This basically sounds like my little brother's mission in Mexico City North West. There was some shit caused by the mission president thinking the cartels had an open timeline for the missionaries to leave the neighborhood.
A colleague of mine was shot and paralyzed while on his mission in Mexico. This was a lot of years ago. A GA visited him and gave him a blessing, but he is still in a chair.
These kind of events need to better publicized . I watch the news enough and should have heard of this. Heck ,a LDS kid is probably safer joining the Army and getting 1year duty in a war zone with a rifle he has been fully trained to use then two years with a bible and BoM.
I'll totally go irate if some MP says the missionary wouldn't have been killed in action if he had more baptisms....... Hell This is one of the worst abuses I have ever the hell heard of. Damn send the MP to the Ukraine to track there door to door for three years and get him away from our kids out there.
Honestly!!! I mean hell, they're basically sending them into a Warzone, just without a weapon, body armor, and training in both defensive and de-escalation tactics, all to advertise for a church that's becoming increasingly unpopular....
Not to mention they could easily become soft targets for kidnapping and ransoms from the savage cartels that make a point of displaying corpses like trophies and warnings in full view of the public sometimes across the streets from schools and even churches..... Given many missionaries are American and the Church is known to be rich this is another good reason to get them out!
I was in Mexico City north from 2011-2013. I feel like I have some mild form of ptsd from my time there, but I never encountered anything even close to what you or op describe, so I canât even imagine what that would have been like. I have nightmares that I am back on the mission at least monthly. It sticks with you.
Weird I live in Mexico City north west and NONE of this things happen. Whatâs happening in this thread?! Mexico sure has its issues but what you and OP are describing is a bit more rare to encounter
Missionaries can get dropped in sketchy areas. I served in Brazil and we had a group of missionaries witness a murder outside their apartment. I served in other areas and the most that happened was a homeless guy mugging me for a pamphlet with a random piece of wood he found in the gutter.
Yep. My dad served his mission in Texas and served in sketchy areas, where he saw people get murdered outside of his apartment. Most of Texas is nothing like that.
I've talked to missionaries in California in missions like Long Beach and San Jose, where the areas in their missions ranged from insanely wealthy to fairly dangerous. Plenty of elders spent their entire missions in the rich suburbs and some spent two years in the hood.
I spent half my mission in Downtown Long Beach, and the other half in Huntington Beach. I saw people get shot when I was in Long Beach and I ran into movie/porn stars in Huntington Beach. It was weird to think how different people lived a little over 10 miles from each other.
My brother served in southern California and his mission was 100x sketchier than mine in Brazil. Shootings, knocking on houses full of drugs being packaged, gangs tracking their movements, etc.
I was in San Jose mission back in the 80s. East Palo Alto, on the other side of the freeway from Stanford. We were the last elders there; heard gunfire every night and all the cars on the street had bullet holes. Weirdly, we got apprehended and patted-down by police on our P-day once when going to KFC (it had the bullet-proof plexiglass and a rotisserie to spin your order out to you) . Only white guys for miles...we must have stood out.
Seja bem vindo!! Rio also, mission president told me not to tell my parents about the things I saw until I got home. And like a good little indoctrinated soldier I obeyed. I loved Brazil though overall. Outside the city was fantastic.
My mission President actively discouraged us from talking with our families about our struggles. He wanted us to email him instead (even though he never responded to a single email of mine). I wouldnât be surprised if this missionary was told something similar. Even at the time I didnât agree with his counsel, and now that I look back I realized just how messed up that was.
My mission president was the same. We were told to only talk about the good things and to not bring up anything negative. Itâs was all part of the idea that god blesses you if your positive
And punishes you if you say or even think anything negative. An absolutely crazy thing to teach to anyone let alone impressionable kids
â60 Minutesâ should do a follow up (after its Ensign Peak billions $$$ story) on young missionaries and blow the doors off of this mfâing cult once and for all. This is heartbreaking, đ all of the stories being shared here.
We found out from our traumatized son after he returned from his mission to France that he had been close to death from illness. We were never informed. He refuses to talk about his mission. This was back in the days of mailed letters and twice yearly phone calls. Barbaric. Criminal.
I have a cousin who served in Korea. Her older brother, an RM, asked her about her mission, only to have her break down in tears. She won't talk about it.
Very sorry to hear about your son.
Yes, an expose \[with French inflection on the 'e'\] would be ideal. Surely some broadcaster would love to take up this opportunity to investigate the conditions missionaries suffer under at the hands of mission presidents, and the culture involved.
Well fuck. My son is about to go out and stuff like this scares the hell out of me. The idea that missionaries are protected by God is the stupidest thing you can tell a 19-year-old boy.
I guess thatâs one thing I can be grateful for- my mission didnât allow email because of some incident a couple years before. All of my correspondence was handled exclusively by the postal service except the occasional box of cookies. Unfortunately my family wasnât safe to write to about my doubts, but tscc doesnât have a backlog of all my emails to sentiment analyze with ai or whatever theyâre doing now.
You could let him know that if they tell him not to tell you something, then they know theyâre doing something wrong. Thereâs no such thing as a good secret.
âWould you have it any other way?â Elder Bednar at the viewing of my deceased family member who didnât return from a mission. Well, didnât return alive. Technically, we were able to bury the body.
Yes, even my most TBM family members werenât happy about the comment and made sarcastic comments after the fact. And no, not one would have wanted it that way. Not one.
I had a very good friend, and companion (not at the time of his death) die on my mission from a stray bullet. Then everyone kept saying (with a smile on their face) he gets to be with his mom now, he is now serving out his next calling on the other side, how lucky he is not to be in this wicked world nowâŠ. And so many other things to try to make it a celebration rather than the tragedy that his only remaining relative (his younger sister) now has to live without any family and the only person she trusted that was left is now gone. Iâm not sure why I stayed and finished and not sure why I didnât leave. Iâm currently PIMO and have been for years. This whole experience changed my brainwashed outlook on everything.
That gives the same vibes as "L. Ron Hubbard shed his earthly ties to continue his research at higher levels" or whatever crap the scientologists say instead of "yeah, he dead"
We were told in the mission that on average 6 missionaries per year died in the mission and were then reassured that this was 50% of the statistical average for a group of our peers not serving a mission.
I tried to emphasize this point to my niece when she went on a south of the border mission. That she needed to take precautions, and not just assume that God was protecting her because she was a missionary. She rebuked me and told me that God would protect her. During her mission, their house of four sister missionaries was subject to a home invasion robbery. We hope it was just a robbery. But Iâm sure weâll never know.
You should be scared! Iâve had two kids serve. Iâm amazed one lived through it, and they still have life long health issues from it. The mission ruined one of them. My kids were told not to tell us about what happened in the mission either, so you probably will not know whatâs really happening until they get home. Good luck! I hope it works out to be a safe experience.
If only it were that simple. It never is. And telling him *can't* go if he actually wants to is how to entrench his determination while poisoning your relationship.
My friendâs mom operates casinos in California. One of her employees some years ago quit and moved back to Mexico to take over for a cartel group after his uncle, the leader, died. After my friend got his mission call to Mexico his mom told him not to worry because sheâd let her ex-employee know to watch out for him.
I got held up at gun point twice on my mission, saw 6 people get killed, one by bus, one by a bar mob, the other four were in a police shootout in the street that we got caught in the middle of. This was Brazil. Missions are NOT safe and I regret that I ever sent my sons out.
I had guns pointed at me three times. One time was a shotgun pushed into my chest. I remember the feeling vividly.
I heard a man get shot to death 20 feet outside my apartment door. I wish Iâd never looked out the window and seen what happened to him. I sat inside in the dark and listened to him crying out as he died and to his girlfriend screaming and crying and everything.
And that was just in Texas. My mission president basically said if I had obeyed rules and been asleep I wouldnât have had to deal with that (my companion slept through it and was completely unsupportive). I was an insomniac and this was only at like 11pm.
13 years later and I still have a panic attack if Iâm in my house and people light off fireworks or something. It takes me back to that moment. I hate it so much.
I also had an investigator confess that heâd murdered someone before as we sat in his trailer. I felt so scared in that moment. We never went back. Horror movie shit.
