On another thread it was found that a few of the people on this board served in the Canada Montreal Mission. There are also some of us who have overlaps in the time we were there, so it's possible we have met.
Anyone willing to share their names so we can see if we knew one another?
Soeur Paulsen was my MTC comp 1990-1992...I think. Man, are we that old already? If you are talking about that Soeur Paulsen, yes she was a total sweetie and I wish I could apologize to her. I was sent on a mission to, "knock the gay away" and took my girlfriend withdrawals out on her at times. I'm Soeur Reynolds. I am the "other sister" in your class of 1990 who snuck off to the mall to get us all Dr. Peppers and no-doz, and to see my girlfriend! :-) I gave Soeur Paulsen a choice, come with or let me leave on my own. She came with.
She wanted desperately to go to France since she is Canadian, I wanted to go back to my home country of Canada. I begged my Stake Pres not to send me on a foreign mission. I do not have a gift with second languages, and he knew that. I guess he thought being humiliated for a year and a half would be good for me. While we were both wrestling with demons at the MTC, we adored our class of men and I hope that a couple of you are posting on this board.
Soeur Paulsen had a wonderful tenor voice and had the guts to sing in the male section in the MTC choir. I hope she is happy.
If any of you were in my MTC class, do you remember how many sessions we were left without an instructor, or that one guy who was donating plasma so he could afford to get married and apparently a side affect of that is a drippy nose and watery eyes.....good times.
I think I knew Soeur Paulson. If she is the one i'm thinking of, she was blonde and I think her Dad was a mission president in South America somewhere? She was a very nice Sister, very TBM, but very genuine and humble!
I served on the mission from 2002-4 and hated it. I served under President Dave Ulrich. Both him and his wife tried but I eventually ended up returning home to England with no faith. I eventually left the church in 2007. I have found it so hard to forget about my experience, I found it quite hard with the view that if you don't do the work then there is something wrong with you or you're holding everyone else back.
I find it so annoying that I could believe in it. I ended up feeling sorry for the people we were trying to teach.
I went just as they 'raised the bar' so to speak which made it seem harder and was another stick with which companions used against me.
JamesL...I'm not in a huge rush to give out my name...but I bet I know you.
You were on your way out, I was about three months in...
...Halloween on South Shore...you had a third eye...I was a Hawaiian...ghost stories about hunting on indian burial grounds.
Longeuil...you were with one of my MTC comps at the end...district played D&D all night (not me, I didn't care for the game and entertained myself with the comic books in the ant-infested apartment.)
flashes from those months (I was in Sorel)...dinging into Montreal to go see the stripper ads on St. Cath's. Eating souvlaki and doners at Arahova...
Weird memories come flooding back.
...the church can go fuck itself...but Quebec will always be special to me.
Hermes...yes, you have properly identified me. I apologize that I cannot recall your name. I thought I knew who you were, but one of the things you said in your message makes that impossible. If you would be interested in getting in touch with me, I'd like to talk.
I feel much the same. The LDS church is no longer a part of my life, but I will always love Quebec. For the opportunity to go there and to have met, on my mission, the person who remains my best friend to this day...I do not regret having ever joined the LDS and going on a mission.
"My brother went to Montreal. This would have been in the early 80's. He was treated pretty shabbily and it was awful! He certainly came back an exmo."
I was in there in the early 80s as well. May I ask what your brother's name was? (I know you might not want to give his name on a public forum, but I would be more than happy to have you contact me directly.)
I'm curious because I know of a few guys who were, as you put it, "treated pretty shabbily", and I was wondering if your brother might be one of the ones I knew about.
What was especially bad about it was my dad died while he was there. He wasn't going to be allowed to come home for the funeral and my mom was going to be left to run the dental business by herself without any skill or money. That didn't go over well with my brother either.
I'm going to point my brother to this conversation and see if he wants to join in.
Hi, abinidiburns! I served in the CMM from 94-96 under OverLord McKittrick. My areas, in order of slavery, were Sherbrooke, Saint Lambert/Greenfield Park/Longueil, St. Jean-sur-Richelieu, Montreal (St. Michel area), Repentigny/Mascouche, Potsdam (NY), and finally Victoriaville/Drummondville. Did we ever serve in the same area, by chance? As much as I hated the whole missionary experience, I would like to reconnect with some of the people that I may have served with to see how things are going.
St. Michel eh? Were we comps? I had 3 in that area. Were you there in the apartment that had rats? Or were you comps with the guy who found the next apartment?
That was a bitter sweet area for me. Two comps were hard for me then the third was awesome. A real person even. We had a baptism in that area. I still feel bad about that.
Any way. Look up my email. It would be fun to talk.
Crystal bay, st foy, Ontario, st. Michel, Ontario again, Levi.
Hey all! I'm a CMMer as well... I also slaved away under McKittrick and three others for the full two years of 95-96--oh how I remember well the car appreciation days in winter while living outside my area. I was in Terrebonne, Potsdam, Parc Jarry, Gatineau, Limoilou and Drummondville/Victoriaville.
My wife and I stopped going to church a little over a year ago, but I still love the culture and people of Quebec--in fact we visit yearly. It's great to see some of us were able to reach similar conclusions about TSCC--what a lesson on human psychology missionaries and missions are. We saw the "Book of Mormon" musical this past January and absolutely loved it. I don't think anyone, but a return missionary can fully appreciate it.
