Wife of MP blogs about the missionaries.....

[_Runtu]

And hotels keep them in their safes.

Hotels will give them to you when you ask.

Of course, a mission president is going to want to work on you before you leave. That should be expected. If you worked for the Peace Corps and wanted to quit in the middle of your contract, it would be reasonable to assume that people would want to talk you into staying. And it isn't beyond imagination that some mission presidents and stake presidents will exert some attempt at influence.

Obviously. It's the kind of attempt at influence that is the difference. We had one guy in our mission who announced that, because of school schedules and some other issues, he would not be serving the full 18 months but wanted to serve about 13 months. He said this when he arrived in the mission and in every interview that he had with the mission president. After 13 months, he showed up in the mission office to retrieve his passport, and the mission president would not give it to him. He stayed in town for a week before the MP relented and gave him his passport. I was the travel secretary, so I know we didn't book his flight or pay for it.

Of course, you know that when you leave. These aren't children. Only an idiot child would go abroad with no provision for contingiencies. I certainly am not aware of any missionary stranded in a foreign country because a passport is held hostage.

I am not saying they're children. I'm just saying that it is much more difficult to go home than you are saying. As I said, I know of missionaries who were delayed for a week or more because the MP would not hand over the passport. I'd say a week qualifies as hostage-taking.

One of my companions had a clear mental and emotional breakdown while he was on his mission. He went from suicidal to catatonic to alternating between weeping and babbling nonsense. The mission president wouldn't give him his passport. He was in Cochabamba for a month while the MP twisted his arm, ultimately calling the elder's mother so she could tell him how ashamed she would be if he came home early.

So, spare me this crap about how people are adults and can make their own decisions. When someone is in a state of emotional and mental breakdown, they are not capable of acting as responsible adults. That you think they should be able to stand up to leadership in that position is bizarre.

Go through mission president's training. I've not been through it but I've spent quite a bit of time on the phone with mission presidents regarding missionaries who want to come home.

This story reminds me of the handcart pioneers. The Church has taken a lot of heat for Franklin D. Richards berating the Martin company for not leaving. It is not well known, however, that Brigham Young censured him for that, and it is also know well known that a sizeable number of pioneers decided to disregard Richards and back out.

The Church is a collection of adults who can decide for themselves.

Unless they hold their passports hostage.

[Guest]

So, spare me this s*** about how people are adults and can make their own decisions. When someone is in a state of emotional and mental breakdown, they are not capable of acting as responsible adults. That you think they should be able to stand up to leadership in that position is bizarre.

Are you incapable of carrying on a civilized discussion any more without resorting to irrelevant profanity?

They're adults. Adults have breakdowns in many aspects of their lives, be in the military, school or missions. Adults get depressed.

And people for whom they work, such a mission president, ought to be expected to do something to help them, talk them into feeling better, talk them into staying or just being their friend (or boss).

I wanted to leave my firm five years ago. I suffered a lot of arm-twisting and economic pressure to stay. It went on for weeks.

[_Mayan Elephant]

i want what yahoo bot is smoking!

[_Mayan Elephant]

runtu, say sorry to yahoo bot right this second. his feelings are hurt, and he cannot understand the point you are making because you used really really bad profanity. words like that are not appropriate for mature adults like him.

[_Untethered]

Of course, you know that when you leave. These aren't children. Only an idiot child would go abroad with no provision for contingencies.
...
Go through mission president's training. I've not been through it but I've spent quite a bit of time on the phone with mission presidents regarding missionaries who want to come home.
...
The Church is a collection of adults who can decide for themselves.

You say you've spent quite a bit of time on the phone with MP's, but how much time have you spent in the field, or anywhere for that matter with 18 and 19 year olds?

According to some laws they are technically adults, and many are intelligent, socially savvy, and stable minded but the majority of them lack judgement. It's the main reason a person is not able to buy alcohol until they are 21. It's because of their immaturity where judgement is concerned.

Let me give you just one example from my experience. My son served a US mission. He was mostly physically healthy. He was intelligent and never gave me any trouble. It didn't matter to me whether he went on a mission, but I supported him fully in his decision. (This is just to illustrate that there was no pressure from his family to stay on a mission.) There was a day when he was very ill, with abdominal pain and fever. It was the day his district attended the temple. He and his companion were left in the apartment for most of the day. As my son got worse he begged his companion to call someone or go to a neighbor's for help. The companion would not leave or call anyone because he was sure he'd get in trouble for breaking the rules. This is a ridiculous story, and much more involved, but a true story none the less. This young man had poor judgement.

One other thing. I work in the medical profession, and the number of people under the age of 25 who are one psychotropic pharmaceuticals is higher than it's ever been. There are more types of drugs available, there are more physicians who are willing to prescribe them, and for some reason there are more young people who are unable to cope. This is all young people, not just LDS young people. We know from experience that once an adolescent, in fact any human, starts to take these drugs that effect the brain's neurotransmitters (mechanism of action unknown,) that they are more likely to have to continue a course of being medicated in order to feel any sense of well being. I personally feel it's an epidemic. So, for you to flippantly state the the Church is just a collection of adults who can decide for themselves, just seems ignorant to me. It's so much more complicated than that.

