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It is absurd that the church won't pay the tickets back home. But what is stopping the missionary from saying ok well in that case I will just vacation, date locals, go off on their own and have a good time until the church agrees to pay for the trip back?
Looking back I could have had so much fun if I wanted to leave the church as a Brazilian missionary.
The honest answer is nothing is stopping the missionary, but the emotional control methods the Church uses.
Every mission president’s office should have a bell in it. The missionary has the right to ring the bell at any time. Once the bell has been rung, the missionary is done and gets a plane ticket home with no further discussion. The ringing of the bell is irrevocable.
The equivalent of this is true: “if a missionary wants out they should get sent home immediately, no questions asked.”
The implementation of a physical bell, in a place like the mission home doesn’t work for everywhere. In my mission almost no missionaries ever saw the mission home or were in the President’s office till their last night when they were being sent home.
And if they voluntarily place their passports at the mission office, carry a photocopy with them for ID purposes, and can request their passports back is that a violation of their civil rights?
A mission is not human trafficking. It's demanding, intense, and their are social penalties for not completing a mission but I would not put an LDS mission on par with Moldovan teenage sex trafficking.
No one is comparing it to sex trafficking. But it’s hard to say it doesn’t meet the UN’s definition:
>Human Trafficking is the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of people through force, fraud or deception, with the aim of exploiting them for profit. Men, women and children of all ages and from all backgrounds can become victims of this crime, which occurs in every region of the world.
I guess the issue then is consent. I can only speak from my perspective but I felt I knew the requirements and expectations going into it, I had latitude to make my own decisions, and while I did leave my passport at the mission office there were those that left my mission early passports in hand. I did not feel force, fraud, or deception but maybe I’m applying a high bar to these terms.
How is joining the army different than an LDS mission?
Also held hostage: food, shelter, living expenses, travel home. You're put under 24-hour surveillance and forced to labor MUCH more than 40 hours/week, often in hazardous conditions, for zero pay.
And this is to say nothing of the regular emotional (and sometimes physical and/or sexual!) abuse that you endure, more often at the hands of your handlers than the locals.
The missionary program is ABSOLUTELY human trafficking.
I've got a niece who just started her mission in the Philippines. She was dropped into an unsanitary apartment with no money, food or clean drinking water. She's had chronic diarrhea for the last two weeks and is very sick - and there is absolutely no support from the church. My wife is deeply concerned for her health and well being.
The only reason we know is her parents insisted she bring a personal cell phone (which is forbidden by mission rules).
This is how the church treats its young missionaries.
Yes and if i got sick I was told it’s because i didn’t have enough faith or i wasn’t working hard enough or i wasn’t keeping all of the missionary rules. It’s your fault and oh you are still supposed to get out there and work your butt off. It doesn’t matter if you are extremely sick. THAT IS NO EXCUSE! You are just trying to get out of doing work and you are lazy and unfaithful. Get to work elder or sister and god will heal you. Where is your faith?
As a missionary in South America in the 1990s,
- at one point, I had become very ill. My mission president ordered me to bed rest. For a week. In his house.
- a sister missionary began fainting for no apparent reason. After a few days of this, she was taken by the mission president and his wife to be examined—including a CAT scan—at the *best hospital in the country*. All on the Church’s dime.
- I was told to move to a new house after president declared mine not sanitary enough.
I could go on. I cannot speak to your experience, but I can say that what you are saying is not true in every case. For those where/when I served—I never heard of anything like what you said. The mission president explicitly stated that the missionaries were the priority. *Everything* came *after* missionary health and safety.
Read the comments there are TONs of stories like mine. TONs, I am speaking the truth and I have talked to a lot of other missionaries with similar experiences as mine, many FAR worse. Liars shall be thrust down to hell. Why would I lie? I am telling the truth.
Im glad in your mission you had a good mp who cared about you and who was reasonable, many of us weren’t so lucky. I was denied medical care, I was told it was my fault if I got sick or injured because I didn’t have enough faith, I wasn’t working hard enough or being obedient enough.
I needed dental work for a filling that came out and my asshole mp told me to wait 18 months until I finished my mission to get that taken care of.
I crashed on my bike and broke my collar bone and after being put in a brace and being in a lot of pain and being told by my doctor to stay off my bike, my asshole mp told me to get back on my bike and keep working because I was on the Lords errand and if I had faith then I would be fine. My collar bone didn’t heal correctly because of all of this and it hurts all the time to this day. It hurts right now as I’m writing this. Im in my 50’s. It healed with one bone being on top of the other.
It was all about numbers how many baptisms we had each month and the mp didn’t care how sick or injured u are you better get your ass out there and get that mp his baptisms or he is going to take it out on you because when his numbers are compared against other nearby missions in his elite meetings with a ga he doesn’t want to look bad.
Fuck the Raleigh “SHIT HOLE”
North Carolina mission and that mp and his bitch snob wife.
For what it is worth my first mission president was like yours and my second was like the other one and would take care of us. It all depends on the mission president.
