I can only hope that my son’s missions would work out as we’d like for it to be, but if it doesn’t, it’s okay, our attitude and actions towards God’s Work regardless of our physical & mental state determines the outcome of a Mission and a loved one’s life after an Early Return, Like Tyler says, it’s not the end of the World, the best is yet to come, so they still have this to work towards and look forward to. I hope I haven’t offended anyone by this post. But I truly believe that the Church has not exaggerated on Raising The Bar. The Lord should never lower his expectations on the Able and the Physically Strong..nor should we lower our expectations of ourselves….Ofa atu….

I was called to the Virginia Mission in May 2007. I LOVED the MTC. The structure and spirit were great for me. I admit there was a night I lost it emotionally and started bauling over the fact that I realized that I’d not see my family for two years; I’m really close to my siblings and parents. I was so excited when on the airplane trip out I was seated next to a guy that wasn’t LDS I had a BoM already marked and ready to give out. I enthusastically gave him the Book, it was great.

Once I was out in the field things changed. I started to develop emotional/mental issues I’d never faced before; like OCD and Anxiety and panic attacks. I think I had a tendency for this all along, but the mission experience just brought it out more. I also think that the reason it was magnified on my mission was that my normal way of dealing with a tough week was to go to bed 2-3 hours early one night and get some extra sleep. (I always felt better in the morning after one of my ‘recharge’ nights) This way of copeing could be done, but with strict mission rules in practice this couldn’t happen;at least not with the ‘one-size-fits-all’ mentality some missions run. After three months in the field I stopped getting any good amount of sleep. I was starting to have a mental break down and was hoping that some crazy driver would crash into my bike and that I’d die. At the time I wouldn’t have hurt myself, but the whole ‘indirect’ suicide thing sounded good. I wasn’t afraid of death, but I felt like I was losing my mind and I didn’t see any door out.

Thankfully my mission president immediately set up an appointment with a psychiatrist during my first symptoms and this psychiatrist and I met one a week for about a month. The psychiatrist saw that I was deoteriorating and during one of the latter appointments he confrence called my mission president and basically told him that I needed to go home. My mission president-quick aside, my mission president was the greatest guy, so loving and patient, he really wanted and prayed for what was best for me, so I compeletly trusted his advice and counsel-back to the story, my mission president agreed that I should go home and get better. My mission president, President Millburn, latter talked to me and likened my problems to breaking a leg, if you break a leg you need to walk with crutches and take the pressure of the leg to let it heal. Going home was like getting the needed crutches.

My parents were vacationing in Hawaii when President Millburn called them and told them I needed to come home for a while. They bought tickets and came to Virginia to pick me up. Thats how I got home.

Once home I worked with counselors and started medication that did an amazing job easing my OCD. However, everytime I got serious about thinking about returning I would get all anxious and my hands would start shaking. I prayed and fasted about returning and didn’t feel any strong emotions one way or the other; I took this as a sign from God that he trusted me in the choice and that it was probably a choice between good and good. I decided to stay home and not return. I’m now attending BYU and am in the neuroscience program.

I have to say being and early release missionary has been the best thing that has ever happened for me. It sounds odd, but I truely feel like the servent that came in the evening and the Lord still payed him the same wage as he did for those that he hired in the morning.-Parable I can’t remember the name to. I feel like the Lord blessed me, but not because I ‘did my time’, but because I was willing to put my whole life on the alter and allow him to direct my life. (This is a big thing because my older brother is my role model and he served a mission and came back a different person. He never struggled with depression or anxiety before, but they were big when he came home. I was worried about my own mission because of this, yet still wanted to serve. I feel like since I came home early I was able to avoid serious long term problems like this.)

Whether you serve 24,18,or .5 months. The lord will bless you and judge you individually. The best thing you can do is treat individuals and individuals and let them know you care.

