Elderolddog please share some mission stories from the time you were a missionary in Mexico. Why? I bet you broke some mission rules. Lol with what did you get away with on your mission?

ED was lucky to get back over the border when he did .... His missionary picture is posted at all the border crossing and international airports.

He served during a time when the church trusted missionaries. I had a YM advisor who went to Canada during the same era. While there were expectations to find and teach people, missionaries were encouraged to soak up the local culture (pun intended), go to museums, plays and sporting events. For my YM advisor, it was a positive living life experience.

For the rest of us serving a mission it felt like a nanny state, it was very oppressive to say the least. I remember needing to stop at a fast food restaurant to use the bathroom and my companion said screw you. He yelled -I'll see you on 17th St and left me in the dust. He was more worried about meeting a daily quota about teaching missionary discussions than being a human being.

Just as Lionel Messy points out, "...it was a different time..."

Elder Bowler, my first and longest-duration companion, and I slept together in a double bed during our stay at the Salt Lake mission home.  I've never figured that one out...

We had four months together, including three weeks of visa-waiting, spent doing odds bits of whatever they could think up there at the LTM.

Elder Bowler (deceased) went on to be an AP, as did my next companion, my trainer, but that term wasn't in vogue.  Elder "Pastor" is still among the living.  In 1998, he and his twin brother (who served in the next mission over, down, and to the right) and had kept detailed diaries published a book about their experiences.  In that book, he described me, his first 'greenie,' as an overly animated Mexican-American who made everyone laugh and who had to be reined in lest he get too carried away.

Recall that I'd lost my 'faith' going through the temple but that I still liked being a mormon, which makes sense because it was all I knew, including lying my ass off when it made life easier.  I had zero trouble keeping up with both of my future APs (a thought that hopefully gives Rainbow Boy pause...).

Elder "Pastor" and I lived in a ground-floor flat with two other Elders.  He would often send me to the local market alone in the mornings, a jaunt of a couple of blocks.  One morning, I was sent to get bacon so that our maid could finish making our breakfast.

At the market, I forgot the Spanish word for bacon, but no biggie, right?  I'd just find it and head for the checkout stand.  But I couldn't find it, and a clerk approached me, both of us full-on Children of our lord and master, Moctezuma, to ask me if I needed help.  I did, but was unable to immediately express just what it was I was looking for.  I got across the notion that I wanted part of a pig (puerco), but not that I was looking for bacon (tocino).  But "pedazo de puerco para el desayuno" was enough of a clue... (piece of pork for breakfast.)  Hopefully, it was as surreal an experience for him as it was for me.

Elder Pastor only tracted until sundown, but he tracted HARD while the sun was up!  We saw Sound of Music, My Fair Lady, went to the Ballet Folklorico, and ate at the main Sanborn's Restaurant in the Zona Rosa in downtown Mexico City at least twice a month.  And he taught me that D-day started when F&TM was over, and it didn't end until midnight on Monday. He made it to AP, so obviously, none of that was held against him.

My second and third companions were slackers.  The third one introduced me to $4.00 (American) haircuts.  These sessions included a wash and cut, head and neck massage, and a manicure, the last while seated in the barber's chair.  The $4.00 included a nice tip.

During my third posting, I got my Dear John letter.  Her letter-writing habits portended had already portended its arrival, so I took it well.  But it spurred me to do something radical: I got fitted for contact lenses.

I won a ward cake-baking contest in my third posting there in Mexico City (D.F., pronounced De Fe-eh).

After three postings, with four different companions in D.F., it was off to Guadalajara to meet up with catnip... My last senior companion's biggest job was propping me up after I "fell in love" with an LM (lady missionary). If you've seen the photo of eight elders and two LMs in Hawaiian garb, she's the blonde.  The two companionships doubled-dated a bit... (Someday, I'll tell the story of what happened after the mission involving that Elder.)

