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Date: April 14, 2024 02:48AM
RELEASED FROM MISSION PRISON
At long last the happiest day I have ever known came. It was the last day I had to spend in the Virginia Roanoke Mission. That day was Friday, April 13, 1979 and for me, it is a date that lives in infamy. My sentence in this mission gulag was over. Friday the 13th was my lucky day and I have celebrated every April 13th as a personal holiday.
I remember clearly how that wonderful Friday the 13th started. I woke up at 6:30AM, had my shower, dressed, and sat down to a bowl of "Captain Crunch" while my companion showered. Sitting there alone, looking around, seeing my suitcases packed and lying on my bed, it finally hit me with full force that I would never have to sleep on that lumpy bed or wake up to another morning in this or any other cockroach infested dump again only to go mindlessly tract all day. With each spoonful of Captain Crunch, a mental list formed in my mind of things I would never have to do again. The list included the following…
1. I would never have to go out and knock on another door and try to convince an already happy person, that they could be happier if they gave up 10% of their paycheck, sacrificed their weekends from being with their families to perform smothering religious duties and endless callings, alienate themselves from extended family and friends, and eventually pantomime disemboweling themselves while dressed up as the Pillsbury Dough Boy in a building that looked like a bowling trophy. (Talk about a tough sell.)
2. I would never again have to ride a bicycle in a suite sweating like a pig in the Virginia humid summer heat or suffer frostbite out in the bone chilling Virginia winter weather. (I hate bicycles now and can never get on one again.)
3. I would never again have to eat starchy pasta for my only food because of no money to buy proper food. (Pasta dishes of any kind are no longer a block in my food pyramid.)
4. I would never again endure undeserved ridicule and reaming from any church leader and especially from a pinhead GA-wannabe insurance salesman mission president named Frank A. Moscon. (I am so glad he is dead now and I could not be less sad. I hope his death was agonizingly slow with unbearable searing pain. One day, I will go and piss on his grave.)
5. I would never again place myself in an environment that produces overwhelming suicidal depression and loneliness. (so far I am batting 1000.)
6. I would never again have to spend another lonely Christmas away from loved ones. (I only worship Santa and NFL football now.)
7. I would never again be shackled to someone 24/7 that I do not want to be with.
8. I would never again be deprived of the enjoyment of music. (I have music on most of the time and I never play Mormon Tab songs.)
9. I would never again follow a set of idiotic and double-bind rules while trying to perform smothering life-sucking religious duties.
10. I would never again allow anyone to deprive me of the love, the touch, or affections of a woman.
11. I would never again respond to anyone calling me "Elder" or just my last name.
12. I would never again go tracting. (I don’t even like to knock on my neighbor’s door.)
13. I will never have to…
You can fill in the rest, my fellow RM's. You know that this list is almost endless.
Oh, what joy and happiness I felt as I thought about the things I would not have to do ever again. I sat there just relishing the thoughts of being home again, restarting my life again, being with Kathy again, being called by my first name again, and being able to be alone again. I was so happy and I poured myself another bowl of "Captain Crunch". I poured so fast that half of the cereal ended up on the table and the floor. Oh well, I might as well let the kitchen's cockroaches celebrate with me, so I kicked the cereal on the floor under the refrigerator. Throwing the empty bowl into the sink after finishing my 2nd helping, I said to myself, as the bowl bounced around in the sink, “…let the next sucker Elder clean it. I am outta here…".
This particular morning seemed so fresh and I felt so alive. I had not experienced such a wonderful morning for 2 years and I almost forgot what it was like to live again. There was a nice cool breeze and birds were singing. I still could not believe that my escape from the Virginia Roanoke Mission was beginning. As I carried my 2 bags down to our car, I started singing to myself the song by "The Guess Who", "....No time left you…on my way to better things...I found myself some wings...."
I had to go to the mission home to get my plane tickets so we drove to the other Elders apartment to bring them with us to the Martinsville bus terminal where I booked a seat on the local Greyhound mini-van to Roanoke.
MY LAST BUS RIDE IN VIRGINIA
Before the mini-van bus was to leave, I said my goodbyes to my companion and the other 2 Elders in our district. They wished me well and then I got into the mini-van. I remember the looks of envy and jealousy on their faces. I knew they were wishing so hard to be in my place because their Friday would be another lonely day of mind-numbing tracting for the weekly reports. But not my Friday. I would never have to knock on another door again. I looked out the window at my fellow Elders for the last time, waved at them, then turned away and never looked back. As the van started on its journey, a huge wave of relief washed through me and I let out an audible sigh. My escape had begun.
The morning ride to Roanoke would take about an hour. Passing through and out of the Martinsville/Collinsville area and onto highway 220, I mumbled a quiet “good riddance” to that cesspool area as I gazed on all the houses that I had knocked on fruitlessly for eight months. I also mumbled a “good riddance” to some particular members of the branch there that had caused me so much unnecessary pain. Never again would I have to see them or put up with their nonsense.
Once on the highway, I spent the journey relaxing and just watching the countryside go by. For the first time in two years, I got to enjoy all of the green foliage of Virginia without that black cloud of dread hanging over me of having to start tracting in another city once the journey was through. Every transfer, I always dreaded starting over again with knocking on doors that Elders had knocked on before, only to be told to get lost. I also dreaded moving into yet another cockroach infested dump.
This bus ride was special as this was my last bus ride in Virginia, and the beginning of a long journey that would end with me at home and free from this mission hellhole for good. I felt giddy inside. I felt like a little boy going to Disneyland for the first time.
I tried starting a light conversation with the driver to end the silence and this was proving difficult. The bus driver knew I was a Mormon missionary by the way I was dressed and the tell-tale nametag. At first, he was reluctant to talk with me probably from fear that I would start talking Mormonism to him. Sensing this, I told him that I was going home today and had no intention of discussing any aspect of religion or Mormonism. I said this as he watched me take off my name tag and put it in my coat pocket. I told him that he can call me Randy and not Elder Jenkins. Hearing this he visibly relaxed and began to open up.
