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

[_MrStakhanovite]

Whilst not disagreeing with you, the fact that she is sharing this type of delicate personal information in the general public domain is a tad insensitive.

Agreed.

[_Mayan Elephant]

Whilst not disagreeing with you, the fact that she is sharing this type of delicate personal information in the general public domain is a tad insensitive.

Agreed.

wow. i just read more of her blog. that is insanity. every week she posts is another list of missionaries having panic attacks, going on medication, being depressed, and exhausting her and the mission president. i thought the september 2013 post would be an outlier, it is not.

what she is describing is much worse than what i experienced in terms of the volume of homesickness and health issues. i travelled with my mission president to every branch, ward, stake, zone, district and apartment in my mission over a period of about six months. i stayed in hotels all over france travelling with him very frequently. i can honestly say that our mission was a lot more fun than what this woman is describing, and even though we had our issues, it wasn't as smothering as what she is describing. we had a ton of fun in our mission. it was not perfect, but it wasn't a stifling calamity.

runtu/john, i am curious as you read this. you and a few others have great journals and publications about your missions. do you think some of what this woman is writing about is exaggerated? do you think the problems are any worse now than they were when the missionaries were a bit older? is it worse for missionaries in remote areas or better?

also, how much of this stuff she is writing about is because these kids are stuck in denver (just another city to them) and how much of it is that they are completely bored and annoyed by their jobs?

look at the numbers too. holy crapola. 40 baptisms a month with over TWO HUNDRED missionaries. and they claim to be one of the best in the area. on pace for 444 baptisms in a year. i was in france for hellsakes, with half that many missionaries, and we baptized more people than that, in goshdang france! we had a lot to make the day interesting for us as well, it was france and switzerland. on our p days there was a ton of cool stuff to do. we had our zone conferences in cool places, like the old roads where napolean travelled, or the reformers wall, or the bullfighting ring, or the roman aqueducts. i cannot imagine what it is like for these missionaries to average a couple baptisms a year, and be in a boring town, and not have contact with family and friends. it must be a damn blast out there for the pocatello idaho mission president.

[_Runtu]

wow. i just read more of her blog. that is insanity. every week she posts is another list of missionaries having panic attacks, going on medication, being depressed, and exhausting her and the mission president. i thought the september 2013 post would be an outlier, it is not.

what she is describing is much worse than what i experienced in terms of the volume of homesickness and health issues. i travelled with my mission president to every branch, ward, stake, zone, district and apartment in my mission over a period of about six months. i stayed in hotels all over france travelling with him very frequently. i can honestly say that our mission was a lot more fun than what this woman is describing, and even though we had our issues, it wasn't as smothering as what she is describing. we had a ton of fun in our mission. it was not perfect, but it wasn't a stifling calamity.

runtu/john, i am curious as you read this. you and a few others have great journals and publications about your missions. do you think some of what this woman is writing about is exaggerated? do you think the problems are any worse now than they were when the missionaries were a bit older? is it worse for missionaries in remote areas or better?

also, how much of this stuff she is writing about is because these kids are stuck in denver (just another city to them) and how much of it is that they are completely bored and annoyed by their jobs?

look at the numbers too. holy crapola. 40 baptisms a month with over TWO HUNDRED missionaries. and they claim to be one of the best in the area. on pace for 444 baptisms in a year. i was in france for hellsakes, with half that many missionaries, and we baptized more people than that, in goshdang france! we had a lot to make the day interesting for us as well, it was france and switzerland. on our p days there was a ton of cool stuff to do. we had our zone conferences in cool places, like the old roads where napolean travelled, or the reformers wall, or the bullfighting ring, or the roman aqueducts. i cannot imagine what it is like for these missionaries to average a couple baptisms a year, and be in a boring town, and not have contact with family and friends. it must be a damn blast out there for the pocatello idaho mission president.

It's certainly different from my mission. We had at the peak around 270 missionaries in our mission. I can remember 2 missionaries having mental/psychological issues, and one of them was not allowed to leave and was pressured to stay. The other was suicidal and was sent home. I would guess around a dozen missionaries went home for health-related issues, which shouldn't surprise anyone familiar with the living conditions in Bolivia. 4 were sent home for sexual behavior.

So, yes, what she's describing is a much higher incidence of such issues than we saw in Bolivia.

[_Bazooka]

I wonder, has anything changed recently that would lead to missionaries being less able to cope with the mental pressures which come from spending 18 months cut off from all the family and friends you've ever known?

[_Jonah]

I wonder, has anything changed recently that would lead to missionaries being less able to cope with the mental pressures which come from spending 18 months cut off from all the family and friends you've ever known?

I would venture that dropping social media (iPhones, Facebook, texting, Twitter, email, etc.) cold turkey might be a factor. In fact, I have heard of some cases where kids are turning down going on missions BECAUSE they would have to give up their cell phones and all that goes with it for two years. Hell, I have seen kids who start shaking if their phone is out of their hand for two minutes!! At least I don't have to worry about my youngest daughter going on a mission. She told me she would rather die than give up her cell phone. And make-up.

[_Arrakis]

She told me she would rather die than give up her cell phone. And make-up.

Sounds like you have some challenging years ahead....Prayers sent.

[_Dr. Shades]

. . . I believe that the church should consider changing it's archaic "no contact" rule. Having lived through it, I see NO BENEFIT to missionary or parents by having contact (beyond emails) only twice a year.

Actually, it's 0 times a year. Nowhere in the "white Bible" does it specify that missionaries are allowed to call home on Christmas or Mothers' Day. Since we've all been on the topic of myths lately, the idea that missionaries get to call home twice a year on those days is nothing more than a myth that mission presidents have been unwilling to squash.

[_Untethered]

Looks like they made the blog private. The wayback machine only has May 7th archived.
http://web.archive.org/web/201405071023 ... gspot.com/

[_Arrakis]

Somebody made a phone call about the content and it being read by heathens on the interwebz. Maybe she thought the internet really is a series of tubes......

[_Runtu]

Looks like they made the blog private. The wayback machine only has May 7th archived.
http://web.archive.org/web/201405071023 ... gspot.com/

That's a good thing, as she was sharing way too much private information about the young men and women in their care.