[_Untethered]

I wanted to leave my firm five years ago. I suffered a lot of arm-twisting and economic pressure to stay. It went on for weeks.

Are you 19???

[_Tim the Enchanter]

They're adults. When I was 19 I would have punched a doctor who told my mother about my medical history.

Would you punch a mission president's wife who discussed your medical condition on her blog in a way that allowed the missionaries around you to know she was talking about you?

[_Tim the Enchanter]

As one MTC president told me when a son wanted to come home (he stayed), "This isn't a prison; they can go home if they choose; I'm not going to twist his arm to stay."

As I said earlier in this thread...it's one thing to say that. It's another to actually have a church culture that supports that. The church culture doesn't. You can choose to (a) serve a mission or (b) be marginalized. Once on a mission, you can choose to (a) stay on the mission or (b) come home in shame (unless you have a compelling medical reason that cannot be attributed to lack of faith or sin). That is hardly an environment that supports a real choice.

[_Runtu]

runtu, say sorry to yahoo bot right this second. his feelings are hurt, and he cannot understand the point you are making because you used really really bad profanity. words like that are not appropriate for mature adults like him.

I doubt his feelings are hurt. Mine aren't, anyway.

He seems to be discussing human relationships in the abstract without regard to the way real humans interact with each other, especially in relationships of unequal power and authority. To him, deciding to leave a mission is the same as, say, deciding which tie to wear to work. Everyone one is free to make those choices, he says, and to suggest that there are any other considerations is to treat adults like children.

What strikes me is that, in many ways, we were treated as children in the mission. All my life I was taught that a mission wasn't a question of if but when, only there was no question about when, either. I actually felt guilty because I waited to finish a semester of college instead of entering the MTC right when I turned 19.

Anyway, we all understand the social and familial pressure to go on a mission, plus the guilt involved in selfishly declining to serve. In the MTC, they pounded into us over and over that we were to be like the armies of Helaman and obey our leaders "with exactness." To break any rule or question any counsel from the leaders would mean withdrawal of the spirit and failure as a missionary. I remember thinking one time that I was out in an area with no phone and no contact with other missionaries. If we had wanted to do so, we could have faked our reports and basically screwed around and no one would have known. But we didn't do that because we had been trained to follow and obey.

Another thing is the peer pressure within the mission. Because most of us had absorbed what we were taught in the MTC, we felt obligated to help other missionaries be as obedient and dedicated as we were supposed to be. And of course we were encouraged to report to our leaders any lack of diligence or other issues on the part of our companions. I remember being asked detailed questions about my companion's work ethic, testimony, and other stuff in interviews with the zone leaders and the MP.

So, to have even considered going home would have involved overcoming a whole life's worth of indoctrination. It would not have occurred to me to go home. I remember being miserable and sick and living in terrible conditions and wishing I could go home--but putting that daydream into action never crossed my mind.

But let's say that a missionary overcomes all that and tells the mission president he or she wants to go home. The mission president is going to use everything he has to talk the missionary out of it. The companion I mentioned above had suffered a real breakdown. I read his file in the mission office as part of an assignment I was given, and I saw how bad things were for him. But he had everything arrayed against him: the mission president, the Missionary Department in Salt Lake, his stake president and bishop, and his mother. Even so, it took a month of pressure to keep him in the mission.

In 2 years of my mission, I know of only the one missionary who asked to go home who actually did go home. I realize now that he hadn't internalized everything we'd been taught, so he wasn't afraid to say no to authority.

Anyway, I thought we were talking about mission presidents' wives gossiping about missionaries.

ETA: It also is pretty obvious that there's more shame and social stigma for those who go home early from a mission than for those who never serve. "Return with honor" and all that.

In short, these decisions don't occur in a vacuum, and the decision for a middle-aged man to leave a law firm is not at all analogous.

I'm remembering now that Bob didn't serve a mission, so I'm willing to cut him a little slack because he has no idea how things work.

[Guest]

So, for you to flippantly state the the Church is just a collection of adults who can decide for themselves, just seems ignorant to me. It's so much more complicated than that.

Part of the problem with many of you folks on this board is that you seem to assume that adults of any stripe just can't think for themselves or make decisions on their own, and that the Church is a big paternal organization that should be a good parent and protect adults from hurting themselves.

A missionary is an adult. I spent two years in difficult circumstances, half the time in Hispanic ghettos in Chicago; my sons and daughters were in worse. One son served in Laredo where virtually every investigator was involved in the drug trade somehow and, under ordinary circumstances, the missionaries would have been in perilous circumstances. A daughter served in an urban barrio the entire 18 months where most of her time was spent helping kids get out of gangs. She was an English major and had no training to do so. Another son is presently in a country that is mobilizing for a Russian invasion and the members are all fearful; the missionaries are the ones keeping them together.

Give the missionaries some credit. Also, give them the expectation that they ought to be dealing with illness as adults, not as dependent children.

I can't comment on this mission president's wife business as I don't think it is legitimate but don't really know one way or the other.