We had a fun conversation all the way to Roanoke. We talked about his job and the unusual cargo he was carrying in the back (10 gallons of horse cumm) and about his poor experiences with other missionaries he had bussed around. He commented to me that I was not like any of the other Elders he met before. He said I was genuine in my demeanor and well-mannered and was glad I did not try to convert him. I told him that I was from California and was not a Utah “Factory” Elder. That comment made him laugh. We finally rolled into the Roanoke bus station around 8:30AM. Waiting there was a couple of “Factory” Elders to drive me to the mission home.
IN THE BELLY OF THE MISSION BEAST FOR A BLESSED LAST TIME
My itinerary schedule indicated that my plane to Washington DC from Roanoke would leave at 11:30AM. The next day I would hop on another plane at Dulles International and fly to California. I had made previous arrangements for someone to pick me up and give me a condensed tour of the Washington DC area.
In order to create this itinerary, I made up a story to the mission home a month before saying that I wanted to go through the Washington DC temple before departing home and for them to create a flight itinerary to do this. Little did they know that my real goal was to only see the nation’s capital on the Church's dime since I was at this end of the U.S. anyway. Because I was able to fool them so successfully & easily, it proved to me once again, that the mission leadership had the inspiration and discernment of a fence post.
While I waited around in the mission home for my departure hour, I realized how nice it was to just sit knowing that I did not have to do any sort of missionary work. I did not have answer to anyone, not to a District leader, or a Zone leader, or the mission home office elders. And best of all, not to have to answer to that pinhead mission president. Now, I only answered to me.
I found a nice La-Z-boy chair in the common area to sit and pass the time until I departed to the Roanoke airport. I gazed out of the big picture windows at the woods nearby remembering how I looked at those same woods two years earlier wanting to run into them and escape. How fun it was to know that now I was escaping but I would be walking out the front door instead of running into those woods.
I began reading several magazines that were on the table next to me such as NewsWeek, Time, and National Geographic. I was two years behind on news and events and I found it so refreshing to read something other than some dumb-downed church publication or book. I was so fed up with church literature that I took two of the Ensign magazines lying on the end-table and stuffed them into the depths of the La-Z-boy chair never to be seen again.
After about a half hour of reading and enjoying the view of the woods, I noticed that six new elders had arrived from an earlier flight fresh from the MTC. They were a mess. They looked so depressed, downcast, and sleep deprived. They reminded me of how depressed I was when I first showed up at this miserable mission two years earlier.
Seeing them, I felt a wave wash over me of bitter sickly sorrow knowing their hell holes were just beginning. However, that bitter sorrow was washed away by a delightful tidal wave rush of knowing that I was finished and I WAS LEAVING IN JUST 20 MINUTES!! I had fewer minutes than they had months to endure this cesspool.
These new elders saw me reading "missionary-unapproved" material and one asked me, with a “holier-than-thou” Utah-twanged voice, why I was there by myself and not with a companion. I looked up and smiled and told him that my mission ends today and I was on my way home, and before tomorrow ends, I will be kissing my beautiful Japanese girlfriend. I asked him back, smiling smugly, “What will you be doing tomorrow?” I knocked on the table pretending it was a door.
Hearing this, a few of them looked like they were going to breakdown on the spot judging from the glassy look of their eyes. Two of them looked at me with such jealousy it was palpable. It reminded me how jealous I felt when I first arrived two years previous and saw two sister missionaries who were about to depart for home.
If somehow, they could know of the bitter dregs of depression, loneliness, and isolated hellish living that awaited them for the next two years, I think they would have gone into the restroom and sliced their wrists. To think that they would have to put up with that pinhead President Moscon and his idiocy made me smile knowingly at them but I didn’t continue to taunt them about going home anymore. I had at least that much civility left in me after two years of Virginia hell.
I politely brushed them off with a smile and went back to my reading. They went off somewhere else in the common area. I did notice that one lagged behind and was staring longingly at the woods outside the common room window. Maybe he wanted to escape into those woods like I did two years ago.
I rebuffed every prodding from the office Elders to go and have the customary last interview with the mission president. Because of the falling out that I had with him 4 months before, nothing anyone said would change my mind about talking one last time with that bastard. Any communication with him had been fatally terminated four months prior, and while I was there in the mission home, I didn’t even acknowledge his presence.
His clueless wife, Loya, tried to goad me to talk with her husband but I was now immune to her tactics. Frank & Loya’s chance to be any kind of surrogate parents to me had long since passed. If I had parents like that, I would put myself up for adoption. Looking up from my NewsWeek magazine, I gave Loya a look that would have shriveled a rock, said nothing, and went back to my reading. She huffed off and was probably thinking "…how dare this lowly elder brush me off..." But I didn't care anymore what she or her pin-head husband thought. To me, they were now persons non-grata. I just wanted out of there as soon as possible.
ONE LAST ROUND OF AP ARROGANCE
Time was getting close for me to be at the Roanoke airport so I asked one of the office elders for my plane tickets. A convert family from my last area had come to drive me to the airport and see me off, and plus, I no longer wanted to spend any more time in that mission home. Being there was serving no purpose and I would rather be elsewhere. Besides, I finished reading all their magazines. This Idaho-prick office elder spouted off to me that only the mission president could give me my tickets (that he held in his hand) and that I did not have his or the Mission President’s permission to leave yet.
Oh, so arrogant to the end, I thought. But I, being of much larger stature, pulled him aside into an empty hallway, and in a still small voice, told him that if he did not give me my plane tickets, this would be his last day as a fully functional human being, and when he went home, he would be harvesting potatoes from a wheelchair. I told him this as I was "helping" him tighten the knot of his tie by pulling it above his head. Needless to say, he loosened his grip on my tickets as I pulled them from his hand.
With plane tickets in hand, I grabbed my bags and walked out of that mission home with the family who came to see me off. We loaded my bags into the trunk of their car, and after taking one last picture with them, we drove away toward the Roanoke airport. At last, I was finally done being a missionary. No more Mission President to deal with. No more double-bind rules to follow. No more “Factory Elders” to contend with be it a companion or Zone leaders or office Elders. No more carrying around scriptures all day.
When the Roanoke airport came into view, I quietly slipped my nametag into my coat pocket marking the end of the existence of Elder Jenkins.
THE FLIGHT OUT OF THE VIRGINIA ROANOKE HELLHOLE
At the Roanoke airport drop-off curb, I gave hugs and said my goodbyes to the family that brought me there. After they left, I checked in my one large bag keeping with me my small carry-on. The woman behind the counter called me by my first name and I didn’t respond at first as no one ever called me by my first name for two years. I was shocked a little realizing I had a first name again. Funny how the little things you have been starved of for a long period of time are now such joys.
