Tomorrow, April 13th, will be the 33 year anniversary of the day I came home from my mission.

Every year I celebrate April 13 as a personal holiday. A day that brought me so much happiness and joy, I still cannot find the perfect words to describe the feelings of joy and happiness I felt knowing my mission prison sentence was done. I invite all of you to celebrate with me the day of my release from the hellhole known as the Virginia Roanoke Mission.

What say you my fellow RMs? How do you remember the last day of your mission? Can you still remember the intensity of relief of knowing that your days of having to get up and go tracting again for the umpteenth time were done? Do you remember the relief of knowing that you could start being a real person again, have time alone again, be with your girlfriend again, listen to music of your choice again, eat good food again, and to be called by your first name again? Help me celebrate this day by sharing your stories of your last day and how happy you felt knowing it was over. Many here would love to read about the joy you felt.

Below is the account of my last day. It’s a little long and some of you have seen this before. For those who have not, enjoy.


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The happiest day I have ever known was the last day I had to spend in the Virginia Roanoke Mission. That day was Friday, April 13, 1979. For me, it is a date that lives in infamy. My time in the Virginia Roanoke mission was finally over! That Friday the 13th was a lucky day and I have celebrated every April 13th since then as a personal holiday.

On that wonderful Friday, I woke up 6:30AM, showered, dressed, and sat down to a bowl of Captain Crunch while my companion showered. Sitting there alone, and seeing my bags packed lying on my bed, I realized that I would never have to sleep on that saggy bed and wake up to another morning of going tracting from this or any other cockroach infested dump again. With each spoonful of Captain Crunch, my mind began a mental list of things I would never have to do again. The list included the following.

1. I would never have to go out and knock on another door and try to convince an already happy person that they could become happier if they gave up 10% of their money, sacrificed their weekends to perform smothering religious duties from endless callings, alienated themselves from family and friends, and eventually act out disemboweling themselves while dressed up as the Pillsbury dough boy inside a building shaped like a bowling trophy. (Talk about a tough sell)

2. I would never again have to ride a bicycle in a suite sweating like a pig in the Virginia summer heat and humidity or suffer frostbite in the bone chilling Virginia winters. (I now hate bicycles and never can bring myself to get on one anymore.)

3. I would never have to eat starchy crap for food because of no money. (Pasta dishes of any kind are no longer a block in my food pyramid.)

4. I would never again have to endure undeserved ridicule from any DL, ZL, AP, or from a pinhead GA-wannabe insurance salesman mission president named Frank A. Moscon. (He is dead now and I could not be less sad. I hope his death was slow & painful.)

5. I would never again set myself up in a situation that produces suicidal depression and loneliness.

6. I would never again spend another Christmas away from loved ones. (I only worship Santa now. Old Joe has been thrown into the dumpster.)

7. I would never again be shackled to some dude that I did not want to be with 24/7.

8. I would never again be deprived of the enjoyment of music of my choice.

9. I would never again live to a set of idiotic and double-bind rules while performing a smothering life-sucking religious duty.

10. I would never again be deprived of the love, the touch, and kiss from a woman.

11. I would never again respond to anyone calling me "Elder Flash".

12. I would never again……….

My fellow RM’s, you know this list is almost endless.

Oh, what joy and happiness I felt as I thought about the things I would not have to do anymore. I sat there relishing the thoughts of being home again, restarting my life again, being with my girlfriend Kathy again, and being called by my first name again. I was so happy that as I poured myself another heaping bowl of “Captain Crunch” with half of the cereal ending up on the table. Oh well, I might as well let the kitchen’s cockroaches celebrate with me. When I finished eating, I just threw the empty bowl in the sink thinking “let the next sucker Elder clean it. I am outta here.”


MY LAST BUS RIDE IN VIRGINIA
This particular morning seemed so fresh and alive. Since I had not had such a wonderful morning for 2 years, and I almost forgot what it was like to live again. My escape from the Virginia Roanoke Mission was beginning. As I carried my 2 bags down to the car, I started singing to myself the song by “The Who”, “….No time left you… on my way to better things…I got myself some wings….”

I had to go to the mission home to get my plane tickets so I booked a seat on the local Greyhound mini-van bus to Roanoke. I said my goodbyes to my companion and the other two Elders in my district. When I got into the van, I looked out the window at my fellow Elders for the last time. The looks on their faces were of envy and jealousy. I knew they were wishing so hard to be in my place. Their Friday would be another lonely day of mind numbing tracting but not mine. I never had to knock on another door again. I waved at them, turned away, and never looked back. When the van started to leave the bus terminal, I let out a huge audible sigh.

The early morning ride to Roanoke took about an hour. Passing through and out of the Martinsville/Collinsville area and north on to the main highway toward Roanoke, I mumbled to myself a quiet ‘good riddance’ and also mumbled ‘good riddance’ to some particular members of the branch there who had caused me so much unnecessary pain. Never again would I have to put up with their nonsense.

I spent the journey relaxing and watching the countryside go by. Being the only passenger made the journey even more relaxing. For the first time in 2 years, I was enjoying all of the green foliage of the area without a growing feeling of dread of having to start tracting in another new area once the journey was through. Every transfer, I always dreaded starting over again with knocking on doors that previous Elders had knocked on and were told to get lost.

Knowing that this was my last bus ride in Virginia and the start of a journey that would end with me at home and free from this mission hellhole made me feel giddy inside. I felt like a little boy going to Disneyland for the first time.

I tried starting a conversation with the bus driver to end the silence and this was proving difficult. The bus driver knew I was a Mormon missionary by the way I was dressed and the tell-tale nametag. He was reluctant to talk with me because he thought I would start talking Mormonism to him. Sensing this, I told him that I was going home today and had no intention of discussing any aspect of religion or Mormonism. I said this as I took off my name tag and put it in my pocket as he watched. He then began to open up and talk with me.

We had a fun conversation all the way to Roanoke. We talked about his job and the unusual cargo he has carried and about his poor experiences with other missionaries he had bussed around. He also commented that I was not like any of the other Elders he met before. He said I was genuine in my demeanor and well mannered and was glad I did not try to convert him.

When we rolled into the Roanoke bus station around 8:30am, there waiting for me were a couple of office Elders to drive me to the mission home.


IN THE BELLY OF THE BEAST FOR THE LAST TIME
My plane was to leave Roanoke for Washington DC at 11:30am. The next day I would hop on another plane at Dullus International and fly to California. I also had made previous arrangements for someone to pick me up and give me a condensed tour of the Washington DC area. In order to do this, I made up the story to the mission home a month before saying that I wanted to go through the Washington DC temple before departing home and for them to create an itinerary for me to do this.