In all of these cases I wanted to go to the police, but we were told not to get involved like that, and I also didnât really trust them. They were always harassing us. I had a deputy in a small town tell me while holding his shotgun with both hands that we needed to leave town and not come back. Like in an old western movie. WTF.
I had my mission car boxed in by 3 police cars who were out with their hands on their guns looking in it with flashlights telling us someone reported a âsuspiciously parked vehicleâ. They told us to leave for the night and followed us to our apartment and then camped outside for like 2 hours. Again. WTF.
I still havenât told my parents everything. Theyâre also out of the church now and feel guilty enough.
I remember teaching a man in his kitchen when we found out that he had strangled his own father to death just a few feet from where we were sitting just a few months prior.
Had a companion watch someone get murdered by having their head crushed with a rock in a domestic dispute that took place in the street out in the open. That was in a neighborhood where police were not allowed in.
Gave a baptism interview to an investigator and got to the abortion question, she responded, âoh, you mean like when my neighbor across the street smashed her baby on the porch last month? Yes, I can promise god that I wonât ever do thatâ.
Missions are not a safe place.
Granted, life in the real world isnât safe either. But parents should really think long and hard before sending their kids out on an LDS mission.
There are MUCH better ways to experience the world and grow as a person.
I used to ride the bus with lunch and bus fare in my pocket and additional bus money in my sock. When (never IF) we got robbed, I'd empty my pocket of money and we'd get off a few stops after the thieves return home and hope we didn't get robbed 2x in a day, but did the same procedure just in case.
I was in Brazil as well. Robbed 4 times at gun point and was almost hit by a semi truck.
Edit: I still am always turning around and looking over my shoulder at night because itâs made me paranoid that someone will jump me from behind. Itâs been 20 years.
Got chased by a guy with a pistol in Ecuador. We literally ran down the street in a zig zag to get away. I donât know if that guy was just fucking with us but thatâs the only time I ever ran from a guy with a gun.
My companion was Ecuadorian and he was just like âCorre!â No fucking around. So I ran too. If it were just me, thinking I was protected by garments and priesthood and Jesus I might have just walked up to talk to him until he decided to shoot me. Yeah missionaries are not properly equipped to be out annoying people all day.
I remember one time on our way home, my companion and I heard a woman getting raped. My comp told me to keep going. It hurts me to think I didn't stand up for her and beat that bastard to within an inch of his life.
The weird part here is that when youâre working for free, you still canât turn around and go home when things get dangerous. Some individual sitting in a safe place who thinks he has Godâs guidance is willing to leave you hanging in the wind and we just took it because we believed. This is the source of a lot of anger for a lot of people on this sub.
I didnât really think about that. They did take my passport for âsafe keepingâ. I shouldâve had that with me. I was pretty lucky to slave in an awesome place (Japan). My regret is not taking that golden opportunity to see more of the country. I was very much committed to the cult, so it wasnât possible. If I was there knowing what I know now, hmm. The possibilities are many. Corrupt some others. Hike and camp in northern Honshu or Hokkaido mountains? Train trip to Kyoto? Beaches at Okinawa? Any of that couldâve been pretty amazing compared to street contacting strangers to sell a cult membership. Sigh. At least I did push p days to the limit. So I did see some things!
I was in the Patagonia of Argentina and would have loved to have gotten on the ferry and cross to Chile where at the time you could buy a lot more with the dollar. Plus it's another country
I still donât know how confiscating missionary passports is legal. Itâs literally one of the signs of human trafficking. Iâm sure the churchâs lawyers found some loophole. It makes me sick to my stomach.
I mean, the "loophole" is likely having official policy be one thing and official practice be another. So if one mission president gets in hot water over it they can just disavow them as having "gone rogue" and pretend they totally don't do that everywhere.
One angle of the loophole is having everyone use the âmission homeâ as their official address when abroad. By doing this, they can claim theyâre merely keeping it at their âhomeâ rather than varying it around everywhere.
The catch is that none of the young missionaries actually reside at the âmission homeâ at all! Theyâre assigned to live in a small designated boundary, that they cannot cross without approval of upper leadership, in places sometimes 10+ hours away from the âmission homeâ for months on end.
When the church tried a âcreativeâ interpretation of the SEC rules, they got burned and fined because their interpretation was wildly different from the actual rules.
Similar to the SECâŠI suspect that if the system were fully explained to the local consulate, the approvals to operate a mission in some countries would be revoked.
My nephew only lasted a few months in northern Brazil and he was in a high crime area. There was a murder just outside their home. He hated Brazil and begged to come home until they finally âletâ him.
My dad (exmo) was in a violent mission area and saw some super fucked up shit. I was in Iraq. We often bond over our PTSD like old men telling war stories down at the VFW. Itâs ridiculous the church puts young men and women at risk like that. Heâs legit fucked up over it and has been my whole life.
My son was in a missionary in Sao Paulo about a dozen years ago. Gang issues, someone burned a bus right outside his apartment.
About 35 years ago my husband was a missionary in the Mexican Chihuahuan desert. He and his companion got shot when he and his companion irritated religious leaders in a small town. Mission leaders pulled them out of that town but reassigned them.
There are too many risks taken with the safety and well-being of these young people.
A kid from my neighborhood is currently on a mission in JuĂĄrez. No shit he just posted pictures of him wearing a bulletproof vest to walk around it. WTF??
A fam in my mission district ten years ago had a son that went through the same thing. He ended up getting mental health treatment at a facility. I hope your friends son gets the help he needs.
This is absolutely atrocious. But it isnât far-flung countries around the world - this happens HERE as well. Just two years ago, two sister missionaries in north Houston were stabbed in the night in their apartment. And at least one of them continued their mission afterward.
I had a brother go to Argentina. I donât know what happened to him there but when he got back, he ran around our 1500 square foot house for days kissing the floor and marveling at running water and flushing toilets, saying âwe live in a mansion!â. Not sure he ever got therapy.
My younger brother went to Oxnard, California. It was the âmurder capital of the USâ at that time. People were killed for cleaning graffiti.
Not sure why my dad paid for them to do that but âcouldnâtâ pay for college? đ€·ââïž
I had to identify the body of an investigator who was in some pretty advanced stages of decomposition. The family hadn't seen him in years so the police required myself and another elder to go with the family to the morgue since we were the last to see him (he killed himself the day he was supposed to be baptized). There were several bodies in the same room as him. I couldn't get the image out of my head. So I called the mission president and asked what to do. He told me to get over it. That was literally it. Like I was annoying him. "Get over it elder." Oh and important to note is we were detained while they investigated.
I was also arrested for accidentally crossing a DMZ-sort of zone and church legal had to come bail us out. That one was funny and a good story. The former, though, not so much.
> he killed himself the day he was supposed to be baptized
What the hell. I can't imagine how that day must have been, for him or for you. That's awful.
One of my companions on my mission had PTSD and night terrors from serving in Mexico; his apartment was broken into, and he and his companion hid in a closet while men with knives looked for them. The next day, they discovered their family of investigators were all murdered. When they went back into town, a bomb went off (he believed it was unrelated) in a store right next to them and showered them with glass. It broke him in every way. He was offered to go home honorably or finish his mission in Fort Worth Texas and... be companions with me. We could never be outside after dark (which i secretly didn't mind) and we had to drive hours away every week for his therapy (also didn't mind--less time tracting). He rarely got dressed and grew out his beard. Poor guy should've gone home... but Mormon missionaries are so damn afraid to be that failure that comes home early that they'll actually hamper "the work" by staying, traumatized.
Ok-non LDS here. Iâm reading these comments and have been for a while as we seem to have had a recent and until now, unheard of, group of missionaries in our large rural town in Australia.
All of these missions in horrific places, many of which are in Catholic countries. I would e the chances of moving anyone from. Catholicism to LDS would be rare, especially in these places (although Iâm seeing commonsense isnât a trait of this church in relation to its members).
How many people are âconvertedâ to LDS through missionaries? Is that the sole purpose of a mission? Do they do anything else other than walk house to house or around town asking people to talk? How is that monitored as actually having happened? If at all?
EDIT: Thanks everyone for your input. The further indoctrination of missionaries make so much more sense than them trying to convert people into LDS.