I’ve learned a lot since I’ve come home and I’ve met some great people; other early release missionaries. There are groups here in Utah that are held at LDS family services we meet along with our parnets and then the missionaries go with a counselor and talk about their experience while the parents stay with another counselor and they talk about their stuff. Its been great.

I’ve learned that it’s okay to not do the standard thing, it’s okay that I expereienced a lot of pain and mental anguish before I came home. It’s okay that some missionaries come home early, it’s not the end of the world, in fact it might just be the beginning of a better life for them.

Would I do this all again if I could go back and talk to myself before my mission: yes, I would. It’s been hard but I’ve learned a lot. I put my life and mental health ‘on the alter’ and God decided to not take very much of it. I know he cared about me even during those hard, hard times. I now know that when you are sleep deprived for weeks and hungry, tired, and feel like you are literally going insane; God knows what you are feeling and he cares. and often he will make a way for you to get better. Well I’ve reambled long enough. That’s my early medical release mission story. I hope typing this helps at least one persone that reads it; it’s already helped me. Tyler

I think one of the biggest problems with missions at age 19 is the average boy reaches his sexual peak at age 18 and is surging with hormones. I was in Brazil on my mission. There were many beautiful girls all around wearing skimpy outfits. I was singing hymns in my mind all the time and feeling guilty about it.

Tony R.

I also agree that we tend to give too much emphasis to the problems and not enough to the amazing successes of the church’s missionary program.

My mission had a very negative effect on my life that lasted about 20 years. At first I blamed the church (for painting such an inaccurate picture), ward members (for not telling me the reality of what many missionaries were going to be like), the MTC leadership (for their bad leadership examples), and the missionaries (for all the shenanigans, bullying, etc.).

Then my second phase, as I started to recover, was to start to forgive them for the offenses, both real and perceived.

The third phase was to blame myself for not being prepared or equiped (emotionally, spiritually, intellectually, etc) to handle those things.

The fourth phase was to start to forgive myself, and not entirely blame myself either. Lack of preparation (or even sin) on my part did not excuse or justify the offenses (the real ones) on the part of others. IE, my inability to respond correctly back then didn’t justify any unrighteous dominion on the part of MTC BP’s or bullying from fellow missionaries back then.

That kid returned from his mission and shot himself a week later. He did the full 2 years. I personally think that his mission experience must have contributed something to his emotional state since it happened so soon afterwards. But I’ve heard GA’s admit (in training) to many missionaries having trouble adjusting to home life on returning, and there are plenty of ‘testimonies’ around the web on missionary problems, but off course the church will never release official stats on this, nor will it do so for the ‘returned early’. But surely adjusting to home life is harder after returning early?

I’ve also heard that suicide rates are higher for the teens to under 24 but then again its such a difficult issue that probably only God knows what’s going on there.

When I say proximity, I mean more than just physicality proximity. While I see the benefit of spreading couples out geographically I would question how much many of those senior missionaries would actually know about any issues amongst the younger missionaries. My experience also is that quite a few senior missionaries are struggling just as much as the younger missionaries with language, distance from families, health, etc. Don’t get me wrong, I have seen some senior missionaries have huge impact on the atmosphere and attitudes in a mission area. But as a panacea, there are some structural and practical limitations.

As far as the “ecclesiastical abuse,” it isn’t the term that is new to me it is the prevalence. It just seems like, in the Bloggernacle, there is undue and unfair emphasis on the problems that exist in the missionary programs and not enough credit for how amazing it actually is, as a program and in the lives of so many RM’s. That is before we even start to discuss the its actual success.

Carlos JC,

I’m not a psychiatrist, but I understand that mental problems are most likely to manifest themselves in the late teens and early twenties. A single suicide out of that population in the last ten years is almost a selling point. What is the rate of suicide for young missionaries relative to the general population in that same age range?

That’s an excellent idea to have older couples as zonies and AP’s. I hope they find out about that, as well as making the entire program more flexible, like allowing RM to go out again for a month or letting some live at home while preaching 6 days a week within their stakes. Having this separate missionary program has created two churches, one for those on missions and another church for wards and stakes. Elder Scott addressed this extensively in the early ’90′s but all they changed was to delete the stake mission presidency and sent the elders to ward council.

