My sister's mission president could have killed her.

jackjoseph Dec. 2012

My sister just came home from her mission to Latin America with a huge, scary lump on her thumb.

She had had it for two months. Her mission didn't let her see a doctor because they didn't want to deal with it. They figured she could just take care of it when she got home in a couple months.

So finally after she got home she went to the doctor first thing to have it looked at. They thought it was a cyst, but when they removed it, there was no fluid. It was a tumor.

The pathologist analyzed it and turns out it was benign. Good thing. If it had been malignant it would have metastasized in those two months and she would have cancer now.

I can't express how disgusted I am with her mission for being so utterly irresponsible as to risk her health and even life in order not disrupt their "all-important" work. It's just one more example of how the church leadership is not inspired at all on any level.

... Or maybe the "spirit" told her mission president that the tumor was benign :/ ...

I suppose she can't be held completely blameless since she was the one with the tumor and she didn't insist on doing something about it. But I think most of us know know what it's like to be so entirely brainwashed that you can't even fathom questioning the "Priesthood Leadership".

rosenip
Re: My sister's mission president could have killed her.
Oh My Goodness! Thanks for the warning. That wasn't in South America, was it?

EXON46
Re: My sister's mission president could have killed her.
I might be wrong but I though all wellness issues were to be reported immediately to the mission press wife. The church should be more proactive in seeing that missionaries are well. These young people have not been on their own long enough to know how to take care of them selves. If they were off a leash they could pick this up and learn to fend for them selves, but since the mission controls them they are not learning how to protect them selves, so rely on the mission to protect them.

summer
Re: My sister's mission president could have killed her.
That's why I think that parents need to be very insistent that their missionary offspring contact them if their medical needs are not being met.

Why don't you write a letter to the MP and tell him what you told us? I would also copy that letter to others up the chain. They need to know the result of their negligence.

Heathen
Re: My sister's mission president could have killed her.
Who was the mission president?

unwill
Re: My sister's mission president could have killed her.
Neighbor's had a kid in S. America. Started having heart symptoms. MP told SLC that the Dr's could handle it in S.Am. and missionary dept. told concerned parents to shove off. MP told missionary he couldn't go home and referred to Dr. in So. America.

Things got worse, parent's said we're bringing him home anyway. Made all their own arrangement's to get him home. When arrived in SLC took directly to Dr---had emergency heart surgery in SLC--a few more day's he would have been dead.

jackjoseph
Re: My sister's mission president could have killed her.
Wow, good thing his parents had some sense ...
jackjoseph
Re: My sister's mission president could have killed her.
Not quite South America. It was Central America.

Unwill
Re: My sister's mission president could have killed her.
He got an honorable release too. I guess the Church didn't want a lawsuit. Why does the Morg think they own missionaries--

catnip
I've told this one before, but it bears repeating, about assertive mothers. . .
My DH served a mission in Central America. Right off the bat, he picked up a doozy of a parasitic infestation. He dropped 60 lbs in 6 months - he was a big guy to start with. He never complained, but his comp was so concerned that he sent a snapshot of DH, looking like a scarecrow in the suit that had fit him perfectly when he left for his mission, to DH's mom.

Bless her heart, she got on the MP's @$$ like a Rottweiler and wouldn't let go until DH was in a proper hospital in the capital city. (They had been dosing him with herbal teas and the parasites apparently thrived on this.) He had to take powerful medicine - poison, actually, both orally and via IV, to kill off the parasites. It made him pretty sick in the process, but he made it through the mission and back home.

My late MIL self-identified as LDS until the day she died, but she had a college education and a temper, and she was not a person to mess with. She looked out for her boy!

gentlestrength
Re: My sister's mission president could have killed her.
If that were me or my brothers, we'd be dead.

Good call by the parents, it's a nasty business dealing with a cult that pretends to be a religion.

utahmonomore
Re: My sister's mission president could have killed her.
Glad she is going to be okay.
robertb
Re: My sister's mission president could have killed her.
In the last area in my mission I was given a new companion who had been out a short while. He was a rotund kid but had lost 40 pounds. He'd been to the doctor but the doctor didn't find anything. The zone leaders said he was home sick and I needed to work him hard. I didn't feel right about that and had a feeling something more was going on.

So when we had interviews with the new mission president I told him I thought my companion really was sick and the president needed to do something. I was insistent enough that I exasperated the mission president, but he asked what I thought he should do. I told him to send my companion to the hospital where I had been treated a year earlier, and he did. I finished my mission and returned home to the U.S.

A couple of months later I got a letter from my former companion that he had been hospitalized and treated in the U.S. for a precancerous condition in his colon and had been on the verge of very serious trouble. He was finishing his mission in the states where he could be checked regularly. I consider getting the mission president to have my companion medically evaluated was the best thing I had done the whole two years.

