Where you a TBM on your mission, or did you go just to please your parents?


I was a TBM but had some doubts. My parents were not LDS. My bishops sent me, and paid for it.

I was (and am) a dumb kid who didn't know any better and trusted the wrong people too much.

I parroted the words they told me to. Deep down I think I suspected it was all a crock, but it was easier to quiet my doubts rather than face them.

Well until something had to give.

Things kept happening to erode my level of belief. I was a goner halfway through my mission but we got a new pres. who knew my dad, and he left me stay and do carpentry for the people. The guys who got rotated into my companionship weren't too happy about it.

I was a total TBM back then. And was so upset when I saw missionaries acting like....get this.....kids. And not like the lords anointed missionaries. It was a shock to me at first to see these guys acting like 19 & 20 yr old kids.

I flagelated myself, I idolized the mission president, I begged god with a variety of fasts, promises, and plans. I was judgmental of apparent slacker missionaries. I believed all christianity was an anti-mormon conspiracy.
That was 20+ years ago and I'm still untangling my head from it.

Total TBM. All the way. I was horrified at a lot of the other missionaries not being spiritual enough.

I did have one interaction with a man who caused me the first millisecond of doubt in my life. I did not think about it again until right after I had my Aha! moment and left the church, but I believe it was percolating under the surface those years after.

He said to me after I bore my testimony, "I know you felt something, but how do you know it wasn't just something you worked yourself up into?"

I went into the MTC as a hardline TBM. Came home from France as a NOM (though I wouldn't admit it to myself). Was a NOM masquerading as a TBM for more than 20 years, until I finally saw evidence of doctrinal changes with my own little eyeballs.

Admitted to myself that the whole thing was a steaming wok full of fecal matter about 5 months into it. Knew other missionaries who felt the same way, but stayed in for various reasons, mostly family

I was a little more liberal and little less orthodox— emphasis on little. I pretty much took it all seriously and was obedient as hell. I leaned a towards the mercy/grace side more than some maybe but but was strict in my observance...at least in my first year.

While on my mission, I concluded that the "missionary program" was a ridiculous cult. I still believed the "Gospel" was true for a long time after that.

I was a recent convert (a little over a year) when I went on a foreign mission. I was so shocked when I heard other missionaries in our apt talking about how silly and strange the temple is! I couldn't believe it. And these were people who were raised in the church. Some of them were nice people, and some of them were straight up a-holes. If I lived with some of those people outside the mission and was not a member of LDS, I would beat the hell out of them and cuss them out.
Yet, I stayed in tscc another 18 years. What the hell was I thinking?

I went because I had been drilled since birth "I hope they call me on a mission". My mom had done a mission work in Denmark and had loved it so it was just assumed that I would also go.

I never had wanted to go. I had never asked to go.

One day, I was walking in the hallway at the church, and the bishop approached me with some papers in his hand. As he thrust them at me, he said "Hey, fill these out and bring them back to me."

I looked at the paper in my hand and at the top was something along the lines of "Full Time Missionary Application" or something to that effect.

I thought, "well sh!t, here it goes."

At the time I had heard of electro-shock therapy at BYU. I was fully aware that all LDS church leaders could easily read your mind. The Spirit of Discernment was drilled into my head from a young age.

I was also fully aware that I was gay.

Now I entered a state of anxiety that would not stop until I was back home from Japan.

For the next two years I was stressed out that in my next interview that person would be able to see right through me and sling me off to get electrocuted via my dick.

Because my mom was so goddamned gungho about mishie work, I decided to give her the thrill of a lifetime and fill out my paperwork. She was more than happy to oblige.

LONG LONG LONG LONG story short, I went on a mission dreading it, loathing it, suffering through it, but I went because it was expected of me and I didn't want to disappoint family.

I thought I was TBM, but I was just going through the motions and the first chance I had to skip those motions I took it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/21/2014 12:01PM by Levi.

went to

- attract a better quality spouse
- avoid Viet Nam draft;

I still hadn't learned how arbitrary application / enforcement of LDS teachings ('doctrine', ha ha) was.

