From my own personal experiences and those related to me by friends and family, missionary life is rarely the testimony-building, spiritually edifying affair that Mormons popularly believe. Young Mormon men are still men, and they WILL look for ways to relieve themselves from the buckets-loads of testosterone that aches to be released. When I was still a member I was forbidden from recounting the more coarse and salacious stories of my mission, but now that I'm no longer under any obligation to keep mum I'd like to share. I'm also very curious to know if any of you have experienced anything similar.

Note: I served in Australia, which is known for its sexual promiscuity. There were many, many opportunities for us to be unchaste. Some of us kept ourselves occupied with, ahem, solitary activities, and were able to rebuff advances, but many I knew decided they much preferred team sports.

Here are a few tidbits from my mission:

-Starting at the end, I caught my next-to last companion in bed with one of our investigators. I knew that he regularly left our flat in the middle of the night to see her, but this night for whatever reason they decided to have a riskier encounter. I cursed at him and told him that if he was going to that he could at least choose a different room than the one we share. Later he tried to tell me that she was just cold and he was sharing his warmth, but that didn't quite explain why her clothes were laying beside the bed.

-In my second area my ZL's were known to regularly invite women over to their flat. I didn't believe it at the time, but a while later I became very good friends with the family of one of those girls. She was 16.

-In that same zone I befriended a missionary with whom I shared a love of art. We spoke all the time and used to go on splits just so we could stay home to chat and sketch (No funny business, I promise). One day he confided in me that he had feelings for one of our ZL's. I shouldn't have been shocked that he was gay, but it took me a little bit to adjust to this information. I asked him if he planned to do anything about his feelings to which he responded that he wouldn't, but less than 2 weeks later he was on a flight home. I called him when I found out he was leaving, and all he said was, "Something happened between us." I found out later from one of his flat mates what had happened: they had engaged each other one night, and in the morning the ZL called the Pres and claimed the other missionary had made advances on him. ZL finished his mission "with honor," and my friend was sent home in disgrace.

I have many, many tales from my mission, but this will suffice for now. They're not all sexual, either: I experienced everything from theft to hitchhiking cross-country to brutal physical violence. I even had a companion who deliberately made up points of church history and gospel doctrine that he would share with potential investigators just to screw with them and infuriate me! At the time I was a little horrified, but now I am bewildered at how interesting my life was for those two years and how it was NOTHING like I had expected.

Any other RM's out there with interesting tales from the mission field?

My best friend went on a mission to Pocatello Idaho, and he hated it. Him and one of his companions used to go to the bar all the time. Until he couldn't live a double life any more, and left his mission. He was talking about coming home months before he finally did, and my parents wanted me to talk him into staying. At the time I was a semi-active member, and didn't think he should have gone on a mission in the first place. So there was no way I was going to talk him into staying.

Sorry nothing juicy.

This is great news! Missionaries are leaving the church. The only problem I see is that no one has explained the facts of life to them in regards to safe sex. That is a concern. Having sex is natural. NOT having sex is the "sin". Not having sex safely is just stupid.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/26/2010 07:36PM by winecountrygirl.

That same friend about 6-7 years later, has now bought a house and moved in with his never-mo girlfriend who he has two kids with.

As far as I know (since I moved across the country and haven't seen him in two years) he doesn't go to church and I know for a fact that his girlfriend doesn't want anything to do with the church.

Before I moved we hung out all the time. We used to drink at her place frequently. She was curious about the church and we would always tell her all the dirt. Those were some good times.

I never went on a mission, but I've spent a lot of time telling people about the church. Nothing untrue, but the good stuff that scares people away.

Isn't that kind of like sending Catholic missionaries to Rome?
How ridiculous.

I had a friend who served in Arizona who was assigned to a suicidal elder to keep him from offing himself. It was terribly depressing for him, as you could imagine, so my friend took up drinking to pass the time. Eventually he started dating. He tattled on himself and was sent home.

I had one companion who I caught masturbating in my bathroom. I also had an elder that I knew and went on splits with that got sent home for having mutual oral sex with an investigator.

Our mission was very spiritualistic with lots of praying for magical things to happen, trying to pray for investigators to appear out of nowhere, etc. None of the magical thinking worked, the leaders were totally uninspired hypocrites, visiting GA's were douchebags, and the Irish people (where I served) were way too fun and smart for the Mormon church to compete with. After the first year, most missionaries stopped trying to be jerks to each other, and most of us just tried to do the minimum effort and enjoy the amazing country we were in. It was clear to many after serving that Mormonism is a manipulative lie and not worth the enormous effort expected of us just to be worthy of a lifetime of more of it.

