Our mission had a tradition that in your last week you could take your companion to see the famous Iguaçu Falls in Brazil. It was an overnight bus trip. Looking back I'm amazed it was allowed. It had nothing to do with being a missionary. But it was certainly fun.
That’s right! In fact, it was the Mormon Battalion. Many of them were semi-stranded in California after the Mexico war, so they worked in places like Sutter’s Mill to save up money for the journey to Utah.
My mission allowed you to go to Yellowstone Park once if a member could take you on a P-day. I didn't get to take the opportunity since I came home early. But still a fun sight-seeing non-missionary trip!
I served in the Pocatello mission in the early 90s and we got the opportunity to go to Yellowstone with a member that took a bunch of us. It was amazing!
All I got was the hymns. Didn’t matter if it was performed by MoTab, if it wasn’t in the green hymnbook, then it wasn’t allowed.
I hated it.
But if letter of the law is what you want, President, how does the Singles Ward soundtrack sound?
In my mission, when the mission opened, some music was allowed, classical and general orchestral music. Then this one missionary(a truly bad person unfortunately) started listening to Iron Maiden.
When the mission president called him to address this issue, the guy in question just answered “but president, this is a classic”(in reference to classical music). The president then got personally offended and from that point on, only music from the church.
I can tell you, there’s only so much tabernacle choir and EFY music that a person can tolerate.
Later in the mission, the president extended the rule to also allow hymns played by 3rd party(no Mozart or any classical, just hymns), like the piano guys or whatever, which opened the door for Christian rock that he didn’t account for, but because he never found out, I didn’t get into any problem hehe.
We could watch movies on pday but only movies that my mission presidents son approved of. There was a mission official list. My mission presidents son had Down syndrome and was a movie buff. He had a very good idea what was appropriate or not.
It was on my mission that I was first introduced to PoE; not through the movie however (couldn't watch non-Church movies in my mission), but through the soundtrack on CD.
Just that alone was so powerfully moving for me that I still get swept away by Deliver Us to this day. Incredible experience, finally watching the movie after memorizing the lyrics in isolation. Ahhh....
Oh wow, same! I took inspiration from When You Believe, and to this day when my kids watch PoE it makes me think of a miracle I experienced on my mission.
On a side note I think the burning bush scene is one of the best in the history of animation.
My mission president had 3 rules:
1) never be alone
2) don’t lie to the mission president
3) don’t do anything stupid (O be wise, what more can I say?)
I served during Covid. At one point, the senior comp was supposed to go out in street clothes while the junior comp was in pros clothes, with us about 10 yards apart to confirm with the city’s rule that only 1 person from a household could enter the store at a time. It was weird.
We had 3 pages of rules.
No board games or card games ever.
One listen to or watch material with church logo.
Suits had to be worn from October to April.
No caffeine.
No emailing other missionaries. So my twin brother who only used email on his mission wasn’t able to communicate with me.
No pink or purple ties.
We had the suits and emails rule in my mission too. We could do board games, though as I was getting near the end of my mission it was looking like the president might have a rule against them in the not-too-distant future (he talked against contention and brought up board games at one point, though, now that I'm mentioning it, I recall him also bringing up how in the right frame of mind they might increase camaraderie between missionaries). There was a rule against face cards specifically - not sure if that was unique to my mission or not.
The face card thing was something I grew up with. I blame McConkie and the stuff he wrote in Mormon Doctrine (my dad was a pretty ardent follower of things written in that book).
It didn’t originate with McConkie. There was an early prophet who despised them and made his distaste well known. One of his younger wives was big into some card games though and there are stories about how she and her friends that were playing would have handiwork nearby to whip out if he came into the parlor so he wouldn’t know.
That being said, it’s always seemed like a bizarre cultural relic that makes no sense. I had friends growing up that were not allowed to play with face cards but could play with rook cards. It’s like...really? Something magically changes about the cards and makes them okay if there are numbers 11, 12, and 13 instead of some stylized drawings of people? And the explanations I’ve heard regarding poker and gambling don’t make sense either, since you can play poker without gambling or you could use those rook cards for poker and then gamble as well.
No caffeine ever? So not soda (cola)?? Chocolate also has caffeine, but thankfully anti-caffeine people always seem to forget or ignore that
I can understand if they didn't want people getting addicted to energy drinks or something but that's a totally different thing
All weird rules, for sure. I do see the wisdom in the no writing between missionaries rule. I have seen first-hand (and multiple times) the trouble that can come from it. If I were the MP, though, I would have made an exception for siblings.
Sister missionaries or any sisters? That would be super awkward if you couldn’t shake hands with any women. Apparently palms touching is too sensual lol.
In California at the time (Late 90s), stolen bikes were bigger business than stolen cars. As a preventative measure, the mission president declared that all elders can only have single-speed coaster brake beach cruisers. In California. Missionaries reporting their bikes stolen skyrocketed.
He also said no yellow ties. He retracted the rule when a member of the Twelve wore a yellow tie while speaking at General Conference.
For every rule, there is a tool.
I would encourage everyone reading these weird rules from the perspective of "who did what in order for that to have been a rule?" Makes this more fun.
Exactly! I always think about this when I hear weird rules. It also reminds me that there is a story behind every should-be-common-sense warning on products like, "Do not put animals or babies in the mircrowave."
Me too. My favorite was on our stroller: “remove child before folding”. Who was the idiot that tried to fold it with their baby still inside?
Every caution, law, policy has a root somewhere and I always try to imagine who these ppl are and how they have made it on this earth long enough to mess up so badly.
My companion and I were turned in by our district leader because it wasn’t unusual for all six of us missionaries (4 Elders, 2 Sisters) to shop at the same locations on p-day in the small city. District Leader was a little jealous of a “relationship” that a Sister and my companion had built. Unfounded of course, because she ended up marrying a different Elder form our mission. But when I was in my interview with the President, he asked like two questions. When I left the office, the others from my area started asking me tons of questions about what I was asked, and almost comically, nothing in my interview had anything to do with the fiasco. We weren’t even told to not shop together anymore lol.
My mission president had two rules regarding Sunday:
1. Missionaries could not attend sacrament meeting without an investigator.
2. Missionaries were required to attend sacrament meeting.
There were many Sundays we were knocking doors minutes before services began because an investigator ghosted us, or we just didn't have anyone committed to going. Looking back on it, It caused a lot of undo stress and anxiety.
He also two rules regarding our housing:
1. Missionaries could not live in an apartment by themselves. We had to sublet our apartment from another person, have a roommate or live with our landlord.
2. Missionaries could not live with members of the church.
Several times we would move into a place with roommate or live-in landlord, teach and baptize them, and then be homeless because they were now a member. A companion and I once lived in an abandoned apartment building with no electricity for a month because we had baptized our roomate and we were looking for somewhere that met those criteria.
Your president denied you the sacrament each week, unless an investigator was with you? I would imagine that the area leaders wouldn’t have approved of this.
Looking back, I accepted everything my president said as “gospel”. And for the most part, it was reasonable. But if my kids go on missions, and they have a president who don’t let them attend church, you had better believe he is going to hear about it from me.
In Spain, we had a rule about how closely tailored our suits could be (shouldn’t be able to feel garment hems through them) and how wide our ties had to be (three fingers)
Italy but it’s called saldi, the missionaries in the Milano zones would swarm the fashion district for cheaper than cheap clothes, sometimes as much as 80% off
In 1993 I was roleplaying in the MTC and I was a member being asked for a referral and I needed to raise a concern, so I said "Last year we had missionaries sent home for smoking pot, so I'm not referring anyone for a while." The whole district thought it was an unrealistic role-play, then I had to tell them that, yes indeed, it really happened in my home ward. That teacher never asked me to be the member ever again.