I collected my boarding pass, and walked to the gate boarding area. Once there, reality really hit me hard that I was finally done with it all and alone. Even with the airport crowd walking around me I felt such a thrill from being alone and being separated from the mission collective. Looking around, no other Elder was in sight and I could do as I please without worrying about some judgmental prick Elder reminding me of the mission rules for this or that.
It may seem hard to imagine why being alone was such a glorious experience. But when you have someone around you 24/7 for two years watching where you are, who you talk to, what you are reading, what you say, what you eat, and what you are wearing, being able to be alone again and accountable to no one, is so refreshing. Its beyond words to describe.
I always cherished my alone-time as I always needed it to recharge myself. To have it stripped from me for two years proved to be very draining. Only Mormon missionaries or people in prison can understand the joy of just finally being alone.
While I waited for the boarding call, I decided I should purge myself of any Mormon missionary looks and accoutrements. I no longer wanted anyone to assume I was a Mormon missionary. So, I collected together my nametag, the missionary white handbook, and a big heavy envelope of mission reports I was given at the mission home. Looking around for the nearest trash bin, I saw one, walked over to it, and tossed it all in creating a big thud as it hit the bottom of the nearly empty bin.
Watching that crap disappear into that bin brought on another wave of relief. I stood there by the bin for a few moments letting it sink in that I was finally done with it all. No more reports to fill out. No more fantasy goals to record. I had no more tell-tale nametag, no more White handbook of smothering rules to follow, and no more of anything to remind me of being a missionary. The only papers I had left were my tickets. I jokingly amused myself thinking how these tickets were the "papers" I needed to for my escape from the iron curtain country called the Virginia Roanoke Mission.
To complete the purging of any missionary look, I went into the restroom and into an empty stall. Once inside, I removed my suite coat, vest, and tie and stuffed them into my carry-on bag. I then took out of my bag a nice blue colored dress shirt that I had been saving for over a year for going home and changed shirts. I unwrapped the blue dress shirt and hung it on the door hook. Then I literally ripped off that old white shirt popping off most of the buttons in the process.
It felt so satisfying to rip off that old worn-out white shirt and to watch the dislodged buttons ricochet between the walls of the stall and dance on the floor. I considered flushing the white shirt down the toilet but refrained myself from such amusement. So, I just threw it into the restroom’s garbage bin. From that moment, April 13, 1979 at 10:50AM, and to this day, I have never worn a white shirt again. Even today, the thought of putting on a white shirt disgusts me. I cannot even wear a white T-shirt.
With my non-missionary look, I found myself a seat and happily noticed that the people who I sat next to did not even notice or care who I was or look at me funny. I was just another fellow flyer. It was so liberating and refreshing to look and be like a normal person again. I quietly celebrated my new transformation by imbibing an "evil" can of Dr. Pepper I got from a vending machine and read an abandoned Sports Illustrated magazine I found on the seat next to me. Oh, that Dr. Pepper tasted so good and was so refreshing ice-cold and as I read, I never found the phrase “And it came to pass” anywhere in that Sports Illustrated. Life was getting better by the minute.
About 45 minutes later, the call to board was announced. I made my way to the outside of the gate boarding area to the stairs leading up to the Piedmont plane door, got onto the plane, and I found my window seat. Soon everyone was boarded, the hatch was shut, and the plane began pulling away from the gate.
The flight attendants began scrambling to get everyone a drink of their choice. It seemed like it took forever for that plane to taxi down the runway to get ready to take off. As it did so, I mumbled to myself, "Oh please let there be no mechanical problems." I could not bear the prospect of returning to the gate. I wanted so badly to be out of Virginia and as far away from Roanoke and that mission home as I could get.
When the plane roared down the runway, lifted off, and its wheels no longer touched Virginia soil, I felt this feeling inside like poison was draining out of my body. Two years of amassed missionary poison that had cankered my soul was draining away. The faster and higher the plane went, the faster the poison seemed to drain out of me. What a relief it was to be whisked away from that god-awful place.
As the plane continued climbing, I thought how for two miserable years I longed for this day to come. I had dreams of this day. I thought about leaving all the time and now I was flying away at last. To make sure I was not in some lucid dream, I pushed on the side of the plane and squeezed the armrest convincing myself that they were substantial objects. I was not dreaming. I was really on my way home. "It is really true?" I thought over and over again? Yes, it was all true. I almost cried.
From my window seat, I looked down at the ever-shrinking Virginia countryside and thought about how two precious years of my life were forfeited and wasted there. Two whole years, where instead, I could have been in college getting my electrical degree, enjoying time with Kathy, and just living happily. I thought about the missed Christmases, the missed birthdays, my brother's wedding I missed, and about the long separation from Kathy. Sitting on that airplane and trying to comprehend and sort through all my feelings of relief, joy, and happiness that I was on my way home and that I did not have to do or think about missionary work ever again was beyond words.
The flight attendant came by and gave me my complimentary can of Coke. As I sipped the blessedly caffeinated drink, I amused myself with the thought that, below my feet, some poor Elder was looking up at my plane wishing with all his heart to be where I sit as he tracted going door to door to door endlessly with each door being slammed in his face. I thought how I was mocking him by staring out the window so he could see that I was the one here and not him. I was the one soaring higher and higher and escaping the drudgery of a mission. I was the one flying away leaving only a contrail behind for him to see as he walked to the next door only to be told again to “F**K off and get lost!” I thought how his wishes were in vain because today was my day to taste freedom’s sweetness.
My thoughts then drifted back to the last time a flight attendant, out of pity, offered me a soda two years ago when I was so depressed and sobbing as I left California for that Salt Lake Mission home nightmare. Such a contrast, I thought.
THE WASHINGTON DC MINI-TOUR
In less than an hour my plane landed at National Airport in Washington DC and I found the person who I previously arranged to meet. My plane to California would leave Dullus International the next day. So, according to our previous arrangements, he provided me a mini-tour of the Washington DC mall area. He drove me around in his TR7 showing me the White House, the Washington memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, and other mall monuments.