Little did they know that my real goal was to only see the nation’s capitol on the church’s dime while at this end of the U.S. It felt good to know that I was able to scam them successfully and it proved to me once again that the mission leadership had the inspiration of a fence post.

At the mission home, it was so nice to just sit knowing that I did not have to do any sort of missionary work or answer to anyone, not to a DL, or a ZL, or the AP office elders, and best of all not to that pinhead mission president. Now I only answered to me.

I found a nice La-Z-boy chair in the mission home’s common area to sit and pass the time until I had to leave for the Roanoke airport. I began reading several magazines such as NewsWeek, Time, and National Geographic. I was 2 years behind on news and it was so refreshing to read something other than some shallow church publication.

After a half hour of reading, I noticed six new elders had arrived from an earlier flight fresh from the MTC. They looked so depressed, sleep deprived, and downcast. They reminded me of how depressed I felt when I first showed up at this mission home 2 years earlier. I felt a wave wash over me of sickly sorrow and pity seeing them. However, those feelings were washed away by a delightful tsunami rush of knowing that my hell hole was over. Their hell holes were just beginning but I was leaving in just 30 MINUTES!!

The new elders saw me reading “unapproved” material and asked why I was there by myself with no companion, I told them that my mission ended today and I was on my way home. Hearing this, a few of them looked like they were going to breakdown judging from the glassy look of their eyes. Two of them looked at me with such jealousy it was palpable.

If somehow they could know the depths of depression, loneliness, and hellish living that awaited them for the next two years, they would probably go into the restroom and slice each other’s wrists. To think that they would have to put up with that pinhead President Moscon and his idiocy made me smile knowingly at them but I did not taunt them about going home. I had at least that much civility left in me after my two years of hell.

I refused to go and have the customary last interview with the mission president. Because of the falling out that I had with him 4 months earlier, would change my mind about talking one last time with that bastard. Any communication with him had been terminated.

His clueless wife, Loya, tried to order me to talk with her MP husband but looking up from my NewsWeek magazine, I gave her a look that would shrivel a rock, said nothing, and went back to my reading. She huffed off and was probably thinking “how dare this lowly elder brush me off.” I didn’t care anymore because they were now persons non-grata.


ONE LAST ROUND OF AP ELDER ARROGANCE
Time was getting close for me to be at the Roanoke airport so I asked one of the AP elders for my plane tickets. A family from my last area had come to drive me to the airport and see me off and I no longer wanted to spend any more time in that mission home. Being there was serving no purpose and I would rather be elsewhere.

This AP elder spouted off to me that only the mission president could give me the tickets (that he held in his hand) and that I did not have his or the MP's permission to leave the mission home yet. Oh, so arrogant to the end, I thought. But I, being of much larger stature, pulled him aside into an empty hallway, and in a still small voice, told him that if he did not give me my plane tickets, this would be his last day as a fully functional human being. I told him this as I was “helping” him tighten the knot of his tie. Needless to say, he loosened his grip on my tickets and I pulled them from his hand.

With plane tickets in hand, I walked out of that mission home with my two bags, got into the backseat of the car of the family that came to see me off, and we drove away toward the airport. Breathing a huge sigh of relief as we reached the airport, I reached over to my nametag and quietly slipped it into my coat pocket.

I was finally done being a missionary.


THE FLIGHT OUT OF THE VIRGINIA ROANOKE HELLHOLE
At the drop-off curb, I said my goodbyes and gave final hugs to the family that brought me there, and after they left, I checked in my bags and walked up to the gate boarding area. Once there, reality really hit me that I was finally alone to do as I please. It was such a thrill to be alone and not be watched over, and after being tied to someone 24/7 for two years, it felt sooooooooo good to just be alone. I always cherished my alone-time and to have it stripped from me for 2 years proved to be very hard on me.

It may seem hard to imagine why being alone was such a wonderful experience. But when you have someone around you 24/7 for 2 years watching where you are, what you say, who you talk to, what you are reading, what you are wearing, and what you eat, being alone and accountable to no one is so refreshing its beyond words. Only Mormon missionaries or people in prison would understand.

While I waited for the call to board, I decided to purge my Mormon missionary looks and accoutrements so I collected together my nametag, the missionary white handbook, and a big envelope of mission completion papers I was given at the mission home. Looking around and finding the nearest trash bin, I walked over to it and tossed it all in creating a big thud noise as it hit the bottom of the bin.

Watching that crap disappear into that bin brought on another wave of relief. I stood there by the bin for a few moments letting it sink in that I was finally done being a missionary. I realized I now had a first name again. I was no longer ‘Elder Flash’. I had no more tell-tale nametag, no more “white” handbook of smothering rules, and no more of anything to remind me of being a missionary. The only papers I had were my tickets. I jokingly imagined how these tickets were the “papers” I needed to enable my escape from this iron curtain country called a mission.

To finish the purging my missionary look, I went into the restroom with my carry-on bag and found an empty large stall. Once inside, I removed my suite coat, vest, and tie and stuffed them into my bag. I then took out of my bag a nice blue colored dress shirt that I had been saving for a year for going home and changed shirts.

I literally ripped off that old white shirt popping off most of the buttons in the process. It felt so good to get out of that white shirt. I just threw the white shirt into the garbage. I did think about flushing it down the toilet but refrained myself from such amusement. From that moment, I have never worn a white shirt again to this day.

Now wearing my non-missionary attire, I was able to sit next to anyone without making them feel uncomfortable. I found myself a seat and happily noticed that the people who I sat next to did not even care who I was or look at me funny. I was just another fellow flyer. It was so liberating and refreshing to be a normal person again after 730 days. I quietly celebrated my new transformation by imbibing in an evil can of Dr. Pepper I got from the vending machine.

About 45 minutes later, the call to board was announced. I walked out onto the tarmac, up the stairs to the airplane’s hatch, and I found my window seat. With everyone boarded and the hatch shut, the plane began pulling away from the gate. It seemed like it took forever for that plane to taxi to the end of the runway to get ready to take off. As it did so, I mumbled to myself, "Oh please let there be no mechanical problems." I could not bear the prospect of returning to the gate. I wanted so badly to be out of Virginia and as far away from Roanoke as I could get.

