Reading all the recent posts about being in the MTC and how bad it was, my mind brought me back to the time when I was on my mission in Virginia in the late 70’s. I remember how the endless drudgery of knocking on doors all day and every day just drove me into the ground. I just wanted to leave to end the depression.

Lying in bed, I would imagine ways I could leave like sneaking away from my companion at night while he slept, or when he was in the shower, then riding my bicycle to the nearest train station or bus station or airport to get some transport out of there. I even tried to work out how far I could ride my bicycle in a day to calculate how long it would take to get to California. How desperate is that? However, I never could find the courage to go through with any of it.

My fellow RMs, did any of you find the courage to escape or know of other Elders or Sisters that were able to sneak away and escape? If so, how did you do it? Or how did they do it? How great was the deception involved to pull it off?

Inquiring minds want to know these stories. In fact, your stories may inspire some current Elders to escape also.

I thought about it, but they sent me back home first! :)

Their loss... because I would probably have "converted" to a TBM if I'd stuck out the two years.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/21/2011 05:47PM by freeman.

Only in my mind during the little free-time I had or at night before falling asleep

Northern England in the late '70's. He was from a small town in Sussex but the ZL's got him at the bus station and brought him back.

Had another one fly the coop when I was a new DL. He flew home to Ohio and hung out for a couple of weeks...actually went camping with his girlfriend. Had to speak with a GA before he finally came back. Poor guy...he was this close to getting free!

Northern England in the late '70's. He was from a small town in Sussex but the ZL's got him at the bus station and brought him back.

Had another one fly the coop when I was a new DL. He flew home to Ohio and hung out for a couple of weeks...actually went camping with his girlfriend. Had to speak with a GA before he finally came back. Poor guy...he was this close to getting free!

There was an elder in my mission who tried to pull it off. He had injured an arm or leg and needed to stay home for a few days. He was miserable even before the injury. His comp was upset about having to sit at home, so he went out to teach by himself!

The elder with the injury had completely had it with the comp, with the mission, with everything. He packed his stuff, borrowed a bike from his landlord, and somehow managed to pedal himself and his suitcases to the bus station. He took a bus from the NW part of Argentina all the way to Buenos Aires - a 24 hour bus trip. In Buenos Aires, he got to the airport and tried to get a ticket back to the states. Alas his passport was locked up in the MP's safe at the mission home.

The airport called the mission home to see if they could send the passport or something and instead they sent the APs to pick the guy up and bring him back to the mission home. Somehow he was talked into finishing the mission.

I was skeptical when I first heard this story, since the guy was no longer there to verify. But in my 2nd city we used to eat lunch at a house where they had been feeding/housing missionaries for a long time. One day at lunch the husband told this story to us just like I first heard it. It turns out HE was the landlord who loanded the elder the bike to make his getaway. Guess it was true.

This was in the early 80s.

Japan .. late seventies. I got to the point where I couldn't take it anymore.. about 10 months into my mission. One morning I jumped out the window ran to the train station and took a train out of the mission to Osaka.. my plan was to purchase a ticket to Hawaii and plan my next move. I had a credit card and I too.. was thwarted in my plan because the damn Mission Pres had my passport. I actually went to the US embassy in an effort to obtain a new copy of my passport (telling them I lost it).. but in the process decided to return and take my lumps.

I had been gone almost 2 days and ended up convincing the Mission Pres that I temporarily lost my mind.. hadn't screwed any chicks during my absence.. and stayed put. I was actually promoted to senior companion that next month.. lol.

I never heard about anyone escaping other than for "health reasons." I was a little skeptical on those but am now totally sympathetic. As a Zone leader, one of my minions that was in the field 3-4 months found out his girlfriend was pregnant. As Homer Simpson says, "Dohhh!" I got to take the chicken bus shame ride back to mission HQ for 6 hours with him. A little awkward to say the least. What was the hell was the point of needing a drowsy chaperone at that point? Did they think he was going to rape a chicken on his way home? Ahhh, so rational and logical.

He was a convert and a really great guy. Apparently his family had not wanted him to go on his mission, but the bishop had convinced him to.

He seemed depressed for a while. He had realised TSCC was a crock. One day he got up, packed his bags left his sleeping companion a note and took the five to ten minute walk to the railway station and bought a one way ticket from Shropshire to Liverpool to his family and from what I heard was not a Mormon any more.

His companion woke up and found the note, but he had already taken the train so was beyond the reach of the Mission President. He had to wait until an emergency replacement companion could be obtained and sent to him.

matt Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
He had to wait
> until an emergency replacement companion could be
> obtained and sent to him.


Love that phrase. Did they go to the warehouse and get one off the shelf, dust if off and put it in a box?!