Free418years - I was in Drummondville for the last 5-months of '96, there's a chance we may have been companions.
abinadiburns - I'm glad to hear things have turned out so well for you...I loved reading about the fulfillment of McKittrick's prophesy :^). I almost died the day he stopped allowing missionaries play hockey on P-day.
cheezus - I was in Jarry for 5-months and slept over several times in that terrible St Michel apartment; even babysat our district leader's companion for a couple days while he recovered from epididymitis--that was a new vocabulary word for me at the time and I've wondered about it ever since.
Yes, McKitterick was there when I was there. I think he called himself a president or something silly like that.
Perhaps he was speaking by the spirit of prophesy, however, when at my final interview, he said to me "Don't be surprised if you end up marrying someone a lot like you." I'm sure he meant introverted and "quiet", but it's funny that he prophesied that I would marry someone with b00bs and a vaj-j. Just like me!!!
I was in Ottawa, Hawkesbury, and Brossard (South Shore). While on the South Shore I went to the Greenfield Park ward (or was that in Ottawa? It has been 20 years after all).
I remember going to both French and English church on Sunday (for the whole 3 hours each) while in South Shore just to have something to do that wasn't tracting. And of course to see friends, new members (so sorry I inflicted the cult on the meager few that I did) and hang out with other missionaries and etc.
I don't feel like giving my name on a searchable site like this, sorry. Chances are we at least knew OF each other if we had that much overlap. I can't think of anything other than my name that would have made me memorable. As I mentioned above, I'm an introvert (the mission is NOT GOOD for us introverts by the way, but I muddled through somehow) and I was, as I said before, a goodie 2 shoes at the time.
Life has gotten far more interesting since...
And far better.
I am a licensed professional in health care and I married a fantastic lady who is also a professional in a different realm of health care. The missionary saying came true for me "The harder you work, the hotter the wife." I worked my a$s off and made myself crazy trying to obey ALL the rules. By the way, this is purely a joke. I no longer can muster anything even resembling faith or even a speck of superstition.
We don't have kids and we have a great time being aunties. We are going to have to work and save to have a golf retirement, but I am driven to succeed by the smoldering anger that I still feel when I think of the years lost and the horribleness of listening to that fiend Packer tell me how evil I was. And believing all that garbage. What a waste.
Living well is truly the best revenge. After a while you are just living well, and have totally forgotten about the revenge part as you sip that Mai Tai on the beach.
Yep. That was me. I was there when my dad died in 1983. President Wynder refused to let me go home to the funeral, so I went home for the funeral. The only mistake I made after that was coming back. I'm not all sour grapes about it. Nobody held a gun to my head. It was just another waste of my precious time.
I often think about what would have happened if I had taken the resources that I spent in that 18 month extravaganza and invested it in Microsoft instead.
I don't believe you were one of the guys I was thinking about. I don't recall any of them being named "Smith". Of course, if that's not your real name, that means nothing.
That particular Mission President was the sort who would do that to someone.
I was in Laval with Travis Agle, Smiths Falls with a notorious Elder Huntington, In Verdun as a ZL with several comp's until my dad died. Verdun was where we saw the crazy stuff. Missionaries smoking, drinking, going to strip clubs. Ironically, I think all of those guys stayed in the church. it was some the really serious ones who became disillusioned. I was at Dorval, then ended at Longuille(sp) where I left behind the notorious mattress.
Back in the 80-82 range Soeur Menanger was notorious for breaking the rules. I was in Quebec City when she skipped after a zone meeting and went on her notorious tour of eastern canada with a member. Her comp ended up staying with us overnight until we could put her on a bus to the mission home the next day. When Sis. Menanger came back to her senses a few weeks later, she was stuck in the mission home for a few months - rather than being sent home. And then when I was a ZL on the south shore for my last several months, she was put back in my district as I was the only one who "understood her". She would still run off by herself for a few hours and I'd get calls "she's gone again". We'd have to go out looking for her. We also got two cars after the flood of missionaries going home early when they announced shortened missions...."fun" times.
Yes, I knew Laurie Menager although I was never in any of her districts. Only one elder to my knowledge "understood" her. He was from Logan, his initials were B.C. and he was my MTC DL.
That's not me. But we may know each other. I served mostly around Montreal...or within an hour drive, except for Quebec City. Never in Ottawa...I had a great handle on the french language. Lot of the guys stuck over in Ottawa were struggling with french.
I'd be very surprised if we didn't know each other, or at least of each other. I served 9 straight months on the Island in 1981, first in Dorval and then NDG/Westmount. Didn't get to Ottawa until my last two months, and never made it to Q-City.
I wasn't known as a strict rule-keeper either. My main claim to fame was writing a parody of "Ye Elders of Israel." Apparently it was copied and distributed throughout the mission, and eventually became sort of an unofficial mission song. The chorus ran:
"O Montreal, O Montreal, Province of Quebec, If you reject us, then you'll all go to heck."
The reason I brought up B.C. is that within a month or two after we all returned home around the same time, I received a phone call from him. He had arranged for Laurie to come to Utah to see him, but he was having car trouble or something. He was stuck in Utah and couldn't meet her at LAX, and asked me to pick her up. He said he'd be there soon to get her. I asked the folks and Laurie got the OK to stay with us. A week later B.C. hadn't shown up yet, so I called him to ask what was up. His car still wasn't running, but then she talked with him and we all agreed that she could take the Greyhound from L.A. to SLC and they could work it out from there. Never heard from either one again.
So Laurie Menager stayed in our house for a week post-mission. But she and B.C. wouldn't have made this arrangement if some sparks hadn't ignited between them back in Quebec.