When the plane roared down the runway, lifted off, and its wheels no longer touched Virginia soil, I felt inside this feeling like poison was draining out of my body. Two years of missionary poison that cankered my soul was beginning to drain away. The higher and faster the plane went, the faster the poison seemed to drain. What joy I felt being whisked away from that god-awful mission. For two miserable years I longed for this day to come. I felt like I was dreaming but I realized I was really on my way home! “Is it really true?” I thought.

From my window seat, I looked down at the Virginia countryside and contemplated about how two precious years of my young life were forfeited and wasted there; Two whole years, where instead I could have been in college finishing my electrical degree, while enjoying time with Kathy, and just living happily. I thought about the missed Christmases, the missed birthdays, my brother’s wedding I missed, and the long separation from Kathy. Sitting in that airplane trying to comprehend all my feelings of relief, joy, and happiness of knowing that I did not have to care about missionary work ever again was beyond words.

I was given a complimentary can of Coca Cola on the plane, and as I sipped the blessedly caffeinated drink, I amused myself with thoughts of some poor Elder below looking up at my plane as he endlessly tracted and wishing with all his heart to be in my seat. I imagined how I was mocking him by staring out the window at him and knowing I was the one here and not him. I was the one rising higher and higher and escaping. I was the one flying away leaving only a contrail behind for him to see. Today was my day. I was free. Sipping my Coke, I thought about the last time a flight attendant offered me a Coke two years ago when I was depressed and sobbing as I left for that Salt Lake Mission home. Such a contrast, I thought.


THE MINI-TOUR
In less than an hour the plane landed at National Airport in Washington DC and I found the person who I previously arranged to meet. My plane to California would leave Dullus International the next day so, according to our previous arrangements, he provided me a mini-tour by driving around the Washington mall area in his TR7 showing me the White House, the Lincoln Memorial, and the other mall monuments.

He was very nice and treated me to McDonalds. We got along great and he said that he knew how I felt being released from the ‘mission prison system’ as he called it. He also was an RM and he said he could see the relief all over my face. He told me he understood how I was feeling inside. What he did not know is that I was also reveling in my joy that I was successful in pulling the wool over the AP elders’ & MP’s eyes to set up my itinerary to allow for this mini-tour while they thought I wanted to go through the Washington DC temple. I got the last laugh on them.

After the Washington Mall mini-tour, we got on the DC beltway to go to his place for the night. We approached where the Washington DC temple is located and when I saw it, I felt nothing inside. It had no significance to me as it was just another symbol of an ungrateful church. I was asked if I wanted to see it up close but I politely said no. Puzzled by my reaction he passed by the temple exit and I did not give the place a second glance.

Soon we arrived at his place. He gave me the use of one of the spare bedrooms of his luxury apartment. That night I had a nice long hot shower where I scrubbed off two years of missionary dirt and disgust. I soaped myself up several times just to watch the water rinse the disgust away over and over again. I must have stayed in there for over an hour.

In bed, I laid there pondering over the day’s experiences. What a day, I thought. I woke up in a hot & humid, cockroach infested dump for the last time, brushed off the MP and his clueless wife, bodily threatened an AP for my plane tickets, transformed from Elder Flash to Flash, flew away from the hellhole known as the Virginia Roanoke mission, toured the Washington DC mall, and ended up in this nice place for the night.

It was so wonderful to have this day and night for myself after slaving for two years with no time off and no diversion. I no longer said nightly prayers anymore. They were never answered anyway so done were the useless nightly prayers and done was the rigid schedule of sleep & wake up times with tracting to dread in the morning. I felt so refreshingly free.

That night was the first night in two years that I got to watch the “Tonight Show” and have a radio sing me to sleep. An air conditioner droned in the background keeping me cool all night as I slept. Gone forever was the nightly ritual of trying to find sleep while in the silent & relentlessly hot and humid air of Virginia. Life was really looking up.


THE FLIGHT TO CALIFORNIA AND HOME
Early the next morning, I arose with great anticipation of being home at the end of the day. I dressed myself in “normal” clothes as I was not about to sit for 6+ hours dressed in a suite. I was driven to Dullus International to catch my flight to California. I thanked my friend/tour guide graciously at the curb, checked in my bags, found my gate, and sat down to wait for the boarding call. Again, it felt wonderful not wearing the telltale nametag or the clothes that screams Mormon Missionary; No suite, no vest, no tie, no white shirt, just comfortable clothes. Nobody called me "Elder" or avoided sitting next to me. I was just another traveler.

An hour later, the boarding call was made. My plane to California was a large TWA with relatively spacious economy class. Way better than the cramped Piedmont Airlines I showed up in two years ago. I found my window seat and settled myself in for a nice long journey. The plane was only two thirds full so I had two empty seats next to me where I could stretch out my legs and sleep if I wanted to. I glanced over at the cabin door as they closed it and thought that when it opens again, dry California air would rush in signaling that I was home.

The plane pulled away from the gate, taxied to the end of the runway, straightened out, and then its four engines came to life. Faster & faster did we roll down the runway and near the very end did the plane slowly lift off and began the 6+ hours journey west toward California. A wonderful rush of happiness fell over me.

I gazed at the countryside passing underneath the plane for hours while music flooded my brain from the in-flight music selections from "The Bee Gees" to "Bread". The music seemed to act like Scrubbing Bubbles detoxifying my brain of mission gooey. Oh, how happy I was and how relieved I was to know I would be home by the end of the day. I made a point to assure myself again that I was really here and not in some lucid dream that would end with an alarm clock waking me up in Martinsville to go out tracting again. I shuddered and almost puked at the thought.

For the 6+ hours it took to fly home, I simply decompressed by listening to music and watching two movies that 48 hours ago were considered “evil”. I just relaxed thinking that life was good. The food on the flight tasted quite good probably because it was so much better than the crap I had been eating for so long as a missionary. I finished both meals completely plus 4 cans of Dr. Pepper plus whatever cookies I could persuade the flight attendant to steal for me.

As the plane flew over Utah, I looked down and thought about that “Bad Boy’s Reform School nightmare” week I spent in the Salt Lake Mission Home two years previous. During my mission is when the church started up the MTC with the domestic Elders spending one month there. How lucky I was to avoid that. I could not imagine spending a month in that nightmare. I imagined mocking those new elders in the MTC below as they looked up at the contrail my plane was leaving behind. I am going home while they were stuck in that prison camp.

I also thought again of those poor Elders back in Virginia just starting out. How was their 2nd day in the Virginia Hell hole? What dark thoughts do they now have about their pinhead MP? A wave of pity for all of them occupied my mind for about five seconds but those thoughts were washed away for good with a tsunami of happy thoughts of being home where I would be loved and wanted and free. Those poor new Elders and the Virginia Roanoke Mission felt so far away now and of no importance and the relentless roar of the jet engines seemed to magnify that feeling.

