Gunnar wrote:I wonder how many missionaries with iPads have found this site and logged on to it. If missionaries have cell phones or iPads, how do mission presidents enforce the only two calls home per year policy? Do they periodically check every missionary's phone and/or iPad to see what they have been using them for?
I think the two things are different.
Mobile phones tend to stay in the companionship and when a missionary moves on the phone stays where it is.
iPads, as Rollo questions, are funded by the missionary (at least that was the plan) and are meant to stay with the missionary throughout their mission and they take it with them when they return home. Coupled with this the missionary is meant, through utilising the iPad apps like Facebook, to maintain contact with investigators they teach and people they convert throughout their mission, even when they transfer area.
Mobile phone records go to the mission office.
Browsing history goes to Google.
The principle of missions is to isolate the missionary from the world, including their family, for two years whilst they are intensively indoctrinated. It is a program designed to 'church break' young people into staying Mormon for the rest of their lives. This program started to be unfit for purpose when the advent of the Internet grasped those young people in the year they became an adult and before the age for missionary service. They found stuff out, went inactive and didn't serve missions. Membership activity suffered and income went down. To solve this problem the Church put on the sticking plaster of dropping the age by a year, so that young men in particular didn't have that adult 'gap' year where they could think for themselves. The fall out though, was that these younger missionaries were going cold turkey on electronic devices. Leading to an epidemic of depression, homesickness and early returns. The iPad was the sticking plaster that was supposed to stop that.