But the post by Lisa here says that there ‘SEEMS’ to be an increase in the number of ‘returned early’ who aren’t excommunicated. I generally agree and find it worrisome; we’ve had 2 this year so far, one for listening to country music, after been told not to, and the other for just not fitting in. The suicide case was in ’97 or ’96 and there must have been other problems, sure. But, remember that these kids are aged mostly 19/20, an age where they really can’t stand up and say NO on principal, they don’t want any rules and are still mostly at home. Seems they’re thrown in the deep end more and more and should the sink? well members and the church simply say ‘too bad’!

#69 Ray,

I meant the ‘maximum age’ to be called; its gone down over the years and the result is a more homogeneous missionary force but they haven’t made the entire program more flexible. This ‘more homogeneous’ missionary force hasn’t produced better results -if it did they’d be trumpeting those results in every conference.

I doubt the church will ever release official stats for this; nor will it do so for the total of excommunicated members or total divorces….it only ends up as ammunition for the enemies of the church to use.

#2: Proximity. Nothing is necessarily keeping the couple missionaries from living in cheap 1 bedroom apartments throughout the mission (both US and most foreign missions) just like the younger missionaries. I get the impression that currently, full time couples missionaries are living clustered near the mission home or office, and serving in office capacities. If the church can recuit more retired couple missionaries, let’s sprinkle them throughout the mission as ZL’s, or as advisors/mentors to DL’s and ZL’s. (Granted exceptions will be made in more dangerous areas. But if an area is too dangerous for retired couple missionaries, I’d be wary about sending 19 year old elders there too.)

#3: “ecclesiastical abuse” is a new name to old problems, such as when someone in a leadership position is condescending, manipulative, “grinding the face of …”, Nephite diseased, confrontational, unrighteous dominion; or in other words, all the stuff that section 121 says not to do.

I did not know the term ecclesiastical abuse until I read the bloggernacle too. But it fits well to the class of nephite-diseased, manipulative, condescending jerks who were called to be branch presidents of the MTC when I was there in 1984. “Jerks” is too nice a word. Most of them were…, uh, let’s say “worse than jerks.” And there was one guy there who I was convinced was an actual wife-beater.

If I had sons, I would not encourage them to serve missions if today’s MTC leadership were as bad as it was in 1984. They were just not good role models. Seriously, if I were a father, I’d pay a visit and attend one of the weekly convocations and see how the BPs address the missionaries today.

IMO, the type of men who served as MTC BP’s in 1984 would not be tolerated by the rank-and-file membership if such men were BP’s and bishops here in the midwest.

Part of my resentment lies in the fact that I fell into the same trap. Back then I resolved the cognitive dissonance of jerks holding leadership positions in the true church, by thinking that was the way you were supposed to treat missionaries. So when I was a DL, I followed their (the MTC BPs’) example. I treated others as we were treated in the MTC by the BP’s. But now, I kick myself for allowing myself to have fallen into the trap. But I also have to admit my personality fit very readily into the domineering rule-nazi mould back then.

#76, Ray: We’re seeing that here in Indianapolis. Unless a ward is producing lots of investigators/baptisms (like the Spanish branch) double sets of missionaries are being reduced to one set per ward. The ward I’m currently in is producing very few investigators, and only one convert baptism per year for the last two years. If I were the mission pres, I’d consider pulling the full-time missionaries out of this ward, or assigning them to devote a larger percentage of their time into re-activation efforts.

I agree with your prediction that we are heading in the direction of, if not no missionaries, then perhaps an average of less than 1 companionship per ward. Perhaps one set of missionaries per chapel, covering the two or three wards that meet there.

And you’re right, if a ward is only baptizing a small handful of people per year, then the ward missionaries should be able to cover it.