Later I looked out the window again and saw Lake Tahoe where the California/Nevada state line is. The plane began to slow & descend. Oh God, is it really true? Am I really almost home?


HOME AGAIN
When I walked out of the jet way, all my family was there to meet me. I cried seeing them and hugged them more than I ever had done before. It was the first time I ever cried because I was happy. I could not believe I was with them again.

Kathy was also there to meet me. To see her standing there after two long years brought another rush of tears to my eyes. Is it really her? How much more beautiful she had become. At twenty one now, she was a very pretty woman. I rushed over to her and we gave each other a very-very long hug and a deep kiss. I did not want to let go of her. I missed her so much. I kissed off (pun intended) the bullshit that I was still a missionary until being released by the Stake President. I was threw being a missionary the moment I left that goddamn mission home and nothing was going to keep me from Kathy any longer.

The hugs and kiss I received from Kathy, after missing her for two miserable lonely years, poured peace into my soul in such a way that I have never found adequate words to do justice in describing how I felt. Only those who have gone through this can understand what I am talking about. The English language is just too inadequate to paint a proper frame of reference for someone who has not gone through the trauma of a Mormon mission and returned.

No event in my life has ever produced such an intensity of relief and happiness as the day I came home from my mission. For those who had the courage to overcome the pressures to serve a mission and not go; coming home was not like coming back from college or summer camp. It was like coming back from the dead.

NO MORE GHOSTS IN VIRGINIA
To you exmos who live in Virginia, please don’t think that I am trashing your home. Virginia is a very pretty place and after my mission, my wife & I have visited there a few times. Each time it was in the fall when all the colors are changing and my wife and I are always overwhelmed with the beauty.

I also visited a few of the places where I served as a missionary. In those places, the old familiar feelings of dread tried to come alive again. But with my adorable Malaysian wife at my side, those ugly memories & feelings of dread were crushed forever with her help. The missionary ghosts from the past have been slain and the ugly mission memories of pain are now in graves never to be given new life. I am free now of any mission ghosts and I look forward to visiting Virginia again when the opportunities arrive.

greatest day of my life...

I felt liberated .. last few weeks of my mission I slept in my

suitcase.

I read this story every year and every year I cheer for you and your freedom...

I do happen to come from Virginia and I'm glad you've found something to love about the place, despite your mission experience! It's a shame you had to waste two years being an indentured servant to TSCC.

For some reason I was depressed today--then I read your story and couldn't stop smiling.

Almost everyone on this board can remember their own personal "FREEDOM DAY".

If their "FREEDOM DAY" wasn't the last day of their mission, it was the last day they were active in the church, or the day they sent in their resignation papers!

I am now getting out my old calendar to see if I can identify my own "FREEDOM DAY" date. It was exactly two weeks after I blessed my youngest at church, that was 20 years ago!

I can't tell you how happy I'm starting to feel already.

Count your many blessings!

Great story. Just a few questions if you are willing to go deeper. When you left your mission, did you completely leave the church as well? How did your family, girlfriend, and friends react when you told them about how much hell your mission was? Did you still "play the game" and speak in your ward and other wards about how great your mission was?

Again, great story. I did not go on a mission because I knew it would've been two years of hell since I didn't really believe. Your story made me think of the moment in Shawshank Redemption when he is celebrating in the rain after escaping prison. Great uplifting moment watching that movie just as it was a great moment reading your story.

To answer your questions, Archaeologymatters, here is what transpired after I came home. Sorry for its length.

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I did report to the Stake President and High Council where I was officially “released”…yeah, right. I was asked if I would like to speak in the other wards to encourage the young men to serve missions. I had to refrain myself so hard from saying “F**K, NO” to his face that I thought my teeth would shatter. I politely declined.

After I left the high council room and began driving home, it occurred to me that I did not even get a pat on the back or even a thank you from the Stake President or High Council for making it through this hellish mission. It was just like I got released from being a Sunday school teacher or some other useless make-work calling. It was one of those WTF moments when you realize that nobody cared or gave a damn or even acknowledged any of your efforts, sacrifices, or pain in completing a horrendous task.


WHAT THIS MISSION EXPERIENCE DID TO ME
Allowing myself to be coerced to serving a mission turned out to be the most damning decision I had ever made. Looking back, I saw how serving this mission short-circuited my dreams and aspirations. I lost two precious unrecoverable years of my youth being a salesman for Joe Smith and his revolting church. I was now 21 and two years behind in college.

I did not come home a “saturated sponge” dripping with the spirit, instead I came home feeling like an old dried out chamois. Spiritually, I was wounded fatally. For those two years I stagnated. I did not grow financially because I was not paid. I did not grow socially because I was not allowed social interactions and I did not grow academically because I just read the same four books for two years. I did not grow spiritually or emotionally because I had been used, abused, stepped on, lied to, humiliated, and condemned constantly by my leaders for any imperfections no matter how trivial.

The Lord never answered my prayers in any form or ever provided me a warm feeling that what I was doing was true & worthwhile. I was now worn out and fed up with God, and everything about the Mormon Church. The whole missionary experience left me extremely bitter and I am now convinced that the Mormon Church is the only church on Earth that persecutes its own missionaries.

THE WARD FOOLS
Now at home, it took about four weeks of spending some time alone, listening to lots of music, and spending as much time as I could with Kathy to get back mentally where I left off two years prior. In today’s computer parlance, I needed four weeks to completely reboot my system back to its former self. I did not need drugs or therapy. Kathy was my drug and being home where I was loved was my therapy.

I could never bring myself to give some glossy rosy answer to people when they asked me how my mission was. I would tell whoever asked that it was the worst experience I have ever had and regretted going. People who never served a mission were stunned that I would say that because that kind of talk is so not allowed in the church. Others that asked me, who had served missions, just replied back that they understood because they knew where I was coming from. They knew the unspoken truth of what a mission is really all about and the lonely misery that attends it.

I told the Bishop not to bother asking me to speak to the younger boys about my mission because I would tell it like it is and I would not whitewash out the bad experiences. I also informed him that I could never, in good conscience, encourage anyone to serve a mission, and if I ever had a son, I would discourage him heavily from wasting his time doing so.

He was very irked to say the least but after telling him these things, he never gave me any calling that had anything to do with the youth of the ward or any calling at all. That was fine by me as I was already on my way out the door from Mormonism and I needed to get back into college and finish my degrees in electronics so I would not end up some dumbshit unable to feed my face for the rest of my life.