He was very gracious and kind to me and treated me to McDonalds. We got along great and he said that he knew how I felt being released from the “mission prison system” as he called it. He also was an RM and he said he could see the relief all over my face. He told me he understood how I was feeling inside and related to me the day he came home from his mission. What he did not know is that privately, I was also reveling in the joy of knowing that I was successful in pulling the wool over the office Elders' & Mission President’s eyes to set up my itinerary to allow for this mini-tour while they thought I wanted to go through the Washington DC temple. I got the last laugh on those clowns.
After the Washington DC Mall mini-tour, we got on the DC beltway to go to his place for the night. When the Washington DC temple came into view, I felt nothing inside seeing it. It had no significance to me as it was just another symbol of an ungrateful church. He asked if I wanted to see it up close but I politely said no. Puzzled by my reaction, he passed by the exit and I did not give the place a second glance. Soon we arrived at his place where he let me use of one of the spare bedrooms in his luxury apartment.
That night I had a nice long hot shower where I scrubbed off two years of missionary dirt and disgust. I soaped myself up several times just to watch the water rinse the disgust away over and over again. I must have stayed in there for over an hour, but when I was done, I felt cleansed from the missionary gooey that symbolically had built up. I even shampooed my hair 3 times.
As I prepared for bed, I realized that I no longer had to pretend to say personal nightly prayers anymore so as to not raise suspicion in a companion that I had lost my testimony. I also realized that I no longer had any rigid schedule of sleep & wake up times, and no tracting to dread in the morning. I felt so free.
In bed, I laid there pondering over the day's experiences. What a day, I thought. I woke up in a hot & humid, cockroach infested dump for the last time, brushed off the Mission President and his clueless wife, bodily threatened an office Elder for my plane tickets, transformed from Elder Jenkins to Randy, flew away from the hellhole known as the Virginia Roanoke Mission, toured the Washington DC mall, and ended up in this nice place for the night.
His spare bedroom had a TV and a clock radio. That night was the first time in two years that I got to stay up late and watch “The Tonight Show” and then have a radio sing me to sleep. An air conditioner droned in the background keeping me cool all night as I slept. Gone forever was the nightly ritual of trying to find sleep in the silent & relentlessly hot and humid air of Virginia. “Life was good now” I thought as I drifted off to sleep.
THE FLIGHT TO CALIFORNIA AND HOME
Early the next morning, I arose with great anticipation of being home at the end of the day. Again, there was no need for a phony morning personal prayer to attend to for a tattle-tale companion’s sake. And WHOOOOPEEEEEEEE!! No tracting to do! No life sucking missionary duties of any kind to do! My only focus was on getting home.
I dressed myself in "normal" clothes as I was not about to sit for 6+ hours dressed in a suite. I was driven to Dulles International to catch my flight to California. I thanked my friend and tour guide graciously at the drop off curb, checked in my bags, found my gate, and sat down to wait for the boarding call.
Again, it felt wonderful not wearing the telltale nametag or the clothes that screams Mormon Missionary; No suite, no vest, & no tie, just comfortable clothes. Nobody called me "Elder" or avoided sitting next to me. Nobody knew me and I saw no familiar faces. I was just another anonymous traveler and again it felt SO good to just be alone.
I got myself a Dr. Pepper and a newspaper, found an empty seat, and just sat and read the daily news. How refreshing it was to just sit and read the paper and not spend another morning reading the same boring scriptures over and over again. Drinking my Dr. Pepper lifted my already sky-high spirits even more.
The boarding call was announced about an hour later and I made my way to the gate to board my plane to California. It was a large 4 engine TWA jet with spacious economy class seating. Way better than the cramped Piedmont Airlines I took from Roanoke to Washington DC. I found my window seat and settled myself in for a nice long relaxing journey.
The plane was only 2/3 full so I had 2 empty seats next to me where I could stretch out my legs and sleep if I wanted to. I glanced over at the cabin door when they closed it and thought that when it opens again, I would be in California breathing the dry air of home and not the humid locker room stuffy air of the east.
The plane pulled away from the gate, slowly taxied to the end of the runway, straightened out, and then its four engines came to life. Faster & faster did we roll down the runway and near the very end the plane slowly lifted off, folded up its wheels, and began the 6+ hours journey west toward California. “What a wonderful way to start a day”, I thought.
I gazed at the countryside passing underneath the plane for hours while music flooded my brain from the in-flight music selections of "The Bee Gees" to "Bread". The soft music had a way of flowing throughout my brain and scrubbing away the two years of missionary gooey that had gummed it up. I also watched two wonderful “evil” movies. How refreshing to watch a non-church movie. I was so fed up with church movies that if the airline had started playing “Mans Search for Happiness”, I know I would have gotten up and broken the projector.
The food served on the flight tasted great because it was so much better than the crap I had been eating for so long as a missionary. I finished both meals completely plus 4 cans of various sodas plus whatever cookies I could persuade the flight attendant to steal for me.
Oh, how happy I was and how relieved knowing I would be home by the end of the day. I made it a point to reassure myself again that I was really there. I pushed on the side of the plane and grabbed the seat armrests and again they were substantial objects. I was not in a dream that would end with an alarm clock waking me up in Martinsville, Virginia to go out tracting again. I shuddered from a cold chill and almost puked at that horrible thought as I was grabbing the armrests.
As the flight continued on, the plane eventually flew over Utah where I looked down at SLC. I briefly thought about that "Bad Boy's Reform School nightmare" week I spent in the Salt Lake Mission Home two years previous. During my mission is when the church started up the MTC with the domestic Elders spending one month there. How lucky I was to avoid that. I could not imagine spending a month in such a nightmare. Again, I amused myself with imagining that there were some MTC Elders out in a courtyard looking up at the contrail my plane was leaving behind and wishing they could be where I was. But it was not to be for them. Unless they had the courage to escape the MTC, they had two hellhole years to go through wherever they would end up.
I also thought again of those poor Elders back in Virginia just starting out. How was their 2nd day in the Virginia Roanoke Hell hole? What dark, unholy, and impure thoughts do they have now of “the Lord’s anointed” pinhead mission president?