They gave us the option of going home a month early or staying a month later, so I opted to go home a month early to start school Fall semester. Then when the itineraries came out, I was mysteriously put in the group that came out TWO months before me. I don't know what happened, but I didn't say a word. I fully expected to get a note saying that they had made a clerical error and then have to stay another month, but that never happened.

The night before the flight home, my departure group all stayed in a room together, and the other guys ganged up on me and wanted to know why I was going home two months early, "honorably." I said that I didn't know, but the Lord works in mysterious ways. I was not popular at all that night.

It was a good thing though. I was really at the end of my rope with the whole thing. It was an answer to prayers. lol

In the MTC I seriously thought about it twice. Had it all planned out how I would take just what I could, get a taxi to a bus station, fly home out of Salt Lake.

Kyle, I was in Nagoya in the early eighties and I know just how you felt. Once early on in the mission I was visiting a shrine on P-day. I was standing next to a large grove of bamboo, and I told my companion I just wanted to wander in there and disappear. She basically told me not to because there would be hell to pay for her. I fantasized about it other times, and I don't think it even ocurred to me that my passport was in the mission home.

I live near Osaka now. It's much better being here as a "real person".

**NOT ME* --but I personally knew a sister who wanted so bad to go home from her mission -- During her next interview with the Mission President she climbed over his desk grabbed him by the tie and let forth a stream of obscenities that would make a sailor blush. Fortunately he was an understanding MP and next morning put her on the first flight home..

I could reveal her full name and the name of the Mission President and the mission involved, however that might diminish the brilliant courage of her actions...

JB

I was in Brazil from 86 to 88. A sister in my district lived in a near by city. (She was with me in the MTC too.) At any rate, she was a good friend and when she made her escape sent me a letter from the airport in Sao Paulo. She was able to somehow obtain her passport from the mission office and to this day I have never figured out how she did it.

She was an older sister too. I believe she was 26 or so. Also, her parents were on a mission in France I believe. But, I often wonder what ever happen to her. I hope she left the insanity called mormonism. As of right now I know of 4 missionaries from my mission who have left the church. I love it!


P.S. Sister Mason, if you are reading this board I would love to contact you. I was in Tupa and you were in Marilha.

Anyone who doubts for a minute that the LDS Church is a Cult ought to read this thread!!

My thoughts exactly! WT?? My passport would never leave my person. They would have to send me stateside. I wouldn't agree with SALT LAKE'S foreign country revelation. Then again, these are young brainwashed kids. SO SAD!

Well... when I was in the Peace Corps, our no fee passports were held for "safekeeping" by local authorities. But those passports were issued solely because we were doing work on behalf of the government. The Peace Corps did not take passports that volunteers purchased on their own. At that time, I only had a no fee passport because we were allowed to use them for recreational travel. Nowadays, if you get a no fee passport, you also have to have a regular passport if you want to travel.

I escaped my mission twice in 1986. First in Puerto Rico, I didn't really escape that time, I told the president I would leave if not transfered out of that hell hole. (I didn't say hell hole though.) So I was transferred to.......Salt Lake North Mission. I quit probably six months later. Just packed up and took the bus to a friends and quit.

Glory, glory halelujah.

Tried to take up smoking but it didn't take so I stayed in the church a little while longer. Wish I had quit the church much earlier.

I was in El Salvador during the beginnings of the civil war in the late 1970s. Lots of missionaries were stressed out by the poverty and danger. One elder snapped and sneaked out during the night, leaving behind all his possessions other than that which he was wearing or carrying in his pockets. The next morning his companion saw that the rogue elder was gone, but that his journal was left open. Upon reading the last several entries, it became clear that he had been planning this for a couple of weeks. Somehow this guy managed to hitchhike all the way back home to Idaho, crossing three countries' borders without his passport (locked up in the mission home) and only $50 bucks to his name. His parents called the mission after their son showed up on their doorstep. The funny thing was that, because of this elder's successful journey, we were all instructed to carry $50 bucks on us in the event of a sudden evacuation directive. The mission president figured that if $50 got that elder all the way back to Idaho, it should be enough for the rest of us to bribe our way out of the country, too.

On my mission (Argentina Neuquen, Sep 2003) there was a sister that showed up in Argentina and then only stayed a week and then flew back home. At the time I thought she was an idiot. Now I think she was smart. After one week she realized she needed to get the hell out and she did. That takes courage!

She lives in Zapala and we've just reestablished communication after almost 30 years. She's still TBM, but we've had a good time catching up.

I didn't "escape" from my mission...after six weeks in the MTC I just left. The MTC Prez (Pinegar) breached my thrust by revealing what I had told him in confidence. That pissed me off, I told him and a G.A. (Carlos Asay) that I had lost my desire to serve and could no longer trust or follow any mission leader. I called them sons-of-bitches under my breath (but loud enough for them to hear) and then asked if they would make arrangements for my travel home or would I. They were stunned, did all they could to convince me to stay, but I wouldn't budge. Four hours later I was on a plane home.