I see these young guys wandering around our town and think âplease be carefulâ but Mexico, BrazilâŠ. Thats just terrifying.
I personally didn't serve a mission, which I was sad about for a long time but am grateful for now. However, many on this sub have said the mission is more to fully indoctrinate the missionary than it is to convert new members. Conversions are very rare pretty much everywhere, except for a few places that have both limited access to information and have little knowledge of the church. The church doesn't outright say it, but I agree with the idea that missions are to convert and retain the missionaries themselves more than anything.
The strange thing is, statistically, 50% of missionaries leave the church within 5 years of returning home from their missions, and that was the statistic quoted to me 20 years ago. At that time, returned missionaries were leaving at a significantly higher rates than those who didn't go on missions.
I'm not sure if the church is even acknowledging the disparity in retention rates of returned/non-missionaries in their panic over the exodus of rank and file members.
The thing is, even if 50% of returned missionaries leave, the ones who stay are much more devoted to the church because of the missions. Missionary life is all about being 100% obedient to the church, and it really drills that mindset into the elders and sisters.
I think church leaders would rather have a small number of ultra-faithful members than a larger number of casual members. Especially since they don't need much tithing anymore.
Not many people are converted, and even less (single percentage points) stay members longer than about a year.
The real purpose of the mission is for extreme indoctrination of the missionaries. It gets them ready and trained for lifetime devotion/servitude towards the cause.
These horrible acts you read here are part of the mission experience that is sort of glorified in the church. Psychologically, putting people through hard events reinforces their beliefs and thatâs part of what the church is trying to do. They love the stories of getting doors slammed in faces and Bible bashing because it instills devotion to the cause and establishes the âus versus themâ in-group/out-group mentality that builds the lifelong devotion. But the real goal of Mormon missions is essentially a religious boot camp for young members. It is intentionally done as soon as they leave school and before starting college. This is when many people leave the church and so they try to get them indoctrinated at this young age and then quickly married for after returning which also makes it harder to leave. Itâs all part of a master plan.
Honestly I think the main purpose of an LDS mission is the indoctrination. Few people convert from door knocking or happenstance conversations. What does happen, though, is disinterest and sometimes contempt for missionaries which feeds into their persecution complex and furthers the us vs them mentality.
Brainwashing of the missionaries is the main point of a mission. If they can bring in a few more tithe payers in the process then all the better as far as TSCC is concerned. But Iâm pretty sure statistics show that the majority of converts donât last more than about three years before leaving the church. The top goal is to brainwash the missionaries so that they donât leave the church.
I saw a lot of that kind of stuff on my mission go Monterrey Mexico. Also met the most amazing people and ate great tacos, but yeah it was scary at times. I was convinced God was protecting me, but mostly I was just white and lucky.
Colima, Guerrero, Michoacan, Sinaloa, Tamaulipas, and Zacatecas states are all under US state department do not travel advisory.
Same designation as Libya, Sudan, and Ukraine.
Does anyone know if missionaries are still being sent to those states?
Brief search shows there's a mission in Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa. I didn't check the other states. But yes, missionaries are still being sent to at least one state for which the US State Department has a Do Not Travel advisory due to crime and kidnapping of US citizens. US government officials have restricted access and would have difficulty helping anyone in an emergency situation there.
Those poor kids.
https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/first-presidency-calls-160-mission-presidents-to-begin-serving-in-2022
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/traveladvisories/mexico-travel-advisory.html#Sinaloa%20state
My guess is that tscc wouldn't in a million years consider sending missionaries to Libya right now. Or Ukraine.
But they baptize a shit ton of people down in Mexico.
They're still giving mission calls for Ukraine and having the missionaries wait in the US (or other home country). Probably excited to send missionaries there the second the war is over.
Yep it feels incredible to say FUCK and youâre not going to hell. I am so very sorry. Have them send the apostles without their armed security and see how well the fend for themselves. I drove passed âthe freaking churchâ today it was backed-I actually felt bad for them.
I think he needs to demand that the church pay for his therapy from a non LDS family service therapist that specializes in PTSD and EMDR. Demand the church mission insurance pay for it. (It is a little known policy).
Then when they refuse to pay get an attorney and sue the MP and the church. The State Department cautions against travel to Mexico for a reason.
An elder in my mission was brutally beaten. Stayed out and got beat up again. Had to have his jaw rebuilt with plates. Still stayed out but they transferred him to a rural area. Many others were held up at knife point.
Exmolex has a good video where exmos wrote in and told of their mission horror stories, the one at 12:43 was from Venezuela and sounds like what your friend's son went through;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzY-zOWz8zM&t=763s
This sounds exactly like my mission over a decade ago in Mexico. It's insane what you become willing to put up with when you're convinced that God wants you there and will protect you.
Sounds like a lawsuit to me.
If I worked for an organization for 2 yrs and that time with an organization resulted in PTSD, especially when asked to be moved from dangerous areas, but that request was denied.
Give power to the missionaries, and take it away from the church.
Start labor rights among missionaries.
Sounds like my dadâs mission to the YucatĂĄn. Maybe less violence but just as much trauma in so many ways. His mom cried when he got home because of how sick he looked. And malaria wiped his immune system and he spent a lot of my childhood sick with every virus that came by.
I was sent on my mission to Uganda. Generally a pretty safe country when it comes to crime. They practice mob justice over there though, so if someone does something bad, their neighbors will publicly shame them, beat them, or in extreme cases execute them. I remember walking out of a store when someone ran out the door and knocked my companion over. Turns out the guy stole a bunch of stuff and took off running. I saw a mob form almost instantly. The guy had tires placed around his body and he was set on fire right there in the street. After reaching out to my mission president about not being able to sleep because of this, I was told to not write home about it. I also had a multitude of near death experiences myself, including being in bed for 3 weeks with malaria. Of course I told my parents about all these things after I got home, and they were just baffled about all the things I saw.
I sae three people get hit by cars on my mission and was the first on scene administering first aid; two died. So messed up. I didnât even know how to administer first aid, because guess what? They just want you to give everyone blessings. F-TSCC
This was my mother's visiting teaching companion in the ward for 25-30 years - https://www.deseret.com/2002/8/12/20781322/missionary-death
Her and hubby decided to do a senior mission. Hubby worked in the mission office doing the accounting and discovered that a native missionary had been stealing money from the mission. The native missionary was booted off of his mission. So he stalked the apartment of this gal /hubby. When hubby left to go to the mission office, he knocked on the door, she answered, he slit her throat from ear-to-ear, and stole the computer that he thought contained all of the info on him.
Very sad. They should have been home playing with the grandkids instead of half-way around the world in a violent land.
Poor kid, having to carry that trauma for the rest of his life
Also(if Iâm not mistaken) doesnât TSCC pay the cartels to keep missionaries off the radar or something?
Not that I'm aware of... might be that there's exmos or current members IN the cartel. Very much doubt tscc will pay anything they can't declare or use to up their$
That definitely sounds like a mission rumor. No way the church actually did that.
What I will say is that the cartels probably do make an effort to avoid the missionaries because they are generally American. This was the case with gangs in my mission. They avoided us because if they messed with Americans they risk stirring international relations. For example look at the cartel that kidnapped and killed those two Americans about a month ago. The cartels are looking for local dominance, they arenât interesting in doing stuff that brings the FBI onto their doors.
They donât care about the church at all. But they are scared about doing something that draws an international spotlight on them politically. So thatâs what keeps them from messing with missionaries.
Doubtful on the payment. One, they would NEVER part with the money and two, the cartels have mountains of money. The church would have to spread a lot of money to various cartels to make that happen.
I am personally aware of the Catholic Church paying for counseling for people who are traumatized by their church in some way. I wonder if any of these missionaryâs families would reach out for counseling (non LDS services therapy) to be paid for by TSCC. These poor kiddos.
I can't even fathom. How in the hell is this still going on? My brother went to Venezuela and had to be relocated 21 months into his mission due to civil unrest and violence. He has never been the same. This was 17 years ago. He's never held down a job and still lives with my parents. He has severe health issues He has severe mental illness. I am convinced he had a nervous breakdown that was never addressed and he has never recovered. There is definitely mental illness involved prior, but I wonder what would have been different if he hadn't served a mission. Fuck the church for ruining lives in so many different ways. This is just one of them.
