Posted by:
En Sabah Nur
(
)
Date: January 14, 2014 06:31PM
Our own Raptor Jesus has a pretty harrowing mission story. If you have $3 to spare, you can read about it in his book:
http://www.amazon.com/Passion-Raptor-Jesus-Mormon-Apostasy-ebook/dp/B005IQKAQUMy own mission was a battle against the bureaucracy; the mission office wanted us to meet quota, while I wanted to serve by the Spirit (read Spirit as relying on my own intuition and creativity).
I thought it was absolutely backward to have our public service limited to 4 hours a week while tracting was expected at 40+.
It's little wonder why so many of the missionaries I was close to began spending extra time in the library or at the gym, traveling out of their areas to visit friends and hooking up with the native Aussie ladies.
I actually had a bit of a breakdown and spent several months feeling completely out-of-control and lost, having been dumped in the worst area of the mission for 14 months then shipped out bush, hundreds of miles away from the nearest missionaries, without a car in the middle of the blazing Australian summer.
We had a MP "changing of the guards" midway through my mission. I actually liked the second mission president, despite the fact that he scattered all of the older missionaries abroad in tiny towns across central Australia while he kept the younger ones close to "home." When I confronted him at a mission conference and asked him, point blank, if he had sent us all out to pasture, hoping that we would go home without sullying the greenies, he just looked at me with feigned shock, and replied, sarcastically, "WHAT? Oh no, Elder Otter, I would NEVER do THAT! If the Lord wants you all far away from Adelaide (our mission HQ), who am I to disagree?" It was a dick response, sure, but also kind of funny.