintain my sanity as I looked forward to marking off that day while I went from door to door senselessly knocking on them.

This Mama wasn't concerned about her son's mental health, she was only concerned about what her neighbors would think. So Shallow, but so typical of their way of thinking. It seems like as some things change, some things stay the same.

The parents are crazy, I think. I feel so bad for the girl. What kind of an evil parent won’t have their precious child get immediate medical help?? The tumor is on the thyroid and it will spread. I don’t know how much longer her mission is, but it doesn’t matter because she needs to quit it now and get the operation and whatever else she needs.

and then there are so many other things that can happen in terms of her ability to function, but being malignant, she needs to go home. It can spread, too, if it hasn't already.

You never mess with a cancer diagnosis. Who are these people???

I was a missionary 1961 -1963 in a stateside mission. I had a companion that had severe acne mostly on his back. It was a problem for him but did not limit our missionary work. Nevertheless he was allowed to return home for medical care. I think he later finished his mission somewhere near home.

I returned home a month early at my father's request. He was a farmer and needed help with the harvest.

I think the Church was different then.

Sooooo much different...

It seems the rational people are abandoning the church to its madness.

The church is getting desperate... the only person who they really hope to permanently convert is the one on the mission who looks in the mirror!

I was on a mission to the Philippines over fifty years ago....I've been out of the church for the past ten years...I still have lots of tbm family, so I get the mission announcements all the time.....fast forward to last spring and a son of my neice gets a call to the Philippines.....I went over to talk to him about the Philippines and took him a mango,a can of Sarsi (Filipinom root bear an a can of Calimansi juice (Filipino lemonade).

They should have got the boy off his mothers tit.....he didn't stay out a month....it was tough tough of an environment for him. He had to take showers out of a bucket....I did that for my whole two years.It rained a lot and he say a dog get runover by a car....things like that and he couldn't take being away from his mama.

The pour kids been back home for 3-4 months now and is putting in papers to go to another mission.....will they never learn???

I'm not sure that's fair...Why should an 18 year old have to live like that? why should he have to take a shower with a bucket and watch dogs get hit by cars? For what? To convert a few suckers to LDS Inc? Why shouldn't he just go home and go to school? It's not like missionaries are prepared for such a life straight out of high school.

There are people who do volunteer humanitarian work who live like that. They receive training so they can handle it. They are actually helping people. I'm sure some of them can't hack it and go home early.

I was in Switzerland on my mission. I was able to take a nice warm shower every day and never saw any dead animals on the street. Still it was a very difficult experience for me. I wish I had gone home early instead of wasting so much of my time knocking on doors. I couldn't go home early though. I didn't want to embarrass my family. I didn't want to be a failure.

I think kids today are smarter than my generation. They know they don't have to take it. I wish they'd all complain about missions and make some changes.

I can't believe the kid is going on another mission. He should wise up and not go. He's probably being pressured to go by his parents and church. Poor kid.

I was there with you. In our Antipolo Apartment near the mission home, we could take a cold shower as long as it was prior to 6 a.m. After that, the water pressure was too low to go all the way up to the shower head.

Meanwhile, the guys in the mission home had hot showers every day and an indoor swimming pool at Bel Air II. Ostensibly the pool was only for baptisms.

Tracting every day door to door was a major struggle for me. It would have been a lot easier if I had slept comfortably in a air conditioned room like the mission staff, who told everyone else where to go and how they had to live.

We had to buy our own room circulating fan. The church was too cheap to get one for us, so we would buy the cheapest one we could find. It would last a few months, then die. So the replacement missionaries would always end up buying new circulating fans.

I don’t miss it, but I do plan to go visit and see how everything changed after only 50 years.

Before the internet, members wouldn't readily know the fate of those that left the church. It was easier for church leaders to scare members to stay in the church. Today, lots of people know members that have left. Many can see (not readily admit it though) that former members are living happily without the church. The youth is aware of this!

-RM's are returning (and admitting) with serious health issues
-Some youth are choosing not to serve and they're not stuck in a miserable dead end job ~working at 7-11
-RM's have returned with ZERO baptisms. And here's the clincher! They were faithful, obedient and hard working missionaries. The promise that if elders/sisters are obedient and will be rewarded is hogwash!

**I've probably stated this a gazillion times, but there is a 50-50 chance that church leaders will care about the missionaries. My mission president did not and delighted in telling us not to bother him with trivial matters.

The mission can be the loneliest experience despite being assigned a companion.

"RM's have returned with ZERO baptisms. And here's the clincher! They were faithful, obedient and hard working missionaries. The promise that if elders/sisters are obedient and will be rewarded is hogwash!"

That's been happening for decades in certain locations. Depends where you are.

I've been told parts of Northern Europe are especially bad prospects - Holland, Scandinavia, much of Germany... And the Republic of Ireland is a hard sell if you're not based in Dublin.

Jordan Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> "RM's have returned with ZERO baptisms. And here's
> the clincher! They were faithful, obedient and
> hard working missionaries. The promise that if
> elders/sisters are obedient and will be rewarded
> is hogwash!"
>
> That's been happening for decades in certain
> locations. Depends where you are.
>
> I've been told parts of Northern Europe are
> especially bad prospects - Holland, Scandinavia,
> much of Germany... And the Republic of Ireland is
> a hard sell if you're not based in Dublin.

That's true.

I had a companion that did his best to be that perfect missionary. I was his last companion and he bought into mission president's spiel that only faithful and obedient missionaries would have success. He admitted that he had slacked off in the previous months and asked if I would double down as the Jr companion and follow every rule to the letter.

So we did it all. Companion prayers, companion study (including the awful role playing trite in the missionary guide). Individual prayers, fasting and scripture studying.

So a ton of baptisms according to the church's promise, right.

I sent him home very tired and discouraged. Perhaps doubting and probably delusional. The mission promises fell flat. He went home and tried to follow the covenant path. He married in the temple, worked two jobs and tried to take some evening classes. His wife cheated on him and ran off with another guy. He joined the Army and I have since lost track of him.

"The fields are white and ready to harvest!"

Really. I swear. No, you aren't just doing busy work, Elders. The lord has prepared the way for you. Like, for sure. Just don't slip up and say the word Mormon anymore. Even the original Mormon up in heaven now has to go by the name "Ernie."

Now when you're done mowing the bishop's lawn and helping Sister Jensen get ready for her garage sale, get out there and convert!

That's what my Dad later told me. He told me how strongly my TBM felt about me staying out as a missionary; even after my only Grandparent passed away. My ex-Mormon sibling was furious that my parents refused to call me. I was serving stateside and had a phone-answering machine in the apartment.

My sibling looked up the phone # and told off my mission president when explaining that Messy was needed to come home. My parents were angry that my sibling had interfered. My parent's plan was to wait two weeks after the funeral to write a bombshell; Oh btw Messy, your Grandmother passed away. We are excitedly awaiting the opportunity to do her temple work.

I didn't have much of a choice. I had to serve or risk family estrangement or possibly being disowned.