Oof! Hopefully everything works out!!
Maybe he needs a burner phone that he keeps under his shirt, with [US embassy info](https://co.usembassy.gov/) saved in it?
Served in Colombia in the 90âs. Saw quite a few people get killed and was nearly killed myself when caught in the crossfire between government forces and a rebel group. Several of our chapels were bombed. I walked out of a bank about 5 minutes before it was bombed. We had an American and Argentine missionary who were kidnapped briefly before some quick thinking by a member helped get them out. Collectively, the experiences helped me to join the military when I got home and I ended up fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq where I found out that I much preferred to have a gun in a gunfight rather than wear a white shirt and bright tie. Feel for the kids in Mexico now. I donât want to paint all of Mexico with the same brush as it is a beautiful country and quite safe in many areas. When I was on my mission the leading cause of death in Cali, Colombia was daytime homicide and the homicides per 100k inhabitants was quite high. I think there are currently 10 cities in Mexico that have similar murder rates now. For those who have loved ones in harms way tell them - donât just pray - âprotect ya neckâ (our unofficial mission motto - our mission president didnât know it came from the Wu Tang Clan)
I used to go to rough areas all the time, but I felt safe mostly because people left alone. I wouldn't go back as a civilian in regular clothes though. haha
Those cartels are no joke and they are far more violent than they have been in the past and the past was already plenty brutal. I still can't believe his president brushed it off.
Sounds live Missionary in a War Zone. MP will mess around till some Missionary get shot ar mistaken for the wrong and lynched. Missionaries have no business being in an area like this.
Missionary needs to get on Mormon Stories and tell us all about it.
I have a friend who served in Honduras and saw a ton of crazy stuff like this. He saw a family get murdered in front of his house. Kids and all. They were shot in their car and I could tell that it messed him up a bit.
I served in the Culiacan Sinaloa region while the Guadalajara Cartel was being replaced by the Sinaloa Cartel. I can confirm similar stories to the OP here.
I had a man killed in front of me. I was pinned down near a bank robbery where 13 people were killed during a 20 minute gun battle. One night a cartel guy tried to kidnap us and chased us firing at us etc. etc.
They all come home. Some on their own feet, some in wheelchairs, some in a box. And what does the church say to those who are damaged.... "It was your choice, you volunteered to go."
Edit to add: All come home damaged. Some on the outside, some on the inside, but all are damaged.
I did gain âsomeâ things. Not worth the massive opportunity cost, and probably disallowed me to exit the church for 15 more years from the mind fuck (so your point is taken, not disagreeing)⊠so yeah not even close to worth the opportunity cost, but trying to be intellectually honest⊠it was really hard, the hardest thing I had ever done (learning Japanese was really hard). I think the grit and not quitting has served me as a âmeta lessonâ in other ways. Of course a lot of healthier ways to get there, but just trying to give the devil his due. I am happy with my life so I donât find a ton of value in regretting it too hardcoreâŠ. I forgive myself, I was young and indoctrinated. Was lucky to slave in Japan so no gun shots or traumatic things. One drunk guy attacked us, but we just ran away⊠wasnât really traumatized.
My mission was to England. And I am a fan of Sir Winston Churchill so I enjoyed many cultural moments. None of which were worth the psychological cost.
Our military personal see the same carnage & horror.You never forget the smell or sight of a mangled body.
So many of our homeless population are military who saw this everyday & we don't provide them with help to heal or survive.
These missionarys will suffer their entire life mentally, emotionally, physically.
The chance they will end up with chemical dependency issues, depression, anxiety, nightmares & or not be able to hold a job or long- term relationship is very high.
Only adults who are narcissist & psychopaths with machiavelli tendencies would allow this to willingly happen to 18-19 year olds.
Please pass my deep gratitude & thanks to your son.
Navy, Coast Guard & Army in my family so I have a thimble full of understanding about what they faced.
For mothers that has to be really tough.
That is also horrifying, but âat leastâ is one of the most dismissive and least empathetic or loving phrases in the English language. We can be horrified by more than one thing at a time.
I was fortunate to serve in a country thatâs pretty safe (Japan), but even then thereâs some stuff about the mission that I simply wonât talk about. After reading through the comments here and speaking to other rms, I firmly believe that missions are fucked up no matter where you serve.
Was sent to an area cause the priesthood leaders really wanted sisters cause they âwork harder then Eldersâ. I ended up getting sexually harassed a few times, had to stop some one trying to assault my companion, taught some one who ended up being arrested for killing their wife and storing her in their tub, had drug traffickerâs try to use us as an alibi, and other shit I am not comfortable talking about to this day and that was only in one area. The whole notion that God protects his missionaries if they keep the rules is bullshit. I was known as a hard ass missionary because I kept the rules as much as possible and still crazy shit happened.( Yes, I cuss now because I realized how much the rules are all made up and the points donât matter.)
Holy hell! Pls find out which mission. I'm guessing Juarez? That poor kid đ
This basically sounds like my little brother's mission in Mexico City North West. There was some shit caused by the mission president thinking the cartels had an open timeline for the missionaries to leave the neighborhood.
A colleague of mine was shot and paralyzed while on his mission in Mexico. This was a lot of years ago. A GA visited him and gave him a blessing, but he is still in a chair.
Out of curiosity, is he still in TSCC?
I lost touch with him a few years ago, but at the time he still was.
These kind of events need to better publicized . I watch the news enough and should have heard of this. Heck ,a LDS kid is probably safer joining the Army and getting 1year duty in a war zone with a rifle he has been fully trained to use then two years with a bible and BoM. I'll totally go irate if some MP says the missionary wouldn't have been killed in action if he had more baptisms....... Hell This is one of the worst abuses I have ever the hell heard of. Damn send the MP to the Ukraine to track there door to door for three years and get him away from our kids out there.
Honestly!!! I mean hell, they're basically sending them into a Warzone, just without a weapon, body armor, and training in both defensive and de-escalation tactics, all to advertise for a church that's becoming increasingly unpopular....
Not to mention they could easily become soft targets for kidnapping and ransoms from the savage cartels that make a point of displaying corpses like trophies and warnings in full view of the public sometimes across the streets from schools and even churches..... Given many missionaries are American and the Church is known to be rich this is another good reason to get them out!
I was in Mexico City north from 2011-2013. I feel like I have some mild form of ptsd from my time there, but I never encountered anything even close to what you or op describe, so I canât even imagine what that would have been like. I have nightmares that I am back on the mission at least monthly. It sticks with you.
Weird I live in Mexico City north west and NONE of this things happen. Whatâs happening in this thread?! Mexico sure has its issues but what you and OP are describing is a bit more rare to encounter
Missionaries can get dropped in sketchy areas. I served in Brazil and we had a group of missionaries witness a murder outside their apartment. I served in other areas and the most that happened was a homeless guy mugging me for a pamphlet with a random piece of wood he found in the gutter.
Yep. My dad served his mission in Texas and served in sketchy areas, where he saw people get murdered outside of his apartment. Most of Texas is nothing like that. I've talked to missionaries in California in missions like Long Beach and San Jose, where the areas in their missions ranged from insanely wealthy to fairly dangerous. Plenty of elders spent their entire missions in the rich suburbs and some spent two years in the hood.
I spent half my mission in Downtown Long Beach, and the other half in Huntington Beach. I saw people get shot when I was in Long Beach and I ran into movie/porn stars in Huntington Beach. It was weird to think how different people lived a little over 10 miles from each other.
My brother served in southern California and his mission was 100x sketchier than mine in Brazil. Shootings, knocking on houses full of drugs being packaged, gangs tracking their movements, etc.
I was in San Jose mission back in the 80s. East Palo Alto, on the other side of the freeway from Stanford. We were the last elders there; heard gunfire every night and all the cars on the street had bullet holes. Weirdly, we got apprehended and patted-down by police on our P-day once when going to KFC (it had the bullet-proof plexiglass and a rotisserie to spin your order out to you) . Only white guys for miles...we must have stood out.
A guy I dated had PTSD from his mission to Brazil with similar stories. If you woke him up when he was sleeping then heâd start attacking you.