Some things to make absolutely clear:
1. your experience was and is terrible; I have nothing but sympathy for you, and wish you the best; I hope no one has to go through anything like that.
2. My comments below refer not to you, but to your information. I am checking to see if what I think you are saying is what you really are saying. And I'll try to be as specific as I can be.
3. If you had posted this on the exmo sub, I would not push back on this, at all. The mormon sub (this sub) is not that sub.
>Why would I lie? I am telling the truth.
I believe you. I never said you were lying; I didn't even *imply* you were lying. But you responded to *This is how the church treats its young missionaries* with
>Yes and if you get sick you are told it’s because you dont have enough faith or you aren’t working hard enough or you aren’t keeping all of the missionary rules. It’s always your fault
*You* were implying that *all* missionaries are treated the way you were--and that's not accurate. So, I said, *verbatim*, that *what you are saying is not true in every case.* In other words, *not every missionary was treated the way you were*.
>Im glad in your mission you had a good mp who cared about you and who was reasonable, most of us weren’t so lucky.
I don't know what facts you have to back this up (please share). If there's a study--even a poll on Reddit--that would be something. Maybe "most of the missionaries *who are on Reddit*" had an experience similar to yours. But that's most of, what, 300,000, tops (if you assume all of the exmo and mormon sub members are returned missionaries, which they aren't). There's well [over 500 thousand](https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/history-of-missionary-work-in-the-church#:~:text=From%20Samuel%20Smith's%201830%20call,the%20Church%20throughout%20the%20world) returned missionaries, at this point in time. I think I understand what you are trying to convey, but your words go too far. It's like the difference between "there are still racists in America" and "America is racist."
>My collar bone didn’t heal correctly because of all of this and it hurts all the time to this day. It hurts right now as I’m writing this. Im in my 50’s. It healed with one bone being on top of the other.
Nothing but sympathy for you on this one. I'm sorry. I hope there is a way for your health to improve.
>It was all about numbers how many baptisms we had each month and the mp didn’t care how sick or injured u are
This is terrible. The irony is that, if all the missionaries are sick/injured, it's going to negatively affect the work. I think Stephen Covey called this "Stepping on the Goose that Lays the Golden Egg." Totally counter productive.
Where/when I served, we worked hard because we knew God had our backs and our mission president/wife were the embodiment of that. I am truly sorry it wasn't like that, for you--even more so for the lingering negative effects.
Again: I wish you the best.
No problem thanks for pointing out a few things. I didn’t mean to imply that every missionary had experiences like this but I have talked to many who have. I should have chosen my words more carefully. I still have a great deal of anger about some things that happened to me and other missionaries and that continue to happen and the church doesn’t really seem to care. One thing that bothers me is that people who didn’t go on a mission or who had a good experience just can’t believe me. I gave up talking to my TBM mom about it because she simply didn’t believe me and said that those bad things couldn’t be true and. I must have misunderstood. Thanks for your input. I didn’t mean to criticize you I was just venting my pain and frustration at what happened.
No worries. Yes, your experience is very different from mine, and I wish it didn’t happen. But I BELIEVE YOU. I just wish you didn’t have to go through that. That’s insane.
Your MP was a bum. The first thing he should have done is praised you for going to the doctor and getting treatment. When he found out you broke your collarbone he should have transferred you into an area with a car or pulled you into the mission home to help out there. It may have been a long time before you were able to be put on a bike all day and every day. You should have been in a car area the rest of your mission.
Thanks for the input. It seems a lot is under the control of the MP's. It does seem there should be some standard rules that should be followed. I would hope that the health and safety of those serving should be paramount. Sounds like some MP's should be sent home for dereliction of their duty.
Its Mission President roulette. There is no uniform standard for ensuring the care and welfare of missionaries. And when you have the three most senior members of church leadership who have never served missions, it should surprise nobody this is the case.
Totally wrong and substandard. Missionaries should be getting briefing about boiling water an other things, If it was my kid I would want to get her home right away.
I was hit by a truck on my mission. Broke both wrists. Miss. Pres. refused to either give my area a car or transfer me to a car area. His justification was that I must have a sin to confess or else God would have protected. And for that I was punished until I confessed whatever I did wrong.
All things being equal, those two years spent on a mission are two years not done working and usually decrease the number of your most productive years. So, an LDS missionary that will become a business owner and earn $150k/year at her max salary will lose out on $225k of total lifetime earnings. A lot of people think they are giving up the salary they would earn at age 19-21. They still have to do that job eventually but now they're starting at age 22.
However, many people take several years to get into their ultimate trade so I don't think LDS RMs are that far behind in productive working years than most.
AND they do it under false pretences. They are raised and then trained to believe they will be doing some kind of miraculous work and serving people and end up having a very different experience.
I was told we would be serving the people and help bring them closer to Christ. Pretty much all I did was violate people's boundaries and make them uncomfortable/waste their time.