I once calculated that there is one companionship per 70,000 population in metropolitan Indianapolis.

By distributing missionaries in such a ratio (1-set per 70,000) in places like the Pacific Islands, Latin America, and Africa, the “yield” of baptisms per year per companionship would be much higher than the same distribution ratio in the US.

With India being a non-Christian nation, I don’t know what the missionary yield there would be. Not as high as Latin America or Africa, but probably greater than Europe.

Personally, I think India has huge potential, like the Asian Pacific Islands, but the Brethren are going slow, having been burned by the retrenchment required in Chile and the Philippines. I just hope the pendulum hasn’t swung too far the other way.

Back to couples missionaries, they would be great for leadership training in India. So we need 32,000 more young missionaries, plus about 2,000 retired married couples (4,000 men and women), to go to India.

Oh, there’s another use for couple missionaries: to be the BP and RS-pres in a mission branch instead of 19/21 year old elders be the BP.

There are 2 missions in India, and both are English speaking. At least the first, Bangalore, is. That is, the missionaries teach in English, and do not go through Hindi language training at the MTC.

Currently, there are 5 translations of the Book of Mormon in Indian languages: Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Sinhala, and Tamil. Bengali and Shinhala are “Selections of”, but Hindi, Telugu, and Tamil are full translations.

I would suggest two issues with this. First, there aren’t nearly enough senior missionaries to fill the current needs.

Second, I don’t know that the senior couples, for the most part, have the same access to the younger missionaries that a peer would. It would be a trade-off, maturity for proximity.

Maybe the assignment can be given to mentor the ZL’s $ DL’s. But I think that is effectively happening now, in the cases where the senior couple is capable.

Bookslinger. I have to agree, if missionaries were held to a standard of professional behavior we would avoid a lot of problems. But in my experience, the personal distance required to maintain that goes away when people spend the quantity of time together that missionaries do.

I have been a ward mission leader in two different missions in the US and worked with missionaries in several places overseas, besides my own two year mission. I never heard of rampant “ecclesiastical abuse” until I read about it on the Bloggernacle. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, it just seems to got excessively dramatized in this forum.

Carlos was referring to the _maximum_ age allowable for missionaries to start their service. When I started my mission in 1984, the maximum age allowed was 26, and I was 26 when I entered the MTC.

As I understand it, the maximum age to start is now 25. If you’re 26, it’s too late to start a mission, according to today’s rules.

Nick/Mac Roger on the thing about young men going into the military to escape the pressure to go on a mission. I know a 20 year old here in my town who did just that. And I have to agree that his mother and the bishop might have put too much pressure on him. But rather than try to get him to “leave his options open” while he took a year of college, they kept pushing for a committment to go,and that pushed him in the opposite direction. In fact, Army basic training might be a more pleasant experience for him than his home-life has been.

CarlosJC:

My mission was rather disorganized. At the time I thought it was pure chaos. I would have been much happier if the mission had been run more like a business. I worked in corporate america, or at least small businesses for 7 years before I went on my mission. A good business would not put up with employees and managers pulling the kind of crap that missionaries, district leaders, zone leaders, and AP’s pulled. And good employers/bosses would be able fire the kind of knuckle-headed jerks that Mission Presidents are forced to keep in their mission as missionaries.

Missions really can’t be run like businesses, though there are some efficiencies that could still be implemented (cell phones, PDA’s, etc.) An employee is free to leave and find employment elsewhere. Missionaries really can’t do that, and they shouldn’t.

One thing I’d like to see is older couples be zone leaders and APs, and let them train and supervise the district leaders. And in places where they don’t have enough mature 19/21 year olds, older couples could be district leaders too. Oh well, just a thought.

Here in Indianapolis, the alternative service missions, where you live at home, and do church service for 18 to 24 months, are becoming common and popular, and are, in my opinion, producing good results.

