I was on a mission in 1986 through 1988 in Europe. Small country, snow, beauty, but not a lot of interest among the locals. Actually most were amused or put off.
The lack of interest created a lot of real downtime for missionaries and they seemed to develop ingenious ways to pretend like they were doing something.
Many missionaries had quasi-girlfriends. Some real girlfriends. A few elders and sisters got together as girlfriend and boyfriend.
Some elders participated in the local drug scene, kept separate apartments, rode motorcycles. Some purchased train passes and visited forbidden territory whenever they could. Others just wandered around in a daze.
The mission president bent over backward not to send anyone home.
I am of the impression that in some missions, minor infractions would get you sent home.
I am interested in the following questions:
Was the decision to send or keep based on the personality of the mission president?
Do the Brethren lay down a set of rules about how often and specifically for what offenses a missionary can be sent home?
Are missionaries being sent home today in large numbers? and for what?
Is it still considered a fate worse than death to be sent home?
Do modern missionaries get the impression that the failure to go on a mission will result in a "bad" life?
In my experience it's based on the personality and attitude of the mission president. First keep in mind that no mission president can send a missionary home. That decision is ultimately made by the Area Presidency and must be ratified by the missionary department. The area presidencies (usually 1st quorum types) are more removed from the individual missionaries, less benevolent and tend to be much more strict, black and white, even vengeful in their discipline.
Mission Presidents run the gamut. There are those that are hopeful climbers or just hard core and not personable. They would tend to involve the GA's in their decisions and show the appropriate level of disgust for variant behavior. Mission Presidents that connect with their missionaries and want what is best for them usually learn early on not to involve the area presidencies when problems arise, especially belated confessions. Once an MP involves the area pres he pretty much gives up control of the situation.
My MP (France, 1970) bragged to a small group of mishies that "I've never had to send anyone home, but I HAVE come close."
I wondered then if he had sent anyone home, he might be considered "less than perfect" by the suits.
The most "left wing" thing I heard about was an elder who left the mission to attend a rock concert. The MP heard about it in advance and went to the concert to bring the sinner home.
Another elder stole a porn magazine and was caught and arrested by the local police. The MP made him confess his "sin" to the whole mission in a letter. But he didn't send him home.
After I got home, another elder who is gay told me he used to sneak out whenever he could while his companion was asleep, to have sex with "men of the street." Apparently he was smart enough not to get caught.
I wish I would have done some of those thing. My mission might have been enjoyable, and I had at least one companion who would have been down for it. The most rebellion I would allow myself was taking naps on days other than P-day, or not talking to people on the bus about the gospel during my 15-minute ride to church. When my companion and other missionaries would do it, though, they sure made me feel bad.
I had sex over the course of about a month with my companion in 1985 and didn't get sent home. It's hard to say if it was policy, generosity, or just a *really* technical definition of what had to go where for it to move from "horseplay" (=foreplay) to "sex." Big mystery.
In retrospect, getting exed and sent home could have been the best thing for me. He did me no favors.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/05/2012 07:12PM by Inverso.
I went to te best once and the movies twice. Looking back I wish I has spent way more time at the beach. Me and all the guilty misshies were tattles on by a douche bag but none of us were sent home.
We had a guy who snuck out at night and went to a strip club and even he didn't get sent home. They'd much rather you stay on the mission than go home. More likely you'll end up a tithe payer that way.
Sending missionaries home for infractions shows the suits in the COB that you don't have control over your mission. Plus if you send a missionary home the Morg has to pay for the return plane ticket. That's why they threaten it all the time but they don't do it much.
