This is my second nephew to come home early.

I guess after the recent conference, he had a guilty conscience and confessed something. They sent him home and said he can go back in the fall. I am kind of hoping he stays home.

It't not my business to figure out what he did, although I am curious. I just wonder if his confession is a way to leave his mission. If he really wanted to stay, my guess is that he'd not tell anybody and just finish out the 2 years, then move on to college, marriage, career, etc. But I think he wanted to leave. He is a surfer/snowboarder type and a free spirit, so I was surprised when he left. He never had his hair in a typical missionary haircut until the day before entering the MTC. Maybe he didn't buy it, and found a good excuse to return, and instead of saying he thought it was all crap, he blamed himself.

I have an alternative idea, too. I think he took purity and honesty to such an extreme that he blamed any failure he had in the mission field on his "sins." I had received emails that his mother forwarded, and he had said that a lot of people flaked on him and his companion. I wonder if he blames himself. My family takes honesty to extremes. So if he has even one event in his young life that he things was sinful, he probably felt so guilty that he had to get it off his chest. If he is like me, he probably lost sleep over something every teenager does. That would be my guess.

Anyway, he is extremely lucky that work took his family to a different state where nobody knows him right before he left, in a state where Mormons are rare. I can't see going back to Utah. They'd eat him alive.

Poor kid. Stupid cult.

T-Bone



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/20/2014 12:43AM by T-Bone.

I know all about blaming yourself and your "sins" for lack of mission success. My mission was 2 years of guilt-wracked hell and I didn't even have that serious of "morality" problems compared to other mishies. Never even masturbated the whole time I was out there and for a couple years after. Stupid fucking cult.

I had a family dump us once on the mission, we thought they were golden and we couldn't figure out what went wrong. My companion, with his head held low, then tells me he thinks he knows what happened. He tells me he masturbated the previous night and that these people dumped us because he didn't have the spirit. He felt like sh!t. I actually started laughing and told him that there's no way God would have this family change their mind just because he spanked the monkey. I told him to lighten up and to not worry about it, let's just move on.

The crazy things Mormons think...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/22/2014 09:39AM by Hold Your Tapirs.

Never underestimate the power of guilt. Hard to say what motivated him to confess, but always remember that a mission is a guilt incubator. The true test will be if he goes back in the fall. I hope he dosent. Snowboarding sounds a lot funner.

Don't overlook the possibility of a fabricated confession as an acceptable way to get out of Dodge. Some people are not that good at genning up psychosomatic illnesses. We realize it is a volunteer position and all you have to do is quit, but easier said than done when you are 19 and your whole family is in a cult.

Seriously, I think there are some faked confessions.

I was kind of thinking that, too. We had one relative come back a few years ago, and that broke the ice. I'm thinking this kid might have wanted to leave, but couldn't bring himself to just leave, so he made up something, or came up with something he normally wouldn't have thought was really a bad thing, and used it to go home.

T-Bone

Don't underestimate the power of youthful zealotry harnessed to a generous load of guilt.

I was a good example of that before my mission.

My sincere devotion to the cult compelled me to spill my guts and behold, it kept me from ever going on one.

Praise to the man, Gordon B Hinckley who heard my true heart's confession.


:o)

...my BIL is a bishop who has 2 kids who went to MTC to get "tuned up" for their mission. Both were booted because of an "addiction to technology." According to BIL, the biggest reason for kids flunking MTC "boot camp", is porn and tech addiction. Apparently, the kids are forced to abandon their "unsupervised" use of the Internet for 2 years...............good luck with that!

T-bone, your post makes me heartsick and I relate to it completely.

I was another one of those Mormons who was so black and white I HAD to be 110% chaste and I couldn't lie about it.

I never even did anything to warrant real church discipline, but I felt guilty about EVERYTHING.

If I'd served a mission, I could see myself obsessing about every little impure thought or perceived indiscretion. I probably would've spilled my guts to the M.P. and begged for excommunication so I could be thoroughly sanctified and washed "clean".

As it was, I stayed home and had a nervous breakdown anyway.

I hope your nephew is okay. The church can set people up for true torment if they take it too seriously, and that's exactly what they're supposed to do.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/20/2014 04:57PM by hapeheretic.

hapeheretic, I was one of those guys, too. I remember going to my bishop and telling him stuff, thinking that it would help me become more "righteous" It didn't. I'm still human. I just learned to accept it.

T-Bone

My advice is to be super supportive of him. My nephew came home early and so did my assistant's son.

Tell him to be proud of the time he served and to put it on his resume.

Tell him to look at it as if he applied to Harvard and instead of getting a four year degree there, he got a 2 year degree at a state college. It's still a big accomplishment.

We need to be supportive of these kids after their missions. This is really hard for them. They need to be able to see it as a successful, valuable life experience, even if it wasn't at all what they thought it was going to be.

Thanks, nationalnewscampaign

The no-Mormons in the family are very understanding. I mean, he has a gf and if they did what young men and women do, I'm happy for him.

Religions like Mormonism make young people feel like they are evil for behaving normally. F*** that.

This is why my daughter will not be raised in a shame-based religion or culture.

T-Bone

You're welcome. Even though it's not what I would do (go on a mission) I think it's terrible that their church doesn't recognize them for doing some missionary service if they come home early.

so glad your daughter won't be raised to be cultish. It's even worse for women.

figuring maybe they wouldn't be as hard on him as they would if he said he didn't want to go.


KW

They want missionaries to blame the failures of their mission on their own "sins" because it helps keep the missionaries from waking up to the reality that they are failing because the whole thing is a crock.

You do not get "Good feelings" from "God" and these dont mean that Joseph was a "Prophet"

I didn't grow up in the church so some of the missionary stuff is still a little foggy for me.

Are you guys saying that these youngsters are taught to link what OTHER PEOPLE DO OR DON'T DO (since they have their "agency" too, i.e., pursue church teachings or not) to the missionaries' OWN "worthiness????"

That sounds kind of like why I never wanted to be a supervisor at work. I didn't want MY appraisal to be based on whether the people I supervised did well or chose to be slackers. There's only so much you can do to influence what somebody else does or doesn't do. Ask any parent!

That's EXACTLY what is taught. That if a missionary is obedient to the "commandments" (rules) they will be "blessed" and so will the people they "teach" "Blessed" is generally meant to understand that they will have success (baptisms) in their areas.

So when all that inevitably fails (because the average person sees through the church's BS) the missionary must either blame themselves or the system.

Sadly it is easier for them to blame themselves.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/21/2014 03:23AM by nonsequiter.

Anytime the mission isn't netting new converts, the mission president and visiting authorities routinely blame it on the sins of the missionaries. It reminds me of Warren Jeffs telling the FLDS that he is in prison because of THEIR sins, as though his sins of sexually assaulting little girls had nothing to do with it.