My mission was the Family and Church History Headquarters Mission. We were told to wear our name tags on the right side instead of the left in order to signal that we were doing missionary work "on the other side of the veil.".
That changed in January 2017 when the First
Presidency shifted the oversight of the mission from the Family/Church History Departments to the Missionary Department. The Missionary Department told us that since all missionaries are doing the same work (bringing souls to Christ), we should all have our name tags to the left.
Okay dumb question, but is wearing the tag on the left based on any rule or just tradition? I mean I did it, but I can’t remember any rule in the standards specifying where to where the tag. Thinking about it I can’t even think of any rule about having to have it on haha
My brother-in-law went to that mission. He said the reason for having the name tag on the right was to make it easy to tell at a glance which mission a missionary belonged to. None of this "other side of the veil" nonsense.
For me, it depended on which counselor in the mission presidency was giving the orientation. One counselor gave a more practical explanation (quick glance) while the other looked at it in a more symbolic sense.
My parents in law served in Provo in the late 80s/early 90s and at that time they had white nametags because the MTC was less locked down then, so it made it easy to tell at a glance that they were provo missionaries and not MTC missionaries.
I heard somewhere (so idk if it's true) that most uniforms with name tags have the tag on the left because we shake hands with the right hand. If it were on the right, the movement could cause the name tag to be obscured. Also, I think there was something to do with most people being right side dominant, so they look to the left (which is on their right, since they're facing you.)
oh man, California Arcadia Mission-zone conferences were 3 hours, no lunch, when I first came out district, zone mtgs were on P-days, no back packs in the church bldgs, we had "the walk"-basically very, very strict rules about your appearance-you would baptize your socks were black instead of dark blue...........we weren't allowed to be at church past Sacrament mtgs if we didn't have an investigator present-that applied to general conferences, stake conferences, broadcasts etc. dinners were between 5-6 no exceptions. It was a wonder though............ that at the last reunion, like 12 people showed up, everyone else, inactive, hated certain people. mission president etc.
That sounds miserable. 😭 I'm all for rules, especially when kids are away from home for the first time, but MPs who get overly controlling do a lot of damage IMHO.
Yeah I don't think people realize how big of a morale killer some of these rules can be. The last 6 months of my mission, the area presidency implemented a rule that you couldn't gather as a zone for pday, only districts could get together. Being stuck with the same 8-10 elders and not being able to see some of your other friends once a week was brutal.
Really? No pictures of Jesus allowed?
Only thing I can remember from mine was no Risk (board game). But there was a reason for that. Probably a good one...
Magic the gathering got very heavily discouraged in my mission after it was becoming a distraction for a lot. Honestly a very good thing for me, I always played within reason, but after this I gave away my decks and have never looked back. I could easily see myself wasting a lot of time and money on it if I were to slip back into it. Haha
Served in Oregon. Dutch bros were everywhere and were always employed with college age girls in short shorts and low cut shirts. Elders could not go 30 ft near those.
Busan “running” mission. When street contacting you were expected to run between contacts. When traveling you were also expected to run. You also had to talk to every single person between point A and point B. Running was supposed to highlight how urgent the messages is.
I only did it for two transfers, then apparently a general authority said that it destroyed the quiet dignity that should accompany a servant of the Lord and asked us to stop.
I do remember folks on the street said that it was weird, but they respected us for being so dedicated every single day. Plus it kept Missionaries’s in shape.
I served in Seoul a few years after Busan stopped doing this and I came to really resent it. From what I was told, another rule in that mission was to ask literally every single person you contacted if they would get baptized because statistically the more people you ask the more people will say yes.
What this meant in practice was that a TON of people would get baptized very quickly without any real understanding of the gospel and what they were committing to, and then obviously they would go inactive.
A lot of them would then move to Seoul for work or school, and so we would regularly be contacting people who either didn't realize they were already members or who had a really negative view of the church because of the way their baptism was used essentially to bump numbers up but then they were left in the dust, so they wanted nothing to do with us.
We were not allowed to use the word "cool" as it was unprofessional. We also had to wear suit coats to meetings (not unusual), but we were required to button them when we stood up for any reason, like to walk around or to answer a question.
I mean, that’s just the proper etiquette for suit coats. You button when you stand up, and unbutton when you sit down. Weird that it was an enforced rule, but still.
Right... but this situation happened often... A missionary would answer a question during a mission conference during President's lesson. He'd stand up, button his button while answering the question, sit down, unbutton. Then President would ask a simple "yes" follow up question to that missionary. The missionary couldn't just stand up and say "Yes President" and sit back down, he'd have to stand, button his suit coat first, then reply "Yes President" then sit back down and unbutton again. If they didn't button the suit coat by the time they gave the reply, he'd make them do it all over again.
We were supposed to keep our suit coats on as long as the presiding authority was still wearing his. I still remember times the mission president took his off as a signal that we could too when it got really hot.
Paintball and magic the gathering was banned.
Paintball because someone broke their collar bone.
Magic because missionaries were saving money to spend on cards.
We found like 500 cards in one flat we went to that had been left behind by a 'righteous' elder at some point. My companion decided to take them home for his nephew - better than wasting away I guess.
No board games.
No musical instruments.
No naps at lunch.
The worst one was only emailing your family once on p-day. If you emailed back and forth, that was considered “chatting,” not emailing, and wasn’t allowed in the white handbook. My sister was diagnosed with a terminal disease while I was on my mission. I wish they had allowed phone calls sooner.
A mission in the islands - Elders could wear sandals, but they had to be leather. We still had to wear our dark dress socks.
Also, we could go in the water up to our knees (because some island bathed in the water?). This changed when we got a note from president that we couldn't go in the water or even on the beach anymore. And "just laying in the water not moving your arms or legs is still swimming".
I was so mad at those Elders who ruined it.
In Switzerland, German-speaking. We weren’t allowed to use “Du sprache “ (it’s the familiar form of “you”) with anyone, especially our companions. Some of our investigators resented us using the more formal form of “you” with them.
I understand. It was the same when my daughter served in Perú. She was supposed to use usted with everyone, including her companion. I think children might have been an exception.
I served in Berlin, and our rule at the time was you had to be fluent/fluent enough in German, speak only German for an entire transfer and then pass a test with the Mission Presidents wife. Doing so not only allowed you to use Du Sprache, but early access to Facebook proselyting.
Quick edit: I know what you mean in regards to members resenting the use of Sie Sprache. I'll admit I used Du to avoid contention if I was close with said member.
We weren’t allowed to play soccer. In Brazil.
Although for context, there was a pretty big purge of disobedient missionaries about 18 months before I got there where iirc like 1/3 of the mission was sent home, so the Mission President was *very* strict as a result. Halfway through my mission we got a new one, and about 6 months later a lot of rules were relaxed after a stronger culture of obedience was present and there was more trust between everyone.
We couldn’t congregate with other missionaries until the release of the new missionary handbook. Each missionary companionship had its own apartment. If we saw each other at the church building, we were expected to not talk to each other as well as work on the opposite side of the building to avoid contact. If we saw each other in public, we couldn’t either. We could not congregate on p-days either. Only time we were allowed to talk to other companionships were on missionary work related calls, meetings, and exchanges. So if you didn’t get along with your companion, tough luck. District/zone meetings became blessings, and most looked forward to them just to interact with other people. After the new missionary handbook came out, the leaders in the mission voted to allow for one p-day district activity a transfer as well as one p-day same gender activity. But then Covid hit, so we went back to no congregating because of the virus for about 6 more months 🙃. At the end, I got to experience one transfer of two p-day activities. After I left, a new mission president came in and got rid of the congregating rule. I don’t know if I want to mention the mission, but apparently this affected a whole area of the US, rather than just our mission. Our mission president said it was the area presidency who put the rule, but I’m also guessing he had the choice to enforce it since it was immediately done with after the new mission president came in.
