As has been mentioned I think the missionary program is as much about further indoctrinating 19 year old boys into being lifelong members(thus having their families being in the church for their life) as it is converting new members.

I've known so many 19 year old kids who really knew little to nothing about what the church really stood for, but went on a mission because that is just what you did as a Mormon. Thoughts?

The mission was in the picture since I was old enough to walk--maybe sooner. I was on automatic pilot with all things mormon by the time I hit 19, so, off I went without giving it a thought.

It was just what you did if you wanted to please and I did.

I was relieved to at least get a foreign mission and not be stuck in Utah or Idaho. Even though I was prepared to do my duty, I really wasn't in to it. I didn't even look it up on the map for a few weeks after I got the "calling" to Argentina.

I was truly like the people from Invasion of the Body Snatchers who had the pods put under the bed.

I believed--why wouldn't I?-- with no exposure to anything else.
And when I finally saw through the church, it was like waking from a coma.

Yeah there is a great relief when you realize it is not true. My heart goes out to nonbelievers who had to suffer through a mission.

At the age of 19 you actually had to look at a map to figure out the location of Argentina?

Oh, don't be like that. Ha Ha. I knew where it was--generally. I looked at the map just to get more specific about it, study it a little more. My point was that I should have been more interested, but I was just accepting doing my duty and the details did not matter to me at that time. That changed when I finally got to Argentina. I was fascinated beyond belief by the people, the country, everything. It changed me. That was one of the few good parts about the mission.

It is embarrassing but there was almost no emphasis on world geography in my school. I was a straight A student, but I can't even remember a geography class. I don't know if that was common or not back then.

I traveled a lot after that, and was told in several different countries that I visited that Americans tended to know a lot about their own country and little about others.

I wish I had known more about the world when I was younger. Its very important to know that the whole world doesn't begin and end with you. That is what I I did not like about living in Utah, I always felt a predominance of that feeling. I haven't felt that since I left.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/08/2012 07:09PM by blueorchid.

I was expected to go. I was forced to put a percentage of my money in a mission fund. All my life I knew that I didn’t want to go, but also knew that I had to. I dreaded it.

At 19 I was living with my girlfriend, and at Christmas I opened a present at my Mom and Dad’s and he said, “That will come in handy on your mission.” She got pregnant, and I didn’t go.

I was always drawn to the “bad” people. And I was sandwiched right in between the favorite kiss ass brother, and the favorite sister. The brother was always the quorum President and the adults all thought he was perfect. So of course he would go on a mission.

I knew I had to go, but I at least wanted it to be a surprise that I went, not an of course he did like my brother. So I drank, swore, and had sex in high school, so that at least people would be surprised that I went. I couldn’t stand people thinking that my life was preplanned out, just like my brother.

They still expected you to go after you moved in with your girlfriend?

Glad you did not. It amazes me how many people don't live the church lifestyle yet still go on missions because of family and cultural pressure. Glad you didn't succumb to that.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/07/2012 02:46AM by archaeologymatters.

Me. I was miserable, wrote in my journal all the time about wanting to go home ASAP or early ... but never thought about actually doing anything else but first, go and second stick it out until the end ... just because that's what you do.

I thought about it...and said NO!....

Yeah I said no as well. I didn't really think about it much. I knew by the time I was 15 that I could not believe in Mormonism. My family took a trip to Nauvoo when I was in high school, and it felt weird how people acted there. Totally different experience for a nonbeliever.

My parents were very TBM, but at the same time they were respectful of me as a person. My decision did not in any way affect my relationship with my folks, especially with my dad whom I was in business with. Family was first, then the business and then the church...exactly the way it should be....unlike so many stories I read about here....



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/07/2012 01:13PM by Lethbridge Reprobate.

i am about to but i dont want to i feel like i have to or my family will disown me

If you feel that way, then your family does not respect you as a human being and they have their priorities in the wrong order...JMHO

...I was newly baptized, "full of the spirit", and completely excited to serve the lard on a mission. Not thinking? Well, rationally, I wasn't thinking. More than anything, I was clueless and blind.

I was raised in tscc. When I received my pb at 17. There was a phrase in there that meant going on a mission. I didn't want to go at first. But as I neared 21 and 22, I already had two sisters that had 'served' and my younger bro was preparing to go to, so I went. (Incidently my bro's last 2 weeks at mtc were my frist 2). So only thought of it because it was a phrase in my pb.

Being BIC, of course I received the indoctrination from birth.

The thinking was that it was the right thing to do.

It would be two years of focused, blissful servitude to the Lord. No other worries. And according to Kimball, Benson, et al, great would be my reward when I came home... because, you know, a mission is worth more than a college degree.

Marriage, kids, education, would all fall into place as post-mission blessings. Great would be my reward.

As far as church knowledge, I was sufficiently aware of things... (though I'm an angry, lying, exmo if I repeat any of them now!).

