If Your Child Comes Home From A Mission Early...............

[_sock puppet]

My father met me at the airport. No hug, just a handshake. He told me "You look good. I can't say I am glad to see you."

At least you got your father. When I flew home to SeaTac Airport there was noone to meet me at all.

Hey, Kevin, I am sorry there was no one to meet you. I for one am curious to hear whatever more you may want to tell us (or me by PM) about this.

[_Yoda]

While a ZL, we surprised a low performing companionship by coming over to visit for lunch. We found them still in bed playing Nintendo. After frank discussion, we found out that both were slated to go home in just a few months. Neither had had any success their whole mission. We testified that if they worked hard and faithfully for the remaining time, the Lord would bless them and they would be able to address their respective wards when they got home with a semblance of honor. We checked back from time to time and they did seem to be doing the work. Just a week or two before they went home, they had an adult convert baptism and we rejoiced with them. Can you imagine the difference in their testimonies? It was huge and I wish I could have heard their homecoming talks.

Bcspace, I wish you and your companion could have dropped in on my companion or me, May, June, or July of 1980. I could have used some of your positive feedback. It was a critical point in my mission and I wasn't getting any feedback from anyone.

The beginning of April my MP told me about my new senior companion, and told me that in two months it would be my turn to be senior companion. That would have had me as senior companion the month of June. Instead my MP made me a senior proselyter that June, which meant Elder Bailey and I had equal authority; we were both senior companions, so to speak. During the month of June our ZL told us that when Elder Bailey and I were split up the one that left would go off and become a senior companion in his new sector, and the one that stayed behind would become senior companion in the old sector.

My first night with Elder Bailey we went to the Lavin family's house to teach them a discussion. When we got there they were just sitting down to watch a TV movie. I said, no problem, we'd go off and knock on doors for a couple of hours and then come back in time to teach them the discussion. Elder Bailey said, no, we were going to stay there at the Lavin house and watch the TV movie with them. That left me speechless. Watching the television was blatantly against mission rules. So what should I do? Should I start a fight there with Elder Bailey in front of the Lavins?

I spent a few seconds weighing my options. What it came down to was that (1) Elder Bailey had been in the sector before I got there, (2) Elder Bailey thought quicker on his feet than I did, (3) Bailey wanted to lead, and (4) I didn't want to fight him. So we stayed there and watched the movie.

That colored the rest of my month. In name we were senior proselyters, but in fact Bailey saw himself as the leader, and I did myself to follow his lead. To an extent. In the middle of the month when he arranged for a date with a girl, I was pretty sure I couldn't go along with him on that one. Shortly after he set it up he got sick. I found a local companion; went out; found the girl; told her that Bailey hadn't been serious, that he hadn't really meant to ask her on an actual date; then I came back and told Bailey what I'd done. He wasn't very happy with me, but what could he do? Watching television movies was against mission rules; dating a girl was extremely against mission rules.

July finally came. Bailey and I went to a baptism. Elder Carter, one of the assistants to the MP, was there. He told us we were getting split up. Elder Bailey was going to Laja with brand-new missionary Elder Cifuentes. I was staying in Hualpen with Elder Angulo. I thought, this is it. This is what the ZL told me about. Bailey's going off to be a senior companion; I'm staying here to be senior companion to Elder Angulo. But as the baptism progressed I got to thinking, Elder Carter hadn't explicitly told me I was going to be senior companion. So, to be absolutely sure, I found Elder Carter in a restroom after the baptism and asked him right out, was I going to be senior companion, which would make Elder Angulo my junior companion? Elder Carter didn't answer me; instead he just asked me if I understood the Methods of Instruction. I'd heard about the Methods of Instruction but didn't know precisely what they amounted to, and I told Elder Carter so. And that was the end of our conversation. As I recall, Elder Carter simply walked out of the restroom.