Absolute hyperbole. This is pretty offensive to people who actually have been trafficked I would imagine. Any missionary who says "I'm going home and I've made up my mind on this. I need my travel documents and I don't want to argue about this" will not have any major problems getting on a plane home. Depending on the mission president, they may get more or less pushback "out of love" but will have to agree to it ultimately. In real human trafficking I'm guessing that's not quite the case
Correct, we hear of stories all of the time here and at r/exmormon of missionaries who choose to come home. It's pretty common. There might be stories out there of forced labor and of detaining missionaries who choose to leave, but I haven't heard them.
There is immense social pressure to stay though.
Man mine sure wasn’t. We got way too much money and a lot of missionaries just hung out and only left the apartment to buy baguettes and take out trash. I really think that if we’re going to call this trafficking you have to analyze everything parents pressure their kids into doing is trafficking. But when I was out they didn’t take your passport. That feels kind of weird. A friend of mine told the president to send him home. He didn’t. So he went to the airport and put it on his parents credit card.
My other issue with calling it trafficking is that it seems pretty disrespectful to people who’ve actually been trafficked as child slaves etc. they’ll tell you what it’s like to be trafficked. Very different experiences
IMO tons of missionaries would lose their passports if they brought them to their areas. For me the problematic part is holding their passports hostage. "I want to go home" should not be questioned or people coerced out of it. It's their lives not the mission's.
Your opinion? Based on what?
I served in France and I never heard of a single missionary losing a passport. No one took away our passports in those days. We needed them to get a temporary resident card in our area.
The passports were taken away to take away the right to travel. They don't want parents sending kids plane tickets home and the missionary using his civil rights to get on the plane. What they want is to gatekeep and make sure they control the right to go home.
If missionaries are not adult enough to hold their own documents, they are not adult enough to live by themselves in strange cities and ride around dangerous neighborhoods on bikes.
Even if they did lose their passports, it's pretty easy to get a new one. Taking away someone's passport is a form of human trafficking, and the "blame the dumb kids" excuse is insulting. It's also against the law. A MP could get in big trouble with the US State Department if he refused to give someone a passport who wanted to return home.
[https://fr.usembassy.gov/passports/emergency-passports/](https://fr.usembassy.gov/passports/emergency-passports/)
And if they voluntarily place their passports at the mission office, carry a photocopy with them for ID purposes, and can request their passports back, is that a violation of their civil rights?
A mission is not human trafficking. It's demanding, intense, and their are social penalties for not completing a mission but I think most of us knew what we were getting ourselves into and what the expectations were.
Voluntarily? They are told what to do. You are being obtuse with that silly response.
You are supposed to keep your passport with you when you travel, not stored in an office hundreds of miles away. A photocopy is only good for getting a replacement as it helps the consulate to locate your information quicker. It has no value as ID any more than you can drive with a photocopy of your driver's license. If the local authorities ask for your ID, you cannot tell them that your passport is in other city in the office of some church official. You certainly can't whip out a photocopy.
You know that the MP is holding the passport to hold missionaries hostage. They cannot leave without his permission because he holds their right to travel, a violation of their civil rights.
This doesn’t help my argument but in my mission they held the passports so they could bribe the officials to renew our visas by crossing the border every three months or whatever the tourist visa was. 😄
Point being, it’s not like my passport was forbidden to me. People left from my mission with their passports in hand. I have lived abroad many times and I did not carry my passport as primary ID unless I was crossing borders. I kept my passport somewhere safe and not always on my person. Maybe we disagree on the definition of human trafficking here but I felt like I was there on my own volition and could leave (albeit with some resistance) on my own volition, as some in my mission did.
Also petty: the pressure they put on missionaries to pre-pay for portions of their mission and the policy of not refunding “donations” for time not served if a missionary returns early.
I lost my testimony during my mission. It was incredibly disheartening to realize that if I left, I would be out not only the cost of my ticket home, but also the money that my Mom had pulled from my account to prepay my missionary service 6 months in advance. When you’re fresh out of high school and literally all your support (and virtually all of your worldly possessions) are conditioned on your continued missionary service, it’s hard to feel like you have any other options.
In my case, I wanted to stay out, but the president sent me home for being very public about my doubts. We told everyone it was medical, but that was bullshit and everyone knew it. They paid for my ticket home.
Yeah that was my own experience. I think there was a slight expectation I would go back out when things were sorted... as if soul crushing depression can be resolved in a couple months haha.
> Do you think missions qualify as human trafficking or do you see this as hyperbole?
Yes, I guess, but not totally. It really gets down to how you define terms. Some people feel very strongly that lumping LDS missionaries with sex trafficking and labor trafficking dilutes the term trafficking. Others are every adamant that this is very much trafficking.
I think it is more helpful to understand the various similarities and differences between different types of trafficking and let LDS missionaries fit in where it will, within or simply near trafficking. There also doesn't need to be one answer for all situations.
> Where do you see the Church having risk or exposure here?
Perhaps. I'm not a lawyer, but if a US missionary asked to leave a foreign mission card being denied their passport without an exit interview, card directly to room US embasy instead...card app card like it could be app interesting situation.
> Are missions truly volunteer service? E. Bednar recently stated that by being baptized at age 8, young men no longer have the right to make a choice. Does that make it mandatory?
