#Mormon missionaries

[growingupmormon]

My sister: it’s so weird that Mormons can just spot another Mormon out in the wild even those who’ve left. Like in high school we got clocked as Mormon and we could tell who was too.

It’s essentially social isolation, you mirror the behaviors of those around you growing up, if everyone around you isolates themselves from the outside world then you’re all gonna start to be a little weird to the outside world making it harder to leave, it’s subtle mannerisms we learned for sure

It’s that and Mormon Face!

[madeline-celeste]

Do people know that Mormon missionaries have to pay to go on a mission. Like the church gets billions of dollars and still make the missionaries pay to spread their word

[brothermouse]

Sunday doodle 3/24/24

I’ve done sci-fi missionaries, so I wanted to try fantasy world missionaries.

[xena-wolfgang]

former mormon here

please please be kind. and know that many many of them do not want to be out there. a lot of them are pressured if not all out forced to go by their families. even if they seem like they are 100% all in and happy to be missionaries don't assume that is the truth, it could be a mask they have put on for survival.

they are most likely living in difficult conditions. one bedroom apartments with 4-8 missionaries in them is not uncommon in some places. (this does vary on a lot of factors, but the church rents out the cheapest places they can and then shove as any missionaries as they can into the apartments) they get zero privacy. ever. (i know some missionary apartments that have removed the bathroom door). if you have a companion that is by the book they will report you for any and everything. they/their families are spending an insane amount of money to the church to be there. they have insanely small food budgets (the actual missionaries see literal pennies of what their families give the church for their care). if you are lucky you have a family/friends that can send you care packages with extra food/goodies. many are not. and while i know they get to communicate/talk to their families way more than they used to be able to, it's still very limited in how/when/length/who they can talk to and it is heavily monitored. if they are serving in a country that they do not live in they do not have their travel papers, they are being held by the mission president. they can and do get transferred (within the boundaries of the mission, which could be a city, or an entire country) at the drop of a hat and often have no idea where they are going or who their companion is. (that's a horror show all on it's own. companion roulette.) they eat/sleep/breath the church on their mission (don't like doing morning and evening prayer every day along with hours of scripture study, trackting, free labor for the church service projects studying church history, scripture study again but this time with other missionaries? too fucking bad. you get to do it almost every day for 2 years) and they can and will be punished if they don't follow the mission rules.

remember, these kids are in a cult and most of them are not aware of it. please, please, be kind. being mean and rude only reinforces lies they have been told about the world at large and causes more harm.

some things you can do to be nice and help out:

offer them a place to rest for a minute. you can have a chat with them about how long they have been in the city, if they are enjoying their time there, just general chitchat. yes, they will try to talk religion (some may push it more than others, but most of them are probably glad to not give the script for the billionth time), but many are willing to stop and talk about nothing for a moment to take a break from getting doors shut in their faces. even better if you have a place to sit. and while i get not wanting strangers in your house, if you feel comfortable letting them in your house for even a moment if it is hot or cold will be very very welcome.

offer them a drink or a snack if you can. as i said they have a small food budget, many are still growing, they are most likely hungry, offer them a granola bar or something.

ask them if they want to call/email home. if you can offer them your phone for a few minutes so they can reach out to the real world. there are a lot of people out there that want to reach out to their parents/friends/other relatives to get them home (or even to let them know about abuses that are happening to them that are getting ignored by the higher ups) but can't because of the monitoring that goes on. this can also be an offer for you to reach out on their behalf. (PLEASE ONLY DO THIS IF YOU INTEND TO ACTUALLY PASS ALONG THE MESSAGE.)

remember at the end of the day that these are just kids, many of whom have had little exposure to any kind of culture that isn't white/hetero/cis. be patient and kind and who knows, maybe said kindness will help that kid down the road in ways you can't imagine.

also remember there are Sister missionaries out there as well, and they not only have all the above as the boys, but they are at risk for sexual assault/rape, from both randos they run into 'working' for the church, and from their male superiors (i.e. any boy/man on the mission).

[lizardho]

I came out to my dad as bisexual at 14 and I was PANICKED because I had a crush on a guy in my Boy Scout troop and thought I was Going To Hell Forever and he was so kind and understanding of my distress, but he had NO idea what bisexuality was. He just said “yeah but you like girls too? This is normal. Everyone is like this.” And I love my dad and trust him with my life to this day and the idea that the concept of bisexuality had not occurred to him had not occurred to me so I put it off.