LOSS OF KATHY BUT BACK INTO COLLEGE
After being back for about four months, I lost the love of my life. Kathy drifted away from me toward someone else and ironically, it was a non-member. It was a very bitter loss to me as I loved her more than I could ever express to anyone. For those two years, she was all I thought about, dreamed about, and was the only thing that kept me from committing suicide as a missionary. I can only speculate that I loved her more than she loved me or maybe being away for two years was just too long for the relationship to withstand the changes in each of us. I will never know but it became evident to me that I was gone too long and it was everlastingly too late to make up two years of lost time.

I have often thought of what could have been if we could have been together. I know I would have loved her and cherished her with all my heart, given her a very good living and lifestyle, and would have supported her in all the things she told me she wanted to do. It pains me to know that she married a man that, from my observations of him, does not even love her. But Kathy made her decision and where we are with our lives at any given moment is the sum of all our decisions. I wish her the best and hope she found happiness with him.

When I accepted she was truly gone, I felt I had lost a soul mate and someone of priceless value. I felt I lost someone so precious to me, I did not know if I could ever find someone else to fill the void in my life created by her absence. I was deeply depressed for many weeks. I was not able to hide my depression very well and several people asked me what was wrong but I could not really tell them as the loss was beyond my ability to put into words. I attempted to get close to a few other girls later on but none of them ever seemed to measure up to Kathy. She was one of a kind and not replaceable.

I did restart college the following fall semester after returning from Virginia in April, eventually obtained my electrical engineering degrees, and was hired by a major electronics manufacturer in Silicon Valley.


INTO A LOVELESS TBM MARRIAGE COLOSSAL MISTAKE
Somehow, a little over a year after I came home from Virginia, I found myself in a marriage to a TBM “white but not delightsome” woman. At the time it seemed the right thing to do, but a few years and two children down the road, the woman changed for the worse and I could see that I had made yet another very-very bad decision to marry so young because of the pressures from the Mormon Church.

Bitter quarreling began early in this marriage and it always revolved around the church whether it is tithing, church callings or not being home because of excessive church meetings. I also could not earn enough money in her eyes because she wanted and bought on credit many material things immediately that normally take years of work and savings to get.
In the 6th year of this “Celestial” marriage, she began to involve herself with a group of LDS women that were into the “Recovered Memories” fad nonsense of the late 1980’s. This group, which was run by a mormon convert con man in our ward, met weekly to share whatever so-called repressed memories that surfaced that week and would “process” them together to try and "heal" them.

This con man passed himself off as a licensed therapist and was billing these women’s insurance in order to get money. It was later learned that he never was licensed or trained to be a psychologist and had been fired from LDS Social Services for lying on his application.

Each week my ex-wife would come home after these sessions and start saying all kinds of horrible things about her family and how they sexually abused her etc….I knew where this would eventually end up, and that would be on me. But I still tried to salvage the marriage the best I knew how anyway.

Frequently I would do things for her such as clean the house myself or volunteer to take our children for the day so she could have a day to herself and many other similar things that would make the other wives in the ward jealous. It did get back to me that my wife would complain about me publicly in the ward and they could not understand why she would feel that way about me because their husbands would do little if any of the things I did for her. No matter what I did for her, or how much I showed that I loved her, she would brush it off as phony meaningless acts of bribes for her love.

I tried countless times to build up our relationship but you cannot build or repair a relationship with someone who does not and never considers you as a human being with feelings, wants, and rights. To them, you are an inanimate object and the only purpose you exist is to serve them, In their thinking, “how dare you complain to them” about how you feel or if your needs are not being met.

To make a long and bitter story short, I reached the end of my rope with her arguments, her ungratefulness, and her spending us into near bankruptcy. I was giving all and doing all I knew how to do at the time to make her happy and receiving nothing in return from her but disgust. After 8+ years of this hellhole ‘Celestial’ marriage, I decided I needed to divorce this female as quickly as possible.

It was a terrible and bitter divorce and compounding its bitterness was the Mormon Church supporting her financially and paying for her attorney while never offering me a penny for any of my legal expenses. Once again, I was experiencing firsthand how ungrateful the church was to me for being a faithful member & missionary. In order to conclude the divorce process, I had to threaten the Stake President and the Mormon Church with a lawsuit in order to stop the church from providing her cash to use against me as I found myself in the position of my limited funds vs the unlimited funds of the Church.

The Bishop of her ward attempted to pressure me into paying back the money they spent for her welfare needs (even though I was still paying all her bills) saying that it was a loan from the church that I was responsible for. When I asked that Bishop to provide me with the Truth-in-Lending documents and loan note with my signature for this money, he quit hounding me.

My ex-wife became such a nutcase that her own family encouraged me to divorce her as quickly as possible. A few of her siblings had to move across the US to get away from her because of her false accusations of abuse. I even received at work a couple of death threats from the ward members. Are the Danites back?

Several times during the divorce process, her own lawyer would scold her because of her unreasonableness to conclude the divorce proceedings even after I gave her everything. Her lawyer could not believe that she wanted to drag on and on the process after I gave her everything and her half of the equity of the house. I kept the house. I guess her lawyer told her to end it or she would cease to represent her because the divorce process finally ended. I was now free of that female for good. What a relief it was to not have to deal with such an unbalanced person ever again.

My ex-wife also successfully poisoned our two children against me and so I have not seen them for over twenty two years. To bring closure to this bitter chapter of my life and for keeping my sanity concerning my children, I have declared them dead and moved on.

I learned later from others that my ex-wife had privately told them, years before our divorce, that she never loved me from the start of the marriage and only married me to get out of her poverty and that maybe she could “learn” to love me. Hearing this made all the pieces fall together for me as to why she never returned my love. She had none to begin with. So that Spencer W. Kimball nonsense that “two people living the gospel could make a marriage” is a bowl of shit and I have in front of me the divorce papers to prove it.

After going through all this and losing my children forever, any smoldering embers of faith I might have had in the divinity of the Mormon Church or any embers of faith that God cared about me in any way where extinguished, never to be re-lighted.

Families are forever…yeah, right.


THE END OF THE MORMON COMEDY FOR ME
After my divorce was final, my mother wanted me to find another TBM woman to marry, but looking at what my choices of TBM women were, knowing I would most likely end up on the same old endless Mormon treadmill with a good chance of ending up with another bipolar, high conflict woman, I told her “NEVER AGAIN!”