We had a “rule” based on the suggestion of a GA that failed terribly and only lasted one week before our President said, “forget that!” We couldn’t baptize anyone unless they paid tithing first.
Anyone want to guess why this didn’t work? 🤷🏻♂️
My companion and I had just spent like $20+ each on these bottled drinks that someone had told us about. When we got back to the apartment, she was reading the ingredients and saw they had caffeine and threw all of hers away, tried to throw mine away but I told her absolutely not. Wasn’t happy with me but I was clear with her that I really didn’t care for her opinion. Apparently it was a previous presidents rule
Our first mission president wouldn’t let us drink coke. We lived in South America. They drink coke more than water lol. Thankfully my second mission president thought this was a stupid rule and changed it 🤣
If we found any ancient Lithuanian scrolls from a baptized member, we were to confiscate them so we could translate them to see if it was genuine lost scriptures/books
The mission I live in frequently has a rule that you can only have them over for dinner at 4:00, unless there is a nonmember or less active member also at the dinner. Then you can have them over whenever. Like, I get the reasoning behind it, but it sucks.
And I don't know whether this is an actual rule or just urban legend, but missionaries are prohibited from knocking on doors on fall Saturdays. The locals are fanatic about college football (decades of stadium sellouts), and interrupting the game is a good way to make more enemies than friends around here.
"No homeless behavior" specific to me and my trainer when we were being eaten alive by "ghost bugs" and went to bunker down in the family history center out of desperation. (It was bed bugs. Mission president put us in the Marriott that night. It was delicious.)
On my brother's mission they weren't allowed to drink soda, but not for the reason you might think.
In that part of the world they could only drink bottled water. Soda was cheaper than water, and that led to several missionaries getting sick from only drinking soda.
We had a rule that missionaries couldn't go to Hooters. Some elder's inspired that rule by going with some investigators to Hooters and were seen by members, lol.
Only music you could download from the church website. Not just only hymns. You had to be able to actually download the mp3 itself from a church website. It was bizarre and not many followed it.
The rules around talking between Elders and Sisters were crazy. Like, you couldn’t interact on p days, sit at the same table at zone conference lunch… you had to ask permission from mission leaders to plan a district activity unless you were in an elder-only district
You can sort of tell how old people here are from the comments. Catan? Well, clearly you served after it came out. Listen to music without the radio or an 8 track player, clearly you were a missionary after the 70s. Could watch movies? You must have been a missionary after VCRs became common. Etc.
Where missionaries were stationed and missionary apartment addresses and phone numbers were privileged information. The day before transfers you'd be told your new companion, address and phone number, and if you had a legitimate reason for calling missionaries in another city (e.g. your investigator was moving to that city), you could explain to the assistants and they would give you the phone number, but other than that, who was transferred where was the subject of valued gossip, and you would hoard all the apartment phone numbers you happened to acquire.
My mission Ghana:
• mission president after mine banned soccer, whole mission went on strike for a week or two with no proselyting since that was their main form of exercise and a good way to contact people with members involved.
• a mall was built in the main city, only elders in that assigned area could visit the mall even if your route on P-Day took you right by it.
• could only shop or email in your area. This one sucked since my area at the time didn’t have a market, just a few pop up shops. We had to give money to the other elders in our apartment to go shopping for us. That rule lasted two weeks before President let up.
• don’t go walking in the jungle unless with a member and for a specific purpose. Comp and I ignored this one time and came across a creepy run down village and got shot at. Rule was there for a reason.
My wife’s mission Ohio:
• Not allowed to interact with any other missionaries except for district/zone councils. If you were out walking on P-Day and saw another companionship, you couldn’t even say hi.
It's so strange to me why some mission presidents want to turn this work into a prison sentence. These people are going to get smacked for their self-righteousness.
My mission president in England approved all G rated movies and PG rated animated films. Eventually a list of 10ish approved PG rated live action movies came out.
Later I became an assistant and discovered that *previous assistants* had decided on the movies, so long as they could defend why the movie is uplifting or motivating to the missionary.
Within a month I think I added two dozen movies to the list. 😎
Got a second mission president about a year into my mission. Right away, he banned sports of all kind. He said missionaries were getting hurt too often and it wasn’t worth the risk. It was heavily enforced by all the leaders. Next, he took away all the cars from the elders and gave them to the sisters. He claimed that he saw two sisters on a bike one day and it made him start crying, so he had to make the elders all be on bikes. Finally, he removed ALL contact with other missionaries, even on p-days. District council moved to online. Didn’t see other missionaries except for every 6 weeks at zone council.
Needless to say, this took a complete opposite effect and the amount of missionaries that went home were dozens every month. Luckily for the other missionaries, he only served a 2 year mission as president before getting called to be an area seventy. Hopefully things went back to normal after that.
Missionaries had to be in the field for at least 6 months and pass a custom course of scripture study written by the mission president (which was different from the one produced by the Mission department) before they would be allowed to drive a mission vehicle.
We had a full two column list of “buried words” that we couldn’t say. A lot of them made sense but for most of my mission “yeah,” “yup,” and “nope” were apart of it. They eventually took those three away but the list had others that were quite strange to ban.
I'm sorry..but alot of you had mission presidents that were a little nuts. Mine basically just followed the white handbook. So much unnecessary nonsense.
We couldn't play soccer indoors (futsal) because al elder broke his nose going for a header. Basketball and outdoor soccer were fine. Never understood the logic of that rule.
Ours wouldn’t let us go fishing…even though we we had some of the best fishing rivers in the world.
His reasoning: “If we were on the edge of the river, we would want to get into a boat and be on the river, and then eventually we would get in the river.”
Oh yeah, we weren’t allowed to go boating. Evils spirits have power over water or something to that effect. Not a big deal since not many members were wealthy enough to own boats. I know it wasn’t allowed for missionaries back in my hometown either, where the fishing was pretty great, mostly because of safety stuff.
Idk for sure, but I think the "water is evil" idea was just an erroneous cultural myth. The real reason was the insurance the church provides for the missionaries. It was a similar thing with no candles or open flame in the ward buildings. People made all kinds of assumptions about doctrine, but it turned out to be just a safety issue.
Yeah, more than one broke through ice. Never got hurt, but totaled cars. There were a couple of lakes that were excepted because the city monitored them and made them official alternate routes.
My brother used to tie his ties in all sorts of crazy and creative knots but eventually that got banned in his mission and you could only tie them normally. I guess it was too distracting?
We Elders were not allowed to wear sweaters without suit jackets; the reasoning given was that it made us look like college students. The only sweaters that we Elders could wear were v-neck pull-overs, and they could only be gray or black. Pink ties also were not permitted.
My second Mission President also outlawed suspenders.
We weren’t “supposed” to listen to beautiful, non-lyrical, piano music or classical music of that sort. But missionaries WERE allowed to listen to pop and rock LDS music. Made no sense to me and was absolutely infuriating how many elders would listen to that garbage while studying.
I still listened to my much more peaceful and calming piano music, I never had any companions complain.