Particles of Faith
Re: My sister's mission president could have killed her.
This is another follow up to my missionary nephew who went to the Dominican Republic and contracted amebic dysentery followed by Dengue Fever. He's been home since September and still isn't well (fatigue, nausea, anorexia, etc.). He's going through a GI work up which revealed he has an enlarged liver and spleen. The fear is amebic liver abscesses. He's getting a CT as the next diagnostic test. What a waste...

buddyjoe
Re: My sister's mission president could have killed her.
And still, how many waiting at this moment to go and have exactly the same experience.
This is what the testimony in 20 years from now is made of.

toto
Re: My sister's mission president could have killed her.
I can't believe that happened to your sister, I'm so sorry.

On my mission, I was hit by a car but was able to initially walk away from the accident even though the paramedics came immediately and suggested I go to the hospital "just in case". I didn't think anything really happened, and I was lucid without any pain. I should've gone anyway.

Next day, I was in pain all over, like I was hit by a car. Hey! I went to the doctor and couldn't do any missionary service for a few days. My companion helped out and the mission president and his wife understood and talked with me daily.

I never felt guilty for going to the doctor or taking those days off. I was hit by a car, became injured and needed to recover before continuing. How that mission president didn't give you sister permission to see a doctor is beyond me. I'm so sorry.

hello
Re: My sister's mission president could have killed her.
that's cool, robertb, you saved his life...

twojedis
Re: My sister's mission president could have killed her.
Our son had to cut back on food because they stopped giving him money for the copy for his asthma meds. He didn't want to ask us for it, so he was just going hungry. I'm glad he finally said something to us. We ripped him a new one for not telling us right away. Were I not TBM, I would have ripped the mission prez a new one for letting my son starve. If our 16 year old serves a mission, I'm going to be the most annoying missionary mother ever!

johnsmithson
Re: My sister's mission president could have killed her.
I think a lot depends on the mission president. I had no great admiration for my mission president. But I do have to admit that he and his wife did a good job making sure we missionaries ate well, saw a doctor when we needed to, and kept our apartments clean and sanitary. This was in Japan. We had been living in squalor, and eating cheaply and like pigs. Literally, since we ate cracked wheat and the sliced-off ends from loaves of bread that were otherwise sold to farmers to feed to their chickens and pigs. The futons that we slept on were like rags. One of the members came in to help us clean and almost fainted from the smell, and she could not believe that we lived that way. Things got cleaned up and stayed that way. It helped a lot, both in physical and mental health, to live in clean, though still modest, accommodations.

While I was never sick on my mission with other than a cold or two, one of the missionaries in our apartment got seriously ill. He woke up his companion in the night after he was too weak to go to the toilet, and so had soiled his futon with diarrhea that he could not control. We were scared and helpless, not knowing what to do. We called the zone leaders, and they called the mission president. Though it was the middle of the night, he told us to call a taxi and get the elder to the hospital as soon as possible. We did, and it was good we did. He was in the hospital for a month before he was well enough to go back to the United States. He stayed at home to recuperate for a month or two more, then finished up his mission somewhere there.

ducky333
Re: My sister's mission president could have killed her.
Did her MP say she could inform her parents, or was she supposed to take it all on faith? Just freaking unbelievable. Glad it turned out to be benign.
absentminded
Re: My sister's mission president could have killed her.
Wow...that's horrible. I actually know a guy who is dying from a skin cancer that started out as a lump on his thumb...it got infected and spread to his lymph nodes and lung.

Sadly one of my favorite cousins is dying as well....from a parasite he got on his mission in mexico. He didn't get help until he was hospitalized for dehydration. It trashed his kidneys. He had to have someone hold him up to baptize his own daughter last year. He is doomed because he is allergic to some drug so he can't have a transplant despite a long line of donors who want to keep him around. He probably won't make it to 40.

I could go off on this subject for a long time it is so enraging. Just curious, have you checked out runtu's book?

The 1st FreeAtLast
My lying mission president nearly killed me in Peru in 1984/5.
Right out of the MTC in Provo and sent to Peru, which was impoverished and struggling with Marxist terrorism (El Sendero Luminoso).

During the 1st interview on day #2, the MP asks me about my parents' work. I told him my mother was a nurse.

He then assigns me to live and work in a filthy shantytown on the north side of the capital, Lima. No running water, no sewage (toilets were holes in the ground), piles of rotting garbage abounded.

On day #10, I started burning up with a wicked fever (temp.: 105 deg. F) and was loosing strength fast. The full-of-himself AP told my Peruvian comp (who called from a pay phone near the highway) to not overly concern himself with my health "issues" because I was green and just "adjusting."