I was getting intense heat from my draft board in the late sixties and was about to be inducted so I signed up for a mission and was sent to Chile. I was pretty careful about being diligent and acting like I cared when really I was down there hiding out from the US Army. After a few weeks in the MTC it dawned on me that no one was having any inspiration as they never cornered me about my true reasons for being there, so I just went along, kept getting promoted and ended up a ZL over the zone that included the mission home and all the slacker elders working there. What an eye opener. I did get stationed for 6 months on the Straits of Magellan and got in some really amazing fishing, for which I have always been thankful. I actually got two 4 day vacations to go into the hills and camp and fish. The other 3 elders in town seemed more than willing to go along. I always figured my punishment for all of this was the torture that resulted from all of the pretty Chilean girls I kept running into that I couldn't go out with!!!

Definitely not.

I went because I didn't feel I had any choice. I was born into TSCC so from a very early age I was told I would be going on a mission. So I went.

Was miserable the whole time. Didn't even learn all the discussions (Korean).

It was incredibly fortunate that at the one year mark, they changed missions from 24 to 18 months (early 80's) and I was able to get out of that hell hole 6 months sooner than I thought.

I stayed active for a year after getting home, but as soon as I went away to college I never set foot in another chapel.

I believed fully in the Gospel, and in the Church, though I did think some of the mission rules were completely bunk and had nothing to do with anything other than control and I balked at some of them.

We had a member who used to get old books from work and he would bring them over and let us go through them. We would select what we wanted. So I had a good collection of books going that was 'off the plan'

I didn't actually READ them. I just was collecting them and then sending them home.

One of the ZL's found out and went completely ballistic about how I didn't love the Lord and that I was the most evil thing ever. You would have thought I was raping and killing babies the way he reacted. He was like a complete NUT JOB.

So I sent the stuff home, and CONTINUED COLLECTING, but was a little more observant in keeping it a secret.

Then towards the end of my mission, I figured if I started saving early, I would have enough money to get a nice stereo when I got home. So I lived on straight beans and rice for 3 or 4 months. Saved up about 300 bucks in my account. Somehow the ZL saw that my account was much BIGGER than his and went on about how it was the LORD's MONEY.

Hey I slaved hard for 2 years, I was going to reward myself, and NO, it was actually money I had saved to come OUT here. They wanted me to turn it all over to the church. I withdrew IT ALL right before they could do anything, went home...

And bought myself a NICE new stereo.

I believe in God and Jesus and the Gospel, I also believed that mission leadership, the APs and the ZLs were a bunch of NAZI robots. The only cool thing in leadership, except for a couple of exceptions was the mission president.

I would say that I was more of a "wanna-be TBM" than a true TBM. Honestly, I'd read quite abit of anti-Mormon stuff before my mission. Had been inactive for awhile. Then, one day, I said to myself: "If the Church is true, and I don't attend it and live by it, then I'll miss out. If the Church is false...I'll find that out...even if it take me 50 years!" Well, it book me more like 10 years from that point, until I finally lost my testimony. I lost my testimony in "stages".

I lost faith that mission Presidents were inspired, on my mission.

I lost faith that the Brethren have "the spirt of discernment" in late 1985, not long after Mark Hofmann confessed to forging focuments, killing people, and "fooling" Gordon B. Hinckley and Dallin Oaks for five years!!!

I lost faith that single Mormon women were always honest and virtuous, as I was told as a young Mormon convert of 18 years of age, when I kept finding active young Mormon girls and women in the beds of my roommates.

I lost faith in the Book of Abraham after reading Hugh Nibley's "Abraham in Egypt" book; which was PURE B___ SH____!!!!

I lost faith in Mormon bishops after telling them about my roommates, only to have the bishops chuckle and say: "I find your story hard to believe!"

I lost faith in The Book of Mormon after doing research to try to find evidence for it.

I lost faith in Joseph Smith after reading how he lied about being a polygamist, and promised young teen girls that if they "married" (i.e. had sex with) him, then their enire extended families would be saved.

I lost faith in Mormonism...little by little...until nothing was left.