I was not keen on going foreign at the time, and I remembered hearing a rumor that the church would keep guys with medical problems in the states.

So, I really played up the fact that I have a deviated septum and have trouble sleeping at night sometimes. I then laid it on pretty thick in order to get the sympathy vote with a little flowery language and embellishment.

It worked, too. San Diego, California 2000-2002.

I was just wondering if I was the only one who heard about / tried something along those lines.

Didn't serve a mission, but a relative of mine was majoring in Japanese, and guess where they served...Japan. I always thought it was too coincidental and not inspirational. Nothing to do with BS though.... :)

Still, it makes one wonder, right?

I guess if you knew how to ski, they'd send you to Switzerland. lol

I was sent to the Nevada Las Vegas mission from South Jordan Utah. I wondered why in the heck I was going to close to home and it hit me after getting into the mission office and seeing the records of the missionaries coming to us. Over 1/4th of the missionaries in our mission had special health challenges of one type or another and our mission became a dumping ground for missionaries being called with mental issues, health issues or were any kind of risk for dangerous behavior to themselves. I was called there cause I checked the box of having sucidal thoughts more than once per week on my mission papers (never serious thoughts, just temptations as I explained it to my bishop, stake president and to the member of the quorum of seventy from the church headquarters who called me up to be interviewed by him before I could serve my mission because I checked that box. I had to assure him that it wasn't serious and I was just being honest that the thought would come to me once in a while that ending it all was easier than dealing with life at times. Now, I've discovered from my time here on RfM that state side mission calls were given to people whom they considered a risk. Makes me wonder how many of us in that mission were there cause we were deemed a risk after all now.

Yeah, the term "medical mission" was thrown around a lot in SD. And after getting there I saw plenty of elders and sisters with either physical, emotional, or mental challenges. Was it really a divine coincidence that so many of us ended up in the same mission?

in a California mission. At least that is what they did with the guys who were in Japan and had problems with rules, health, girls, etc.

But nowadays it seems like such a high percentage of these kids are staying stateside that I wonder if there is a dumping ground any more.