What was the worst part about your mission?
turnonthelights Feb. 2013
For me it was being with a crazy companion 24/7. I remember the best part of the day was when I could take an extra long shower and finally be alone! When I got home It felt like a luxury to be my own person again and not have to worry about someone else.
resipsaloquitur
Re: What was the worst part about your mission?
The part between opening the sentence, judgment and commitment letter and the plane ride home.
ladell
Re: What was the worst part about your mission?
Being a missionary
spwdone
Re: What was the worst part about your mission?
It would take less time to explain the parts that weren't awful. Worst 16 mos of my life, no question.
CA girl
Re: What was the worst part about your mission?
Never being alone. I don't think I realized how much of a natural introvert I was until my mission and then again after I left the church. The kind of 24 hour surveillance that constantly being with your companion inflicts upon you was freaky to me. I needed to be left alone and I needed quiet. I needed to escape into a good book and recharge. I needed to do something creative - at the time it was quilting. But in the mission field you were always on stage, always with someone. Granted, I could take a long shower or go into the bedroom to read but the person was still always THERE. It took me years to get over the anxiety attacks I'd randomly have from a year and a half of intense togetherness like that. I didn't really get better until I got out of Mormonism completely. Now I know how to head them off, primarily by being alone and forcing myself to relax and unwind. The exact opposite of a mission where you are always on stage and really never feel like you can relax and unwind. It's all the pressures of grown-up life and none of the safety valves.
shell
Re: What was the worst part about your mission?
realizing that you were the missionary that all your companions hated because you followed every rule by the book. i believed every word that came out of the leaders mouths. wish i could of rebelled and had fun out there maybe i would of been AP. lol. i had a friend that told me the mish pres. didnt believe i was ever telling him the truth.
Mr. Neutron
Re: What was the worst part about your mission?
It's a toss-up between being with a companion that I loathed all day and night, or the guilt I felt for sleeping in, hanging out with member families with cool kids, watching a video at someone's house, reading a godd*mn paper, etc. If I knew then what I know now, but still felt like I had to serve time for some reason, I would have ditched the a**hole comps and done whatever I pleased.
The worst part of my mission is that it wasn't really mine.
Mr. Neutron
+1
Not logged in
That is exactly how I felt! It would've been okay to be out teaching, maybe 8 hours per day and then have time alone in the evening with music or books to unwind. But NOooooo. We had to be "on stage" (exactly the phrase I used about it) for 70+ hours per week and then no books and no music to relax with.
Also hated that they took my passport. I just KNEW that was wrong and I really hesitated about surrendering it. I'm still a little angry at myself 30 years later that I didn't at least protest that demand. I felt trapped. I also think they sent us sisters into areas that weren't safe. And because we were in an area that still practiced the siesta, we had to do scripture study in the afternoon and then work until 11:30 at night. Two girls walking through the projects alone just before midnight? Really???
Not logged in
"The worst part of my mission is that it wasn't really mine."
Excellent quote! Exactly the problem.
forbiddencokedrinker
Re: What was the worst part about your mission?
That's how I felt too. Though replace quilting with something stereotypical geek boy stuff.
When I got really depressed, which was all the time, I would start playing out the first couple levels of the Golden Eye video game in my head. I had just gotten it a couple months before my mission, and would replay those same couple of levels in my head for the next couple of years as a form of escape.
A lot of times I would start doing this during discussions, and it would be my turn to speak, and I would totally miss my cue. Which would totally destroy the discussion. Looking back, once again my incompetence has probably paid off yet again, as it probably saved some people from a cult.
forbiddencokedrinker
Re: What was the worst part about your mission?
That's funny. It was always the craziest guys who broke all the rules who made AP in my mission to. It seems to go one way or the other, the rule breakers or the most anal, and it all depends if the MP likes being around fun kids or butt lickers.
albertasaurus
Re: What was the worst part about your mission?
