I was asleep last night when I had a dream that was cut short when I woke up.It was a little sad,that it inspired me to make this post.

My dream was that a Mormon missionary wanted to escape from his mission and the cult all together.He was probably on a mission in England,or anywhere in America,but was most likely in Australia where I am.

In my dream,the mishie wanted to vanish and not be in a situation where he could be persuaded not to abandon his mission.He knew he would face this difficulty and his passport was probably held in the mission office. My dream was cut short by waking up.

I think I was faced with the situation whether to hide that missionary in my house and help him elude those searching for him.Eventually,the local police would become involved in searching for the missing missionary if he was missing for a significant amount of time.

Eventually,the missionary was to vanish in to an untraceable existence like vanishing in to thin air without any person hearing from him again.

Has anything like this ever happened in reality?I know there have always been cases a mishie wants to leave the mission.The case in Calgary where Elder William Shun called a bomb hoax on an airline to stop a mishie leaving is comparable.I know passports for mishies are held in the mission presidents offices .

I'm aware that it has happened.

Over on Reddit r/exmormon, they apparently have a 'procedure' roughed out in which a missionary who wants out can start a threat giving some pertinent data, and then their version of the 'Bat Signal', called the Tapir Signal, is shone in the night sky and people volunteer time and money to get the kid to wherever he wants to go.

PostMormon(dot)org had a large number of stories under a thread titled "Best Apostate Mission Moments" and some of those stories were about missionaries who 'disappeared' from the mission. Most of them involved an amorous coupling, including one where the missionary simply moved out of the missionary apartment and into a sweet young thing's place.

Just about anything you can imagine happening has happened. Just not to you or me...

Somebody really called in a bomb scare? How many months was he sentenced to? It's hard to believe that even a mishie would be that deeply stupid.

I know of missionaries quitting. I haven't heard of any "disappearing", but that seems like more trouble than it is worth in any case. Even if the mission home has your passport, all you have to do is show up there and demand its return. If you are in a foreign country you can even go to a consulate/embassy and they will buy you a ticket home if you don't have money for one. They also bill you for a full-fare ticket, so that should be a last resort.

They can't physically keep you there. That's kidnapping. They can hum and haw and whine and guilt-trip you, but that's all. They can make it awkward to leave. They can't make it impossible.

I thought someone had linked it here some years back or it might be on this website. Maybe someone can direct you to it.

This story?

https://www.amazon.com/Accidental-Terrorist-Confessions-Reluctant-Missionary/dp/1941928560

When I was stationed oveseas we had a new missionary Elder New came into the ward about a month after they shortened the time to 18 months.

In talking with the Elder New I learned he was from a particular city where another missionary Elder X was from. I asked Elder New if he new Elder X and he replied Elder X gave his homecoming talk the week before he left.

This came as great shock to Elder New's senior companion who called the mission home. As far as the Mission President knew Elder X was still in a far flung place serving a mission.

After a frenzied poll of the mission and a few hurried trips to a few apartments they found the four missionaries headed home on their own dime the minute they knew the mission time was reduced.

When I worked at LDS Family Services, a lady came in and admitted to me that she was having an affair with a missionary, and was hiding him.

Just 2 years before I arrived in Argentina a male missionary walked out of the branch where he was assigned and showed up back home USA a couple of weeks later.
The "mission" disavowed any knowledge of this.

One of the missionaries in the Canada Vancouver mission, in the 1980s, bought a bus ticket and traveled half way up British Columbia to be with a girl in the area he had recently been transferred away from. He got caught but didn't get sent home. At the time, I thought this guy has a terrible reputation for crazy behavior. To this day, I wonder where he ended up.