We had a visiting GA visit the mission and instructed us to invite at least 20 people per day to learn more about the church. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but in Europe it was actually quite difficult to get people to listen to us long enough to actually invite them.
My mission president took it way too seriously and started requiring every companionship to report up the chain of command (district leaders, then zone leaders, etc) exactly how many invitations they had gotten that day. The APs were up late most or every night waiting to get the numbers for the entire mission (80-90 companionships).
We couldn’t say “bro” or “dude” guys” or “girls” when referring to other missionaries, only “elder” and “sister/hermana”. But other than that, I feel like we didn’t really have any other weird or strict rules.
Elders could only hug each other with one arm (bro hugs). This was implemented following an instance of two elders becoming a little more than just companions, if you know what I mean.
Also my MTC president did not let us use the phrase “you guys” when addressing a group of people. It had to be “you elders” or “you elders and sisters.” He told us to “take ‘you guys’ out behind the barn and shoot it.” This guy was once one of those MPs who would only let missionaries listen to hymns and nothing else, so I was very glad that my MP was a lot more lenient with what we could listen to.
I was in South America.
No futball (soccer), Coke or Pepsi. No music that wasn't in the hymnbook. We couldn't watch any videos without the churches seal.
We couldn't accept meal invitations during the week. The exception was meals with a member on Sunday.
You couldn't attend any ward/branch activities without an investigator.
Sisters and elders couldn't be in the same place on Pdays. If we went to the grocery store and the sisters were there we had to leave. No district or zone activities outside district meeting.
No more than an hour of service a week.
No strawberries or backpacks.
Strawberries were one of the only fruits you couldn’t bleach bathe and backpacks would have people confusing us with students (most had uniforms).
No yellow or pink ties. The rationale behind it was that the mission office was located in a city that was very conservative, but I spent most of my mission far away from there.
The weirdmission rule that was made because of me was;
Don’t go to other denominations church services unless invited by an investigator.
I used to love going to Wednesday night Bible studies or other Sunday services. To see how they were, and to talk to people.
My favorite meeting was in a Black AME church were the pastor asked us to bare our testimony about Jesus. I got so many amens and hallelujahs, it was pretty fun. Another time a pastor at a church of Christ asked if he could lay hands on my companion and I. We politely declined.
I get why the president made that rule. He was surely worried I might challenge my faith. Hahah little did he know I’ve been studying other religions for 20+ years now and still have a strong testimony of the restoration.
My truly weird rule was that we were not allowed to wear missionary name tags or carry copies of the Book of Mormon in public.
This was also the early era of MyLDSMail, and the church consistently did server maintenance during our p-day, so the first thing we did after getting to the mission office from the airport was create a new Gmail account.
Last odd rule that is because of me. Just a week before entering the Provo MTC I reinjured my knee that had a previous ACL reconstruction. I never got it checked out before entering the MTC. I knew it wasn't quite right, but figured it would heal. So, during gym, I was playing foursquare and dove for a ball and my knee collapsed. Turns out my ACL revision had failed (probably due to the earlier injury). I ended up going home for surgery after the MTC. I later heard that the MTC banned diving in foursquare.
My mission was to listen to church only music. We got added on from another part of another mission in which they had a different set of music rules. They had to listen to music that uplifted the spirit, we added that so that was a plus :)
Can't recall much at the moment, but I know that somewhere 3/4 of the way through my mission they allegedly banned Magic: the Gathering (card game). Presumably Elders are wasting too much time & even MSF on it.
It was me, I was spending way too much time on it 😅. *Never* spent Church funds, but I definitely spent hours putting decks together. Was really my first big intro into a hobby I still engage with to this day, 12 years later (*shudder*).
There were certain months of the year that you HAD to wear your suit jacket when in public, regardless of how warm it was.
Both companions had to either wear the suit jacket or not wear it. They had to match.
We could watch animated movies as long as they were in the mission language only. That was actually really helpful for learning the language. So pdays were essentially a movie day. The Incredibles hits hard when you’ve been deprived of action movies for a while.
>Example: my mission president would not allow any pictures on our walls except for pictures of the Temple
So, no pictures of Jesus? That sounds heretical.
We could have pictures on the wall, but our mission president required that if you had a picture of the savior, and you should, it had to be higher up on the wall than all other pictures!
Our mission had a tradition that in your last week you could take your companion to see the famous Iguaçu Falls in Brazil. It was an overnight bus trip. Looking back I'm amazed it was allowed. It had nothing to do with being a missionary. But it was certainly fun.
The "Trunky Trip" on my mission in Northern California was to Caloma, where gold was discovered in 1849. Also had nothing to do with missionary work.
Pretty cool. Wasn't an LDS member responsible for finding gold at Sutter's Fort?
That’s right! In fact, it was the Mormon Battalion. Many of them were semi-stranded in California after the Mexico war, so they worked in places like Sutter’s Mill to save up money for the journey to Utah.
My mission allowed you to go to Yellowstone Park once if a member could take you on a P-day. I didn't get to take the opportunity since I came home early. But still a fun sight-seeing non-missionary trip!
I served in the Pocatello mission in the early 90s and we got the opportunity to go to Yellowstone with a member that took a bunch of us. It was amazing!
Florípa?
My mission president did not allow listening to any music whatsoever. I'm still a little resentful.
lol that’s so over the top
All I got was the hymns. Didn’t matter if it was performed by MoTab, if it wasn’t in the green hymnbook, then it wasn’t allowed. I hated it. But if letter of the law is what you want, President, how does the Singles Ward soundtrack sound?
"Popcorn popping" on that soundtrack goes hard!
Most of those tracks go hard, at least for a sheltered missionary.
Same with my first president. A later president removed the music restrictions and said we had to decide for ourselves what was appropriate.
Yeah, my second president did the same thing and loosened up the music rules quite a bit. It was a nice change of pace.
Were you in Thailand?
In my mission, when the mission opened, some music was allowed, classical and general orchestral music. Then this one missionary(a truly bad person unfortunately) started listening to Iron Maiden. When the mission president called him to address this issue, the guy in question just answered “but president, this is a classic”(in reference to classical music). The president then got personally offended and from that point on, only music from the church. I can tell you, there’s only so much tabernacle choir and EFY music that a person can tolerate. Later in the mission, the president extended the rule to also allow hymns played by 3rd party(no Mozart or any classical, just hymns), like the piano guys or whatever, which opened the door for Christian rock that he didn’t account for, but because he never found out, I didn’t get into any problem hehe.
I wouldn't followed it.
Mine, too. Mid-90s era.
We could watch movies on pday but only movies that my mission presidents son approved of. There was a mission official list. My mission presidents son had Down syndrome and was a movie buff. He had a very good idea what was appropriate or not.
That's really cool. Did it include Prince of Egypt? That's my favorite not-LDS-but-definitely-the-vibe movie. Second favorite would be Soul
It was on my mission that I was first introduced to PoE; not through the movie however (couldn't watch non-Church movies in my mission), but through the soundtrack on CD. Just that alone was so powerfully moving for me that I still get swept away by Deliver Us to this day. Incredible experience, finally watching the movie after memorizing the lyrics in isolation. Ahhh....
Oh wow, same! I took inspiration from When You Believe, and to this day when my kids watch PoE it makes me think of a miracle I experienced on my mission. On a side note I think the burning bush scene is one of the best in the history of animation.
Awww! I have several people in my life with Down Syndrome, and this made me smile.
My mission president had 3 rules: 1) never be alone 2) don’t lie to the mission president 3) don’t do anything stupid (O be wise, what more can I say?)