My promotion to senior comp came with a transfer to Cuautla, Morelos, which I much later learned was a hotbed of early Mexican mormonism.  This is where I had the chance to heal a Down Syndrome baby but apparently muffed it through a lack of faith. My missionary efforts were in line with my junior's desire to work, and my first junior was an eager beaver.  We tracted out Cuautla twice in three months.  

The LM I lusted after went home, and I began writing her.  We talked about getting together when I got home, but then she ghosted me.  (I did have on date with her at the Y, and then we later got together in SLC after she came out...)  I spent at least three hours in a mild depression...  But then we tracted out the little street where Cuautla city officials had the town prostitutes set up shop, and that sent my mind down an entirely new avenue.  

Then another senior companion (we were told we were co-seniors...) and I were sent to open up the town of Silao, Guanajuato, famous for Cristo Rey de la Montaña.  The APs rented a luxurious two-story home, and we lived upstairs and were to hold meetings on the ground floor.  There were never any meetings; the only thing tracting accomplished was to make us sweat.  We'd wash our nylon white shirts every night in the bathroom sink.

Silao was given up as a bad job, and I was sent, with a junior companion, Elder Oso, to open up Lagos de Moreno.  This time, two small apartments were rented, one over the other, with us living upstairs.  Again, no meetings were ever held.  We quickly gave up tracting because we were getting into just about every house where people were home and kind of fawned over.  We learned that the local Catholic priests had 'inoculated' their faithful to watch over us, to open their homes to us in hopes that our hearts would be touched and we'd be able to see the error of our ways.

Lagos de Moreno was about an hour bus ride from Leon, Guanajuato, where four 'fun' elders were posted.  We spent a lot of time in Leon, and I had a brief fling with the nubile daughter of a shoe factory owner. Looking back, I have no idea how I managed to get away with it.

I got into a fight on a bus.  My protagonist and I decamped the bus and squared up.  I remember squaring up to him, then glancing to my right and seeing the bus departing, with three Elders standing at the rear window, looking at me.

Some store owners came out and broke up the fight, telling us that whatever harm resulted from the fight would be nothing compared to what the police would do us for disturbing 'their' peace.

Then the MP sent word that I was headed for my last transfer; where did I want to go?  I asked for a return to my first posting in D.F., and it was made so.  I was given Elder Jose Garibay (deceased), a still-wet behind-the-ears junior.  He was also PIMO.  We never once tracted.  He had relatives in D.F., so if we couldn't get into trouble on our own, we had help.

My mom drove down in late July and left me her car for two weeks, and Jose and I drove all over the place.  I have one photo from that time...  It pretty much encapsulates my mission.

He got into a fight with a machete-wielding dump truck driver.  He got a nasty cut in the webbing between a thumb and forefinger, which required stitches in an E.R.  I don't recall exactly how or why the fight ended; I want to say that Jose kicked the guy's ass, and he ran off...

I had another ethereally romantic fling with a 19-year-old in the ward.  We kept in touch for a while after the mission, but of course, absence makes the heart grow callous...

Then, a month before my release date, I was told that if I wanted, I could be released early, with immediate "mid-semester" enrollment at the Y, and I took the offer.  The same offer was made to Elder Bowler (by then, an AP), but he turned it down.

So I flew out of Mexico City on a Friday, enrolled at the Y that same afternoon, got home after midnight to Las Vegas, met the SP who'd been a next-door neighbor, lied my ass off yet again, got released and then took a bus back to Provo on Sunday and started classes Monday.

I never had a chance to touch bases with anyone there in Las Vegas, meaning my high school unfinished business Nephite damsel in the high tower.


My mission was spent having fun...  So, life as usual.

Forget writing a book, I want to see the movie.

Just need to get the church to back it so long as we have you baptizing the entire pueblo Lagos de Moreno.

This thread seems a bit like Bart and Lisa sitting at Grandpa Simpson's feet, listening to tales of the olden days, when children had to walk five miles to school in the winter with no shoes, uphill both ways.

I don't mind being compared to Lisa Simpson.

She's still my hero!

And I suspect I'm not alone in having had a crush on Bleeding Gums Murphy, may he rest in peace.