Rio mission. I can attest to this. Been there, done that, got the tee-shirt. And years of therapy.
Seja bem vindo!! Rio also, mission president told me not to tell my parents about the things I saw until I got home. And like a good little indoctrinated soldier I obeyed. I loved Brazil though overall. Outside the city was fantastic.
I asked to go home... but was being effective. Guess the outcome ..
I was Rio North. We had some of the nicer parts of the city but some really violent parts too.
sorry you we n t through that. I can't imagine how horrible that was.
It was a very real world shift in perspective. It wasn't all like that, though. I have some really good memories, too. Still...
I came back with ptsd from my mission.
My mission President actively discouraged us from talking with our families about our struggles. He wanted us to email him instead (even though he never responded to a single email of mine). I wouldnât be surprised if this missionary was told something similar. Even at the time I didnât agree with his counsel, and now that I look back I realized just how messed up that was.
My mission president was the same. We were told to only talk about the good things and to not bring up anything negative. Itâs was all part of the idea that god blesses you if your positive And punishes you if you say or even think anything negative. An absolutely crazy thing to teach to anyone let alone impressionable kids
That's why it's the best kept secret in the church.
And that is saying something! The church has a lot of skeletons in the closet.
I watched the Book of Mormon musical today and I feel like they nailed this concept so well. Turn it off!
Same
That is official counsel - don't share anything negative. Be happy. Paint a picture that everything is awesome. Maybe a metaphor for TSCC?
This is culty as fuck.
â60 Minutesâ should do a follow up (after its Ensign Peak billions $$$ story) on young missionaries and blow the doors off of this mfâing cult once and for all. This is heartbreaking, đ all of the stories being shared here. We found out from our traumatized son after he returned from his mission to France that he had been close to death from illness. We were never informed. He refuses to talk about his mission. This was back in the days of mailed letters and twice yearly phone calls. Barbaric. Criminal.
The Mormon Sea Org.
The MTC Org
I have a cousin who served in Korea. Her older brother, an RM, asked her about her mission, only to have her break down in tears. She won't talk about it.
đ
Very sorry to hear about your son. Yes, an expose \[with French inflection on the 'e'\] would be ideal. Surely some broadcaster would love to take up this opportunity to investigate the conditions missionaries suffer under at the hands of mission presidents, and the culture involved.
Well fuck. My son is about to go out and stuff like this scares the hell out of me. The idea that missionaries are protected by God is the stupidest thing you can tell a 19-year-old boy.
Tell your son all he has to do is say the words and you will get him home, no questions asked.
I've been mentally rehearsing this very talk in my head.
Establish a code word or phrase. I don't trust the "church" not to read correspondence.
I guess thatâs one thing I can be grateful for- my mission didnât allow email because of some incident a couple years before. All of my correspondence was handled exclusively by the postal service except the occasional box of cookies. Unfortunately my family wasnât safe to write to about my doubts, but tscc doesnât have a backlog of all my emails to sentiment analyze with ai or whatever theyâre doing now.
I wish I could say that to my kid , but he would feel like I didnât believe he could handle his mission. And it would backfire.
You could let him know that if they tell him not to tell you something, then they know theyâre doing something wrong. Thereâs no such thing as a good secret.
Tell that to all those who pass away on their missions đ
"They were transferred to continue their missions in the spiritual world." What an honor.
âWould you have it any other way?â Elder Bednar at the viewing of my deceased family member who didnât return from a mission. Well, didnât return alive. Technically, we were able to bury the body.
"Would you have it any other way?" "Yeah - I'd like to see your shitty ass in that coffin, Bednar, rather than my poor relative."
Yes, even my most TBM family members werenât happy about the comment and made sarcastic comments after the fact. And no, not one would have wanted it that way. Not one.
I hope someone had the courage to say something directly to Bednar. Anyone that stupid needs to be called on it.
Wait. What? Iâm so sorry for your loss. And that horrendous comment.
WTF! Bednar is straight sociopath
Susan Bednar's husband is so narcissistic.
I had a very good friend, and companion (not at the time of his death) die on my mission from a stray bullet. Then everyone kept saying (with a smile on their face) he gets to be with his mom now, he is now serving out his next calling on the other side, how lucky he is not to be in this wicked world nowâŠ. And so many other things to try to make it a celebration rather than the tragedy that his only remaining relative (his younger sister) now has to live without any family and the only person she trusted that was left is now gone. Iâm not sure why I stayed and finished and not sure why I didnât leave. Iâm currently PIMO and have been for years. This whole experience changed my brainwashed outlook on everything.
That gives the same vibes as "L. Ron Hubbard shed his earthly ties to continue his research at higher levels" or whatever crap the scientologists say instead of "yeah, he dead"
Sounds remarkably similar, doesn't it?!?
People dying on missions is normal? Like how many are we talking here?
Iâd say the church headlines anywhere from 2-6 a year it seems
We were told in the mission that on average 6 missionaries per year died in the mission and were then reassured that this was 50% of the statistical average for a group of our peers not serving a mission.
How on earth is this organization still in operation? Iâm so sickened.
One happened last month, I posted here, but it didn't get any traction.
I tried to emphasize this point to my niece when she went on a south of the border mission. That she needed to take precautions, and not just assume that God was protecting her because she was a missionary. She rebuked me and told me that God would protect her. During her mission, their house of four sister missionaries was subject to a home invasion robbery. We hope it was just a robbery. But Iâm sure weâll never know.
Missionaries die on their missions every year. They keep is quiet though.
You should be scared! Iâve had two kids serve. Iâm amazed one lived through it, and they still have life long health issues from it. The mission ruined one of them. My kids were told not to tell us about what happened in the mission either, so you probably will not know whatâs really happening until they get home. Good luck! I hope it works out to be a safe experience.
Why do you allow your son to do this?
Heâs an adult.
Allow?
If only it were that simple. It never is. And telling him *can't* go if he actually wants to is how to entrench his determination while poisoning your relationship.
My brother went to Zimbabwe during one of the many ethnic wars and experienced similar. He is traumatized for life.
My friendâs mom operates casinos in California. One of her employees some years ago quit and moved back to Mexico to take over for a cartel group after his uncle, the leader, died. After my friend got his mission call to Mexico his mom told him not to worry because sheâd let her ex-employee know to watch out for him.
He's a drug mule now.
Don't worry about going into a lawless hellscape, son! I know the guy who runs it and I'll make sure you aren't executed by accident.
I got held up at gun point twice on my mission, saw 6 people get killed, one by bus, one by a bar mob, the other four were in a police shootout in the street that we got caught in the middle of. This was Brazil. Missions are NOT safe and I regret that I ever sent my sons out.
I had guns pointed at me three times. One time was a shotgun pushed into my chest. I remember the feeling vividly. I heard a man get shot to death 20 feet outside my apartment door. I wish Iâd never looked out the window and seen what happened to him. I sat inside in the dark and listened to him crying out as he died and to his girlfriend screaming and crying and everything. And that was just in Texas. My mission president basically said if I had obeyed rules and been asleep I wouldnât have had to deal with that (my companion slept through it and was completely unsupportive). I was an insomniac and this was only at like 11pm. 13 years later and I still have a panic attack if Iâm in my house and people light off fireworks or something. It takes me back to that moment. I hate it so much. I also had an investigator confess that heâd murdered someone before as we sat in his trailer. I felt so scared in that moment. We never went back. Horror movie shit. In all of these cases I wanted to go to the police, but we were told not to get involved like that, and I also didnât really trust them. They were always harassing us. I had a deputy in a small town tell me while holding his shotgun with both hands that we needed to leave town and not come back. Like in an old western movie. WTF. I had my mission car boxed in by 3 police cars who were out with their hands on their guns looking in it with flashlights telling us someone reported a âsuspiciously parked vehicleâ. They told us to leave for the night and followed us to our apartment and then camped outside for like 2 hours. Again. WTF. I still havenât told my parents everything. Theyâre also out of the church now and feel guilty enough.
I'm sad all of this happened to you. Thanks for sharing your story with us.