For one last time, a wave of pity for them occupied my mind for about two seconds but those thoughts were washed away for good with a tsunami of happy thoughts of being home where I would be loved and wanted and with the girl that I loved. Those poor new Elders and the hell of the Virginia Roanoke Mission felt so far away now and of no importance and the relentless roar of the jet engines seemed to magnify these feelings.
Later I looked out the window again and saw the Sierra Nevada Mountains where the California/Nevada state line is. The plane began to slow & descend. Oh God, is it really true? Am I really almost home? I can hear the wheel bays open. My home airport is in view now. I wondered how many people would be there to welcome me home. I hope Kathy was able to make it. We are closer to the ground now. THUMP…THUMP! I am on my home soil again.
FINALLY HOME AGAIN
When I walked out of the jet way, all my family was there to meet me. I cried seeing them and hugged them more than I ever had done before. It was the first time I ever cried because I was happy. I could not believe I was with them again. The two year nightmare was over.
Kathy was also there to meet me. To see her standing there after two long years brought another rush of tears to my eyes. Was this real? Is it really her? How beautiful she was at twenty one now. I rushed over to her and we gave each other a very-very long hug and deep kisses. I did not want to let go of her. I missed her so much. I kissed off (pun intended) the bullshit that I was still a missionary until being released by the Stake President. I was threw being a missionary the moment I left that goddamn mission home and nothing was going to keep me from Kathy any longer.
The hugs and kisses I received from Kathy, after missing her for two miserable lonely years, poured peace into my soul in such a way that I cannot find adequate words to do justice in describing how I felt. Only those who have gone through this can understand what I am talking about. The English language is just too inadequate to paint a proper frame of reference for someone who has not gone through the trauma of a Mormon mission and returned. For those who had the courage and emotional strength to not succumb to the social pressures to serve a mission; coming home was not like coming back from college or summer camp. It was like coming back from the dead.
No event in my life has ever produced such an intensity of relief and happiness as the day I came home from my mission. The joy and relief of knowing I was done with it all almost overwhelmed me. That night, at home, after my family retired to bed, I sat on my bed and looked around my room marveling that I was there again. I then began to cry so hard that I had to bury my face into a pillow so no one would hear me.
My tears were of joy and anger mixed together. Tears of joy, because I was back home where I am wanted and valued and where I could restart my life again. Tears of anger, as I thought of the enormous time wasted, the undeserved pain received from the mission leaders, the many days of not being able to be with Kathy, the lost opportunities in my education path, and the time stolen from me from just living a normal happy life.
Before turning off the light, I checked just one last time that I was really there and not dreaming. Everything appeared real and solid. That night I slept for 14 hours and did not wake up until 1pm the next day. Happiness flooded my soul when I opened my eyes the next morning to find myself in my bed in my room in my home. Yes! Yes! I was really home.
UNCARING STAKE PRESIDENCY
I did report to the Stake President and High Council on Sunday where I was officially "released"...yeah, right. The Stake presidency asked me how “the work” was in Virginia. I told them only that the mission leadership needed fixing but did not elaborate. I was so disillusioned with the whole missionary experience that I did not want to re-live it again by trying to explain my comment. I was asked if I would like to speak in the other wards to encourage the young men to serve missions. I had to refrain myself so hard from yelling "F**K, NO!!" that I thought my teeth would shatter. I just clenched my jaw and politely declined. There were no more questions and I was dismissed.
After I left the High Council room and began driving home, it occurred to me that I did not even get a pat on the back or even a thank you from the Stake President or High Council for making it through this hellish mission. It was just like I got released from being a Sunday school teacher or some other useless make-work calling. It was a major WTF moments when you realize that nobody cared or gave a damn about your sacrifices and the pain you endured during this horrendous experience.
Now at home, it took about four weeks of spending time alone, listening to lots of music, and spending as much time as I could with Kathy to get back mentally & emotionally where I left off two years prior. In today's computer parlance, I needed four weeks to completely reboot my system. I did not need drugs or therapy because Kathy was my drug and being home where I was loved was my therapy.
WHAT THIS MISSION EXPERIENCE DID TO ME
Allowing myself to be coerced into serving a mission turned out to be the most damning decision I had ever made. Looking back, I saw how serving this mission short-circuited my dreams and aspirations and I had lost two precious unrecoverable years of my youth being a salesman for Joe Smith. I was now 21 and two years behind in college.
I did not come home a "saturated sponge" dripping with spiritual knowledge and wisdom beyond my years for a dedicated life to the Mormon Collective. Instead, I came home feeling like an old dried out chamois. I was fatally wounded spiritually and the church was nothing more than a nuisance to me now.
For those two years, I wilted in every area of my life.
I did not grow financially because I was not paid.
I did not grow socially because I was not allowed social interactions.
I did not grow academically because I just read from the same four books.
I did not grow spiritually because of the emotional rape from being lied to, humiliated, and condemned constantly for trivial imperfections & phantom sins.
The Lord never answered my prayers in any way. He never even provided a simple warm feeling to confirm that what I was doing was true or worthwhile to salvage my daily dying faith. The mission home even stole my $50 deposit claiming it for some phantom unpaid bill.
I was now worn out and fed up with the Mormon Church and with God. The whole missionary experience left me extremely bitter and convinced that the Mormon Church is the only church on Earth that persecutes its own missionaries.
The Mormon Church has a love-hate relationship with its missionaries. They love them when they accept the call but beat the crap out of them mentally & emotionally for the two years they serve. I never could understand why the Mormon Church would treat its missionaries with such contempt. What are they afraid of? If it was any other church, they would have fallen down at the missionary's feet for being so generous with his young life and money and efforts. And the leadership of the Mormon Church scratches its collective head wondering why over 50% of returned missionaries resign their membership after “the best two years of their lives”.
THE WARD FOOLS
I could never bring myself to give some glossy rosy answer to people when they asked me how my mission was. I would tell whoever asked that it was the worst experience I have ever had and everyday I regretted going. People who never served a mission were so stunned that I would say that because that kind of talk was not allowed in the church because that was the era of Spencer W. Kimball, where no one could possibly have a bad mission. Others that asked, who had served missions, just said that they understood my feelings. They knew the unspoken truth of what a mission is really all about and they knew intimately the lonely misery and horror that comes with it.