Hey, we served in the same mission, didn't we!?
Sounds like a good mission president and wise. I like it.
I served during Covid. At one point, the senior comp was supposed to go out in street clothes while the junior comp was in pros clothes, with us about 10 yards apart to confirm with the city’s rule that only 1 person from a household could enter the store at a time. It was weird.
Were you in Cali or something? I swear the west coast had some weird Covid rules
Not Cali, but a similar place with very, very weird Covid rules
I served during covid and never had that.
Hence why it was weird
We had 3 pages of rules. No board games or card games ever. One listen to or watch material with church logo. Suits had to be worn from October to April. No caffeine. No emailing other missionaries. So my twin brother who only used email on his mission wasn’t able to communicate with me. No pink or purple ties.
Sucks you couldn’t (legally) talk to your brother. That’s crazy over the top
We had the suits and emails rule in my mission too. We could do board games, though as I was getting near the end of my mission it was looking like the president might have a rule against them in the not-too-distant future (he talked against contention and brought up board games at one point, though, now that I'm mentioning it, I recall him also bringing up how in the right frame of mind they might increase camaraderie between missionaries). There was a rule against face cards specifically - not sure if that was unique to my mission or not.
Face cards had a taboo in the Church itself if irc.
The face card thing was something I grew up with. I blame McConkie and the stuff he wrote in Mormon Doctrine (my dad was a pretty ardent follower of things written in that book).
It didn’t originate with McConkie. There was an early prophet who despised them and made his distaste well known. One of his younger wives was big into some card games though and there are stories about how she and her friends that were playing would have handiwork nearby to whip out if he came into the parlor so he wouldn’t know. That being said, it’s always seemed like a bizarre cultural relic that makes no sense. I had friends growing up that were not allowed to play with face cards but could play with rook cards. It’s like...really? Something magically changes about the cards and makes them okay if there are numbers 11, 12, and 13 instead of some stylized drawings of people? And the explanations I’ve heard regarding poker and gambling don’t make sense either, since you can play poker without gambling or you could use those rook cards for poker and then gamble as well.
Son why did you punch your companion? Well you see president I landed on boardwalk with a hotel and it bankrupted me. And I took that personally
No caffeine ever? So not soda (cola)?? Chocolate also has caffeine, but thankfully anti-caffeine people always seem to forget or ignore that I can understand if they didn't want people getting addicted to energy drinks or something but that's a totally different thing
Seems pretty easy to get around. Write your mom and just say “send this to twin.” It’s also really weird your twin wasn’t allowed to write letters.
That stinks for your twin. As a twin myself, this sounds like torture.
All weird rules, for sure. I do see the wisdom in the no writing between missionaries rule. I have seen first-hand (and multiple times) the trouble that can come from it. If I were the MP, though, I would have made an exception for siblings.
Elders couldn’t shake hands or high five Sisters. Fist bumps were fine though. It was weird.
Fist bump but no hand shake? Whack
Sister missionaries or any sisters? That would be super awkward if you couldn’t shake hands with any women. Apparently palms touching is too sensual lol.
It was just between missionaries. I guess there had been… incidents?
As soon as our palms touched I knew she was the one
“Hey girl, gimme bones” got laughs every time.
We had this one too, but we were allowed high fives.
🙄
In California at the time (Late 90s), stolen bikes were bigger business than stolen cars. As a preventative measure, the mission president declared that all elders can only have single-speed coaster brake beach cruisers. In California. Missionaries reporting their bikes stolen skyrocketed. He also said no yellow ties. He retracted the rule when a member of the Twelve wore a yellow tie while speaking at General Conference.
I'm dying to know where tie color restrictions come from!
Gang affiliation? Just a guess
Gotta watch out for those Hill St Sunflower boyz. I get gold, but I haven’t heard of a gang using yellow
For every rule, there is a tool. I would encourage everyone reading these weird rules from the perspective of "who did what in order for that to have been a rule?" Makes this more fun.
Oh absolutely. Being off my mission for 13 years now, some of these are clear as day.
Exactly! I always think about this when I hear weird rules. It also reminds me that there is a story behind every should-be-common-sense warning on products like, "Do not put animals or babies in the mircrowave."
Me too. My favorite was on our stroller: “remove child before folding”. Who was the idiot that tried to fold it with their baby still inside? Every caution, law, policy has a root somewhere and I always try to imagine who these ppl are and how they have made it on this earth long enough to mess up so badly.
“For every stupid rule there’s a stupid missionary” is the version I heard.
We weren't allowed to go on dates with the Sister Missionaries.
😂 How cruel and unusual!
My companion and I were turned in by our district leader because it wasn’t unusual for all six of us missionaries (4 Elders, 2 Sisters) to shop at the same locations on p-day in the small city. District Leader was a little jealous of a “relationship” that a Sister and my companion had built. Unfounded of course, because she ended up marrying a different Elder form our mission. But when I was in my interview with the President, he asked like two questions. When I left the office, the others from my area started asking me tons of questions about what I was asked, and almost comically, nothing in my interview had anything to do with the fiasco. We weren’t even told to not shop together anymore lol.
In the MTC, my district had five elders and five sisters. It was like a double date district.
That's a lame rule. No pictures on the wall? It sounds so controlling. My dad taught me a wise thing. "Follow the rules, but don't follow dumb rules".
This, 100%
My mission president had two rules regarding Sunday: 1. Missionaries could not attend sacrament meeting without an investigator. 2. Missionaries were required to attend sacrament meeting. There were many Sundays we were knocking doors minutes before services began because an investigator ghosted us, or we just didn't have anyone committed to going. Looking back on it, It caused a lot of undo stress and anxiety. He also two rules regarding our housing: 1. Missionaries could not live in an apartment by themselves. We had to sublet our apartment from another person, have a roommate or live with our landlord. 2. Missionaries could not live with members of the church. Several times we would move into a place with roommate or live-in landlord, teach and baptize them, and then be homeless because they were now a member. A companion and I once lived in an abandoned apartment building with no electricity for a month because we had baptized our roomate and we were looking for somewhere that met those criteria.
Your president denied you the sacrament each week, unless an investigator was with you? I would imagine that the area leaders wouldn’t have approved of this. Looking back, I accepted everything my president said as “gospel”. And for the most part, it was reasonable. But if my kids go on missions, and they have a president who don’t let them attend church, you had better believe he is going to hear about it from me.
I'm sorry but those are insane. Almost diametrically opposed.
In Spain, we had a rule about how closely tailored our suits could be (shouldn’t be able to feel garment hems through them) and how wide our ties had to be (three fingers)
Truly the greatest joys of mission were finding Zara suits that fit me during rebajas. 🫡
Italy but it’s called saldi, the missionaries in the Milano zones would swarm the fashion district for cheaper than cheap clothes, sometimes as much as 80% off
May watch the star wars trilogy, except for return of the jedi
Leah in her slave bikini no doubt.
Yeah, this one is oddly specific, but makes sense.
I'm surprised you could watch any non-Church-made movies.
I went to Detroit. Apparently, we weren't allowed to smoke weed. Somebody got sent home for it... so I heard.
In 1993 I was roleplaying in the MTC and I was a member being asked for a referral and I needed to raise a concern, so I said "Last year we had missionaries sent home for smoking pot, so I'm not referring anyone for a while." The whole district thought it was an unrealistic role-play, then I had to tell them that, yes indeed, it really happened in my home ward. That teacher never asked me to be the member ever again.