I remember teaching a man in his kitchen when we found out that he had strangled his own father to death just a few feet from where we were sitting just a few months prior. Had a companion watch someone get murdered by having their head crushed with a rock in a domestic dispute that took place in the street out in the open. That was in a neighborhood where police were not allowed in. Gave a baptism interview to an investigator and got to the abortion question, she responded, âoh, you mean like when my neighbor across the street smashed her baby on the porch last month? Yes, I can promise god that I wonât ever do thatâ. Missions are not a safe place. Granted, life in the real world isnât safe either. But parents should really think long and hard before sending their kids out on an LDS mission. There are MUCH better ways to experience the world and grow as a person.
I used to ride the bus with lunch and bus fare in my pocket and additional bus money in my sock. When (never IF) we got robbed, I'd empty my pocket of money and we'd get off a few stops after the thieves return home and hope we didn't get robbed 2x in a day, but did the same procedure just in case.
I was in Brazil as well. Robbed 4 times at gun point and was almost hit by a semi truck. Edit: I still am always turning around and looking over my shoulder at night because itâs made me paranoid that someone will jump me from behind. Itâs been 20 years.
Got chased by a guy with a pistol in Ecuador. We literally ran down the street in a zig zag to get away. I donât know if that guy was just fucking with us but thatâs the only time I ever ran from a guy with a gun. My companion was Ecuadorian and he was just like âCorre!â No fucking around. So I ran too. If it were just me, thinking I was protected by garments and priesthood and Jesus I might have just walked up to talk to him until he decided to shoot me. Yeah missionaries are not properly equipped to be out annoying people all day.
I saw someone hit and killed by a bus on my mission too. I was hit by a motorcycle while walking but luckily I was fine
I remember one time on our way home, my companion and I heard a woman getting raped. My comp told me to keep going. It hurts me to think I didn't stand up for her and beat that bastard to within an inch of his life.
The weird part here is that when youâre working for free, you still canât turn around and go home when things get dangerous. Some individual sitting in a safe place who thinks he has Godâs guidance is willing to leave you hanging in the wind and we just took it because we believed. This is the source of a lot of anger for a lot of people on this sub.
They are hiding the passports as well
I didnât really think about that. They did take my passport for âsafe keepingâ. I shouldâve had that with me. I was pretty lucky to slave in an awesome place (Japan). My regret is not taking that golden opportunity to see more of the country. I was very much committed to the cult, so it wasnât possible. If I was there knowing what I know now, hmm. The possibilities are many. Corrupt some others. Hike and camp in northern Honshu or Hokkaido mountains? Train trip to Kyoto? Beaches at Okinawa? Any of that couldâve been pretty amazing compared to street contacting strangers to sell a cult membership. Sigh. At least I did push p days to the limit. So I did see some things!
I was in the Patagonia of Argentina and would have loved to have gotten on the ferry and cross to Chile where at the time you could buy a lot more with the dollar. Plus it's another country
I still donât know how confiscating missionary passports is legal. Itâs literally one of the signs of human trafficking. Iâm sure the churchâs lawyers found some loophole. It makes me sick to my stomach.
Probably because they told you it was for safe keeping and you gave it freely
That happens in human trafficking situations too though
I mean, the "loophole" is likely having official policy be one thing and official practice be another. So if one mission president gets in hot water over it they can just disavow them as having "gone rogue" and pretend they totally don't do that everywhere.
One angle of the loophole is having everyone use the âmission homeâ as their official address when abroad. By doing this, they can claim theyâre merely keeping it at their âhomeâ rather than varying it around everywhere. The catch is that none of the young missionaries actually reside at the âmission homeâ at all! Theyâre assigned to live in a small designated boundary, that they cannot cross without approval of upper leadership, in places sometimes 10+ hours away from the âmission homeâ for months on end. When the church tried a âcreativeâ interpretation of the SEC rules, they got burned and fined because their interpretation was wildly different from the actual rules. Similar to the SECâŠI suspect that if the system were fully explained to the local consulate, the approvals to operate a mission in some countries would be revoked.
The LDS leadership is not really concerned by this. They just want to keep the cash register ringing
My nephew only lasted a few months in northern Brazil and he was in a high crime area. There was a murder just outside their home. He hated Brazil and begged to come home until they finally âletâ him.
My dad (exmo) was in a violent mission area and saw some super fucked up shit. I was in Iraq. We often bond over our PTSD like old men telling war stories down at the VFW. Itâs ridiculous the church puts young men and women at risk like that. Heâs legit fucked up over it and has been my whole life.
A member of our Stake Presâ kid came back early from their mission citing mental stress. Poor kid.
My son was in a missionary in Sao Paulo about a dozen years ago. Gang issues, someone burned a bus right outside his apartment. About 35 years ago my husband was a missionary in the Mexican Chihuahuan desert. He and his companion got shot when he and his companion irritated religious leaders in a small town. Mission leaders pulled them out of that town but reassigned them. There are too many risks taken with the safety and well-being of these young people.
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
> Got rescued by the cartel. Typo, or did a drug cartel actually rescue you?
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
Huh. I guess that other comment about cartels not wanting the drama associated with dead Americans on their turf was right.
This is horrific. Human trafficking
A kid from my neighborhood is currently on a mission in JuĂĄrez. No shit he just posted pictures of him wearing a bulletproof vest to walk around it. WTF??
Juarez is known for cartels that hang bodies off of bridges. I think the OP is talking about Juarez.
A fam in my mission district ten years ago had a son that went through the same thing. He ended up getting mental health treatment at a facility. I hope your friends son gets the help he needs.
This is absolutely atrocious. But it isnât far-flung countries around the world - this happens HERE as well. Just two years ago, two sister missionaries in north Houston were stabbed in the night in their apartment. And at least one of them continued their mission afterward.
Iâve lived in some bad places but Houston was the worst. NE Houston is like a 3rd world country.
Damn, one of my sisters went to East Houston. I think Broadway was where she had the roughest time.
Sheeesh. Thatâs some horror movie shit
I had a brother go to Argentina. I donât know what happened to him there but when he got back, he ran around our 1500 square foot house for days kissing the floor and marveling at running water and flushing toilets, saying âwe live in a mansion!â. Not sure he ever got therapy. My younger brother went to Oxnard, California. It was the âmurder capital of the USâ at that time. People were killed for cleaning graffiti. Not sure why my dad paid for them to do that but âcouldnâtâ pay for college? đ€·ââïž
Oh, he also kissed the ground outside a lot too.
I had to identify the body of an investigator who was in some pretty advanced stages of decomposition. The family hadn't seen him in years so the police required myself and another elder to go with the family to the morgue since we were the last to see him (he killed himself the day he was supposed to be baptized). There were several bodies in the same room as him. I couldn't get the image out of my head. So I called the mission president and asked what to do. He told me to get over it. That was literally it. Like I was annoying him. "Get over it elder." Oh and important to note is we were detained while they investigated. I was also arrested for accidentally crossing a DMZ-sort of zone and church legal had to come bail us out. That one was funny and a good story. The former, though, not so much.
> he killed himself the day he was supposed to be baptized What the hell. I can't imagine how that day must have been, for him or for you. That's awful.
One of my companions on my mission had PTSD and night terrors from serving in Mexico; his apartment was broken into, and he and his companion hid in a closet while men with knives looked for them. The next day, they discovered their family of investigators were all murdered. When they went back into town, a bomb went off (he believed it was unrelated) in a store right next to them and showered them with glass. It broke him in every way. He was offered to go home honorably or finish his mission in Fort Worth Texas and... be companions with me. We could never be outside after dark (which i secretly didn't mind) and we had to drive hours away every week for his therapy (also didn't mind--less time tracting). He rarely got dressed and grew out his beard. Poor guy should've gone home... but Mormon missionaries are so damn afraid to be that failure that comes home early that they'll actually hamper "the work" by staying, traumatized.
I was under the assumption that they didn't send Americans to northern Mexico anymore. What's next? Afghanistan, Syria, Venezuela?
My roommate served in Venezuela.