By 16 though I had a crush on like THREE boys. Three entire boys in my Boy Scout troop. I felt like my sin was slowly advancing, until like an untreated cancer it had become metastatic. I remember bawling my L’il limp-wristed sissy eyes out in his big rumbly truck on the way home from a scout meeting and him telling me that it was OK, that he still loved me if I was gay, but that he knew I wasn’t gay because I still had crushes on women and that meant I was straight. I didn’t quite know how to explain that those felt *~*different*~* and that I felt like I was losing a fight to evil inside me but I again felt comforted by his reassurances and his genuine fatherly love.

At 18 I was like “hey I’m realizing all my friends are going on missions. I don’t wanna do that. Idk how to say that and I don’t have a ‘good enough’ reason to not wanna go.” So I just put it off. Again, my parents were extremely supportive of the information I gave them (I blamed it on perpetually forgetting to start the paperwork.) and one day my mom texted me that she had done the paperwork for me! And that all I needed was to get a physical! So I did that (it was awkward af tbh, my hernia check was done by a trainee doctor and she spent like 3 minutes fishing around my inguinal canals before her attending rescued me) and was sent to Mexico City where I learned that in addition to dipshit himbos with strong hands and scruffy guys with artistic hearts I was REALLY into chubby Latin men with strong personalities who bullied me a little when I lived in Mexico.

I remember my first companion got annoyed with me during an argument and said we were just gonna wrestle and whoever won the wrestling match won the argument (I stg I am dead serious this happened.) I was like…SWEATING when he tore off his tie and threw his white button-down shirt onto the ground (I won btw, don’t ask me how).

I remember one of my companions with this really intense, almost manic energy telling me that he was gonna make sure I was safe in a new area I didn’t know very well. He cooked breakfast for me and we’d go shopping together on P-Days and in the mornings before breakfast he’d jog around and do pull-ups with his shirt off and I’d do anything but look at him because my face would break out in a sweat so intense he’d think I was crying and come over to see if I was OK and somehow make it worse. He let me play D&D with myself in the evenings even though it was against mission rules because he knew how lonely and stressed I was.

I remember one of my companions was a big chubby man with a loud voice and a great sense of humor. He was kind and direct when addressing conflicts with me, and always bragged about how he knew the secrets of women’s minds and it felt like he really did since it almost always boiled down to “Treat Them Like People and Love Them a Lot. Don’t Stop Being A Person For Them. Also Eat Them Out Sloppy Style.” Our P-Day activities sometimes felt like dates, and it seemed like he was more attentive to my emotional state than I was since he was always the first to suggest we slow down our Divinely Mandated, God-Ordained, Super Sacred Work and Wonder to get a snack or check out a Pawn Shop (I love Pawn Shops).

I remember another companion who asked me to bully him every time he did something against his goal of losing weight. It was like he gave me Carte Blanche to take out my crush on him by being a nuisance and I LOVED that. I remember having a breakdown one day after we’d spent the afternoon frantically cleaning our disgusting-barely-habitable mission house to make it look less vile that it was (not our fault imo?) and I started bawling and he pulled me into a hug and he smelled good and he told me he knew it wasn’t just the house and that I was mad at him for being a Huge Dickhead for about a week (true) and that he would work on it. (He’s also a huge chaser but that’s a separate thing.)

I remember one of my companions waking up early (and our schedule is already built for sleep deprivation) to make me a “birthday cake” from knock-off Nutella and bread. He used matches for candles and woke me up, lit the ‘candles,’ pulled them out, then smashed it in my face and took a bunch of pictures while I was still madrugada and disoriented as fuck. He had the same sense of humor as one of my HS crushes and I could push his buttons pretty easily which was so fun.

I came home from my mission and started back at BYU where I became actively and aggressively suicidal. I had a stalker the year I moved up there and my dad’s solution to that was to get me a gun. I know he wouldn’t have bought me a gun if he could have read my mind, but I had a loaded pistol under my bed during a trifecta faith/sexuality/gender crisis and that was not helpful. I remember that the day I decided to kill myself I figured I’d call the BYU CAPS and see if I could get into therapy because it felt like what I was “supposed to do” so I could check my suicide boxes. My therapist was the guy who’d helped me pick a major the year before and was this drop-dead gorgeous Hawaiian man who cried when I told him how I’d been feeling.

A few weeks into therapy I met another stunning man with soft eyes and a scruffy illegal-at-BYU beard he kept pushing his luck with. He was funny, kind, patient, married, and wouldn’t give me the time of day if he knew I was crushing on him. We were in my history of psych class, which was inarguably the worst psych class I have ever had, and we studied together for every assignment and test and I realized that my feelings for him and for all the men I’d already mentioned were in direct conflict with my faith and relationship with God. My already agonizing spiritual conflict became even more wretched and as a result of this plus some other tightly-packed experiences with Mormonisms bullshit, I left the church.