I told the Bishop not to bother asking me to speak to the younger boys about my mission because I would tell it like it is and I would not whitewash out any of the bad experiences. I also informed him that I could never, in good conscience, encourage anyone to serve a mission, and if I ever had a son, I would discourage him heavily from wasting his time doing so.
He was very irked to say the least but after telling him these things, he never gave me any calling at all. That was fine by me as I was on my way out the door from Mormonism, plus I needed to get back into college and finish my degrees in electrical engineering so I would not end up some dumb shit unable to feed my face for the rest of my life.
LOSS OF KATHY BUT BACK INTO COLLEGE
After being home for about four months, I lost the love of my life. Kathy drifted away from me toward someone else and ironically, it was a non-member. It was a very bitter loss to me as I loved her more than I could ever express to anyone. For those two years, she was all I thought about, dreamed about, and she was the only person that kept me from committing suicide while serving the mission.
I can only speculate that I loved her more than she loved me and maybe being away for two years was just too long for our relationship to withstand the changes in each of us. I will never know. But it became evident to me that I was gone too long and it was everlastingly too late to make up those two years of lost time that I could not be with her.
I have often thought of what could have been if we had stayed together. I know I would have loved her, cherished her with all my heart, given her a very good living and lifestyle, and would have supported her in all the things she told me she wanted to do. It produced incredible pain and sorrow to me to know that she married a man that, from my observations of him, did not even love her and just wanted her for dipping his wick.
I felt I had lost someone of priceless value. I felt I lost someone so precious to me, I did not know if I could ever find someone else to fill the void in my life created by her absence. I was deeply depressed for many weeks. I was not able to hide my depression very well and several people asked me what was wrong but I could not really tell them as the loss was beyond my ability to put into words. I tried to get close to a few other girls later on but none of them ever seemed to measure up to Kathy. She was one of a kind and not replaceable. Well, Kathy made her decision and I wish her the best and hope she found happiness with him.
The following September after returning from Virginia, I restarted my college path. I eventually obtained my electrical engineering degrees, and was hired by a major electronics manufacturer in Silicon Valley.
INTO A LOVELESS TBM MARRIAGE COLOSSAL MISTAKE
Somehow, a little over a year after I came home from Virginia, I found myself in a marriage to a TBM "white but not delightsome" woman. At the time it seemed the right thing to do, but a few years and two children down the road, the woman changed for the worse and I could see that I had made yet another very-very bad decision to marry so young because of the pressures from the Mormon Church.
Bitter quarreling began early in this marriage and it always revolved around the church whether it was tithing, church callings, or not being home because of excessive church meetings. I also could not earn enough money because she wanted and bought on credit many material things immediately that normally take years of work and savings to get. However, the thing that caused the most arguments in my first marriage was the non-payment of tithing.
I was fresh into my new electrical engineering job after graduating college and the pay was not that great. My new wife and I barely made it every month because I did not pay tithing. My budget showed that if 10% went away, the choice before us was eat OR have a place to live with utilities. I chose to eat AND have a place to live with utilities.
When my "white but not delightsome" first wife found out that I never paid, she was furious and abusive to me and railed on me to pay it. I showed her the budget and told her that the math does not lie. So, I said to her to choose tithing or eating and having shelter. This made her even madder and she insisted that I pay tithing and stop paying the mortgage because we would be blessed to be able to pay our bills. However, she would never agree to go without food or her credit card shopping for her frivolous things.
To make peace, I said then let’s prove if God really cares about us. So, I paid the tithing and not the mortgage and waited for God to invoke some new math on my budget that somehow the numbers would all work out. One month went by, then 2, then 3, and my budget's math remained the same. No sack of money fell from heaven and no hidden cash bonanza materialized. After the 3rd month I got a notice from my mortgage company saying my house will soon go into foreclosure if I didn't pay up.
I confronted her with the foreclosure notice and said that tithing would never be a budgeted item again. God does not care about us. I also told her that her frivolous credit card spending days have also come to an end so we can make up the delinquent mortgage payments. She blew a gasket at that and then said that I should not pay the credit cards bills and use that money for tithing instead. I then asked her “What's the difference between not paying for the charged items and shoplifting.” I got no response as she stormed off.
In the 6th year of this "Celestial" marriage, she began to involve herself with a group of LDS women that were into the "Recovered Memories" nonsense of the late 1980's. This group, which was run by a Mormon convert con man named Richard Rosander, met weekly to have these women share whatever so-called repressed memories that surfaced that week and would "process" them together to try and "heal" themselves.
This con man also passed himself off as a licensed therapist and billed these women's medical insurance in order to get money. I later learned that he never obtained a degree or was licensed or trained to be a psychologist and had been fired from LDS Social Services for lying on his application about his credentials.
Two days each week my ex-wife would go to these sessions then come home and start saying all kinds of horrible things about her family and how they sexually abused her, tortured her as a baby in some fantastic Satan ritual, yada...yada…yada... I knew where this would eventually end up, and that would be false accusations about how my parents did the same to me so on and so forth. Despite all this, I still tried to salvage the marriage the best I knew how.
Frequently I would do things for her such as clean the house myself or volunteer to take our children for the day so she could have a day to herself and many other similar things that made the other wives in the ward jealous. It did get back to me that my wife would complain about me to the other wives of the ward and they could not understand why she would feel that way about me because their husbands would do little if any of the things I did for her. No matter what I did for her or how much I showed that I loved her, she would brush it all off as phony meaningless acts of bribes for her love.
I tried countless times to build up our relationship but soon I discovered that you cannot build or repair a relationship with someone who does not consider that you are a human being with feelings, wants, and rights. To them, you are an inanimate object, like a hairbrush, and the only purpose you exist is to serve them. A hairbrush does not complain when you mistreat it so "…how dare you complain…" about how you feel or if your needs are not being met. She was a true narcissist.
To make a long and bitter story short, I reached the end of my rope with her arguments, her ungratefulness, her phony abuse stories, and her spending us into near bankruptcy. I was giving all and doing all I knew how to do at the time to make her happy and receiving nothing in return from her but disgust. After 8+ years of this hellhole “Celestial” marriage, I decided I needed to divorce this female as quickly as possible. I walked out on her and sued for divorce.