In fact, I'd contracted spinal meningitis from the filthy conditions and poor quality food. I was dying and would be dead in 24-48 hours.

I worsened and my comp. called the mission office again. Reluctantly, he was told to bring me in. I could barely walk or talk.

I was finally taken to a clinica (small hospital) where a local doctor inquired about my symptoms and, thankfully, treated me.

However, the MP lied to me by telling me I had a less serious illness. Why? He unilaterally decided I should stay in Peru, despite the fact that full recovery from spinal meningitis takes as much as a year. He knew my mother was a nurse and figured that if I told her the truth, she might go to her doctor (a non-Mormon), who might insist that I be sent home to properly recover.

Get this: He asked me if I had medical insurance (so that LD$ Inc. wouldn't be out of pocket for medical attention for one of its dying 'soldiers in the Lord's army'!).

After I was discharged, the MP assigned me to a filthy ghetto and later an even worse shantytown on the outskirts of the Peruvian desert in the north. There, a gang member suddenly attacked my small Peruvian comp. at night (to rob him) and I came to his defense (I was half a foot taller and heavier).

The thief and I wrestled and fell in the sand-covered street. He quickly threw sand in my eyes, pulled a large, homemade knife (the kind used to cut leather for shoes), and nearly sliced open my throat (I hadn't divulged the temple First Sign of the Nail, either!). Other gang members came out from the shadows to aid him. My comp. and I retreated backwards and were lucky to escape alive. I later learned that a municipal inspector had visited the area and been attacked, killed, and robbed.

Having endured hellish conditions, I completed the mission in June 1985 and left Peru, which had increasingly destabilized with bombing attacks and assassinations. Unfortunately, malnourishment, fatigue, and parasites took a huge toll on my health (it took me 15 years to fully get rid of the 'bitchos', courtesy of the 'one, true' corporation of JC!).

During my last interview with the MP mere hours before I flew out, the liar finally revealed to me the truth about the spinal meningitis I'd had during the first two weeks of my mission. I was too mind-numbed and exhausted to be angry at the a**hole. He told me that I should go see a doctor after I got home. Thanks President PR*CK of the Lawrd!

A few days earlier, I learned that God's 'restored' corporation was building a multi-million-dollar temple in a rich neighborhood in Lima. There was ALWAYS BIG $$$ for the Morg's high-end temples (in which useless rites incorporating simulated self-violence were performed), but never $$$ from LD$ Inc. to keep its missionary force reasonably housed, fed and otherwise taken care of.

F*ck*ng money-grubbing CULT!

al-iced
Re: My sister's mission president could have killed her.
This was 30 years ago. Was called on my mission at the age of 24. I was a single woman with a college degree and a fairly decent paying job with benefits. Hadn't been dependent on my parents since the age of 18. I wanted adventure, put in for a mission. The paperwork told me not to take out any special or additional health insurance, so I thought the church would cover anything that might arise.

Had an injury whilst on my mission, ended up needing a plaster cast followed by physical therapy in the mission field. Was told by my MP that I must cover the cost myself. I protested said that I had no insurance because the church told me not to get any. He said "Well, most elders are still on their parents insurance." No acknowledgement for my individual situation.

Paid out of my own pocket, but protested loudly, "Why did the church tell me not to worry about health insurance!!!!" Lo and behold, my protestations must have worked. Five minutes before I was to board the plan back to the USA, the office elders show up with a fist full of local currency for me. Great, what am I suppose to do with unexchangeable local currency with only minutes left in the country! I know they expected me to say, "keep it, it's no good to me at this point."

I needed that cash to get re-established back in the USA. I quickly found several elders that had dollars to change and tempted them with a better than black market rate at a substantial loss to myself. After that I still had some left over, I went to the duty free and bought myself some nice perfume, and a few other last minute souvenirs. I got the evil eye from several other missionaries for this.

Cheryl
Sadly, mishies, parents, & members will continue to pay for this horrific treatment.
Enabling bad behavior encourages more of it.

dk
Re: Sadly, mishies, parents, & members will continue to pay for this horrific treatment.
I was thinking the same thing. These are stories members will never hear. Also, some of these illnesses have long lasting effects. I guess the church thinks the lost of health and income (and hence tithing) is acceptable.

Just wait til some missionary comes home with something seriously contagious.

altava
Re: My sister's mission president could have killed her.
This is all really horrifying tbh. So so glad I never went on a mission...
Demon of Kolob
Re: My sister's mission president could have killed her.
this thread should be archived for all parents who are thinking of lettings their kids go on a LDS mission. It should be available to those who are thinking about going who may find their way to this board.

"Recovery from Mormonism - www.exmormon.org"