So I thought, hmm, I must not be senior companion, since if I had been clearly Elder Carter would have told me so. But then I got thinking, maybe it didn't matter, since this time I was the one who had been in the sector the month before, this time I was the one that wanted to lead. As it turned out, I even thought quicker on my feet than Elder Angulo did. So Elder Angulo and I went out into our sector, and I took over. I was saying where we'd go, and Elder Angulo was more than happy to follow me. I said what we were going to do when we got there, and Elder Angulo was more than happy to go along with my plans. That's how it went for four hours. And it was great. I was really, really enjoying being in charge, taking initiatives, coming up with plans for what we could do.

Then four hours after we'd left the baptism Elder Angulo and I were visiting a member family and one of the kids in the family asked which of us was the senior companion. Before I had the chance to tell them that Angulo and I were both senior proselyters, Elder Angulo told him that he was the senior companion and I was the junior companion, but that he didn't put much stock in distinctions like that, so it was perfectly fine if I took the lead.

I was completely blown away. I thought, what? What? Not anywhere in my wildest dreams did I think there was even a possibility that I might be changed from being a senior proselyter back to being a junior companion again. But the worst part was not being demoted. The worst part was not being told I was being demoted, like I didn't deserve to know what my status was going to be. In that chat in the restroom I obviously thought there was a chance I might be senior companion, or I never would have asked Elder Carter if I was; wouldn't that have been a good time to tell me that not only was I not a senior companion but I wasn't a senior proselyter either?

But I tried to make the best of it anyhow. I thought, okay, wait a month, wait until the next transfers, which would be the beginning of August. The beginning of August came, the time for transfers came, and neither of us, neither Elder Angulo nor me, were transferred.

That was depressing. When it was clear neither one of us was going to get moved, then I thought that maybe I needed to push myself to be a better missionary; maybe that's what I needed to do to become a real senior companion and get back the feeling I had for those four glorious hours in early July when I thought I was in charge. That was a mistake. I try to push myself, and I start erupting in Tourette Syndrome-style vocal and motor tics. That was the beginning of the end for my mission. I spent the next three months in and out of the mission home while my MP tried to figure out what was wrong with me. Finally in the middle of November he sent me back to Seattle to get medical help. I was eventually diagnosed with Tourette Syndrome and released from my mission.

Kevin, so your parents didn't meet you at the airport, and you were discharged due to a medical issue? WTF? I don't understand what your parents were thinking! There is no shame in this. There shouldn't have even been any type of shame from a ward situation.

I'm so sorry you went through that. Echoing Sock's request, I would love to hear more about your parents' supposed reasoning in all of this.

[_sock puppet]

I try to push myself, and I start erupting in Tourette Syndrome-style vocal and motor tics. That was the beginning of the end for my mission. I spent the next three months in and out of the mission home while my MP tried to figure out what was wrong with me. Finally in the middle of November he sent me back to Seattle to get medical help. I was eventually diagnosed with Tourette Syndrome and released from my mission.

Kevin, so your parents didn't meet you at the airport, and you were discharged due to a medical issue? WTF? I don't understand what your parents were thinking! There is no shame in this. There shouldn't have even been any type of shame from a ward situation.

I'm so sorry you went through that. Echoing Sock's request, I would love to hear more about your parents' supposed reasoning in all of this.

I suspect that Kevin's parents shunned him in that way because it was not until after he arrived at SeaTac that he then got medical help in Seattle, was diagnosed with Tourette's and ultimately released from his mission. So perhaps at the day his plane arrived at SeaTac, for the parents it was "what's wrong with Kevin? Is it lack of commitment? Etc.?"

I find it abhorrent that his parents were not there, regardless of the reason. Had he committed a crime? No. Had he put in 16 months of the mission? Yes. Was something going on with their 20 year old son that they didn't understand? Yes. So, instead of be there, they weren't. Why? LDS shame might be it. I don't know. But it was dereliction of parenting not to be there.

