Where's the F'ing comment button so that I can point out the contradictions between his advice and the training/leadership-directives under which the missionaries serve?
In other words, as always, if you're having trouble on your mission, it's you, you, you, you, YOU! It has nothing to do with THEM. Nothing to do with the fact that it's just plain shitty, you are being used, you are being abused, you are wasting time and money that should be spent on college or attaining life skills, and you are being trained to be obedient morgbots.
No, YOU are the one with the problem. YOU are the one failing to see the big picture. YOU are the one not sufficiently self-disciplined. And if you go home feeling like a failure, sorry, it just sucks and it's not their fault.
Realization upon arriving in the mission field that this glorious mission you've prepared your whole friggin life for is just a door to door salesman job?
Intense psychological violence directed at you unless you submit to authority's dictates?
Surrendering your individuality for group-think?
Relinquishing any and all critical thought?
24/7/365/2 of constant mindf@*k ?
Its not the missionary that can ruin a mission its the sons of bitches who run the whole program who lie and obfuscate and use these poor young men & women (really, their just boys and girls) to maintain their control over their false empire.
What is this with the parents completing the mission application, I don't recall very clearly but when I went in the 70s I completed the forms with my Bishop, but I was 19 going on twenty, and my parents did not complete forms and applications for me since I was in Elementary school.