My mission changed my life, but that was because of Ireland. Not because of the Mormon church. I don't know of anyone who committed any sexual sins in my mission. I'm not saying it's impossible, but why do that on a mission when you can just go home and have more opportunities?

that had been a model before her mission. Actually, we had several former models in my mission, believe it or not, but this one I'll call Sister Jane. She was by far the most gorgeous sister but unfortunately, a very high-maintenance type and I think the MP was just counting the days til she went home. In her last area, she and her comp were teaching a gay man. He had a problem joining the church because he was gay so Sister Jane's solution was to take off her nametag, quit being a missionary, and to start giving her all to converting this guy to being straight. In other words, trying to get him to fall in love with her. Her companion was a newbie, who just went along for the ride because the MP had told the newbie that her mission for the first two months was to keep Sister Jane from going home early - no matter what.

Long story short - the guy fell for Sister Jane, got baptized and got dumped. The Sister Jane went home a week later, leaving such a monster high long distance phone bill that ALL the sisters in my mission got their phones taken away. Needless to say, the "baptism" was furious, dropped the church immediately and said he'd never trust a woman again...much less fall in love with one. Sister Jane, on the other hand, is probably still counting him as a baptism when people ask her how many people she taught actually got baptized.

After my mission, there was an elder in my ward who impressed me so much with his incredible spirituality. He got sent home from his mission for sleeping with the wife of someone in our stake. Being mistaken about "feeling the spirit" around him really unsettled me for a while. Now I know it was just salesman-type charm, nothing more.

My trainer streaked for his hump day.

My first and second companion got sent home for having sex, the second totaled a mission car when he snuck out one night to see a girl. There was a whole area shut down because of promiscuous missionaries. I know of three others that were sent home for girls, and "unrepentant hearts." I went out of the mission for a baseball game, but it got rained out, we used a pay phone to call our numbers in. One crazy thing was a fabled book of gadianton, containing information on breaking rules and not getting caught. I can tell you it wasn't fabled though I was never the possessor of it.

I was one of the "good" missionaries who didn't break the rules or even think about breaking them. When I got sick and had to come home early, I was treated the same way as these guys who screwed around and came home early.

I guess I still have some work to do to let some things go, eh?

It may not seem like it from the experiences I tell, but I began my mission with zeal and the purest of intentions. I got very sick the second month in Australia, and my mission president in all his holiness declared me a lying laze-about and rebuked me during zone meeting. This actually resulted in me becoming surprisingly popular amongst the missionaries who didn't aspire toward leadership. I met some great, intelligent people and became a part of a network of radical proselytes who shunned the leadership and their tyranny by quotas and adopted creative ways of teaching what we believed at the time to be God's great gospel.

After a while, though, it became hard for us to continue to participate in a system that branded us as troublemakers and banished us to tiny towns in the middle of the Australian deserts. Some missionaries left, some got girlfriends and two got jobs. I got a gym membership, slept, surfed the internet at the local library and did missionary work in my spare time. In my last area my comp and I managed to take a branch with only 4 active members who met in a school staff room and more than quadruple the activity rate, in two short months, so our efforts were not in vain. Guess who took the credit, though? Our mission president declared that the miraculous change in that area would never have happened if he hadn't been inspired to place us there. We put in all the work and got none of the credit, not even a "Thank you" or a "Sorry for doubting your sincerity and devotion, Elder! I seriously misjudged you."

We carry our anger and resentment toward the church because it wronged us, and we deserved better than they gave us. You should not have been shunned for requiring medical attention while you convalesced at home. Far from it, you deserved to be treated like a goddamned hero for your sacrifice!

I assume that many of the things mentioned in this thread must have taken place before the bar was raised. It's my understanding that today's missionaries do not serve unless they are already righteous, virtuous, pure, and have strong testimonies before they are permitted to be set apart and enter the field.

Yea, you have got to "raise those bars" when far less young men want to serve missions or the cost of retaining separate missions interferes with building those 4 billion dollar malls.Today's missionaries are "Saint's Alive in Jesus," truly.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/27/2010 09:15AM by george.

That's VERY true, I have noticed. When I was a kid, our elders were hella cool and laid back.

But now, all the elders I see are like super psycho holy rollers, who think "darn" is like the worst curse word on the planet.

They are REALLY raising the bar.

If I were forced to do it over again, I wouldn't have followed the rules. I would have enjoyed the country, and said the most horrible things to my MP to goad him into a physical confrontation. Then I would have been sent home for "bitchslapping" a mission president.

Snow skiing and ice skating in Innsbruck.

