...did you nevertheless feel obligated to give the RM "homecoming" SM talk?

And if so, did you give the talk your ward members expected to hear ("the best 2 years of my life!")? If not, what did you mainly talk about?

I remember my talk being terrible. I felt like I hadn't measured up as a missionary. I was district leader, zone leader, baptized about 90 people, and was openly recognized by peers as "one of the best elders in the mission". After all of this, I felt like crap.

Years later, I realize how twisted this thinking was. I sacrificed two years of my FINITE life and I was still not good enough for God.

My talk was a downer. But, good news is most people probably forgot it after 10 minutes.

I lost my belief in the church during my mission, however I wasn't ready to declare my unbelief or leave Mormonism. I faked it for another two years after. I gave my talk, unfortunately I can't remember what I said. I recall during and after my mission, that giving talks or lessons weren't TOO difficult, but I could NOT boldly "bear my testimony." I could teach gospel principle and history, but I just couldn't say things like "I KNOW Joseph Smith is a prophet of God" or "the Book of Mormon TRULY is the word of God."

I remember dreading my final going away testimony in front of the mission (which you were expected to give) which was actually right after I confessed to my mission president I lost my testimony.

I could never do it now. I was so entrenched in the cult at the time that talks and testimonies were like second nature to me, but now I'd probably throw up if tried.

My 'testimony' was severely shaken from my mission experience. Actually, it was my belief in the divinity of the Church as it is currently constituted in SLC that that was severly shaken. I couldn't then, and still can't now, understand how these self professed men of god (mission presidents, GA's, etc) could make you feel so shitty about yourself in the name of Jesus Christ.

The thought that the church really was all BS first occurred to me on my mission. It wasn't until many years later than I finally accepted that.

It took a couple more years.

... I had become dissatisfied with the current church conditions -- this was the start of my "fundamentalist" stage of life where I thought for sure there was some house cleaning to be done to get it BACK to the glory of the Joseph/Brigham era.

I kick myself now for how long it took me to figure out there was no "glory" to go back too. That took a lot of church-history research to discover -- and that was well before the internet made it all so easy.