I did humor my mother's wishes just once by calling a TBM woman in her ward that was in her late twenties but had not married yet and still lived with her parents. I asked her out and she told me to wait a moment so she could check her calendar. But as I waited for her reply, she forgot to cover her end of the phone and I could hear her mother in the background telling her to not get involved with me because I was divorced with baggage. Needles to say, she declined my offer for a date. “Thanks Sister Whitmer for providing your assessment of me to your daughter.” I said to myself.

After she hung up the phone, I now knew where I stood in the eyes of the church. As a divorced man, no one in the Mormon Church wanted anything to do with me. I was damaged and unclean.

MAJOR LIFE RESET
I cannot think of a more damning yard stick to hold up to the Mormon Church than the scripture, “By their fruits ye shall know them”. This one verse summed it up and showed me that I had to jettison this toxic religion from my life or I was going to be forever miserable.

Now that I was living alone again, I decided that I needed to perform a major reset on my life if I was going to be happy going forward. I sat down one evening and told myself that I needed to take care of me. I needed to come first now for I had spent too many calories on the Mormon Church’s needs or programs before my own and never ever received any positive ROI. The two year mission investment returned nothing but anguish and pain and the investment into eight plus years of a loveless ‘”Celestial” marriage produced nothing but heartache & hopelessness.

As I sat there, I began looking back at my whole life, studying what went wrong for the first thirty years, and concluded that every major episode of unhappiness, strife, emotional trauma, or poor decision making I experienced was directly connected to the Mormon Church; every single episode. I concluded from my analysis that I would never again allow any of the nonsense of Mormonism to cloud my judgment again or taint my happiness in any way or come between myself and any woman I want to attempt a relationship with.

Not too long after my divorce, I was introduced to a Malaysian girl who worked at my company’s assembly plant in Penang. At first, this relationship was a long distance relationship and it worked quite well because we had access to the company’s phones and to inter-company email & VMS chat capability. This was before the internet as we know it today so we had in essence the equivalent of today's email, Instant Messaging, and an audio Skype. We were ahead of our time in 1990.

Over the course of a year we phoned each other every day, wrote email, and also posted snail-mail to each other. I took a month vacation to Malaysia to spend time with her and later she came to the US to spend a month with me. Over time, we fell in love with each other & we both felt we were made for each other. A lot of her interests were similar to mine and we both enjoyed each other’s company tremendously.

Being very cautious to not make a marriage mistake again, I made sure that she really loved me as much as I loved her. I determined that she did. I felt I found a soul-mate again and we married a year later. I am still happily married to this Malaysian girl and how wonderful it is to be in a real marriage where real love is returned for real love given. I can say with conviction that there is nothing sweeter than receiving the genuine love of an Asian woman.

We now have a beautiful daughter who is an academic genius now attending the best engineering university in the world, and I have gone out of my way to keep her and my wife untarnished by any facet of Mormonism or its nonsense. I have a beautiful home and a career that pays well into six figures. I am richly blessed and I know it and I owe none of it to old Joe and his revolting church and no penny from my pocket will ever find its way into their coffers.

A few years after I married my Malaysian sweetheart, I formally resigned my membership in order to stop any efforts to “reactivate” me. I will never go back. It would be, to me, like going back to your dinner plate full of your vomit and trying once again to down an unpleasant meal.

I can truthfully say that I have never been happier having Mormonism and all of its painful baggage out of my life. Of course, in life there are bad days here and there. Nobody is immune from that but the vast majority of days have been very happy ones.

In a perverse way, I am grateful for my mission driving in the wedge that opened up my eyes allowing me to see from within, the rot of the church, and enabling me to find the escape hatch from Mormonism. I escaped from living a horrible, meaningless, and hollow existence.

It has been over 20 years since I have left the Mormon Church and I have not missed it at all. I am grateful to be done with it. My Mormon experience is nothing more than a grave now. Sometimes I go put flowers on that grave but I walk away with happiness in my heart and pride in myself that I found the knowledge, courage, and strength to escape from Mormonism intact.

I was married to an RM for 24 months. For whatever reason he couldn't keep his pants on, so I divorced him. I was 20, with no children. Mormons had no problem letting me know I was used goods. I was more than insulted.

I stayed single until I was almost 30 before I married a never mo. I would never, ever marry within the mormon church again. Even though I was bic and the bishops daughter, it was a nightmare I don't care to revisit. I'm so glad my kids have married nevermo's and have left the church.

"I will never go back. It would be, to me, like going back to your dinner plate full of your vomit and trying once again to down an unpleasant meal."

Well said!

your story is well worth reading once a year....you nailed it.

That is exactly how I felt. It was the happiest day of my life...there have been a few better ones after the mish, but to a 21 year old, it does not get any better than getting home from that 2 year tour of duty.

Was an 8 month convert about 11 years ago so I never had the "pleasure" of doing missionary thingy. That's at least the 2nd time I've read that story and it gets better every time. I feel your relief in your words.

I'm so happy for you!

So glad you posted that. It was a very emotional read for me. I will never forget either how I felt getting on that plane to leave, finally. I couldn't even admit to myself how horrible it had all been. I was still in zombie mode on the plane, wouldn't even have a coke.

Thanks.

Strangely, the only thing I remember about that day in 1973 was the flight home from So Cal to Montana and afterwards. I remember nothing about being taken to the airport, being at the mission home, nada.

There was a layover in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, but not long enough to even get off of the plane. I remember I was in my suit, but couldn't wait to get home. My family met me and it was great to see everyone, but I just wanted to get home and put on a pair of jeans and my boots. As soon as I did that, I borrowed my Dad's car and drove about 15 miles to the Stake President's home where he released me. I can recall having a really strange but delightful feeling at being alone in a car flying down the Montana highways with no speed limit.

One of the most surprising feelings I felt coming home was the stark contrast of walking on dirt rather than cement or asphalt. My feet had seldom touched real dirt for 2 years - I wanted to just savor the feeling of how it felt to walk on real earth. And I did not want to talk much about being a missionary - that was done and over, all I wanted to see was what was in front of me.

Thanks for sharing. Way to thread a good love story into it!

I'm also curious about your exit from the Church after that.

"For those who had the courage to overcome the pressures to serve a mission and not go..." Have you ever read "The Things They Carried," by Tim O'Brien? This line of yours reminds me of a situation he laid out. Braver to suit up and head to Vietnam, or to escape to Canada and avoid the draft, in the face of patriotism?

Not a good comparison; just what came to mind.

Loved the story, again. I, too, want to know whether you dropped church right then, or how long you stayed in.