There was a missionary in my mission in South America (late 90s) that was caught feeling up a 13-year-old girl. There are more graphic details than that. The mission president went ballistic and told him he was going home. Then he talked to the area presidency and they told him to keep him. If they send him home, he would probably fall away from the church and he would be lost forever. At least this way the president had another year to work with him on the repentance process.
when my son went on his mission to mexico, he arrived just as they were sending 22 missionaries home for one reason or another. they sent one home for getting married.
my mission pres wanted to send me home. SLC wouldnt let him.
there was one missionary who was a total A-hole in our mission. looking back he obviously knew MORmONISM was BS but for whatever WRONG reason he went on a mission anyway. He hated MORmONISM, but LOVED the church as something to emotionally batter stupid members with. I was a stupid member who was very serious about doing the work at the time. It was a brilliant plan from the mission office. We were put together. He thought it was great fun to make my life Hell just for his personal amusement. he insisted on insulting some investigators, after all, he loved to insult EVERYBODY. I had worked to pay for my mission, I had worked way too hard for that crap. He was having his mission paid for by some ward in central Utah. it was just a vacation/ diversion for him. He said he wanted to fight me, acted real tough. One day, I let him have his way. I knocked him out.
the MP wanted to send me home over it. SLc would n't let it happen. NOw I wish I would have insisted on going home myself at that point.
My first mission president, Omar Righi, often went out of his way to help missionaries in need and he had his wife kept a close eye on me when I was ill. I actually openly disagreed with him in a conference and rather than slap me down, he took me aside later and listened to what I had to say.
I spent some time in the mission home recovering from major surgery. During that period I was tasked with cleaning the files of the previous mission president. I read a couple of letters he wrote to his missionaries and was very moved by his kindness and compassion.
It turned out after my mission when I started working at the MTC, the former mission president whose letters I had read was working there as well. I got to know him and found he was every bit as kind and compassionate as his letter indicated.
a nevermo friend was telling me yesterday that she had an ex whose brother got really sick from black mold on his mission but they wouldn't let him go home. So he lies and says ok, well I had sex before I came here to my mission to get sent home but they still wouldn't let him leave!
I had a companion who was really, really sick and could hardly keep food down. She was terrified to go home to Centerville Utah because of the way she'd be treated if she didn't finish her mission. She said she'd be an outcast and always looked down upon. I told her many times that being sick was different but she told me I just didn't understand how things were in Utah, being from California and all.
From talking to my MP, I got the impression that he felt the same way. He didn't want to send his missionaries home to face that kind of shame and ridicule. He'd do whatever it took to keep them serving and feeling successful instead. Also, he told me that our investigators may or may not get baptized and may or may not stay active but a missionary is already very committed to the church and it was more important to keep him/her active and make his/her mission a success because they were already far into the church and the church had more invested in them. That's exactly how the MP explained it to me.
There was one elder on our mission who was the biggest screwup. His cousin was in the same mission and they always ended up as companions. The MP would try to place the screwup with someone else but it was always a disaster and he ended up back with his cousin. For almost two years, the cousin told me his mission was keeping his screwup cousin in the mission field. There was some overlap, so the cousin had about two months at the end of his mission, after the screwup returned home, to be a real missionary. It was a shame because the cousin could have converted lots of people. Just goes to show the mission is more about converting the missionary than the unwashed masses.
That's only a shame for the church that he couldn't have converted more because he was busy babysitting his cousin. For the rest of the world it's a good thing.
I had to have major surgery in Ecuador...I got the feeling from how my MP presented the surgery to my parents and his "revelations " to me that it ended up being a numbers game...If I had gone home, on the next transfers they would have actually had to close an area or merge it into 2 areas and there would have been a 3-some companionship... So I was forced to endure horrifying pain, a surgery in a 3rd world country and a horrible recovery that would have been a lot less time and pain if it had been done in the US...All in the name of god...
At the time, I didn't care that I would not have been able to return to Ecuador, or possibly finish my mission in the full 2 years. I just wanted to have an American Doctor operate on me. But "revelation" stands over common sense in TSCC...
I practically begged my mission president to send me home. I had been out about 19 months and couldn't take it one more second. After about 2 months of asking to be sent home I threatened to call the US Consulate and inform them my passport was being held against my will. I was home 2 days later.