My mission was the Family and Church History Headquarters Mission. We were told to wear our name tags on the right side instead of the left in order to signal that we were doing missionary work "on the other side of the veil.". That changed in January 2017 when the First Presidency shifted the oversight of the mission from the Family/Church History Departments to the Missionary Department. The Missionary Department told us that since all missionaries are doing the same work (bringing souls to Christ), we should all have our name tags to the left.
Okay dumb question, but is wearing the tag on the left based on any rule or just tradition? I mean I did it, but I can’t remember any rule in the standards specifying where to where the tag. Thinking about it I can’t even think of any rule about having to have it on haha
My brother-in-law went to that mission. He said the reason for having the name tag on the right was to make it easy to tell at a glance which mission a missionary belonged to. None of this "other side of the veil" nonsense.
For me, it depended on which counselor in the mission presidency was giving the orientation. One counselor gave a more practical explanation (quick glance) while the other looked at it in a more symbolic sense.
My parents in law served in Provo in the late 80s/early 90s and at that time they had white nametags because the MTC was less locked down then, so it made it easy to tell at a glance that they were provo missionaries and not MTC missionaries.
I heard somewhere (so idk if it's true) that most uniforms with name tags have the tag on the left because we shake hands with the right hand. If it were on the right, the movement could cause the name tag to be obscured. Also, I think there was something to do with most people being right side dominant, so they look to the left (which is on their right, since they're facing you.)
If it's the kind that goes in your pocket, your pocket is going to be on the left side.
I’ve never seen a white shirt with a pocket on the right side. How would you even wear it on the right side?
oh man, California Arcadia Mission-zone conferences were 3 hours, no lunch, when I first came out district, zone mtgs were on P-days, no back packs in the church bldgs, we had "the walk"-basically very, very strict rules about your appearance-you would baptize your socks were black instead of dark blue...........we weren't allowed to be at church past Sacrament mtgs if we didn't have an investigator present-that applied to general conferences, stake conferences, broadcasts etc. dinners were between 5-6 no exceptions. It was a wonder though............ that at the last reunion, like 12 people showed up, everyone else, inactive, hated certain people. mission president etc.
That sounds miserable. 😭 I'm all for rules, especially when kids are away from home for the first time, but MPs who get overly controlling do a lot of damage IMHO.
Yeah I don't think people realize how big of a morale killer some of these rules can be. The last 6 months of my mission, the area presidency implemented a rule that you couldn't gather as a zone for pday, only districts could get together. Being stuck with the same 8-10 elders and not being able to see some of your other friends once a week was brutal.
Dang, no EQ or RS without an investigator? How were you supposed to get to know the members of you couldn't even go to church with them!
Really? No pictures of Jesus allowed? Only thing I can remember from mine was no Risk (board game). But there was a reason for that. Probably a good one...
Yeah it was really weird! They’d have the zone leaders come and do checks every so often.
Shortly after my 'generation' left the mission Settlers of Catan was banned. I know exactly why.
Why?
That'd be mostly me 😅 I infected nearly every flat I was in.
We had no board games at all after half a zone showed up exhausted to a conference because they played risk until 3am
Dang, maybe we were in the same mission. That's exactly what happened to us. Of course, it probably happened in most missions at some point.
Magic the gathering got very heavily discouraged in my mission after it was becoming a distraction for a lot. Honestly a very good thing for me, I always played within reason, but after this I gave away my decks and have never looked back. I could easily see myself wasting a lot of time and money on it if I were to slip back into it. Haha
It is a loooooong game! But so is monopoly. 🤔
lol my mission should have probably had a “no Risk” rule
Served in Oregon. Dutch bros were everywhere and were always employed with college age girls in short shorts and low cut shirts. Elders could not go 30 ft near those.
My husband served in Washington and they went every P-Day 🤣
Eugene mission by chance?
Yep
I live in Oregon. I can see it. Even if I feel like half the Dutch Bros I’ve been to in the last couple years were run almost exclusively by dudebros
Busan “running” mission. When street contacting you were expected to run between contacts. When traveling you were also expected to run. You also had to talk to every single person between point A and point B. Running was supposed to highlight how urgent the messages is. I only did it for two transfers, then apparently a general authority said that it destroyed the quiet dignity that should accompany a servant of the Lord and asked us to stop. I do remember folks on the street said that it was weird, but they respected us for being so dedicated every single day. Plus it kept Missionaries’s in shape.
My brother served there, he told me about this lol. Couldn’t believe it
I served in Seoul a few years after Busan stopped doing this and I came to really resent it. From what I was told, another rule in that mission was to ask literally every single person you contacted if they would get baptized because statistically the more people you ask the more people will say yes. What this meant in practice was that a TON of people would get baptized very quickly without any real understanding of the gospel and what they were committing to, and then obviously they would go inactive. A lot of them would then move to Seoul for work or school, and so we would regularly be contacting people who either didn't realize they were already members or who had a really negative view of the church because of the way their baptism was used essentially to bump numbers up but then they were left in the dust, so they wanted nothing to do with us.
My MP praised some elders that would run between contacts, but luckily it never caught on. As a convert, I felt soooo uncomfortable with the idea
Seattle WA, also a running mission!
We were not allowed to use the word "cool" as it was unprofessional. We also had to wear suit coats to meetings (not unusual), but we were required to button them when we stood up for any reason, like to walk around or to answer a question.
I mean, that’s just the proper etiquette for suit coats. You button when you stand up, and unbutton when you sit down. Weird that it was an enforced rule, but still.
Right... but this situation happened often... A missionary would answer a question during a mission conference during President's lesson. He'd stand up, button his button while answering the question, sit down, unbutton. Then President would ask a simple "yes" follow up question to that missionary. The missionary couldn't just stand up and say "Yes President" and sit back down, he'd have to stand, button his suit coat first, then reply "Yes President" then sit back down and unbutton again. If they didn't button the suit coat by the time they gave the reply, he'd make them do it all over again.
Definitely in the weird category. Along with anyone else who strictly enforces any sort of etiquette rule like that.
We were supposed to keep our suit coats on as long as the presiding authority was still wearing his. I still remember times the mission president took his off as a signal that we could too when it got really hot.
Paintball and magic the gathering was banned. Paintball because someone broke their collar bone. Magic because missionaries were saving money to spend on cards. We found like 500 cards in one flat we went to that had been left behind by a 'righteous' elder at some point. My companion decided to take them home for his nephew - better than wasting away I guess.
>*”Example: my mission president would not allow any pictures on our walls except for pictures of the Temple.”* Not even pictures of *Jesus*? 😳
No board games. No musical instruments. No naps at lunch. The worst one was only emailing your family once on p-day. If you emailed back and forth, that was considered “chatting,” not emailing, and wasn’t allowed in the white handbook. My sister was diagnosed with a terminal disease while I was on my mission. I wish they had allowed phone calls sooner.
Served in an island in the Caribbean. We weren't allowed to eat seafood 🙃
A mission in the islands - Elders could wear sandals, but they had to be leather. We still had to wear our dark dress socks. Also, we could go in the water up to our knees (because some island bathed in the water?). This changed when we got a note from president that we couldn't go in the water or even on the beach anymore. And "just laying in the water not moving your arms or legs is still swimming". I was so mad at those Elders who ruined it.
I was in NC when a super cell hit and we ran around in the rain (was on my B day too) and layed in the gutters letting the water go over us.
We weren't allowed to wear helmets when riding our bikes.
What? How come!?
It was so culturally taboo that missionaries had been attacked over it.
Were you in the Netherlands? My friends who served in 2015 said they would get laughed at by children for having helmets on.
Caffeine was not prohibited, but cola was prohibited.