I really enjoyed reading this...thanks for posting it:)

Wow...just amazing. I so feel for you and what you experienced. I *was* a convert stayed 12 long years and have been out officially for a month. I too had some really horrible experiences with missionaries, and was always shocked at how the TBMs rationalized "but they're just boys!" Some were arrogant and rude. I felt for the ones I could see were trying but were homesick, confused and couldn't answer my questions. I do live in Virginia, and felt no insult at your post!

Crap, I can relate to your divorce story too.

I accidentally erased everything I'd written! Just wanted to say thank you for sharing this flash. I wept when I read it, thinking of my own two boys, and the hell on earth (aka a Mormon mission) that I hope to help them avoid.

Your writing is really good and your descriptions of your experience come across very honest. Being a male in the LDS is not easy. Alot of young men are unable to express themselves and their feelings of why they don't want to go on a mission. This leaves them vey depressed because they know if they don't go or if they come home early, they will be damned and labled unworthy in the LDS community thus no girl would want to date them.

Hi Flash...

Thanks for your story...and every year it pierces my heart all the same...yet i still voraciously read it and vicariously feel it as a fellow RM.

I too experienced that wondrous marvelous feeling of freedom as only a returning missionary can experience.

After 2 whole years of selling Mo'ism door to door and having the opportunity of working in the Mission Office for a stint i finally realized what Mo'ism was about and had had my fill of it.

I essentially dumped my congenital religion on my plane ride home.

Thank you again for sharing it and in allowing me to reminisce in a positive way about the 2 worst years of my life.

Or so it seems to me...

###

Oh and by the way "skyblue1776" if you're reading this...please shove your comments where the sun don't shine.

Just saw you did tell more of your experience when you got home...so I shall delete what I wrote. Would like to know more about how your family took it-then and family now.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/12/2012 10:22PM by honestone.

Honestone, my family started to see about half way into my mission how horrible it was for me. My mother did kick herself very hard in not telling me that she would rather have me come home early than have me endure that mess for another year.

It was during my divorce that she could sense that I no longer had any desire for Mormonism. She did have hope that I would get with another TBM woman and eventually marry. But she also knew that I was looked upon as damaged goods by other Mormons.

When I announced to them that I was going to marry my Malaysian girl, it was my Dad that pulled aside my mother and told her to not discourage me in any way or look down on my decision because he saw how happy the Malaysian girl made me. It was a rare move for my father to do such a thing. He was a convert to Mormonism and I suspect he only converted to get my mother to marry him. He was more concerned about my happiness than what others in the ward might think.

My family has said to me that they don’t blame me one bit for my decision to toss the Mormon church into the dumpster even though they are all still active. We still are a family with no strained relationships due to Mormonism.

The day i came home from my mission, i had a date with a girl i barely knew. We dated one time before my mission, and then became pen pals. I remember fondly making out with her on a hill overlooking the lights of Palo Alto on the very evening of the day that i got released. The night was cold, so we were thickly dressed. The next time i saw her we did it right at a house where she babysat. She was a nevermo, and i was still somewhat entrenched in the church, so it didnt work out. It was fun while it lasted. So thats my only memory of the day i got released-making out with a girl i liked.
You know, flash, thats the second time i've read your stories, and i read them through all the way. Very well written, and i understand exactly how you felt about your mission.

Your post brought back both the unending dread and the sweet relief of ending it. The average LDS mission is a poorly conceived, poorly planned, poorly managed mess.

I remember the day I flew home and met my family at the airport. Beautiful.

If you brother went to the Massachusetts Boston Mission, he might have been my companion! Just Sayin

Well, it's about 30 years too late, but Welcome Home, MISTER Flash!


Thanks for sharing your experiences.


I was a lady, so nobody ever pressured me to go on a mission. It was "hurry up and get married," but fortunately, I found a good LDS man to marry.


So I really appreciate your sharing your story with us, and allowing me a glimpse into an experience I was fortunate enough to miss out on.

Happy homecoming day, Flash! Great story, and so glad you came out on the positive end. There's a missionary in our area now who is going home in May, and I have a strong feeling he feels the way you did, and will feel the way you did on his last day here. I really feel for these guys...some seem like robots, but some just seem so...SAD. Thanks for sharing.

I woke up early that Monday. Well let's be honest, we always got up early, but if I'm not mistaken, that day it was earlier than usual. It was the last day I was going to be a missionary and I wanted to catch the first bus out of town. I was serving in Gutierrez Zamora, Veracruz in Mexico. The Mission Office was located in the city of Veracruz. That was about two and half maybe three hours south, straight down the coast. I was hoping to catch the earliest bus so I would have the whole day in the city.

My mission took place at a time when missions were 18 months long. That would have been great except for the fact that right as I hit the halfway point, the church said, "My bad!" and decided to make them two years again. The good thing about it was we were given a choice on how long we wanted to serve. I could keep my original call or extend one to six more months if I wanted. Some missionaries didn't seem to think about it at all. They just immediately extended. More is always better right?

It wasn't that easy for me. Personally, I wanted to do what was "right" but I couldn't for the life of me figure out what that was. I prayed and prayed and prayed for an answer as to what God wanted me to do, but I got nothing for the longest time. After about a month of agony, I finally got my answer: stick with your original calling. This was great for me because I figured that if I changed my mind, I could always extend. However, I was pretty sure that if I extended then and decided I wanted to shorten it, I might get some grief. Would it surprise you to know that a lot of missionaries didn't believe me when I told them I had prayed to know what to do and was told to stick to 18 months? Yeah, I didn't think so.

But it was all over now and I was looking for a bus to take to the mission HQ. If I had really planned it, I would have taken the good bus line called ADO. When I say 'good' what I mean is you got an assigned seat. The other buses were more like school buses. We called them 'guajoloteros' which referred to the fact that they often included turkeys, chickens and other animals along with the people. A guajolote is the word most Mexicans use for Turkey. The Spanish word is 'pavo' but guajolote is Náhautl in origin. Its literal translation is big monster. I don't know how it evolved to mean turkey.

Besides the livestock, they liked to cram as many people as humanly possible onto these kind of buses. That meant you could end up standing for part or all of the journey. This was not a big deal if it was a short distance, but if you were traveling for a few hours, it was a major pain.

By the time I tried to get an ADO ticket, they were already sold out for that day. There was only one that went to Veracruz, so I knew I'd end up on a guajolotero. That was o.k. I had ridden on them before and it was going to be the last time. We lived about a mile from the bus station. I had two suitcases, plus a carry on so our landlord offered to drive us there. He was a good guy. He wasn't Mormon and we never once tried to teach him about the church. They had rented to the missionaries for years and I always assumed that if he wanted to hear anything, he would ask. I probably wasn't the world's greatest missionary.