It was a terrible and bitter divorce and compounding the bitterness was the Mormon Church supporting her financially and paying for her attorney while never offering me a penny for any of my legal expenses. The Bishop of the ward tried to pressure me into paying back the money they spent for her welfare needs (even though I was still paying all her bills) saying that it was a loan from the church that I was responsible for as a priesthood holder. When I asked that Bishop to provide me with the Truth-in-Lending documents and loan note with my signature for this money, he quickly backed down.
In order to conclude this divorce comedy, I had to threaten the Stake President and the Mormon Church with a lawsuit in order to stop the church from providing her cash to use against me as I found myself in the position of my very limited funds vs the unlimited funds of the Church that were paying for her legal expenses.
My ex-wife became such a nutcase that her own family encouraged me to divorce her as quickly as possible. A few of her siblings had to move across the US to get away from her because of her false accusations of child abuse. I even received at work a couple of death threats from the ward members over this divorce. Are the Danites back again?
During the divorce process, her own lawyer would scold her because of her unreasonableness to conclude the divorce proceedings even after I gave her everything. Her lawyer could not believe that she wanted to drag on and, on the process, after I gave her everything and her half of the equity of the house. I kept the house. I guess her lawyer told her to end it or she would cease to represent her because the divorce process finally ended. I was now free of that female for good. What a relief it was to not have to deal with such an unbalanced person ever again.
My ex-wife was also very successfully in poisoning my two children against me. To bring closure to this bitter chapter of my life and for keeping my sanity concerning my children, I declared them dead and moved on.
I learned later from others, that my ex-wife had privately told them that she never loved me from the start of the marriage and only married me to get out of her poverty and that maybe, over time, she could "learn" to love me. Hearing this made all the pieces fall together for me as to why she never returned my love. She had none to start with. So that Spencer W. Kimball nonsense that "two people living the gospel could make a marriage" is a bowl of shit and I have the divorce papers to prove it.
After going through this divorce and losing my children forever, any smoldering embers of faith I might have had in the divinity of the Mormon Church or faith that God cared about me, were now extinguished, never to be re-lighted.
FAMILIES ARE FOREVER !!!!!!!...(yeah, right.)
THE END OF MY MORMON COMEDY
After my divorce was final, my mother wanted me to find another Mormon woman to marry, but looking at what my choices of Mormon women were, knowing I would most likely end up on the same old endless Mormon treadmill and a good chance of ending up with another bipolar, high conflict woman, I told her "NEVER AGAIN!" to her chagrin.
I did humor my mother just once by calling on a woman in her ward that was in her late twenties but had not married yet and still lived at home. She and I had grown up in that ward and she was 2 years younger than me. I asked her out on a date and she told me to wait a moment so she could check her calendar. But as I waited for her reply, she forgot to cover her end of the phone and I could hear her mother in the background telling her to not get involved with me in any way because I was divorced with baggage. Needles to say, she declined my offer for a date. Thanks Sister Whitmer, for voicing your vote of confidence of me to your daughter.
After she hung up the phone, I now knew that in the eyes of the church, I was "damaged and unclean and beyond redemption." As a divorced man, no one in the Mormon Church wanted anything to do with me. I never again contemplated being involved with another Mormon woman after that phone call.
For those who have not married yet, don't be in ANY rush to marry. If I could do it over again, I would have waited until I was 30. It seems that any mental illness that someone might acquire manifests itself in their mid 20's. I wish I had known that at 22, but at least I was able to escape from spending the balance of my life with a bipolar, high conflict female. She was the most dishonest person I have ever known.
MAJOR LIFE RESET
I cannot think of a more damning yard stick to hold up to the Mormon Church than the scripture "By their fruits ye shall know them". This one verse summed it up and confirmed to me that I had to jettison this toxic religion or I was going to be forever miserable.
Now that I was living alone again, I realized that I needed to perform a major reset to my life if I was going to be happy going forward. I sat down one evening and told myself that now I needed to take care of me. I needed to come first. I had spent too many calories on the Mormon Church's needs and programs before my own and never received any positive ROI. The two year mission investment returned nothing but pain & anguish and the investment into eight plus years of a loveless “Celestial marriage” produced nothing but heartache & hopelessness.
I began looking back at my life and studying the episodes that went wrong. That introspection revealed that every major episode of unhappiness, strife, emotional trauma, or poor decision making was directly connected to the Mormon Church. I had done all the things that were required of me and the promised blessings never materialized. Prayers were never answered; priesthood blessing given or received did nothing. Council from the Brethren always produced the opposite of that which was promised. To sum it up, NOTHING EVER WORKED!!! Period.
After several sessions of personal introspection, I concluded that I would never again allow any nonsense of Mormonism (or any religion) to cloud my judgment or taint my happiness in any way or come between myself and any woman I wanted a relationship with. I needed to completely purge this Mormon toxin from my life.
One of the first steps in my purging process began with disposing of anything Mormon. I collected together all my Mormon books & scriptures, all my missionary pictures, my patriarchal blessing, my priesthood ordination certificates, my baptism certificate, my garments, my Seminary graduation diploma, my Institute graduation diploma and anything else I had that was Mormon. I then stuffed it all into my fireplace, soaked it with carburetor cleaner, lit the gas pipe, and quickly shut the fire doors.
Oh, what a fire! The fire just exploded into an inferno with flames shooting out from around the fire doors scorching the bricks. The fire burned real hot warping the fire doors. The amount of fire got a little scary but I managed to keep it under control and not burn my house down.
When the fire died down, I sifted through its dying embers to make sure it was all ash, and as I sifted, I felt cleansed, refreshed, and renewed. This incineration of all things Mormon was my first step out of the Mormon bog. There were many other steps and actions that followed and I found that with each step I took away from Mormonism, my happiness greatly increased. To this day, I have no regrets burning all that stuff.
A REAL MARRIAGE TO THIS DAY
I began entering the dating scene again shortly after my divorce. I did not realize how awkward this was at 32 as I was out of practice but I found it fun to associate with women with whom I wanted to be with and perhaps find one to marry.
I was in no hurry. I would do it my way and would have a relationship with a woman I wanted. Not what the Mormon Church said I should have and not what those 15 geriatric men in Utah said I should have. Gone were those stupid teachings about only marrying in your own race or class or to avoid dating "evil non-member” women. I promised myself that I would never again get involved with any Mormon woman. The Mormon product had failed me, so I would try some “evil” non-Mormon imports.