Although many of you might have dreamed, wished, and fantasized about taking off from your missions, in reality, going home opened up a whole new can of HELL. Still, as tough as it was, some 30+ years later I have no regrets.

LOL, I taught at the MTC when Pinegar was there. What a douche.

Ron

In California Mission, circa 1960s, an older elder (a convert) disappeared during the night. He next appeared at his home near Boston. I knew him. He had a banking account and just purchased a ticket home. He was not made for missionary work, real shy.

So the moral of some of these stories is this:

Before you go out into your mission, have somebody make you a FAKE PASSPORT! It doesn't need to convince anybody at customs, just the Mission President ;)

What will happen if a new missionary in a foreign country absolutely refuses to give the MP his passport? Does that get the missionary sent home immediately?

In a foreign country why couldn't you just go to the amercian embassy first and report that your passport was lost and get a new one? Do they make you wait to get it? I know I got a new passport when my expired when I was a student overseas, but that was pre sept 11.

Had an older companion that left the mission in the middle of the night. HE left a note on his pillow that explained he wanted to re enlist and serve another term in Vietnam.
Everyone thought he was whacked but in reality he was the sane
brave on that wasn't out there on a mission deferment dodging real service and wasn't living a lie like me and so many others.

Or, why couldn't you go to the american embassy and say your passport was confiscated by and in the possession of a power-hungry, controlling cult leader? I can imagine the conversation between the embassy and the mission president...

against taking someone elses passport and jail time also.

Ah, the memories! A sweet young boy from southern Utah was up here in NW Canada on a mission when he realised that he had to leave in order to keep his sanity. He tried to fly out of Calgary, but the MP caught wind of what was up, went to the airport, and was able to hold the plane up long enough to talk with my friend, ordering him, "in the sacred name of Jesus Christ," to get off the plane. Scared and confused, he obeyed. He bowed his head and said, "Yes."

As 'punishment,' my friend was transferred up to Edmonton. One day he showed up at the school where I taught, totally panicked, telling me that he HAD to get out, or he was afraid of what he might do. Since he had served in Edmonton before, and it was known he was a friend of mine, I realised that I couldn't let him stay at my place, so I took him to a friend who had already deep-sixed the church ... she and her husband agreed to let him stay there until a propitious time for him to get out of the country. In those days, before a recent delusional U.S. president, no passport was needed to cross the Canada-U.S. border - a birth certificate and/or driver's license was sufficient ID. For some days, I was visited regularly by sundry APs and ZLs wanting to know where my friend was. I could honestly tell them that - at that particular moment - I had no idea where he might be. [In my friends' living room? Bathroom? Den?] Meanwhile, we checked a few times at the Greyhound depot, the two airports, the train station - always crawling with the aforementioned APs and ZLs and their little helpers.

After a few days the surveillance seemed to have died down, and I was able to put my young friend on a train headed to Vancouver, B.C., whence he was able to take Amtrak to Seattle, WA and then fly home to Utah. My friends and I had outfitted him with civilian clothes so he would not attract any unwanted attention, and his trip home went off without a hitch. He had contacted his parents by pay phone, so they knew what was coming down ... the MP hadn't bothered to do so, obviously embarrassed that a mere missionary could just disappear without a trace. The kid was excommunicated a.s.a.p. by his local 'authorities,' since he celebrated his new-found freedom by telling them that he was gay and thought that the church was a crock.

I never publicised my role in his escape, but I was blacklisted by the MP and every subsequent MP as a deleterious influence on the missionaries. Too bad! I was 'gone' anyway, and gone officially in 2005. My young friend now lives happily with his partner near Las Vegas, NV; and I always delight in telling our 'escape' story!

Good on your...I admire your courage and that of you friend...and as one who never went on a mission or wanted to, and was not forced to go by my TBM parents, I am learning much about how fortunate I am for not going....I would have bolted at my first opportunity......

My first city was Lugano, Switzerland, in the Italian-speaking canton of the country. It was beautiful, but I didn't like my mission, my companion, and especially the egotistic district leader. I would stare across the valley at a small village on a hillside and plot out how I would leave in the night and make my way over there and find someplace to stay. Like anything else, situations changed, people got transferred, things changed, and it all got better.

I met him at a meet in Brum. Very cool chap! His sister posted here, too.

We held a BBQ at our apartment on the upstairs patio during a regular work day. Two other missionaries took the bullet train from Munich to Amsterdam (totally agains all rules known to mankind) and we had a BBQ.

Best thing I ever did on my mission and nobody ratted on nobody! :)

Ron

My escape happened when I realized that I wasn't going to be baptizing anyone but was still in an amazing place. Going through the motions is a time honored way of escaping.