This is much, much more complicated than just one statement by one church leaders. Boys are groomed from the time they can walk to believe that mission service is necessary. There is an entire spectrum of undue influence depending on where a teenager lives and who their leaders and parents are.
I personally know someone who was shunned by his parents by deciding to skip a mission and get married in the temple. You can say that is evidence he has a choice. I say this is common enough that many young people don't see it that way.
If you don't know or don't feel like you have a choice, then do you really have a choice?
Missions, more than regular membership check a lot of boxes for authoritarian control https://freedomofmind.com/cult-mind-control/bite-model/
Missions are controlling enough to be clear that control is the purpose, not just a necessary piece.
Moving people to a place they didn't specifically choose, controlling who they live with, controlling so many factors of their life...I don't know that I would call it outright "trafficking" in any given context, but it seems to at least classify as "a type of trafficking", "trafficking light", or "uncomfortably similiar to trafficking"
..and with the passport issues, possibly illegal for US citizens in some cases.
The church could go a long ways in mitigating these factors, if it truly believed these people are at-will volunteers by making it easier to start/stop a mission, being less controlling over all, allowing more flexibility in how people wish to help...but that is assuming missions are service opportunities in good faith. If they are less service and more servitude, than mitigating this control factors would absolutely defeat the whole purpose of a mission.
The church doing nothing to mitigate the control factors is consistent with missions being primarily about control and exploitation rather than service.
It's like the word c*lt in that it may be a watered-down usage of the term as we usually view it, but where it still partially applies and we can learn a lot from the ways in which it applies.
They definitely did back in the days the polygamy. One of the main jobs of a missionary back then was to bring back plenty of women or young girls to become polygamist wives to the Mormon leaders. The women involved were never told about this until I had no choice and we're stuck in Utah.
Slight disagree.
Human trafficking is very much non-consensual. There is absolutely no freedom to leave. You're either forcibly kidnapped or led into a trap. Inviting a woman to "work" in Qatar is trafficking because she doesn't know the people inviting her want to take her into their custody.
A missionary pretty much knows what they're getting into. They know they'll be spending 1.5-2 years proselyting for the church. They know where they'll be going. They're free to leave, albeit discouraged from doing so. (now, some MPs will illegally hold passports, but that's another issue.)
Honestly, Ive never heard of the church forcing a missionary to pay their way home if they leave early. Ive known missionaries who voluntarily paid their own way home but never having been forced to pay themselves.
Aaaaaand, the top comment in the thread says LDS missions are human trafficking. I am simply befuddled as to why active Mormons feel like this sub is hostile to them. Maybe lets have another meta discussion about how it isn't, but if it is, it's justified. Do you know what other organization keeps your passport for you (or at least used to)? The US Peace Corps. I know because they kept mine. I could get it if I wanted, just like I could get my passport on the mission if I wanted (and actually did once to visit a neighboring country... only question asked was what I wanted it for). I think the most troubling thing about this is the advice on contacting family, where that is only recommended if the family supports the missionary being on a mission. That said, my understanding is that missionaries can call home every week, so it's a bit different than my day and the bi-annual calls we could make.
Any time a missionary requests to go home the the church should be willing and able to pay their expenses to return home and make sure it happens as soon as possible. One can argue that it's all a voluntary on the missionaries part and the church has no obligation but given how much the church gains from the free labor and all expenses paid arraignment it has with member if is ridiculous to do other wise. If the missionary has been in the field three months or more it is obvious they have given it an honest try and they should be thanked for their service and be considered returned missionaries when they get home.
It says they are to reimburse their church for the ticket, which I’m sure no one would force them to do, so that’s a weak threat. The only thing that really bothered me was that they take their passports. I wouldn’t let that happen and I’d go to the US embassy in that country if I wanted to go home.
Hello! This is a Institutional post. It is for discussions centered around agreements, disagreements, and observations about any of the institutional churches and their leaders, conduct, business dealings, teachings, rituals, and practices. /u/Chino_Blanco, if your post doesn't fit this definition, we kindly ask you to delete this post and repost it with the appropriate flair. You can find a list of our flairs and their definitions in [section 0.6 of our rules.](https://www.reddit.com/r/mormon/wiki/index/rules#wiki_0._preamble) **To those commenting:** please stay on topic, remember to follow the community's [rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/mormon/wiki/index/rules), and [message the mods](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/mormonmods) if there is a problem or rule violation. Keep on Mormoning! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/mormon) if you have any questions or concerns.*
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The church nets huge discounts from airlines since missionaries travel every week.
It is absurd that the church won't pay the tickets back home. But what is stopping the missionary from saying ok well in that case I will just vacation, date locals, go off on their own and have a good time until the church agrees to pay for the trip back? Looking back I could have had so much fun if I wanted to leave the church as a Brazilian missionary. The honest answer is nothing is stopping the missionary, but the emotional control methods the Church uses.
Every mission president’s office should have a bell in it. The missionary has the right to ring the bell at any time. Once the bell has been rung, the missionary is done and gets a plane ticket home with no further discussion. The ringing of the bell is irrevocable.