FINDING MY PRETTY ASIAN WIFE
From the first days that I was interested in girls, I always wanted to have an Asian wife. To me, Asian women are more attractive. I can't explain why nor do I feel obligated to do so. It’s just been my preference. I always felt more at ease around Asian women and to me they are prettier. I now had many opportunities to meet and seek after Asian women through my friends and my peers at work since my high-tech company employed many people from the Asian regions of the world. I was able to date a couple of Indian women, a Japanese woman, and a couple of Chinese women.
One thing that I did notice about these Asian women was that all of them never exhibited any bipolar, schizophrenic, or high conflict type behavior as Mormon women did. These Asian women had their act together. They were genuine, intelligent, highly educated, knew where they were going in life, and acted their age. They were very unlike the Mormon women I knew who acted & talked like children, who were uneducated, and were clueless as to what they wanted out of life.
Through a mutual friend, I was introduced to a Malaysian girl who worked in Penang. We carried on a long-distance relationship that worked quite well because we had access to the inter-company phones and to the inter-company email & chat capabilities. This was before the internet as we know it today so we had, in essence, then the equivalent of today's email and Messaging. We were ahead of our time in 1990.
Over the course of a year we phoned each other every day, wrote email, and posted snail-mail to each other. I took a month vacation to Malaysia to spend time with her and later she came to the US to spend a month with me. We fell in love and we both felt we were made for each other. A lot of her interests were similar to mine and we both enjoyed each other's company tremendously.
Being very cautious to not make a marriage mistake again, I made sure that she really loved me as much as I loved her and I could not see anything that denoted mental issues. I felt I found a soul-mate and we married a year later. I am still happily married to this Malaysian girl and how wonderful it is to be in a real marriage where real love is returned for real love given. I can say with conviction that there is nothing sweeter than the love an Asian woman gives.
We have a beautiful daughter who is an academic genius and attended one of the most premier engineering universities in the world. I went out of my way to keep her and my wife untarnished by any facet of Mormonism or its nonsense. I have a beautiful home and a career that pays well into six figures. I am richly blessed and I know it and none of it will ever find its way to old Joe’s church.
A few years after I married my Malaysian sweetheart, I formally resigned my membership in order to stop any effort to "reactivate" me. I wanted no more love-bombs and no more invites to go back. I will never go back because it would be like going back to your dinner plate full of your vomit and trying once again to down an unpleasant meal.
The mission experience and the 8+ years of a hellish “Celestial marriage” that followed, opened up my eyes and allowed me to see the rottenness of the church and enabled my courage to escape from Mormonism. As painful as all of this was, I believe the long-term pain of staying in the Mormon Church would have become unbearable. I would never be given another chance to escape from living a horrible, meaningless, and hollow existence.
I have never been happier having Mormonism and all of its painful baggage out of my life. Of course, in life, there are bad days here and bad days there and nobody is immune from that but the vast majority of my days have been very happy ones. When I wake up Sunday mornings, sometimes I chuckle to myself as I think of where I could be, sitting on a hard pew in a stuffy chapel re-breathing the stale air produced by the previous ward and listening to the same old drivel while multiple babies scream and cry and vomit. I miss it so. NOT!!!!!!!
It has been over 30 years since I walked away from the Mormon Church and I have not missed it on any level. I am so grateful to be done with it all. My Mormon experience is nothing more than a grave now. Sometimes I go and put flowers on that grave but I walk away with happiness in my heart and pride in myself that I found the knowledge, courage, and strength to escape from Mormonism intact. Life is good now and sometimes I find it hard to imagine that I was ever a Mormon.
TO YOU MISSIONARIES READING THIS
To you Elders and Sisters on your missions reading this secretly while your companion is off somewhere else, I say to you escape, go home, and restart your life with the love you left behind. Spend your time getting the education that you need and want.
Don't waste any more of your time and money on this thankless church doing a thankless job. If the Church leaders really wanted you to succeed, they would provide you with all the tools, support, and things needed to do the job. Be honest. Do they do that? Do you think the mission leaders really care about you? Do they lift you up when you are down? Ever? The answers is No.
In fact, the church and mission go out of their way to make your young life as miserable as possible for no reason. Look at the place & area you live in. Look at your budget for the month. What do they spend to help you? NOTHING! However, the church spends with impunity billions of dollars of your tithing money, your parent's tithing money, and your grandparent’s tithing money on things like renovating shopping malls. Said in another way, that is thousands of million of dollars. And you are allotted a living of $5 a day on average.
NO MORE GHOSTS IN VIRGINIA
For those living in Virginia who think that I am trashing your home, I am not. Virginia is a very pretty place and, as they say, Virginia is for Lovers. I did go back to Virginia 15 years after my mission as part of a cross-country vacation.
What a wonderful feeling it was to be there as an Exmo and to be able to do the things I wanted to do that I could never do as a missionary because of having no time or money or freedom. When I went back, it was in the fall when all the leaves were turning color and my pretty Asian wife was in awe. I always loved the fall season there and so did she.
Visiting one of the areas where I was a missionary, I felt a strange feeling to be in that area again. For a brief moment, I felt the familiar missionary depression and hopelessness start to well up inside me of having to go tracting all day. It surprised me that those feelings could still rise up after so many years.
However, those feelings were quickly crushed and swept away when reality came rushing back and I knew that I did not have to go and start knocking on the doors of the surrounding houses. I could leave at any time. I could eat at any time. I was not confined to a certain area. I had no weekly reports to fill out. I did not need the permission of some pinhead Zone Leader or Mission President to leave. I had my own car with my pretty Asian wife in it and I was free from the toxic religion of Mormonism.
It was a very satisfying feeling being in those places as an Exmo because I never felt more free of the Mormon Church than being in a place where it had chained me so tightly.
My fellow post Mormons, adieu.
A SAD NOTE TO MY STORY IN 2013
My pretty Asian wife passed away in 2013 at the age of only 58 from a fatal heart attack. There were no warning signs or symptoms; Just collapsed to the floor. I never felt so helpless kneeling next to her, performing CPR, watching her slip away, and knowing there was nothing I could do to stop it.
Sometimes in life, there are freight trains that come out of nowhere and run us over. Each night, I tell myself that I must be a stronger person than I thought because I have gone one more day without her.