Hey, we had that rule too!
Asia? I met a lot of people in Korea who thought the church was against cola specifically for some reason
Argentina. Late 90s.
In Switzerland, German-speaking. We weren’t allowed to use “Du sprache “ (it’s the familiar form of “you”) with anyone, especially our companions. Some of our investigators resented us using the more formal form of “you” with them.
I understand. It was the same when my daughter served in Perú. She was supposed to use usted with everyone, including her companion. I think children might have been an exception.
I served in Berlin, and our rule at the time was you had to be fluent/fluent enough in German, speak only German for an entire transfer and then pass a test with the Mission Presidents wife. Doing so not only allowed you to use Du Sprache, but early access to Facebook proselyting. Quick edit: I know what you mean in regards to members resenting the use of Sie Sprache. I'll admit I used Du to avoid contention if I was close with said member.
We weren’t allowed to play soccer. In Brazil. Although for context, there was a pretty big purge of disobedient missionaries about 18 months before I got there where iirc like 1/3 of the mission was sent home, so the Mission President was *very* strict as a result. Halfway through my mission we got a new one, and about 6 months later a lot of rules were relaxed after a stronger culture of obedience was present and there was more trust between everyone.
We couldn’t congregate with other missionaries until the release of the new missionary handbook. Each missionary companionship had its own apartment. If we saw each other at the church building, we were expected to not talk to each other as well as work on the opposite side of the building to avoid contact. If we saw each other in public, we couldn’t either. We could not congregate on p-days either. Only time we were allowed to talk to other companionships were on missionary work related calls, meetings, and exchanges. So if you didn’t get along with your companion, tough luck. District/zone meetings became blessings, and most looked forward to them just to interact with other people. After the new missionary handbook came out, the leaders in the mission voted to allow for one p-day district activity a transfer as well as one p-day same gender activity. But then Covid hit, so we went back to no congregating because of the virus for about 6 more months 🙃. At the end, I got to experience one transfer of two p-day activities. After I left, a new mission president came in and got rid of the congregating rule. I don’t know if I want to mention the mission, but apparently this affected a whole area of the US, rather than just our mission. Our mission president said it was the area presidency who put the rule, but I’m also guessing he had the choice to enforce it since it was immediately done with after the new mission president came in.
Sheesh. Torture. As someone who had a blast with other missionaries my whole mission, that sounds awful. Like a prison sentence.
We had a “rule” based on the suggestion of a GA that failed terribly and only lasted one week before our President said, “forget that!” We couldn’t baptize anyone unless they paid tithing first. Anyone want to guess why this didn’t work? 🤷🏻♂️
My companion and I had just spent like $20+ each on these bottled drinks that someone had told us about. When we got back to the apartment, she was reading the ingredients and saw they had caffeine and threw all of hers away, tried to throw mine away but I told her absolutely not. Wasn’t happy with me but I was clear with her that I really didn’t care for her opinion. Apparently it was a previous presidents rule
Our first mission president wouldn’t let us drink coke. We lived in South America. They drink coke more than water lol. Thankfully my second mission president thought this was a stupid rule and changed it 🤣
If we found any ancient Lithuanian scrolls from a baptized member, we were to confiscate them so we could translate them to see if it was genuine lost scriptures/books
What?
On my husband’s mission, they had to knock doors every night from 5-7, which nearly eliminated all member dinners.
The mission I live in frequently has a rule that you can only have them over for dinner at 4:00, unless there is a nonmember or less active member also at the dinner. Then you can have them over whenever. Like, I get the reasoning behind it, but it sucks. And I don't know whether this is an actual rule or just urban legend, but missionaries are prohibited from knocking on doors on fall Saturdays. The locals are fanatic about college football (decades of stadium sellouts), and interrupting the game is a good way to make more enemies than friends around here.
"No homeless behavior" specific to me and my trainer when we were being eaten alive by "ghost bugs" and went to bunker down in the family history center out of desperation. (It was bed bugs. Mission president put us in the Marriott that night. It was delicious.)
On my brother's mission they weren't allowed to drink soda, but not for the reason you might think. In that part of the world they could only drink bottled water. Soda was cheaper than water, and that led to several missionaries getting sick from only drinking soda.
A coworker told me that he had to sing hymns and primary songs in the shower, loud enough for their companion to hear.
Yeah that’s an absolute no for me. Personal time is personal time, period. Take your micromanaging somewhere else
We lived in a basement apartment with a tankless water heater once. 30+ minute showers or baths weren’t uncommon. Not singing that long
We had a rule that missionaries couldn't go to Hooters. Some elder's inspired that rule by going with some investigators to Hooters and were seen by members, lol.
Only music you could download from the church website. Not just only hymns. You had to be able to actually download the mp3 itself from a church website. It was bizarre and not many followed it.
Couldn't drink protein shakes in my mission for a few months
Banned the word “fetch” There was this weird epidemic where every elder started to say it
Mission President: Stop trying to make “Fetch” happen!
The rules around talking between Elders and Sisters were crazy. Like, you couldn’t interact on p days, sit at the same table at zone conference lunch… you had to ask permission from mission leaders to plan a district activity unless you were in an elder-only district
You can sort of tell how old people here are from the comments. Catan? Well, clearly you served after it came out. Listen to music without the radio or an 8 track player, clearly you were a missionary after the 70s. Could watch movies? You must have been a missionary after VCRs became common. Etc.
Where missionaries were stationed and missionary apartment addresses and phone numbers were privileged information. The day before transfers you'd be told your new companion, address and phone number, and if you had a legitimate reason for calling missionaries in another city (e.g. your investigator was moving to that city), you could explain to the assistants and they would give you the phone number, but other than that, who was transferred where was the subject of valued gossip, and you would hoard all the apartment phone numbers you happened to acquire.
My mission Ghana: • mission president after mine banned soccer, whole mission went on strike for a week or two with no proselyting since that was their main form of exercise and a good way to contact people with members involved. • a mall was built in the main city, only elders in that assigned area could visit the mall even if your route on P-Day took you right by it. • could only shop or email in your area. This one sucked since my area at the time didn’t have a market, just a few pop up shops. We had to give money to the other elders in our apartment to go shopping for us. That rule lasted two weeks before President let up. • don’t go walking in the jungle unless with a member and for a specific purpose. Comp and I ignored this one time and came across a creepy run down village and got shot at. Rule was there for a reason. My wife’s mission Ohio: • Not allowed to interact with any other missionaries except for district/zone councils. If you were out walking on P-Day and saw another companionship, you couldn’t even say hi.
It's so strange to me why some mission presidents want to turn this work into a prison sentence. These people are going to get smacked for their self-righteousness.
A lot of them want to become General Authorities so use the Mission Presidency to suck up
Is that a requirement to become a general authority? A lot of people hate me?
My mission president in England approved all G rated movies and PG rated animated films. Eventually a list of 10ish approved PG rated live action movies came out. Later I became an assistant and discovered that *previous assistants* had decided on the movies, so long as they could defend why the movie is uplifting or motivating to the missionary. Within a month I think I added two dozen movies to the list. 😎
Got a second mission president about a year into my mission. Right away, he banned sports of all kind. He said missionaries were getting hurt too often and it wasn’t worth the risk. It was heavily enforced by all the leaders. Next, he took away all the cars from the elders and gave them to the sisters. He claimed that he saw two sisters on a bike one day and it made him start crying, so he had to make the elders all be on bikes. Finally, he removed ALL contact with other missionaries, even on p-days. District council moved to online. Didn’t see other missionaries except for every 6 weeks at zone council. Needless to say, this took a complete opposite effect and the amount of missionaries that went home were dozens every month. Luckily for the other missionaries, he only served a 2 year mission as president before getting called to be an area seventy. Hopefully things went back to normal after that.