I did have a few comps who were oblivious to church doctrine, though.

A few things I learned those two years:
*The church is run by people sans inspiration who want power.
*Other people's beliefs are just as credible, (or not credible depending on POV).
*Success was determined by the personalities involved; outgoing sales-type people were successful. Obedience and prayer had little to do with it.
*It was all about hours and numbers.

So, my perception of mormonism was much different coming home than it was going out.

oh i was thinking about it a lot! But not enough apparently or I would have refused to go. after that BS temple ceremony I really should have said what the HELL was that and said I aint selling that crap.

Instead I went and paid very dearly for it.

It was definitely because of the social pressure and expectations. It was not something I was particularly interested in doing.

There was an article in the Ensign many years ago that said exactly what you are stating. One of the brethren wrote the article and said explicitly that the greatest convert from serving a mission was the missionary. With the abysmal retention rate of converts, it seems the brethren are taking the pragmatic approach.

Yeah it was a red flag for me about how the church operated. As I stated I did not go on a mission because I didn't feel I could go door to door telling people to believe something I didn't really believe in.

However when I was 19 I may not have bought into 100% of the church doctrine, but I felt the church was a force of good and a noble organization. I actually thought I was helping the church by not going. I thought it wouldn't be fair to more faithful members that had strong testimonies. The red flag occurred with how the church reacted. They told me that I didn't need a testimony yet to serve and that I would gain one there. To me this was crazy talk. So basically you are saying I should spend 2 years of my life trying to covince others of believing in something that I don't know if I believed?

It still amazes me how many people serve missions even though they don't really believe in it. I really wonder about parents who pressure their kids into doing this. I think it is very destructive that there is a culture that treats 19 year olds harshly who don't go on missions or choose to come back early from them.

I actually wanted to go. But as I point out, that was back in the day. Boys were not so pressured to go. To go was a privilege that one had to work out on his own. Vietnam was raging, and many guys who wanted to go were unable to because they were being conscripted. My friend Tony Stowe would loved to have gone on a mission, but he was killed in Vietnam.

There was far more of a sense of adventure in the mission then. There was little opportunity to learn a language before departing, so most foreign language missions were 2 1/2 years, with the extra 6 months thrown in for language learning. The indoctrination was far less than today. The entire mission home experience was one week in a fire-trap building that sat near the corner where the conference center now sits. All we did in the mission home was convene in the basement to hear lectures by the general authorities, go to the temple, and have special tours of the tabernacle and the underground passageways. Most training was on-the-job.

I resigned from the Mormon church eight years ago now, and while I hardly think about Mormonism any more, every few months I'll occasionally I drop in here on a lazy Sunday morning out of curiosity to see what "the buzz" is these days. This particular topic inspires me to chime in, since I've never really shared my own experiences relating to my pre-mission expectations and what the mission was actually like for me.

I converted to Mormonism when I was 18, primarily because I wanted to be part of the same group that my Mormon friends were part of, but also because I have some rebellious tendencies, and converting to Mormonism seemed like an awesome act of rebellion against mainstream Christianity. I had absolutely no idea what a Mormon mission actually was, except that it was a commandment from God that I go and that everyone expected me to do it. So, after a year of college in southern California where I had lackluster reciprocity for my involvement in the local institute, I put in my paperwork to serve when I was turning 19.

Nobody ever told me anything, and I wasn't very proactive in getting the information myself, since I was so busy trying to do well in my math and science classes. I figured that if it was a commandment that I go anyway, it doesn't really matter what the details of the mission are; I just need to do it. I had a vision of what a "missionary" was from books and movies I had seen with missionaries, which depicted a Utopian symbiotic relationship between grateful natives and the good-hearted generous missionaries. I thought that most of my time and efforts would involve humanitarian work.

When the calling came, I remember there being a big "mission calling" get-together, where a bunch of the Mormon kids (age 14-17ish) got together in eager anticipation to hear where I'd be going. There was an audible gasp in the room as I read out, "Italy Rome Mission." I guess the place I was sent to was a pretty big deal.

My brain just switched into a state of acceptance of everything from that point. I did the endowments thing in the temple, and I just thought, "Okay, really weird, but maybe I'll get it when I attain Mormon enlightenment or whatever. But this is a commandment, so I'll just stick all this on the shelf for now." Then I got into the MTC, and that's where I got my first indications that a mission in Italy wasn't going to be quite when I expected it to be.

Our instructors were strangely evasive whenever we asked how things really were. They kept on focusing on anecdotes about specific people that they worked with or specific positive experiences and "miracles." They talked about "effective" and "less effective" things to say when contacting people. We were put into "simulated teaching" exercises where we were video recorded as we tried to give the 6 "discussions" to a faux-investigator in Italian, and then we sat down with people who monitored the discussions for criticism about our body language, our intonations, whether we directly pressured the investigator to make commitments, and so forth. At other times we were sent into a calling center, where we had to don headsets and read text off of a computer screen when we got calls, offering to send missionaries by to drop off free copies of the Book of Mormon or church-produced videos. At one point they switched us to an "outgoing calls" queue, where we were basically telemarketers at that point. Over and over, the "commitment pattern" was drilled into our heads. There was very little, if any, talk of humanitarian work that we would be doing to help people in need.