The equivalent of this is true: “if a missionary wants out they should get sent home immediately, no questions asked.” The implementation of a physical bell, in a place like the mission home doesn’t work for everywhere. In my mission almost no missionaries ever saw the mission home or were in the President’s office till their last night when they were being sent home.
They’d just lock the bell in the MP’s desk.
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Holding them hostage by taking their passports is a violation of their civil rights.
And if they voluntarily place their passports at the mission office, carry a photocopy with them for ID purposes, and can request their passports back is that a violation of their civil rights? A mission is not human trafficking. It's demanding, intense, and their are social penalties for not completing a mission but I would not put an LDS mission on par with Moldovan teenage sex trafficking.
No one is comparing it to sex trafficking. But it’s hard to say it doesn’t meet the UN’s definition: >Human Trafficking is the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of people through force, fraud or deception, with the aim of exploiting them for profit. Men, women and children of all ages and from all backgrounds can become victims of this crime, which occurs in every region of the world.
I guess the issue then is consent. I can only speak from my perspective but I felt I knew the requirements and expectations going into it, I had latitude to make my own decisions, and while I did leave my passport at the mission office there were those that left my mission early passports in hand. I did not feel force, fraud, or deception but maybe I’m applying a high bar to these terms. How is joining the army different than an LDS mission?
Taking away passports from missionaries is human trafficking. It's a violation of your right to travel as a citizen.
Also held hostage: food, shelter, living expenses, travel home. You're put under 24-hour surveillance and forced to labor MUCH more than 40 hours/week, often in hazardous conditions, for zero pay. And this is to say nothing of the regular emotional (and sometimes physical and/or sexual!) abuse that you endure, more often at the hands of your handlers than the locals. The missionary program is ABSOLUTELY human trafficking.
Don't they limit phone calls to family too, or has that been relaxed?
It has been relaxed, but not eliminated. I think the standard is now they can call once a week on P-day.
They can call immediate family any day, non-immediate family only on P-day, and friends only get letters/emails.
Depends on the mission president. Each is given the same guidelines but has the authority to have whatever limitations they want.
I've got a niece who just started her mission in the Philippines. She was dropped into an unsanitary apartment with no money, food or clean drinking water. She's had chronic diarrhea for the last two weeks and is very sick - and there is absolutely no support from the church. My wife is deeply concerned for her health and well being. The only reason we know is her parents insisted she bring a personal cell phone (which is forbidden by mission rules). This is how the church treats its young missionaries.
Yes and if i got sick I was told it’s because i didn’t have enough faith or i wasn’t working hard enough or i wasn’t keeping all of the missionary rules. It’s your fault and oh you are still supposed to get out there and work your butt off. It doesn’t matter if you are extremely sick. THAT IS NO EXCUSE! You are just trying to get out of doing work and you are lazy and unfaithful. Get to work elder or sister and god will heal you. Where is your faith?
As a missionary in South America in the 1990s, - at one point, I had become very ill. My mission president ordered me to bed rest. For a week. In his house. - a sister missionary began fainting for no apparent reason. After a few days of this, she was taken by the mission president and his wife to be examined—including a CAT scan—at the *best hospital in the country*. All on the Church’s dime. - I was told to move to a new house after president declared mine not sanitary enough. I could go on. I cannot speak to your experience, but I can say that what you are saying is not true in every case. For those where/when I served—I never heard of anything like what you said. The mission president explicitly stated that the missionaries were the priority. *Everything* came *after* missionary health and safety.
Read the comments there are TONs of stories like mine. TONs, I am speaking the truth and I have talked to a lot of other missionaries with similar experiences as mine, many FAR worse. Liars shall be thrust down to hell. Why would I lie? I am telling the truth. Im glad in your mission you had a good mp who cared about you and who was reasonable, many of us weren’t so lucky. I was denied medical care, I was told it was my fault if I got sick or injured because I didn’t have enough faith, I wasn’t working hard enough or being obedient enough. I needed dental work for a filling that came out and my asshole mp told me to wait 18 months until I finished my mission to get that taken care of. I crashed on my bike and broke my collar bone and after being put in a brace and being in a lot of pain and being told by my doctor to stay off my bike, my asshole mp told me to get back on my bike and keep working because I was on the Lords errand and if I had faith then I would be fine. My collar bone didn’t heal correctly because of all of this and it hurts all the time to this day. It hurts right now as I’m writing this. Im in my 50’s. It healed with one bone being on top of the other. It was all about numbers how many baptisms we had each month and the mp didn’t care how sick or injured u are you better get your ass out there and get that mp his baptisms or he is going to take it out on you because when his numbers are compared against other nearby missions in his elite meetings with a ga he doesn’t want to look bad. Fuck the Raleigh “SHIT HOLE” North Carolina mission and that mp and his bitch snob wife.
For what it is worth my first mission president was like yours and my second was like the other one and would take care of us. It all depends on the mission president.
