You only served 14 months of your mission? What’s wrong with you?
Couldn’t hack it eh?
This conversation is not ok….But it happens.
So what do you do?
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You only served 14 months of your mission? What’s wrong with you?
Couldn’t hack it eh?
This conversation is not ok….But it happens.
So what do you do?
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
this was such a good episode! Loved it! He definitely needs to come back and do another show. 🙂
I liked this episode a lot!
I served in Hawaii on my mission, in which we got up at 6:25 am and worked out until 7.
I had many companions that wanted to, and I wanted to as well, get up earlier, so we would get up at 6 am to work out.
I also don’t think the missionary schedule is that strenuous. Even on P-days. I think it makes you use your time wisely and choose only the most necessary things to do.
So I guess I would disagree on that point. But like Crystal, I’d love to hear more from him. It seems like you were just getting into some good stuff when time was up.
Great episode, I’m a lifer, and this is one of my favorites.
Episode 69 was one that I caught myself giving a “hurraaaaah!” to a few times. I wish that the help for missionaries that is being organized today had been available about 10 years ago. I served a mission for less than a year. My early departure was not due to a lacking testimony, nor did I get “sent home.” If anything, I would call it a lacking appreciation for the communistic spirit that our mission society exhibited; along with some downward spiraling things that this psychiatrist advocated *against* in this podcast.
When hashing things out–sitting across from my mission president in his office–I truly believe I was meek and desperate for help. Looking back, I believe I had a lot of anxiety and to top it off I was getting much-less-than-Godlike help from the man who I hoped would be a safe and trustworthy man to bring my concerns to. He should be able to resolve them, right? 😉 No, it wasn’t homesickness, it wasn’t unresolved sin and it wasn’t a Dear John letter. (He told us any type of girlfriend was not allowed!–Write her and tell her its over!–…then Sister “President” will bake you a chocolate cake. Sheesh. Give me a break.)
Long story short, over a few weeks of meeting with him, my sadness and discomfort were not being resolved, and just before we closed a second or third meeting, he said, “Elder if you go home everyone will think you are a wimp!…” I thought he was just throwing the warning out there to see if I was prepared for the awkwardness, etc. of going back home. So, I humbly and responsibly said something to the effect of: “…I’m ready to deal with that when the time comes…” or atleast I got about halfway through that before he interjected, “Don’t backtalk me Elder!” In that moment my trust and hope for finishing my mission faded to impossibility. I was done.
I left a week or so later without any more meetings–I never saw him again. I was notified by the AP the night before, then I was picked up to be shuttled off to the airport the next morning. I remember that none of the 3 other Elders in my apartment had parting words. (Perhaps partly because they were eating their hearts out–they knew what it was like there. I was not going to suffer any more.) Upon my exit, I was treated like a disease! “Where is the love that we are supposed to treat one another with?” I meekly thought. When hopping from the mission car to a mission van (which would eventually take me to the airport), the AP said, “President wants your Temple recommend.” … I thought: I could question this or I could just cooperate, so I gave it to him. I wondered if I was really in the wrong for leaving… Upon returning home, I immediately met with the Stake President to be released. He told me that my Recommend should never have been taken away; and was immediately reissued (after meeting with my bishop first).
In my mission experience, some things that the psychiatrist mentioned (eliciting the Hurrah!) were: 1) Being told by APs to always skip lunch and dinner. Or, if we must, make it 10 minutes or less. Not 60. This might sound silly, but it really wears on you (in a Health Psychology sort of way) to be on a fast from 9am to 9pm basically every day while walking usually 10+ miles/day. (The church-issued “White Bible” we carried everywhere says to take a one hour lunch and one hour dinner; before 9pm I might add.) 2) Like most missions (I assume), the numbers/stats/goals always seemed more important than truly assisting others in their conversion process–most missionaries would tell you this if they weren’t afraid of Truth. It broke my heart to see that that’s not what missionaries did–not in my mission any way. 🙁 Yes, stats and goals have their place, but so does true conversion. 3) I guess, finally, that I will say again that I feel that these burdensome facts were coupled with a. trying to overcome my crippling shyness b. anxiety and c. what honestly I believe was developing and suffocating depression.
You can call me a wimp. I’m okay with it. A wimp must be someone who can see through the unfortunate Mission President imposed rules that made a difficult undertaking and changed it into something even less possible. I’m not a wimp. I’m a warrior. I say that because I countinue to fight to be active and happy and I’m always trying to re-capture the elusive “settled and happy heart” and the trust that I am loved by my Heavenly Father.
Godspeed.
Wrus, you don’t sound like a wimp to me. I am so sorry you had that experience; I can’t imagine how difficult that must’ve been. Your mission president handled that terribly – he sounds like a real piece of work. Keep up the good fight. You ARE a warrior.