Besides the whole thing, I'd have to say the first few months where I did everything, every god damned thing that I was supposed to do, and I worked my ass off, but only had one baptism in that time and my mission president figured I was sinning because the lord blesses you when you are obedient. What a dick. I think that was probably the beginning of the end of my church membership, even though it took another 15 years.
shazam101
Re: What was the worst part about your mission?
Companions from California!
forbiddencokedrinker
Re: What was the worst part about your mission?
Serving in California, I never had a Californian companion. I don't see why that would be a problem, unless you are telling us that CA Mormons are somehow even more insufferable then say, Utah ones.
shazam101
Re: What was the worst part about your mission?
OMG, celestial surf Elders! Calling and elections made sure and always thought they were better than anyone else and walked in celestial glory, yes more insufferable than Utah ones, and I am from Pocatello! Go figure!
Stray Mutt
Hmmmm, let's see...
Long sub-zero winters? Mmmm, I adapted.
Infectious hepatitis? At least I got some extra sleep.
Being shot at? He missed.
Having a beer bottle smashed on my eyebrow? It healed.
Having a lying, bullying, egomaniacal MP? Karma eventually got him good and hard.
Maybe the worst part was having so many attractive girls around and not being allowed to do anything about it.
Makurosu
Re: What was the worst part about your mission?
For me, it was having a self-absorbed narcissist for a mission president. There was the lack of privacy, the depression, the boredom, the feeling of being trapped, etc., but a cry for help at the end of my rope meant dealing with the steely-eyed lack of empathy of this man. I feel bad for new generation of kids getting shanghaied into a mission a year earlier.
slimchance
Re: What was the worst part about your mission?
YES! Never being alone.
anon2day
Re: What was the worst part about your mission?
Never knew what depression was until I hit the mission.
Writing letters home that I was OK and doing well. Those letters were as big of lie as the ones I was telling to investigators.
I felt alone even though I was with someone 24/7.
WhatsAGoodName?
Re: Hmmmm, let's see...
Which subzero mission did you serve in?i grew up in one of the worst, and now live in another.
ladell
Re: What was the worst part about your mission?
I went through my letters home a little while ago, I really didn't remember writing them. I assumed they would contain some faith promoting BS, but I was surprised to find out how blunt I was, in one I described a day where we basically stood around at a busy downtown park and asked the "golden question". I felt like a freak and a lunatic religious zealot, and pretty much described it in those words. In another letter I described how I felt like I was wasting my spending all day knocking on doors of people who despised what I was doing. I seemed to make it pretty damn clear that I thought my mission was a farce, what still bugs me as an adult was the fact that it was met with indifference, maybe even some embarrassment.
charles, buddhist punk
24/7 Companion followed me to the living room while I read!
Idiot companions are the worst! One guy was so Utah-naive, he followed me to the living room one night and just sat there while I browsed through the apartment's mini library to read. I looked over the top of the book to ask him if he waiting for me to read the book I was holding and he said no. So, I asked him what he was doing just sitting there and he said words to the effect that he was just being a good companion. I rolled my eyes and went back to reading.
kokaubeammeup
Re: What was the worst part about your mission?
--knocking doors all day, every day, with no teaching.
--making my own crap food on no budget to get good food and only invited to eat with members once every few months.
--crap apartments with bugs and short cold showers.
--companions who had sticks up their butts about everything.
--the culture of the mission in which it was believed that if one stopped for a dinner break they were lazy and wasting precious time. The norm was to go from lunch at noon to 10:00 pm and then eat dinner at home.
--guilt that zero success (by any measure) was my fault.
but the pastries were great
this alien
Re: What was the worst part about your mission?
i was going to say the weekly sunday evening report to the APs that our (unsubstantiated) baptism "expects" fell again...but your post reminded me, it was the awful man we had as mission president that was the worst part.
jackjoseph
Re: What was the worst part about your mission?
Stressing over the numbers.
Nobody baptized much in Spain, so the MP focused on the number of lessons taught. Every week he would publish two lists and distribute them to the whole mission: the list of companionships who taught at least X amount of lessons (and the exact number they taught), and the elite list who had taught even more. Then you'd just look at what everybody else was doing in their better areas, get down on yourself, and hope nobody noticed you weren't on either list.