As we got to the station, our landlord ejected the tape playing in the truck's stereo and gave it to me. A couple of months before, he had driven us to a zone conference in Poza Rica so we didn't have to spend money on the bus. On that trip, he had played the same tape during the drive. It was a Mexican band called El Grupo Audaz and I had mentioned how much I liked the music. He handed me the cassette and said, "So you don't forget your family here in Mexico." I was touched. He then hugged me goodbye and wished me a good journey.

My companion, my replacement and I all hopped out of the truck and took my stuff into the station waiting area. A couple of minutes later, two ward members came by to see me off. I was surprised because it was pretty early in the morning and they were both home on a break from school. I figured they would want to sleep. The church owned a private high school in Mexico City called Benemérito de las Américas. At one time, the church owned a lot of private schools down there, but they were beginning to divest themselves of those and this was one of the last, and biggest, ones around.

The bus finally came and to my horror, I couldn't get on. It was so packed full of people that I had to wait for the next one. I was pissed. I really wanted to get to Veracruz. My main mission was to purchase something for my grandmother. What I wanted to get her was a doll from Mexico. She was a collector and I happened to know that there was a store that specialized in dolls clothed in traditional Mexican dress right in the town of Veracruz. I knew because the mission president's wife, who was also a collector, told me about it.

So I waited. The next bus came about 30 minutes later. When I went to get on, the conductor informed us all that this bus would be traveling the long way to Veracruz: through the sierra region. This was going to take eight hours instead of three. Combine that with the fact that I was probably going to have to stand the whole way, I passed again. I had already loaded my bags on so I had to get them back off the bus.

Now I was very upset and totally stressed. I was looking at another hour to wait for the next bus. I was worried. What if I couldn't get to Veracruz today? Would I still be able to go home or would I have wait another month?

The bus finally came and the crowd to get on seemed just as big as last time. Someone decided to open the back door of the bus so I climbed in that way. My companion and friends handed me my bags which I had to place in the cargo area in the back. It made me nervous to be so far away from them. I wanted them in the luggage rack next to where I was, but there was simply no room. Of course I had to stand, but at least I was on the bus. I was only about two hours behind schedule. I looked down at my feet and there were two chickens in a little cage right up against my legs. I finally lightened up enough to laugh. This wasn't the first time I had a chicken with me on a bus, but it would probably be the last.

Riding on a bus standing up in Mexico is a very intimate experience but not in a good way. As we traveled down the coast, more people were getting off than on which meant that I might get to sit after all. As the crowd thinned, I noticed two cute 20-something women smiling at me. I nodded hello to them and they grinned even wider.

"Would you like to sit down?" one of them cooed.

"Thanks, but then you'd have to stand" I said.

"You could sit on our laps."

I knew then that Satan was making a last ditch effort to make me crash and burn before I was honorably released. The wily devil!

"No thanks" I said, smiling, but inwardly I was terrified. Luckily, it didn't take much longer before a seat opened up. Unluckily, it was in the aisle across from the ladies. Satan was having his way today! They started talking to me again. As it turned out, they were in fact just being nice and weren't trying to take my chastity. They just felt sorry for me having to stand all the way there. Plus, I must have looked pathetic. I was about 30 or so pounds underweight. Between all the walking and pretty much constant diarrhea, my 5'11" frame had gone from 165 pounds to about 130 pounds over the course of the mission. When I realized they weren't Jezebels sent by the dark lord himself to seduce me, I relaxed. I even gave them a mini lesson about the church right there on the bus.

Soon we arrived in Veracruz and I was able to get a cab to the mission office. The mission president had chosen this week to host a special conference so all the zone leaders from the entire mission were present for meetings. In those days, our mission encompassed four states: Veracruz, Oaxaca, Puebla and Tlaxcala. There were quite a few of my good friends already in Veracruz. The mission president allowed me and one of my closest missionary buddies, we had been in the MTC together and served most of our missions in the same zones, to spend the whole day together as the meetings hadn't officially started yet. Monday was our P-day and that was a travel day.

My mission president was a really good guy. Very down to earth and not at all like some of the horror stories I have heard about other MPs. He had a very friendly smile and looked almost exactly like the British comedian, Benny Hill. It was sometimes hard not to imagine Benny Hill when he was standing in front of us all and talking. He was great, but that didn't mean he was a pushover either. He just trusted us to behave like adults.

He called me into his office and handed me the address of the store with the collectible dolls. Even though he was a busy guy, he remembered my request for a local shop that sold such things from about two months before. He gave me exact directions on how to get there and which bus would be the best to take.

My buddy and I went out and made the purchase and then had a leisurely lunch at an outdoor cafe across from the Gulf of Mexico. He was also near the end of his mission, but he had another month to go. We made plans to go out to BYU together, but mostly we just reminisced about the times we had spent together in the mission field. It was a great day.

That night, we were all assigned to the different companionships who regularly worked in Veracruz. Most of them were office elders who worked in the headquarters during the day, but still did missionary work in the evening. I don't remember much except that I was more than done with it all. I tried to rally my missionary spirit and just get into it, but I'm not sure I did very well. Finally, we went back to the mission home and called it a night.

The mission office was located in what used to be one of the private schools I mentioned before. The church still owned the building so they converted it over. They even had dorms attached which was were I and the other visiting missionaries stayed for the night. It was a lot like the MTC again, but in a good way. I spent most of my mission in small towns away from other missionaries so I rarely got to have the camaraderie that missionaries in larger areas have. I was usually at least an hour away from any other missionaries. So it was fun for me to hang with other guys and joke around. There were five of us heading home the next day and we were all invited to eat dinner with the mission president and his wife.

I had my final interview with the mission president that night. I don't remember much about it except that he didn't pressure me to get married. He did mention that marriage was my next 'mission' but he urged me to get some education and take my time to make a good choice. I wasn't particularly close to him, but I did like him. I've only seen him a couple of times since my return home. I always sort of hoped he would be made a general authority, but I think he's too normal for that. It's too bad. The church could use more normal.

I was up and out really early the very next morning. I jokingly said that I hoped there wouldn't be chickens on the airplane. Of course there weren't.

The Guess WHo, and it's stuck in my head now. The endf it gets all echoy and spaced out
Got no time, got no time. Nononnono no time, got no time ....
Got
No Time..



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/13/2012 10:34AM by nomilk.