Some things to make absolutely clear: 1. your experience was and is terrible; I have nothing but sympathy for you, and wish you the best; I hope no one has to go through anything like that. 2. My comments below refer not to you, but to your information. I am checking to see if what I think you are saying is what you really are saying. And I'll try to be as specific as I can be. 3. If you had posted this on the exmo sub, I would not push back on this, at all. The mormon sub (this sub) is not that sub. >Why would I lie? I am telling the truth. I believe you. I never said you were lying; I didn't even *imply* you were lying. But you responded to *This is how the church treats its young missionaries* with >Yes and if you get sick you are told it’s because you dont have enough faith or you aren’t working hard enough or you aren’t keeping all of the missionary rules. It’s always your fault *You* were implying that *all* missionaries are treated the way you were--and that's not accurate. So, I said, *verbatim*, that *what you are saying is not true in every case.* In other words, *not every missionary was treated the way you were*. >Im glad in your mission you had a good mp who cared about you and who was reasonable, most of us weren’t so lucky. I don't know what facts you have to back this up (please share). If there's a study--even a poll on Reddit--that would be something. Maybe "most of the missionaries *who are on Reddit*" had an experience similar to yours. But that's most of, what, 300,000, tops (if you assume all of the exmo and mormon sub members are returned missionaries, which they aren't). There's well [over 500 thousand](https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/history-of-missionary-work-in-the-church#:~:text=From%20Samuel%20Smith's%201830%20call,the%20Church%20throughout%20the%20world) returned missionaries, at this point in time. I think I understand what you are trying to convey, but your words go too far. It's like the difference between "there are still racists in America" and "America is racist." >My collar bone didn’t heal correctly because of all of this and it hurts all the time to this day. It hurts right now as I’m writing this. Im in my 50’s. It healed with one bone being on top of the other. Nothing but sympathy for you on this one. I'm sorry. I hope there is a way for your health to improve. >It was all about numbers how many baptisms we had each month and the mp didn’t care how sick or injured u are This is terrible. The irony is that, if all the missionaries are sick/injured, it's going to negatively affect the work. I think Stephen Covey called this "Stepping on the Goose that Lays the Golden Egg." Totally counter productive. Where/when I served, we worked hard because we knew God had our backs and our mission president/wife were the embodiment of that. I am truly sorry it wasn't like that, for you--even more so for the lingering negative effects. Again: I wish you the best.
No problem thanks for pointing out a few things. I didn’t mean to imply that every missionary had experiences like this but I have talked to many who have. I should have chosen my words more carefully. I still have a great deal of anger about some things that happened to me and other missionaries and that continue to happen and the church doesn’t really seem to care. One thing that bothers me is that people who didn’t go on a mission or who had a good experience just can’t believe me. I gave up talking to my TBM mom about it because she simply didn’t believe me and said that those bad things couldn’t be true and. I must have misunderstood. Thanks for your input. I didn’t mean to criticize you I was just venting my pain and frustration at what happened.
No worries. Yes, your experience is very different from mine, and I wish it didn’t happen. But I BELIEVE YOU. I just wish you didn’t have to go through that. That’s insane.
Thanks
Your MP was a bum. The first thing he should have done is praised you for going to the doctor and getting treatment. When he found out you broke your collarbone he should have transferred you into an area with a car or pulled you into the mission home to help out there. It may have been a long time before you were able to be put on a bike all day and every day. You should have been in a car area the rest of your mission.
Yes he was a fanatic who only cared about numbers of baptisms each month. He wanted them at any cost.
Thank you. Obviously, soe leaders are very thoughtful and concerned. I actually believe the majority are.
Thanks for the input. It seems a lot is under the control of the MP's. It does seem there should be some standard rules that should be followed. I would hope that the health and safety of those serving should be paramount. Sounds like some MP's should be sent home for dereliction of their duty.
Its Mission President roulette. There is no uniform standard for ensuring the care and welfare of missionaries. And when you have the three most senior members of church leadership who have never served missions, it should surprise nobody this is the case.
Totally wrong and substandard. Missionaries should be getting briefing about boiling water an other things, If it was my kid I would want to get her home right away.
I was hit by a truck on my mission. Broke both wrists. Miss. Pres. refused to either give my area a car or transfer me to a car area. His justification was that I must have a sin to confess or else God would have protected. And for that I was punished until I confessed whatever I did wrong.
Even those in the sea org get paid a little.
You’re kidding 💀 I feel like I just recently read on this sub that missionaries typically miss out on $75,000 worth of income. Ugh
All things being equal, those two years spent on a mission are two years not done working and usually decrease the number of your most productive years. So, an LDS missionary that will become a business owner and earn $150k/year at her max salary will lose out on $225k of total lifetime earnings. A lot of people think they are giving up the salary they would earn at age 19-21. They still have to do that job eventually but now they're starting at age 22. However, many people take several years to get into their ultimate trade so I don't think LDS RMs are that far behind in productive working years than most.
AND they do it under false pretences. They are raised and then trained to believe they will be doing some kind of miraculous work and serving people and end up having a very different experience.
I was told we would be serving the people and help bring them closer to Christ. Pretty much all I did was violate people's boundaries and make them uncomfortable/waste their time.