Even on the weeks you got lucky and made a list, there was only a brief moment of relief while you reported your numbers. Then the counter rolled back to zero and it was back to square 1 stressing over numbers again for the next week.
Of course, wandering around the street bothering strangers all day and the pain you felt when you considered how much time you had left were both close seconds.
Cali Sally
Re: What was the worst part about your mission?
In France the wards didn't have enough money to keep the lights and heat on during the winter. Meetings and activities at the beautiful new ward building were pure torture as I froze my tush off and fell asleep from exhaustion and cold.
Next was getting fanatical and weird companions. The French companions were mostly interested in snagging an American missionary husband. About every other companion was great but in between the days passed like months and the months passed like years.
Lester Burnham
Re: What was the worst part about your mission?
All the years afterwards when it became clear that I was duped into being a leader in a sales and marketing organization.
misterzelph
Re: What was the worst part about your mission?
Sally, it's interesting that you say your French companions wanted an American husband. I've gone on vacations to Martinique and St. Marteen. The French people there detested us.
Stray Mutt
Alberta-Saskatchewan, 1971-73
slskipper
Re: What was the worst part about your mission?
The "worst thing" about LDS missions is the fact that the enitre church is a missionary initiative, and young people are forced from Day 1 to subsume any impulse toward individuality and self expression in deference to the whims of arrogant, self absorbed losers whose only chance at any sort of accomplishment in life is found in being adored by church members, especially the attractive females. It has only been lately, advanced in years, that I have been able to see this. At 19 I should have been guided along the path to understanding how to develop social relationships. I desperately needed that type of help, saddled as I am with my own personal type of Asperger's symdrome. What I got instead was exactly the opposite.I was taught that I had already succeeded in life, that I was all powerful (via the Priesthood), and that everybody else was fundamentally defective because they weren't LDS. That's what the church teaches (oh, yes it does!!! Can we be honest for a few seconds at least?). When I got home I became painfully obvious that I didn't have the foggiest notion of how to get along in the world, and it has taken me four more decades to figure that out and to come up with some sort of a solution.
CA girl
Re: What was the worst part about your mission?
That's ridiculous. Granted, I grew up with some of those rich surfer types and they can be full of themselves but the self-righteous, Utah/Idaho, hillbillies who had nothing to recommend them but a sure sense of their superiority based on no facts whatsoever were by far the worst. I can put up with arrogant when the person actually has something to base it on. And I can take trashy people who are comfortable with their laid back approach to life (i.e. love me or leave me). But people who pull their superiority out of thin air and lord it all over people while the rest of the world sees right through them ... those are by far the worst.
toto
+1
Like you guys said.
Erick
Re: What was the worst part about your mission?
There are a lot of things that would fit under this bill, but I'd have to go with companions as being the worst part. I liked most of my companions, I just didn't like the constancy of their presence. Some alone time would have been nice.
robertb
Re: What was the worst part about your mission? [language}
The unrealistic goal-setting and self-blame if the idiot goal wasn't reached. It really did a number on my self-esteem and willingness to set goals. To paraphrase Joseph Smith, "I teach them correct principles and they mind-fuck themselves."
T-Bone
I never went, but I'll tell you what got old
Hearing every story in EQ start with "When I was on my mission..."
It gets used as a passive-aggressive (hostile) tactic against adult converts. It's a way for lifelong TBMs to tell you how much better they are than you.
One RM even told me at work, immediately after I told him I didn't go on a mission, "Geez. If I hadn't gone on my mission, I would have just ended up a loser."
The sad thing is, even at RfM it's one of the biggest topics. But now I can definitely say that I am sooooo glad that I didn't go. I spent 2 years partying and chasing girls, even caught a few. I don't have any apologies to make for getting unsuspecting people to join. And I didn't have any creepy companions with me 24/7. I did have a bad roommate in college, but we weren't around each other 24/7. And I didn't get brainwashed! Probably one of the biggest benefits of NOT going on a mission.
T-Bone
"Recovery from Mormonism - www.exmormon.org"