I think there will even more flexibility put into the church’s missionary program. There might
even be alternative-service proselyting missions in the US, where you live at home, but put in 8 hours a day proselyting as a full-time missionary. Something has to change about how we proselyte in the US, because there is greater demand for overseas missionaries, especially in India.

If we had the man-power (mission presidents and missionaries), we could put 32,000 missionaries (200 missions) into India, where they have 1,100,000,000 people, and still have only 1 companionship for every 68,000 people.

I think there will be a greater shift of missionaries sent overseas, and fewer full-time missionaries serving in the US. That’s just my opinion.

My experience, with membership in the military was similar. I saw many young men from LDS backgrounds who were escaping family/community pressure to live up to a gospel standard. Anecdotally, it lead more out of the Church than in.

I spent a considerable part of my mission on and around Camp Pendleton, where young Marines were trained. I later went through Army basic training and AIT at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where I took an active part in the weekly serviceman’s branch. I don’t want to dispairage all young LDS men who choose to enter the military. However, I can’t begin to count how many of these young men openly stated that they had enlisted in order to escape pressure to go on an LDS mission. Of course, during the stress of boot camp, they suddenly became a lot more religious.

Also, until someone can give me actual stats on what percentage of missionaries return home – particularly for non-medical reasons – and how many RM’s commit suicide (and how that is related to them having served missions), I personally am going to ignore the cause and effect conclusions some are presenting in this thread. I know they occur, but in my 15 years of extensive involvement in the Church’s missionary program, I personally have known . . . 0 (yes, that’s zero) RM’s who have committed suicide because of their missions – and the only missionary of whom I am aware who has been sent home from my current area in the last couple of years for non-medical, worthiness issues was a sister missionary, not one of the male youngsters.

If we are going to have this discussion, we at least should have some grounding in statistics. Otherwise, it’s just ambiguous and anecdotal and subject to every issue that comes with this type of internet discussion.

“there is still stigma because we assume that the missionary’s early return is due to “worthiness problems” rather than the possibility that the demands of missions themselves might be unreasonable and even sort of strange” (Banister #65)

Well said.

Missions are voluntary and unpaid, and also not subjected to the orders system one finds in the military. Because of this they ought to find other ways of ‘preaching’ across the world which results in less turnover (ie less finishing early) and place the emphasis back on things like the Lord and Forgiveness. But the church seems to be going the other way, making rules tougher for missionaries and constantly lowering the age; once it was for under 31′s, then under 26, now under 23 (I think from memory). And the results are becoming more worrisome, from those mistreated for returning early and the mistreatment of those who never went (like Nick wrote) to even those who commit suicide after returning (some after a full 2 years). Making things tougher and raising the bar won’t necessarily stop all suicides of ex-missionaries.

I really think that they should be getting their management examples from community and voluntary organisations and not from the corporate world -which they have being coping since the 1950′s.

My second son turns 18 this month, a few weeks before his junior year in high school ends. His appendix ruptured in 5th grade, and in 8th grade he was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. He is one of the most mature kids I have ever known. His diabetes will limit where he can serve, but he will be an elder throughout his senior year in high school and leave on his mission the summer after he graduates – before starting college.

Both my boys will be as ready as they can be, but the second one probably will be more prepared than the first one. It really is an individual thing.

“Top notch mission presidents are the real key to solving these issues.” (#57)

I wholeheartedly agree with this assessment. For young missionaries, especially those in far-flung locales, their President is all the Church authority they have. Thankfully, I had a good (albeit rather strict) President and I believe my positive experiences were due in large part to his guidance. For a bad example, you need look no further than John Dehlin’s accounts of his time in Guatemala. Bad Presidents = negative mission experiences.

For me, I loved my mission. I knocked a lot of doors, wore holes through numerous shoe soles, ate all manner of jungle creatures, and put up with indignities of all sorts from strangers and companions alike. But, despite all of that, I enjoyed what I did, and those two years have turned out to be arguably the most formative in my life (to date). Sure, missions are full of unpleasant times, but as was said above, that shouldn’t cause to forget the positives.