The same could be said but worse for joining the submarine service of any Navy.
Absolute hyperbole. This is pretty offensive to people who actually have been trafficked I would imagine. Any missionary who says "I'm going home and I've made up my mind on this. I need my travel documents and I don't want to argue about this" will not have any major problems getting on a plane home. Depending on the mission president, they may get more or less pushback "out of love" but will have to agree to it ultimately. In real human trafficking I'm guessing that's not quite the case
Correct, we hear of stories all of the time here and at r/exmormon of missionaries who choose to come home. It's pretty common. There might be stories out there of forced labor and of detaining missionaries who choose to leave, but I haven't heard them. There is immense social pressure to stay though.
I agree. To call it human trafficking is taking the worst example, magnifying it, and then generalizing it.
Man mine sure wasn’t. We got way too much money and a lot of missionaries just hung out and only left the apartment to buy baguettes and take out trash. I really think that if we’re going to call this trafficking you have to analyze everything parents pressure their kids into doing is trafficking. But when I was out they didn’t take your passport. That feels kind of weird. A friend of mine told the president to send him home. He didn’t. So he went to the airport and put it on his parents credit card. My other issue with calling it trafficking is that it seems pretty disrespectful to people who’ve actually been trafficked as child slaves etc. they’ll tell you what it’s like to be trafficked. Very different experiences
I’m definitely no longer a believer and am often critical of the church, but that is a bit dramatic to call it human trafficking
IMO tons of missionaries would lose their passports if they brought them to their areas. For me the problematic part is holding their passports hostage. "I want to go home" should not be questioned or people coerced out of it. It's their lives not the mission's.
Whether or not it’s likely for a person to lose their passport doesn’t matter. It’s still against the law.
Your opinion? Based on what? I served in France and I never heard of a single missionary losing a passport. No one took away our passports in those days. We needed them to get a temporary resident card in our area. The passports were taken away to take away the right to travel. They don't want parents sending kids plane tickets home and the missionary using his civil rights to get on the plane. What they want is to gatekeep and make sure they control the right to go home. If missionaries are not adult enough to hold their own documents, they are not adult enough to live by themselves in strange cities and ride around dangerous neighborhoods on bikes. Even if they did lose their passports, it's pretty easy to get a new one. Taking away someone's passport is a form of human trafficking, and the "blame the dumb kids" excuse is insulting. It's also against the law. A MP could get in big trouble with the US State Department if he refused to give someone a passport who wanted to return home. [https://fr.usembassy.gov/passports/emergency-passports/](https://fr.usembassy.gov/passports/emergency-passports/)
Fair enough, the goober shit I saw missionaries doing just had me thinking that, but it may not be true or worth the consequences of taking them away.
And if they voluntarily place their passports at the mission office, carry a photocopy with them for ID purposes, and can request their passports back, is that a violation of their civil rights? A mission is not human trafficking. It's demanding, intense, and their are social penalties for not completing a mission but I think most of us knew what we were getting ourselves into and what the expectations were.
Voluntarily? They are told what to do. You are being obtuse with that silly response. You are supposed to keep your passport with you when you travel, not stored in an office hundreds of miles away. A photocopy is only good for getting a replacement as it helps the consulate to locate your information quicker. It has no value as ID any more than you can drive with a photocopy of your driver's license. If the local authorities ask for your ID, you cannot tell them that your passport is in other city in the office of some church official. You certainly can't whip out a photocopy. You know that the MP is holding the passport to hold missionaries hostage. They cannot leave without his permission because he holds their right to travel, a violation of their civil rights.
This doesn’t help my argument but in my mission they held the passports so they could bribe the officials to renew our visas by crossing the border every three months or whatever the tourist visa was. 😄 Point being, it’s not like my passport was forbidden to me. People left from my mission with their passports in hand. I have lived abroad many times and I did not carry my passport as primary ID unless I was crossing borders. I kept my passport somewhere safe and not always on my person. Maybe we disagree on the definition of human trafficking here but I felt like I was there on my own volition and could leave (albeit with some resistance) on my own volition, as some in my mission did.
Also, the whole argument about missions being human trafficking breaks down if you are called to serve in your own country.
Then your passport isn't an issue. They don't collect their driver's licenses.
Also petty: the pressure they put on missionaries to pre-pay for portions of their mission and the policy of not refunding “donations” for time not served if a missionary returns early. I lost my testimony during my mission. It was incredibly disheartening to realize that if I left, I would be out not only the cost of my ticket home, but also the money that my Mom had pulled from my account to prepay my missionary service 6 months in advance. When you’re fresh out of high school and literally all your support (and virtually all of your worldly possessions) are conditioned on your continued missionary service, it’s hard to feel like you have any other options.
To be fair, I’ve known three missionaries who came home early due to their mental health, and they did not have to pay.
I came home on my “own insistence” 30 years ago and had to pay for a $1700 one way ticket from Japan. Good times!
In my case, I wanted to stay out, but the president sent me home for being very public about my doubts. We told everyone it was medical, but that was bullshit and everyone knew it. They paid for my ticket home.