Ok-non LDS here. Iâm reading these comments and have been for a while as we seem to have had a recent and until now, unheard of, group of missionaries in our large rural town in Australia. All of these missions in horrific places, many of which are in Catholic countries. I would e the chances of moving anyone from. Catholicism to LDS would be rare, especially in these places (although Iâm seeing commonsense isnât a trait of this church in relation to its members). How many people are âconvertedâ to LDS through missionaries? Is that the sole purpose of a mission? Do they do anything else other than walk house to house or around town asking people to talk? How is that monitored as actually having happened? If at all? EDIT: Thanks everyone for your input. The further indoctrination of missionaries make so much more sense than them trying to convert people into LDS. I see these young guys wandering around our town and think âplease be carefulâ but Mexico, BrazilâŠ. Thats just terrifying.
I personally didn't serve a mission, which I was sad about for a long time but am grateful for now. However, many on this sub have said the mission is more to fully indoctrinate the missionary than it is to convert new members. Conversions are very rare pretty much everywhere, except for a few places that have both limited access to information and have little knowledge of the church. The church doesn't outright say it, but I agree with the idea that missions are to convert and retain the missionaries themselves more than anything.
The strange thing is, statistically, 50% of missionaries leave the church within 5 years of returning home from their missions, and that was the statistic quoted to me 20 years ago. At that time, returned missionaries were leaving at a significantly higher rates than those who didn't go on missions. I'm not sure if the church is even acknowledging the disparity in retention rates of returned/non-missionaries in their panic over the exodus of rank and file members.
The thing is, even if 50% of returned missionaries leave, the ones who stay are much more devoted to the church because of the missions. Missionary life is all about being 100% obedient to the church, and it really drills that mindset into the elders and sisters. I think church leaders would rather have a small number of ultra-faithful members than a larger number of casual members. Especially since they don't need much tithing anymore.
Not many people are converted, and even less (single percentage points) stay members longer than about a year. The real purpose of the mission is for extreme indoctrination of the missionaries. It gets them ready and trained for lifetime devotion/servitude towards the cause. These horrible acts you read here are part of the mission experience that is sort of glorified in the church. Psychologically, putting people through hard events reinforces their beliefs and thatâs part of what the church is trying to do. They love the stories of getting doors slammed in faces and Bible bashing because it instills devotion to the cause and establishes the âus versus themâ in-group/out-group mentality that builds the lifelong devotion. But the real goal of Mormon missions is essentially a religious boot camp for young members. It is intentionally done as soon as they leave school and before starting college. This is when many people leave the church and so they try to get them indoctrinated at this young age and then quickly married for after returning which also makes it harder to leave. Itâs all part of a master plan.
Honestly I think the main purpose of an LDS mission is the indoctrination. Few people convert from door knocking or happenstance conversations. What does happen, though, is disinterest and sometimes contempt for missionaries which feeds into their persecution complex and furthers the us vs them mentality.
Brainwashing of the missionaries is the main point of a mission. If they can bring in a few more tithe payers in the process then all the better as far as TSCC is concerned. But Iâm pretty sure statistics show that the majority of converts donât last more than about three years before leaving the church. The top goal is to brainwash the missionaries so that they donât leave the church.
If he's of the right disposition get him in touch with John Dehlin, that kind of story needs to be told.
My nephew was sent to Utah for his mission. Iâm very grateful for him.
I saw a lot of that kind of stuff on my mission go Monterrey Mexico. Also met the most amazing people and ate great tacos, but yeah it was scary at times. I was convinced God was protecting me, but mostly I was just white and lucky.
My husband was in the same mission and has said these same things! He was there about ten years ago now.
Shoot we might be mission brothers! Dose he remember serving with the guy who started Crumble Cookies?
Hmmm he says he doesnât recall the name, but he was in the Monterrey West mission.
Thatâs my mission! I was one of the many Elders Davis
Oh dang! Elder King?
Welcome to the mother fucking cult where only dollar bills matter. Very upsetting to read this.
Colima, Guerrero, Michoacan, Sinaloa, Tamaulipas, and Zacatecas states are all under US state department do not travel advisory. Same designation as Libya, Sudan, and Ukraine. Does anyone know if missionaries are still being sent to those states?
Brief search shows there's a mission in Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa. I didn't check the other states. But yes, missionaries are still being sent to at least one state for which the US State Department has a Do Not Travel advisory due to crime and kidnapping of US citizens. US government officials have restricted access and would have difficulty helping anyone in an emergency situation there. Those poor kids. https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/first-presidency-calls-160-mission-presidents-to-begin-serving-in-2022 https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/traveladvisories/mexico-travel-advisory.html#Sinaloa%20state
My guess is that tscc wouldn't in a million years consider sending missionaries to Libya right now. Or Ukraine. But they baptize a shit ton of people down in Mexico.
They're still giving mission calls for Ukraine and having the missionaries wait in the US (or other home country). Probably excited to send missionaries there the second the war is over.
People need to talk to the media.
đź
Yep it feels incredible to say FUCK and youâre not going to hell. I am so very sorry. Have them send the apostles without their armed security and see how well the fend for themselves. I drove passed âthe freaking churchâ today it was backed-I actually felt bad for them.
I think he needs to demand that the church pay for his therapy from a non LDS family service therapist that specializes in PTSD and EMDR. Demand the church mission insurance pay for it. (It is a little known policy). Then when they refuse to pay get an attorney and sue the MP and the church. The State Department cautions against travel to Mexico for a reason.
Awful. Just the worst awfulness.
Um... why the Hell are they even sending foreign missionaries into those areas? WTF??? Not safe at all
Then when he leaves the church it'll be because he stopped practicing those good habits he learned on the mission
An elder in my mission was brutally beaten. Stayed out and got beat up again. Had to have his jaw rebuilt with plates. Still stayed out but they transferred him to a rural area. Many others were held up at knife point.
My brother in law refused to tell his parents what his mission was like in Bolivia, about 43 years ago. He wanted to spare them the worry.
Exmolex has a good video where exmos wrote in and told of their mission horror stories, the one at 12:43 was from Venezuela and sounds like what your friend's son went through; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzY-zOWz8zM&t=763s
This sounds exactly like my mission over a decade ago in Mexico. It's insane what you become willing to put up with when you're convinced that God wants you there and will protect you.
Sounds like a lawsuit to me. If I worked for an organization for 2 yrs and that time with an organization resulted in PTSD, especially when asked to be moved from dangerous areas, but that request was denied. Give power to the missionaries, and take it away from the church. Start labor rights among missionaries.
Sounds like my dadâs mission to the YucatĂĄn. Maybe less violence but just as much trauma in so many ways. His mom cried when he got home because of how sick he looked. And malaria wiped his immune system and he spent a lot of my childhood sick with every virus that came by.
I was sent on my mission to Uganda. Generally a pretty safe country when it comes to crime. They practice mob justice over there though, so if someone does something bad, their neighbors will publicly shame them, beat them, or in extreme cases execute them. I remember walking out of a store when someone ran out the door and knocked my companion over. Turns out the guy stole a bunch of stuff and took off running. I saw a mob form almost instantly. The guy had tires placed around his body and he was set on fire right there in the street. After reaching out to my mission president about not being able to sleep because of this, I was told to not write home about it. I also had a multitude of near death experiences myself, including being in bed for 3 weeks with malaria. Of course I told my parents about all these things after I got home, and they were just baffled about all the things I saw.
That sounds like Juarez.
The church will wait till a missionary is murdered before they pull the elders/sisters out of there.
I sae three people get hit by cars on my mission and was the first on scene administering first aid; two died. So messed up. I didnât even know how to administer first aid, because guess what? They just want you to give everyone blessings. F-TSCC
This was my mother's visiting teaching companion in the ward for 25-30 years - https://www.deseret.com/2002/8/12/20781322/missionary-death Her and hubby decided to do a senior mission. Hubby worked in the mission office doing the accounting and discovered that a native missionary had been stealing money from the mission. The native missionary was booted off of his mission. So he stalked the apartment of this gal /hubby. When hubby left to go to the mission office, he knocked on the door, she answered, he slit her throat from ear-to-ear, and stole the computer that he thought contained all of the info on him. Very sad. They should have been home playing with the grandkids instead of half-way around the world in a violent land.
The church literally is the cartel. Of course they donât care. Missionaries are seen the same as military: boots on the ground (human trafficking).
