I am nearing my 50th year in the work force. If I were to count the second and third jobs to maintain a household and pay tithing in my earlier years, I am closer to 65 years in the workforce. Today (Sunday) was a quiet day, I got up, wandered about, did what I felt like doing, and then sat down to write this.

The reason I am bring this up is my wife got this E-Mail from a former co-worker telling her all about her mission she was on wtih her husband. Since this co-worker was just an aquaintance, the e-mail confused my wife as to what her intentions were. This co-worker retired about a year ago, with major vision problems and will most likely loose her eyesight at some point. But hey lets go on a mission so I cannot see the world before I loose my vision? And then this random E-Mail about how wonderful things are in the mission field. My wife said to me, whats her point, I dont care about her mission. Its another one of those boundry issues again I suppose. So you spend your life busting your butt, hopefully saving for retirement, and then some church wants you to go on a mission at your cost? So in essence all you do is walk away from one daily grind to another. When in all reality it has little value except for the statistical department of the church. I just cannot understand how people think that paying for your upkeep, while baby sitting elders, branches, wards, or teaching stuff like budgeting in your senior years is somehow going to make you god like material. Heck, volunteer at the local charity of your liking. You stay home, help people, go on vacations where you want to go, spend time with the grand kids, and know your house is still intact. Most of all you are in charge of your life instead of some religious institution.

Glad I got out of that mindset.........sheesh! Most of us waisted our younger years, so I would encourage all to not throw away their senior years.

May I suggest, and perhaps you've already considered it, but maybe you ought to e-mail this back your wife's former co-worker; you know, just to let her know how much you "appreciate" her e-mail.

Many senior missions aren’t even proselytizing missions, they’re “service” missions. The $100 billion+ church is not only too cheap to pay for some positions, they want you to pay them to work for them.

Do you want to work in property and building maintenance? It will only cost you $4205/month, and you have to provide your own vehicle.

https://seniormissionary.churchofjesuschrist.org/srsite/ft/search?lang=eng

This is a perfect example of what I am referring to.

For that $40,000+ you would spend in a year working for the church, you instead could take a trans Atlantic\Pacific cruise, tour Europe\Asia\Islands for a month or two.

If you took that two years worth, you could put it towards and in a couple of cases pay for a multi-week cruise and explore numerous stops depending on the area you chose including airfare.

Rent a Motorhome\Car and travel the US, see all the national parks, go on a museum tour, visit Civil War sites, the list goes on. But instead people think working for the church is their ticket to heaven.

Remember the old song...Stairway to Heaven...."she is buying her way to heaven".

I had to look at the list for a minute. Here is an example of a senior couple mission to Alaska to work for the Church Education Sys (may have exact name wrong)

USD $3,820 / Month per Couple
HOUSING USD $1,400
PERSONAL USD $1,190
TRANSPORT USD $500
INSURANCE USD $730

These are what should be paid to the volunteers, not the other way around. There are many more expenses than just on that list. That would break many retirements. No or limited family connections during that time would be a hardship. It is crazy. I am so glad I got off that train decades ago.

We’re early retirees who are nomads, and we’re definitely “on a mission.”

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100080713872201

Liked your facebook page. We are doing the same thing but not quite as much as you are.

Thanks.

We have no home. We are storing stuff with our son. All we have is what we carry in luggage, and I’m trying to get my wife to even pare things down to no checked luggage. Here in La Paz, we met a couple that has been on the road for eight years, and they don’t do checked luggage. It can be done with the proper mindset.

Members are really fooling themselves if they believe their church brags impress the non-member world. I received some really horrible advice when applying for work in a non-Mormon area. I was a RM missionary at the time

Here's my 5 errors (I had priesthood leaders who believed that putting your church creeds above everything else) which made me a toxic applicant in a competative workforce.

1-Explaining that serving as a Mormon missionary was vital in my life
2-Demanding that you will not work on Sundays
3-All of your references are named Bishop
4-Emphasizing that your religious beliefs will not be infringed upon
5-That you're a team player so long as everyone else conforms to your high moral standards

And the first retail place where I indicated that I would work Sundays hired me on the spot!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/27/2023 11:27AM by messygoop.

I was raised to believe the world was in awe of us Mormons and everyone wanted to hire us just for that.

I found out later that what we called "higher standards" they called rigid misconceptions about what it means to be human.

Mission exist to convert the members and give them lot’s of busy work so they don’t have time to think.

I recently got a friend request on Facebook from a former classmate of mine. She and her husband are now serving a mission somewhere in Eastern Europe, neither one of them understand the language and she says this makes it very hard to help the members they are supposed to be coaching on how to run a ward/stake.

My mother always wanted me to date this girl (she was from a Royal Mormon family from my hometown). She was also a model for ZCMI and was exceptionally stuck up. I was in no danger of being able to ask her out. Her husband was a "player", and a bit of a nasty jerk in high school. He forcibly assaulted a girl I really liked and the last time I saw him in high school he was barfing his guts up at a kegger in the mountains above my hometown. Now he is teaching the lowly convert mormons how to do proper accounting procedures for the Church's ward/stake finances and the Tithing Cash Flow. Makes me want to puke too.

> She and her husband are
> now serving a mission somewhere in Eastern Europe,
> neither one of them understand the language and
> she says this makes it very hard to help the
> members they are supposed to be coaching on how to
> run a ward/stake.

It almost sounds like the church doesn't care if the older couples achieve anything on their missions--as if the real purpose were just to keep the old people busy and engaged.

But that couldn't be. The church wouldn't waste people's time like that.

Yes, I know the type. Not good people at all, yet pretending to be.

I wonder if they are reaching out to anyone they know as part of their missionary work. I've had relatives I barely know decide to contact me to tell me about their mission and the wonderful gospel spiel. I guess they are in the missionary mindset and start thinking of everyone they might "help" or something.

Maybe in your case they are encouraged to contact other retirees to try and convince them to go on missions too. They not only look for potential converts, they are probably looking for recruitments too.

I have come cousins who confided in me that they hardly knew their grandparents because they left for one mission after another. The kids lost the best time for grandparents to truly bond with grandchildren and help the working parents with the needs of the children. Imagine having your special 5th birthday party and the grandparents are not a part of any of it.

The cousins also resented seeing what could have been a needed inheritance for the children mostly spent on missions. The church managed to take any accumulated wealth they had away from the next generation. Apparently the missions cost the grandparents a great deal. They had retired early to go on their first mission and had to cut into their retirement funds early.

There are a lot of reasons people go on missions, but they don't get to pretend it is about family.