How do you, a RM, feel about your Mission?

[Guest]

Difficult, exhausting, and occasionally crushing. Built me up on the side though and had some of the best times of my life.

Also learned to love a new land and a new accent. I went to the one area in the world where my love of Red Dwarf and Fawlty Towers could be used as a BRT.

Could I do it again? I doubt it. On my exit interview my Mission President asked if I could do it again.

Nehor: I don't think so.
President: I don't think I could either. A youth mission is something you can survive and do well in once when you're ignorant. If you really know what you're going to face then it's difficult to go back again.

All in all, I'm glad I went.

[_Ray A]

A mission helps one appreciate the freedom they have. It's the next best thing to two years jail. The morning I flew out of that Gulag, I swear, Neal Armstrong could not have experienced more euphoria when he stepped on the moon.

[_Mary]

How do I feel about my mission now?
I don't feel much to be honest... I don't have occassion to think about it too often, except if it comes up on these boards.

It wasn't a totally negative experience and it wasn't a totally positive experience. I found one or two of my companions hard to get on with, and I'm sure I was hard to get on with one week in four.
I was sincere in my belief at the time. My mission was very numbers orientated with little opportunity to follow up once the 'baptism' had taken place. I had just about learned to live with it, when a new MP came in and attempted to calm the missionaries down a bit.

Always remember Pres Livingstone saying that we didn't need to baptise everyone right now. Baptism for the dead would take care of a lot of people.

I loved my first MP, Pres Ivory, because he was the first church member who was genuinely interested in my development. Not just spiritual, but intellectual and social also. I'll never forget it. I heard many a member announce their love and concern for me (and others as a congregation), but Ivory was the one, who I thought genuinely meant it.

I loved teaching, and my mission was the catalyst for me deciding to go back to college and train to be a teacher (I'll credit Pres Ivory for that too).

I was too ignorant, too naïve, too immature at the time, to really get as much out of a mission as I could have done, but I worked hard, kept the rules, didn't flirt with the elders (though one or two or them that I got friendly with were just great people) and came home feeling that I had done the best I could.

I taught a lot of good people and genuinely cared for them. I often wonder how they are doing. I don't believe that any are active, though I am not entirely sure. The church does help people to clean up their lives, it can give them security, happiness and purpose, and as long as any person I taught is better because of their contact with the church then that would be great, even if they aren't active any more.

I can't regret any step I have taken in life, including the mission, because if my life hadn't have gone like that, then I wouldn't have met my husband and had my lovely son...

So, no regrets.

Mary

[_Roger Morrison]

A nice post WS. Obviously, in my opinion, you fit into the Mission environment ideally. The way it should be, but cannot be for all. Reinforcing the need for psychological and apptitude testing.

I also found your paragraph pasted below interesting: (I'm inblue

The bottom line is that my mission set me on the path for the remainder of my life; it was there that I learned that personal revelation mediation, & "...studying it out in your own mind...") is the only way to "know" anything about life and its purpose and meaning. As a great many of us do... It was there that I came to fully recognize the voice of God, and I have never lost the capacity to discern that voice -- as well as its opposite. I know what you mean. Recognizing the ring of truth and the ability to discern comes to all who attempt to live charitably. Of course you know that Trump's "...prophecy...understanding mysteries... that without charity I am nothing..." I know of many of my former mission cohorts who have since fallen away from the church, lost in a morass of doubts, fears, and incoherent anger towards the Lord and His kingdom on the earth. "Since one size doesn't fit all", have you "discerned" that possibly they never should have been Mormons? The "Lord" doesn't bring to, or leave such negative feelings in a person's life. People inflict other people with such discomforts... But as for me and my house, we continue to patiently hold our places in the steadily advancing caravan, oblivious to the sniping of its opponents on either side of the road.
Most of us hold our places on the road. Some standing more than "sniping" as they encounter discriminations & prejudices...

Did your Mission expose you to the goodness and integrity of others who did not accept your Mormon story? Do you honestly think they will be left out of "Heaven" while you and other Mormons are ushered to your throne as a "God/Godess"??
Roger
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[_William Schryver]

Roger:

Did your Mission expose you to the goodness and integrity of others who did not accept your Mormon story?

In fact, not only did my mission expose me to such people, but, in the three decades since, I have never ceased to encounter such people.

Do you honestly think they will be left out of "Heaven" while you and other Mormons are ushered to your throne as a "God/Godess"??

No, I don’t.

I believe no truer statement was ever made than, “In my Father’s house are many mansions.”

[_ajax18]

Do you honestly think they will be left out of "Heaven" while you and other Mormons are ushered to your throne as a "God/Godess"??

You know that argument is hitting pretty powerfully lately. But I can't see how Mormonism could make sense without answering, "No, they'll at some point have to accept Mormonism or be damned." Right now all I think we're seeing is a compromise between trying to comfort people with loved ones who didn't accept the gospel and the necessity of the need for converts, tithing, and growth which really makes advantageous the hard line that all must accept and contribute the LDS faith.

Incidentally most LDS I've met and posed that question to simply say, "I don't like that question."

[_Brackite]

Hello,

I am a RM, And I am no longer LDS.

I served my Mission in the early to mid 1990s. When I started losing my testimony in the LDS Church, which is when very shortly after that, is when I started to regret serving a Mission. For a few years after losing the testimony in the LDS Church, I really regretted serving a Mission. A couple of years ago, I very much regretted serving a Mission. However, just recently and right now, I don't any longer really regret serving a Mission. Now, I am kind of glad that I did serve a Mission. I got to meet a lot of different interesting People on my Mission.

[_The Nehor]

"No, they'll at some point have to accept Mormonism or be damned."

This.

[_ajax18]

"No, they'll at some point have to accept Mormonism or be damned."

This.

You're nothing if not a straight shooter Nehor. I still feel like the Church should have a more standard doctrine but admittedly it'd probably be an empty Church if they did.

[_Roger Morrison]

Ajax18 said:

You know that argument is hitting pretty powerfully lately. But I can't see how Mormonism could make sense without answering, "No, they'll at some point have to accept Mormonism or be damned." Right now all I think we're seeing is a compromise between trying to comfort people with loved ones who didn't accept the gospel and the necessity of the need for converts, tithing, and growth which really makes advantageous the hard line that all must accept and contribute the LDS faith.

Like it or not, and while it might rile many Mormon sensitivities, the LDS Church's reason for being is to replace ALL of the untrue Christian Churches that "God" (supposedly) told 15 year old Joseph Smith, in the Sacred Grove, were "...an abomination..."

The LDS Corporate purpose, in sending Missionaries by the tens of thousands into all the world, is to convert all Jews, Gentiles, Muslims, Hindus, Atheists, et al to the doctrines of the LDS Church.

Many of which are obviously traditional Christian doctrines; some being better than others. This commonality is the, "...sheep's clothing of wolves that would scatter the flock..." It is very cunning and crafty that this army of proselytisers is recruited from the the late stage of adolescence, exploiting the idealism of that cohort. (Military recruitment tactic.)

That such a task is in all practicality utterly impossible does not daunt generation after generation of new and zealous youthful, comely candidates serving their God-serving-church, as they define LDS purpose. The process of inculcating preteens to serving a Mission, beyond lectures, is reinforced by Temple Trips that opportune what might be considered "hands-on-experience, saving the dead." Who of course cannot say, "no," as do most at the front doors of their homes when tracted in real life.

Is the Mission Experience a bad-thing? The responses above would suggest, on the most part no. However, the question, "...is it the right thing, in its deception and pretense of Divine injunction?"
Roger
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