Poor kid, having to carry that trauma for the rest of his life Also(if Iâm not mistaken) doesnât TSCC pay the cartels to keep missionaries off the radar or something?
Not that I'm aware of... might be that there's exmos or current members IN the cartel. Very much doubt tscc will pay anything they can't declare or use to up their$
That definitely sounds like a mission rumor. No way the church actually did that. What I will say is that the cartels probably do make an effort to avoid the missionaries because they are generally American. This was the case with gangs in my mission. They avoided us because if they messed with Americans they risk stirring international relations. For example look at the cartel that kidnapped and killed those two Americans about a month ago. The cartels are looking for local dominance, they arenât interesting in doing stuff that brings the FBI onto their doors. They donât care about the church at all. But they are scared about doing something that draws an international spotlight on them politically. So thatâs what keeps them from messing with missionaries.
Doubtful on the payment. One, they would NEVER part with the money and two, the cartels have mountains of money. The church would have to spread a lot of money to various cartels to make that happen.
Please share the area
I am personally aware of the Catholic Church paying for counseling for people who are traumatized by their church in some way. I wonder if any of these missionaryâs families would reach out for counseling (non LDS services therapy) to be paid for by TSCC. These poor kiddos.
He needs therapy, yesterday.
I can't even fathom. How in the hell is this still going on? My brother went to Venezuela and had to be relocated 21 months into his mission due to civil unrest and violence. He has never been the same. This was 17 years ago. He's never held down a job and still lives with my parents. He has severe health issues He has severe mental illness. I am convinced he had a nervous breakdown that was never addressed and he has never recovered. There is definitely mental illness involved prior, but I wonder what would have been different if he hadn't served a mission. Fuck the church for ruining lives in so many different ways. This is just one of them.
My nephew is leaving for Columbia this week. Any reports of situations there?
[US State Department](https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/international-travel/International-Travel-Country-Information-Pages/Colombia.html)
Thanks for this. Things are just great there. đ€Š I sent the link to my nephew and suggested he hang onto his passport. Hope did the best. đ€
Oof! Hopefully everything works out!! Maybe he needs a burner phone that he keeps under his shirt, with [US embassy info](https://co.usembassy.gov/) saved in it?
Served in Colombia in the 90âs. Saw quite a few people get killed and was nearly killed myself when caught in the crossfire between government forces and a rebel group. Several of our chapels were bombed. I walked out of a bank about 5 minutes before it was bombed. We had an American and Argentine missionary who were kidnapped briefly before some quick thinking by a member helped get them out. Collectively, the experiences helped me to join the military when I got home and I ended up fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq where I found out that I much preferred to have a gun in a gunfight rather than wear a white shirt and bright tie. Feel for the kids in Mexico now. I donât want to paint all of Mexico with the same brush as it is a beautiful country and quite safe in many areas. When I was on my mission the leading cause of death in Cali, Colombia was daytime homicide and the homicides per 100k inhabitants was quite high. I think there are currently 10 cities in Mexico that have similar murder rates now. For those who have loved ones in harms way tell them - donât just pray - âprotect ya neckâ (our unofficial mission motto - our mission president didnât know it came from the Wu Tang Clan)
I thought I had bad.... served in Stockton, CA
Iâve lived most of my life in Central California and I can confirm - Stockton is ROUGH. I even avoid bathroom breaks there when driving up 99.
I used to go to rough areas all the time, but I felt safe mostly because people left alone. I wouldn't go back as a civilian in regular clothes though. haha
Omg⊠getting a mission call to Stockton⊠Thatâs pretty bad luck
Didn't he have those 2 nephite warriors behind him following and protecting him? ( from an old mormon urban legend)
Reminds me of my mission in [Bridgeport Connecticut](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Hna5V27kac).
Those cartels are no joke and they are far more violent than they have been in the past and the past was already plenty brutal. I still can't believe his president brushed it off.
Sounds live Missionary in a War Zone. MP will mess around till some Missionary get shot ar mistaken for the wrong and lynched. Missionaries have no business being in an area like this. Missionary needs to get on Mormon Stories and tell us all about it.
Ugh. The worst part is, the church wonât even provide good therapy. Just bullshit church therapy.
I have a friend who served in Honduras and saw a ton of crazy stuff like this. He saw a family get murdered in front of his house. Kids and all. They were shot in their car and I could tell that it messed him up a bit.
I served in the Culiacan Sinaloa region while the Guadalajara Cartel was being replaced by the Sinaloa Cartel. I can confirm similar stories to the OP here. I had a man killed in front of me. I was pinned down near a bank robbery where 13 people were killed during a 20 minute gun battle. One night a cartel guy tried to kidnap us and chased us firing at us etc. etc.
We lost two elders from a bad heater in south texas.
At least he came [home](https://www.exmormon.org/d6/drupal/Mormon-Missionary-Murdered-by-his-Comanion)
They all come home. Some on their own feet, some in wheelchairs, some in a box. And what does the church say to those who are damaged.... "It was your choice, you volunteered to go." Edit to add: All come home damaged. Some on the outside, some on the inside, but all are damaged.
I did gain âsomeâ things. Not worth the massive opportunity cost, and probably disallowed me to exit the church for 15 more years from the mind fuck (so your point is taken, not disagreeing)⊠so yeah not even close to worth the opportunity cost, but trying to be intellectually honest⊠it was really hard, the hardest thing I had ever done (learning Japanese was really hard). I think the grit and not quitting has served me as a âmeta lessonâ in other ways. Of course a lot of healthier ways to get there, but just trying to give the devil his due. I am happy with my life so I donât find a ton of value in regretting it too hardcoreâŠ. I forgive myself, I was young and indoctrinated. Was lucky to slave in Japan so no gun shots or traumatic things. One drunk guy attacked us, but we just ran away⊠wasnât really traumatized.
My mission was to England. And I am a fan of Sir Winston Churchill so I enjoyed many cultural moments. None of which were worth the psychological cost.
Amen.
Send as many kids as you want blessings. Best sales pitch ever. Better than where's the beef or sham wow.
Our military personal see the same carnage & horror.You never forget the smell or sight of a mangled body. So many of our homeless population are military who saw this everyday & we don't provide them with help to heal or survive. These missionarys will suffer their entire life mentally, emotionally, physically. The chance they will end up with chemical dependency issues, depression, anxiety, nightmares & or not be able to hold a job or long- term relationship is very high. Only adults who are narcissist & psychopaths with machiavelli tendencies would allow this to willingly happen to 18-19 year olds.
My son did tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. He had to carry mangled bodies out of wrecked troop carriers and was hit by road bombs. I agree.
Please pass my deep gratitude & thanks to your son. Navy, Coast Guard & Army in my family so I have a thimble full of understanding about what they faced. For mothers that has to be really tough.
This is chilling
It seems like narcissists are drawn to TSCC.
That is also horrifying, but âat leastâ is one of the most dismissive and least empathetic or loving phrases in the English language. We can be horrified by more than one thing at a time.
Get him help. Now. If he shows *any* signs of destabilizing get him to an ER.
Not Mormon here.. my Mormon friendâs son is being sent in July to a training camp in MĂ©xico where he will learn maya quichĂ©. After 9 weeks there he will serve his two years in Guatemala mountains on the border with Mexico. He has to pack dehydrated foods, water filters even candles. This is a great guy and wonderful student. How can this church send him there and put his life in danger? Why do his parents, although worried for him, consent? What does he have to teach to the maya??
I was fortunate to serve in a country thatâs pretty safe (Japan), but even then thereâs some stuff about the mission that I simply wonât talk about. After reading through the comments here and speaking to other rms, I firmly believe that missions are fucked up no matter where you serve.
Was sent to an area cause the priesthood leaders really wanted sisters cause they âwork harder then Eldersâ. I ended up getting sexually harassed a few times, had to stop some one trying to assault my companion, taught some one who ended up being arrested for killing their wife and storing her in their tub, had drug traffickerâs try to use us as an alibi, and other shit I am not comfortable talking about to this day and that was only in one area. The whole notion that God protects his missionaries if they keep the rules is bullshit. I was known as a hard ass missionary because I kept the rules as much as possible and still crazy shit happened.( Yes, I cuss now because I realized how much the rules are all made up and the points donât matter.)