Then we got on the plane and flew into Rome. Within a day, we had our first area/companion assignments and were on trains and buses to various destinations. I was sent to a higher-elevation part of central/northwest Italy, and I just remember how gone-chilling cold it was first stepping off the bus. My companion didn't have much to say; he just grabbed one of my suitcases and we walked a couple of miles through the snow to our apartment. "Can you cook?" was his first question, to which I stammered, "Uh, well, I've been getting my food in college at the student cafeteria under a meal plan, and at home my mom used to cook for me, so not really." "That's just great. I guess I'll have to teach you then."

My first companion hated talking to people he didn't know. I asked him what we'd be doing, and he said, "We'll visit some members." So we spent the first week repeatedly visiting the 3 or 4 Mormons in that city, and a couple of times we dropped in on a retirement home, where we visited with a couple of elderly people who weren't getting visits from family. "Okay, this isn't too bad a start", I thought to myself. Then I recall him getting a phone call from the Zone Leaders, and he was grilled about our "numbers." I guess they weren't too good, since we weren't out there knocking on doors nearly as much as we should have been. We were supposed to have 2 or 3 people in our "teaching pool," which is the set of people actively progressing through the 6 discussions. Then there was the perpetual number of people we planned to baptize in the next 3 weeks, which was set to "1" on my planning sheet for my entire mission (I didn't baptize anyone). Anyway, the conversation was obviously uncomfortable, and my companion was chided for not contacting more people.

In short order, my companion went home (I was his last companion), and I got someone who was more extroverted. He would constantly prod me to walk up to total strangers, give a goofy smile, and engage in some sort of conversation. The goal was to get the other person engaged in a conversation of some sort, at which point we'd need to "find an angle" to wedge in something like, "We've got an important message for the family. Can we come by your house and share it with you?" That was a "hard invite." We were supposed to do a minimum of 40 of those a week. Most of my companions ended up doing that by knocking on doors all day. One in 10 or so would get an answer, and of those, maybe 1 in 10 wouldn't slam the door shut upon seeing that we were proselytizers. We'd go an entire street or apartment complex with maybe a couple of "hard invites."

At some point the metric changed to "number of first discussions," since the "hard invite" metric wasn't working out so well. The entire mission got something like 120 baptisms that year. I had by that time learned that our measure of success as missionaries wasn't the humanitarian aid that we provided to people in need, but rather the number of convert baptisms in the Mormon faith. This was my big disappointment with the Mormon mission. I resolved that dissonance by figuring we were still helping people, since we could at least get people into the "right" church.

Anyway, some missionaries responded to the mandate by figuring out how to blurt out all of the "key points" of the first discussion in 2 or 3 sentences to anybody who had the misfortune of being within earshot. *knock knock* "Who is it?" "We're missionaries!" "Yes...?" "jesus died for your sins and joseph smith is a prophet and the book of mormon is the word of god and will you read and pray to know it's true?!?" That technically earned the missionary a "first discussion," which he could proudly report as having taught in sufficient quantity when pressed by the mission hierarchy that weekend. I almost couldn't blame them, since that's the only way they would possibly meet the mandate. None of the Italians would ever willingly sit down and listen to what they had to say otherwise. Those missionaries who had some degree of self-respect just didn't meet their numbers and sadly reported their failures (i.e., lack of faith) every week. We woke up, knocked on doors all day, maybe taught 1 or 2 first discussions, and then reported bad numbers. Every so often we would teach an English class or visit someone in a hospital or retirement home. Repeat for about 100 weeks, and that was more or less how the mission was.

In all, I found the Mormon mission to be highly manipulative, comically mismanaged, and tragically averse to real humanitarian work. Looking back, one of my deepest regrets is that those precious two years went to fruitless proselytizing for Mormonism rather than to a genuinely helpful charity such as the Red Cross or Habitat for Humanity. My consolation is that, when I am retired, any time or energy that I'll have then will end up going to the right place.

Thanks for sharing. Sounds like a rough trip. I have heard many people who claimed it was the best 2 years when they got home, later reveal it was a horrible time where they did not feel like they were helping anybody.

"My brain just switched into a state of acceptance of everything at that point."

Thank you. That is so well put, and exactly what was happening to me.

Great post.

I didn't really know anything about the church other that gleaming certain nuggets during SS/Priesthood growing up. I wasn't ready for it at all. The first day in the MTC, everyone stood up and started chanting D&C 4 and I remember thinking to myself "what the hell is everyone talking about"? I'd never even heard it before.
I deff. only went because I was too afraid of what the repercussions would be of not going.