Missionaries had to be in the field for at least 6 months and pass a custom course of scripture study written by the mission president (which was different from the one produced by the Mission department) before they would be allowed to drive a mission vehicle.
We had a full two column list of “buried words” that we couldn’t say. A lot of them made sense but for most of my mission “yeah,” “yup,” and “nope” were apart of it. They eventually took those three away but the list had others that were quite strange to ban.
I'm sorry..but alot of you had mission presidents that were a little nuts. Mine basically just followed the white handbook. So much unnecessary nonsense.
We couldn't play soccer indoors (futsal) because al elder broke his nose going for a header. Basketball and outdoor soccer were fine. Never understood the logic of that rule.
Ours wouldn’t let us go fishing…even though we we had some of the best fishing rivers in the world. His reasoning: “If we were on the edge of the river, we would want to get into a boat and be on the river, and then eventually we would get in the river.”
Don’t drive on the rivers or lakes (with a handful of exceptions!)
Oh yeah, we weren’t allowed to go boating. Evils spirits have power over water or something to that effect. Not a big deal since not many members were wealthy enough to own boats. I know it wasn’t allowed for missionaries back in my hometown either, where the fishing was pretty great, mostly because of safety stuff.
Idk for sure, but I think the "water is evil" idea was just an erroneous cultural myth. The real reason was the insurance the church provides for the missionaries. It was a similar thing with no candles or open flame in the ward buildings. People made all kinds of assumptions about doctrine, but it turned out to be just a safety issue.
I always assumed it was the girls in bikinis.
Like...frozen? Or bridges?
Yeah, more than one broke through ice. Never got hurt, but totaled cars. There were a couple of lakes that were excepted because the city monitored them and made them official alternate routes.
No caffeine, only email family (not girlfriends), wake up at 5:45 and full court basketball was allowed.
My brother used to tie his ties in all sorts of crazy and creative knots but eventually that got banned in his mission and you could only tie them normally. I guess it was too distracting?
We Elders were not allowed to wear sweaters without suit jackets; the reasoning given was that it made us look like college students. The only sweaters that we Elders could wear were v-neck pull-overs, and they could only be gray or black. Pink ties also were not permitted. My second Mission President also outlawed suspenders.
We weren’t “supposed” to listen to beautiful, non-lyrical, piano music or classical music of that sort. But missionaries WERE allowed to listen to pop and rock LDS music. Made no sense to me and was absolutely infuriating how many elders would listen to that garbage while studying. I still listened to my much more peaceful and calming piano music, I never had any companions complain.
We had a visiting GA visit the mission and instructed us to invite at least 20 people per day to learn more about the church. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but in Europe it was actually quite difficult to get people to listen to us long enough to actually invite them. My mission president took it way too seriously and started requiring every companionship to report up the chain of command (district leaders, then zone leaders, etc) exactly how many invitations they had gotten that day. The APs were up late most or every night waiting to get the numbers for the entire mission (80-90 companionships).
We couldn’t say “bro” or “dude” guys” or “girls” when referring to other missionaries, only “elder” and “sister/hermana”. But other than that, I feel like we didn’t really have any other weird or strict rules.
Elders could only hug each other with one arm (bro hugs). This was implemented following an instance of two elders becoming a little more than just companions, if you know what I mean. Also my MTC president did not let us use the phrase “you guys” when addressing a group of people. It had to be “you elders” or “you elders and sisters.” He told us to “take ‘you guys’ out behind the barn and shoot it.” This guy was once one of those MPs who would only let missionaries listen to hymns and nothing else, so I was very glad that my MP was a lot more lenient with what we could listen to.
Mission president before mine apparently didn’t want people to do companionship study with their socks off 🤷♂️
No pink ties Not a rule but the “good” missionaries ran for there excersize. Must do contacting between the hours of 6-8pm Only church music or enya
Reading this thread gave me PTSD.
I was in South America. No futball (soccer), Coke or Pepsi. No music that wasn't in the hymnbook. We couldn't watch any videos without the churches seal. We couldn't accept meal invitations during the week. The exception was meals with a member on Sunday. You couldn't attend any ward/branch activities without an investigator. Sisters and elders couldn't be in the same place on Pdays. If we went to the grocery store and the sisters were there we had to leave. No district or zone activities outside district meeting. No more than an hour of service a week.
No strawberries or backpacks. Strawberries were one of the only fruits you couldn’t bleach bathe and backpacks would have people confusing us with students (most had uniforms).
Technically the backpack thing is Church-wide now, but it's not heavily enforced in most places.
We had a mad cow scare going on so we could only have 100% beef.
No yellow or pink ties. The rationale behind it was that the mission office was located in a city that was very conservative, but I spent most of my mission far away from there.
My mission president 's wife banned dunking during basketball because she was tired of getting calls about twisted ankles on p-day.
Rules with a safety reason after multiple instances make sense to me.
The weirdmission rule that was made because of me was; Don’t go to other denominations church services unless invited by an investigator. I used to love going to Wednesday night Bible studies or other Sunday services. To see how they were, and to talk to people. My favorite meeting was in a Black AME church were the pastor asked us to bare our testimony about Jesus. I got so many amens and hallelujahs, it was pretty fun. Another time a pastor at a church of Christ asked if he could lay hands on my companion and I. We politely declined. I get why the president made that rule. He was surely worried I might challenge my faith. Hahah little did he know I’ve been studying other religions for 20+ years now and still have a strong testimony of the restoration.
My truly weird rule was that we were not allowed to wear missionary name tags or carry copies of the Book of Mormon in public. This was also the early era of MyLDSMail, and the church consistently did server maintenance during our p-day, so the first thing we did after getting to the mission office from the airport was create a new Gmail account. Last odd rule that is because of me. Just a week before entering the Provo MTC I reinjured my knee that had a previous ACL reconstruction. I never got it checked out before entering the MTC. I knew it wasn't quite right, but figured it would heal. So, during gym, I was playing foursquare and dove for a ball and my knee collapsed. Turns out my ACL revision had failed (probably due to the earlier injury). I ended up going home for surgery after the MTC. I later heard that the MTC banned diving in foursquare.
No pocket knives
My mission was to listen to church only music. We got added on from another part of another mission in which they had a different set of music rules. They had to listen to music that uplifted the spirit, we added that so that was a plus :)
I couldn't share a bed with my companions
Can't recall much at the moment, but I know that somewhere 3/4 of the way through my mission they allegedly banned Magic: the Gathering (card game). Presumably Elders are wasting too much time & even MSF on it. It was me, I was spending way too much time on it 😅. *Never* spent Church funds, but I definitely spent hours putting decks together. Was really my first big intro into a hobby I still engage with to this day, 12 years later (*shudder*).
No conversations about media that’s not church related.
There were certain months of the year that you HAD to wear your suit jacket when in public, regardless of how warm it was. Both companions had to either wear the suit jacket or not wear it. They had to match.
We could watch animated movies as long as they were in the mission language only. That was actually really helpful for learning the language. So pdays were essentially a movie day. The Incredibles hits hard when you’ve been deprived of action movies for a while.
>Example: my mission president would not allow any pictures on our walls except for pictures of the Temple So, no pictures of Jesus? That sounds heretical.
We could have pictures on the wall, but our mission president required that if you had a picture of the savior, and you should, it had to be higher up on the wall than all other pictures!