The Stupidest thing I did as a Missionary for ChurchCo was...


(let's not incriminate or embarrass anyone with crimes or sex with mission president's wife or daughter(s), OK?

Bank Robberies, Hot-Rodding, etc; swimming, traveling outside the mission, are all Fair Game!!


mine: I & one of comps were often being mistaken for FBI agents; we even thought about 'doing' our lowly Rambler up as a cop-car, you know, lights, siren, etc.

Hey! this was Detroit, not too long after the RIOTS!!

You're Right, this was totally berserk!!

others that somehow Didn't launch:

- working for $ on 'Diversion' (later changed to "Preparation") day.

- Dubbing copies of the MoTab onto cassettes & selling them to other mishs...



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/17/2020 08:49PM by GNPE.

In 1969, my former dh and his campanion took the mission car and went on a trip out of the mission boundaries to see the destruction caused by hurricane camille. I don't know if he ever confessed or got busted but I remember he got into some sort of trouble for doing that.

I missed so much by going inactive the last nine months of my mission.

We had one crazy American missionary here who enjoyed driving on the wrong side of the road, just for fun. He didn’t get busted, or killed. I liked that guy.
One missionary went wild when he got home. He and his friends streaked through a shopping mall. This was in San Francisco. Not sure how he didn’t get into trouble.
More than a couple of missionaries fell for a girl in the ward and started dating as soon as their missions were over. A bit hard to keep up when you live in different countries though.
One missionary lost his testimony on his mission here. It made him lose his mind; I felt bad for him. He started randomly referring to Jesus as Sid. He kept going on about ‘Sid’. His companion found that difficult to cope with when trying to give the discussions to potential converts. He got sent home but not before he told a lot of people about Sid.
I visited a BYU YSA ward with one of ‘my’ missionaries when I later visited Utah. I was a golden convert and was a bit disturbed by the fact that he wore sunglasses throughout the whole of church. His friend also spent sacrament meeting showing me his tattoos. I wasn’t impressed. That missionary gave me a gun later that week; he then rode me around the desert on his motorbike without a helmet and gave me a horse to ride without telling me it wasn’t broke in properly yet. But I galloped across a few fields with no problem. I don’t know if he was impressed or if he was trying to get me killed. I didn’t like Utah, but Idaho was a novelty as an English girl, and it was one of the best days of my life. He eventually got married in the temple and I never saw or heard from him again.
My brother lost his driving licence on his mission because he kept speeding. He retook his test and still became AP. Apparently breaking the law doesn’t matter so long as you get converts.
One missionary here got in trouble for trying to sell the Book of Mormon instead of giving it away. VERY ambitious.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/18/2020 03:57AM by Third of Five.

During my time in Paris, I had one companion for five months, and fortunately, I got along with him reasonably well, and he was well-liked by the mission president. The combination meant that we did things that I don't quite remember us getting approval for, but I was junior anyway, so I can't say I cared that much either. Among other things:

1. we spent a day at the French Open
2. we toured the catacombs of Paris with the sisters, on something that could have been (mis)interpreted as a double date
3. we saw an opera. The mission president scolded my comp afterward because it was an odd night, but my comp reminded him that we had been given permission to go on my companion's birthday.


I had another companion who had influential ties. He and I got permission to join a family to visit Caen, Bayeux, and the Normandy Beaches. Ironically, that day, we wound up running into the mission president there, who asked us if we weren't far from our zone. My comp turned and introduced him to the family. We later heard that the president called the mission clerk later and asked crossly, if we had been given permission to do the trip. The clerk immediately replied that yes we had -- even though he really didn't know, but he knew that he needed to cover for us. Good guy, whatever his name was.

Tyson



Edited 7 time(s). Last edit at 04/18/2020 03:21PM by Tyson Dunn.

As I never served a mission I can only guess my biggest sin would have been to have said flip when I was thinking ...

I broke my first pair of eyeglasses playing missionary basketball 4 months into my mission. Per missionary rules, I had my spare set to get me through. Before I had an opportunity and an extra 100 bucks to get a new pair, my spare flew off my face during a transfer ride in the back of a pick-up. I was miserable.

After spending the entire day trying to reach the mission president, he left me hanging. "I'll have to think about it and call you later in the week."

In the evening, a good bishop whom I had just met earlier in the day was concerned about my welfare. "How about I come pick you and your companion up and get your eye glasses situation resolved."

So my new companion and I quarrelled into the evening and later ratted on me for my "willful disregard of area and zone boundaries". I was stupid for calling the mission president.

The Italian Mission was founded in 1967. I went on my mission to Italy in 1969, which was a big deal, because Italian Mission President Dunn was from my ward. His son was also called to that mission. But by the time I got there just two years later, the president had been sent home for cause, and had, out of shame, gone in active. The reason was the "Ausflug."

"Ausflug" is the German word for "excursion." When they cobbled the mission together, they took German-speaking missionaries from southern Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, and sent them to Italy. The missionaries did not speak Italian, and could not effectively teach or even tract. But the dollar was keen, Europeans thought Americans were cool, and the mission rules were lax. So missionaries made a pastime of "ausflugging," or just taking a train somewhere, often staying away for as much as week, staying in some youth hostel. They went to Germany, Austria, France, and Switzerland. The ones in Sicily took the ferries to Tunisia and Malta. An infamous pair of missionaries had photos of them in Red Square. In 1967-68, just a handful of people were baptised.

The Brethren didn't like what they heard, and sent the president home in shame. As a provisional mission president, they sent out Hartman Rector until the new mission president was found. From that point on, Rector became a fixture in the mission, coming over frequently, and making the rounds. He was a good-looking and well dressed man, and he was famous for having a couple of bespoke suits tailored for him on each visit. (The last thing I did on my mission was get interviewed by Hardened Rectum, before flying back. He made me promise to get married within 6 months. I failed, but still got married much to early.)

I did go out of mission one time at the behest of the new mission president. My comp and I were in Lugano, Switzerland (the Italian speaking part of Switzerland). A well-known member from Rome was getting married to an American woman in the Swiss temple, and they needed help negotiating their way around, since he knew no English, and there were no sessions in Italian. The man asked for my companion to help them through. And since I had worked at the temple before my mission, they thought that I could bring them through the veil. So the president's actual excuse was that my comp had not had his patriarchal blessing, and somehow really needed it badly (according to the president), so he got permission only to send us up to Zurich so that my comp could get his blessing from the only patriarch for miles and miles, Patriarch Ringger. After that, we headed to Zollikofen, did the temple thing, stayed overnight, and went back the next day. It was a huge adventure for the both of us. I got in trouble because I couldn't help buying an issue of "Deutsches Mad" (Mad magazine in German) at a kiosk in Zurich, and got a huge lecture. Still, I held onto the magazine for another 10 years or so.