I have a friend who quit his mission 2 1/2 months into it. Didn't like it. Realized he'd made a bad mistake in going. Was subjected to being evaluated by an LDS psychologist and some medical tests before the MP relented and stood down, and he went home. He had to borrow money from an uncle to pay for the plane ticket home.

His father was the only family member at the airport. On the ride in the car home from the airport, there was some silence. Then a few questions from his father, sort of in a stern tone. About two minutes out from their house, the father told his son that he was very happy to see him and that he was home--but the father explained that he would deny that he was happy or had said that if it was raised. The rest of his family--older brothers, married sister, his three living grandparents, and even mother shunned him. He left for college about a month after that. He lives several states away and has in the 35 years since only visited the parents about once every three or four years. I say WTF? to how he was treated. Only one of his older brothers had been on a mission and had first-hand knowledge of what it was like.

I know if I had the opp to have spent a week with full-time missionaries, I would likely have not went. The "corporate sales" mission experience was the second biggest factor in killing my 'faith', next only to what I learned about how fraudulent the whole LDS scheme is, as revealed from its history.

[_Yoda]

I find it abhorrent that his parents were not there, regardless of the reason. Had he committed a crime? No. Had he put in 16 months of the mission? Yes. Was something going on with their 20 year old son that they didn't understand? Yes. So, instead of be there, they weren't. Why? LDS shame might be it. I don't know. But it was dereliction of parenting not to be there.

Amen to this!!!!

As a Mom, I just don't understand how you could treat your child this way.

[_KevinSim]

I suspect that Kevin's parents shunned him in that way because it was not until after he arrived at SeaTac that he then got medical help in Seattle, was diagnosed with Tourette's and ultimately released from his mission. So perhaps at the day his plane arrived at SeaTac, for the parents it was "what's wrong with Kevin? Is it lack of commitment? Etc.?"

I find it abhorrent that his parents were not there, regardless of the reason. Had he committed a crime? No. Had he put in 16 months of the mission? Yes. Was something going on with their 20 year old son that they didn't understand? Yes. So, instead of be there, they weren't. Why? LDS shame might be it. I don't know. But it was dereliction of parenting not to be there.

Ack! Backpedal! Backpedal! It's completely understandable that all of you have come to the conclusions you did, but it was due to the way I worded my responses, not to any real dereliction of parenting on the part of my parents. The original poster spoke of being met at the airport only by his dad; I thought my situation was worse because when I got to the airport nobody was there; but it was worse because of my confusion, not because of anything my parents did.

I told you I was diagnosed with Tourette Syndrome; that diagnosis was June 1980. Roughly 2002 I was also diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome. I have asked some medical professionals if there's a possibility that Asperger Syndrome might be able to explain my symptoms better than Tourette does, but they seem to think that in all likelihood I really do have both TS and AS. Turns out there's a high corelation between people who have TS and people who have AS.

Asperger Syndrome is considered to be a high functioning form of autism, and is characterized by deficiencies in common sense and social skills. Common sense as in realizing that if I want my family to meet me at the airport I've got to call them from Los Angeles and tell them when I'm flying in. As it turned out my family was ready to come meet me at the airport (complete with the "Welcome Home Elder S" banner), but they didn't know when I was flying in, so they couldn't do anything until I called them. So I wandered around the airport trying to figure out where everybody was for about twenty minutes, and then found a payphone and called my parents, whereupon they came to meet me.

This doesn't let the Church completely off the hook. I wouldn't have been surprised if there had been an ambulance waiting at the airport to take me to a hospital, and in fact the only thing that seemed to work in keeping the symptoms at bay was simply relaxing, so you would think the Church might have realized it wouldn't dawn on me to call them from LA; so in retrospect they might have either told my family when I was flying in or told me explicitly that I needed to call them from LA. But the Church didn't know I had AS at the time, so maybe they just concluded that common sense would tell me to call them from LA and therefore they didn't worry about it.

Shame doesn't appear to ever have been an issue. My family has been completely supportive ever since.