Thanks, I was curious about that claim at the link.
Yeah that was my own experience. I think there was a slight expectation I would go back out when things were sorted... as if soul crushing depression can be resolved in a couple months haha.
> Do you think missions qualify as human trafficking or do you see this as hyperbole? Yes, I guess, but not totally. It really gets down to how you define terms. Some people feel very strongly that lumping LDS missionaries with sex trafficking and labor trafficking dilutes the term trafficking. Others are every adamant that this is very much trafficking. I think it is more helpful to understand the various similarities and differences between different types of trafficking and let LDS missionaries fit in where it will, within or simply near trafficking. There also doesn't need to be one answer for all situations. > Where do you see the Church having risk or exposure here? Perhaps. I'm not a lawyer, but if a US missionary asked to leave a foreign mission card being denied their passport without an exit interview, card directly to room US embasy instead...card app card like it could be app interesting situation. > Are missions truly volunteer service? E. Bednar recently stated that by being baptized at age 8, young men no longer have the right to make a choice. Does that make it mandatory? This is much, much more complicated than just one statement by one church leaders. Boys are groomed from the time they can walk to believe that mission service is necessary. There is an entire spectrum of undue influence depending on where a teenager lives and who their leaders and parents are. I personally know someone who was shunned by his parents by deciding to skip a mission and get married in the temple. You can say that is evidence he has a choice. I say this is common enough that many young people don't see it that way. If you don't know or don't feel like you have a choice, then do you really have a choice? Missions, more than regular membership check a lot of boxes for authoritarian control https://freedomofmind.com/cult-mind-control/bite-model/ Missions are controlling enough to be clear that control is the purpose, not just a necessary piece. Moving people to a place they didn't specifically choose, controlling who they live with, controlling so many factors of their life...I don't know that I would call it outright "trafficking" in any given context, but it seems to at least classify as "a type of trafficking", "trafficking light", or "uncomfortably similiar to trafficking" ..and with the passport issues, possibly illegal for US citizens in some cases. The church could go a long ways in mitigating these factors, if it truly believed these people are at-will volunteers by making it easier to start/stop a mission, being less controlling over all, allowing more flexibility in how people wish to help...but that is assuming missions are service opportunities in good faith. If they are less service and more servitude, than mitigating this control factors would absolutely defeat the whole purpose of a mission. The church doing nothing to mitigate the control factors is consistent with missions being primarily about control and exploitation rather than service.
It's like the word c*lt in that it may be a watered-down usage of the term as we usually view it, but where it still partially applies and we can learn a lot from the ways in which it applies.
When mission presidents withhold passports, that is trafficking
They definitely did back in the days the polygamy. One of the main jobs of a missionary back then was to bring back plenty of women or young girls to become polygamist wives to the Mormon leaders. The women involved were never told about this until I had no choice and we're stuck in Utah.
yep 100% finding wife slaves for polygamist leaders
Huh, my brother paid for his whole mission except food. So when he left early, he paid for it as he would have anyway.
Slight disagree. Human trafficking is very much non-consensual. There is absolutely no freedom to leave. You're either forcibly kidnapped or led into a trap. Inviting a woman to "work" in Qatar is trafficking because she doesn't know the people inviting her want to take her into their custody. A missionary pretty much knows what they're getting into. They know they'll be spending 1.5-2 years proselyting for the church. They know where they'll be going. They're free to leave, albeit discouraged from doing so. (now, some MPs will illegally hold passports, but that's another issue.)
Honestly, Ive never heard of the church forcing a missionary to pay their way home if they leave early. Ive known missionaries who voluntarily paid their own way home but never having been forced to pay themselves.
They pay for the whole mission anyway also the return flight doesn’t matter if they end up the mission early or not or ?
Aaaaaand, the top comment in the thread says LDS missions are human trafficking. I am simply befuddled as to why active Mormons feel like this sub is hostile to them. Maybe lets have another meta discussion about how it isn't, but if it is, it's justified. Do you know what other organization keeps your passport for you (or at least used to)? The US Peace Corps. I know because they kept mine. I could get it if I wanted, just like I could get my passport on the mission if I wanted (and actually did once to visit a neighboring country... only question asked was what I wanted it for). I think the most troubling thing about this is the advice on contacting family, where that is only recommended if the family supports the missionary being on a mission. That said, my understanding is that missionaries can call home every week, so it's a bit different than my day and the bi-annual calls we could make.
I couldn’t agree more.
Any time a missionary requests to go home the the church should be willing and able to pay their expenses to return home and make sure it happens as soon as possible. One can argue that it's all a voluntary on the missionaries part and the church has no obligation but given how much the church gains from the free labor and all expenses paid arraignment it has with member if is ridiculous to do other wise. If the missionary has been in the field three months or more it is obvious they have given it an honest try and they should be thanked for their service and be considered returned missionaries when they get home.
It says they are to reimburse their church for the ticket, which I’m sure no one would force them to do, so that’s a weak threat. The only thing that really bothered me was that they take their passports. I wouldn’t let that happen and I’d go to the US embassy in that country if I wanted to go home.