The rest of your life to think about it

There is a saying in the mission field: Two years to do it, the rest of your life to think about it.

Well, there is one thing that I did in the mission field and I will have the rest of my life to think about it. It's something that will haunt me until the day I die.

Being "spiritually macho" in the mission filed is really encouraged by the Mormon leadership. Working ungodly hours, sacrificing your health and mental well being and putting your mission before all else is seen as a sign of dedication. At least it was in my mission.

The Mormon Church has a current advertising slogan that says "Family: Isn't it about time?" Well believe me, when it comes to family, it isn't about time.....it's about the Mormon Church! I'd like to go now to a post I found on the ExMormon board that shows just how family oriented this "pro-family" church is:

Recently, a good friend's teenage daughter was in the final stages of dying from a long term illness, and the father wanted his other older daughter to come home from her mission to give her final farewell. The father called his daughter's abusive Mormon mission president (a former "corporate" leader), and he said that it was Church policy that missionaries should NOT go home for the death of an immediate family member. The abusive Mormon mission president then "dictated" a phony letter for the father to write to his missionary daughter essentially saying that they (the parents) did not want her to come home under any circumstances.

Well, this good Father was a convert and had a much broader Christian experience than Mormonism and, after a lot of prayer, he did not feel good about keeping his missionary daughter away from her dying sister. So, he started making calls to everyone he knew in Church leadership. He even made contact with a daughter of the Prophet. Well, eventually someone finally called the abusive Mission President, and he in turn called the Father and asked how he could "help". And, of course, he then "allowed" the missionary daughter to come home.

She was home for two weeks. Her sister died within a few days in the arms of her missionary sister, and she stayed to personally bereave and help comfort her family. And, of course, the whole time, the abusive Stake President was hounding the family to send her "immediately" back to the mission. The Father told me about the enormous load that the Mormon Church put on him and his family from that experience. But, like Jesus's parable of the unrighteous judge, he just kept confronting the Mormon abusers until they grew weary of his petitions. Part of the problem is when you are unfortunate enough to have a former "corporate" leader serving as a "mission president" the corporate leader will never neglect "productivity" (knocking on doors) to "serving" the needs of the sick, dying, and bereaved.

The Mormon Church is very insensitive to the needs of families, despite its public relations campaign. So, does anyone wonder why Utah has the highest per capita use of anti-depressants in the United States? The members have to do something to recover from the constant abuse of their Mormon leaders.

One final thought, a good friend, who served as a Mission President (and was a medical doctor) told me that the biggest mistake he had made was not to allow a missionary son to return home when his brother had been killed in an automobile accident. He told me that he would have insisted until his son could have come home. The returned missionary had severe depression from the experience, and has never fully recovered....

How does this relate to me? When I was five months into my mission, my mother had her leg amputated. She had been sick for a few years prior and this was the last resort to save her life.

I should have been there. For her, for my father, for my brother. I have no excuse and it still is a shame and blot on my character that I put some stupid Mormon Church before my family. Yet in an atmosphere of spiritual machismo it was cool not to care about anything but your mission (hell, I even had to permission to call my mother after her operation!). I was not contacted by my mission president, and the mission leaders who were present when I found out didn't seem to care either.

I was later to discover that in Mormonism life is cheap. While individual members may care and show compassion, the corporate church does not. The individual means nothing compared to "the work". As Mormon scripture says, faithful Mormons should "...waste and wear out [their] lives..." teaching Mormonism to the world.

Mormonism seems to say nothing about the guilt still felt by a person 25 years after neglecting his own family in their time of need.

Just a few notes here on the dark side of my long strange trip through Mormonism.