I tried being a good missionary, not breaking the rules, tracting like I was supposed to, etc. What I could never figure out is why the areas where we worked the hardest had little to no results, areas where I'd already given up, didn't even believe in god, we had baptisms. Baptisms are a reward for your obedience...my ass. I talked to my TBM brother about this, he said that we were given an easy baptism as motivation. "just think, if you can baptize one without working and being disobedient...think of how many you could baptize if you were obedient!"

If you were curious, I actually went through the temple later with on convert, he's still active, and 2nd counselor in the bishopric.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/27/2010 12:02PM by dino.

Last two months I was in S.America I hit home runs with two babes who pretended to be interested in the church but really wanted to have sex with me. I am so glad I did, I will never regret it

an elder in my mission fucked a girl we later baptized. then she went inactive and he fucked her again and got sent home.

I have a friend on a mission in Peru... he plays xbox live at this peruvian guys mansion and sits around in internet cafes most days.

I don't know of any friends who did the deed on their mission... but I do KNOW that half of my senior class were NOT worthy to serve missions but did anyways.

The whole bar raise was just a facade... I don't know anyone who was turned away from their mission (even those who openly admitted their deeds haha).

They just want numbers out there.

"Raising the bar" gives them an excuse for lower numbers and is more of a mindf*ck for those that DO go: "Be extra perfect, boys!"

Okay okay, here it goes, this is all true:

In an African Mission (Note that over there, it's a whole different ball game):
-Elder knocks up an investigator up then pays for abortion with subsistence (Mission supplied funds)
-Quite a few elders having sex with members
-Dating, partying, and drinking (Came across a completely drunk Elder while on exchanges).
-DL and companion having sleep overs with Sister missionaries (Sexual activity unknown, but grinding and making out).
-Elders making out with girls in locked bedrooms of mission apartments (Who knows what else went on behind those doors).
-At the extent of the above, you can count on all other rules being broken, some that would get you sent home in US were casually broken by almost everyone.
-Corrupt Leadership and a "Secret Combination" that kept all this hidden nicely in the dark, but it eventually got found out, Big Investigation, and mass ex-comms,disciplinary action, and send homes.

While the above took place, this is an African affair and shouldn't be used as fodder to stereotype Mormon missionaries as a whole and take cheap shots at the church. It was quite the experience being in the midst of it but it didn't destroy my faith (Definitely had a place in the process though).



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/27/2010 05:58PM by grassboy.

The Aussie missions were atypically debaucherous as well. Our mission covered the middle third of the entire continent, and many missionary pairs were completely isolated from the rest of the mission. Alone and surrounded on all sides by desert and suffering from mind-altering heat it was easy to see how a relationship, however brief, could become a much-needed distraction. That being said, an inordinate amount of elders in the cities were equally rebellious.

I'm not one to take pot shots at the church, because it cheapens the the more troubling and legitimate problems inherent in Mormonism, particularly in the eyes of members. If the ex-Mormon community really wants to weaken the foundation of the LDS faith they would do it better in civil public discourse.

I created this thread mainly to purge my mind of many of the mission memories I was encouraged to keep quiet as a member. They weren't faith-promoting, and I was told that anything that didn't strengthen the church was irrelevant. I disagree. Just as you, my mission didn't demolish my faith, but it certainly opened my eyes, and I believe the behavior of missionaries can very well be seen as a reflection of the church.

Middle third of Australia you say, that would
make your mission the Adelaide Australia Mission.

That's correct. I served there from '98 to '00.

I'm not telling my regular name for this one.
I made out a couple of times, juggling the bare boobs of sister missionaries, and getting a handjob.
Got drunk, went swimming in the ocean, watched tons of movies, left boundaries, spent a lot of time at museums and generally being a tourist. I did all of this as a zone leader when I had a car.
Baptized a shit load. And my MP begged me to be his AP. Hahaha. I felt very bad about it all, good times just seemed to find me. I've actually cleaned up my act considerably since getting home. It was the wildest time of my life.

You lucky bastard. I served in the Melbourne Mission in the 1970's. Was mostly a "good boy". Had lots of opportunities to fool around with girls there, they loved the Yanks. Most I ever did was go on a site seeing trip with my companion and two non member girls. She grabbed my "member" while we were in the back seat...had a real problem the the masterbation thing after that.:) Had one TBM mother that wrote me a letter asking me if I "wanted" her daughter.....to take back to America?????

Taught a thirty-something couple the discussions. Got transfered to Tasmania and received a letter from the wife asking me if I wanted to have a secret affair with her. Oddly enough the letter was sent to me via the mission home and was opened by the MP. He inserted a note addressed to me that the letter was opened by him by "mistake" and that my reply to her should be "no reply". Big Brother was alive and well in my mission.