After leaving the church I decided to move back to AZ and transfer to ASU. My mom helped me get a dog since I think it had started to dawn on my family that my mental health was barely getting me through the day, and she knew that we both loved dogs. Madi made my last year at BYU livable while I got my shit together and transferred. In that last year, I went on a date with quite possibly the only semi-openly-out trans person on BYU campus. It was not a great date imo, I was not doing well, but the person I spoke with was fun and fascinating and talked to me about Gender Dysphoria and it really cemented my need to go. To leave and never come back to that fucking school.

I started at ASU a month after my last semester at BYU and within a very short time frame it felt like I was coming back together, like a puzzle magically putting itself together in an environment that wasn’t slowly draining that puzzle’s will to live.

On the 4th of July, the year I started at ASU, I saw a transition timeline photo of a gorgeous happy beautiful happy radiant happy woman and her former Mormon missionary self and I realized the light that was on in her eyes was the light that was off in mine. I looked into transitioning for 3 days, sleeping about 10 hours total during that time. I started talking to other trans people on Reddit (one of whom is now my beautiful fiancée @cintailed) and after about a month of making preparations to be disowned and kicked out, something I was not sure would happen but was ready to go through to Turn On The Lights, I came out to my family and it was amazing. I started HRT a month after that. I secretly dated some dorky guys for about a year while I applied to grad schools. I got into a great grad school for me and my needs. I got FFS. I did my trainings and classes. Me and my fiancée moved in together after some LDR shenanigans. We’ve lived together now for 4 years of basically marital bliss. We have a cat named Grandmother Esmeralda Weatherwax who bites the hell out of my feet about three times a day. My bi-cycle continues to be part of my life but now it’s not as scary. Baby gays in my life have started to look to me for advice. Idk how this all happened so fast. When the years, months, weeks, days, and hours seems to crawl by so slowly now they are rushing past me so fast it’s almost bewildering. Whereas before I felt like I was living on borrowed time, past my ‘expiration date,’ now it feels like I can Fucking Breathe. I’m training myself to slow down now and it feels worth it to Live In The Moment.

Idk why I wrote this. Idk why these thoughts only seem to come up on Sundays when I’m supposed to be writing my dissertation. Idk why I’m crying rn or why I feel so happy. I’m gonna post this shit then get on with my dissertation I guess. Read more Terry Pratchett and give yourselves the time you need. Get a pet. Talk to someone. Re-examine the events that brought you here. Be gayer. Love y’all 💕

[mormonmouse]

Saint Andrew of Snohomish - The Blows of Life

If something hard happens to me and I somehow manage to get through it, does that experience make me stronger or better? No. I might become stronger or better before, during, or after the hard experience, but it is never the experience itself that makes me stronger or better, despite such prevalent sayings as “Adversity builds character,”and its many variants, or “What doesn’t kill you makes…

[ashleyloob]

I randomly got dragged to Mormon church and met the illustrator for A Series of Unfortunate Events who is apparently a bishop at the church, and now we are Instagram mutuals. today was so bizarre

[rosequartzandrosaries]

I live in Utah, and back when I was still a practicing Catholic (right around the time I started getting into paganism again after a brief interest in hs) some missionaries came to the door. I’m terrible at saying no, so we had a discussion on LDS vs Catholicism, and something I noticed was that they kept repeating the same talking points.

As someone who went to Catholic school from Pre-K to 12th grade, I know a lot about Catholicism. And one thing I know is this: most modern Catholics don’t evangelize. I don’t know if it’s a cultural thing or officially stated, but they tend to prefer to lead by example instead of go out and preach specifically to convert. (Something else I noticed, is that white Catholics give off Protestant and Born Again vibes. It’s weird, I don’t like it.)

Because Catholics don’t really go out preaching, we aren’t taught a script to use to try to convince people to join. Usually, if you ask a Catholic a question, they will give you a genuine (though not necessarily correct) answer. If there are multiple Catholics around, this could lead into a debate, because most Catholics don’t know or care about the official catechism (in my experience, if they don’t like what the catechism says, they tend to treat it as optional or up to interpretation).

When I was in discussion with the lds missionaries, none of their answers were genuine. They weren’t taught to doubt or question or debate their beliefs in order to develop a deeper understanding of them. They were taught to regurgitate basic catch-all answers when asked any question they didn’t know the answer to, and most boiled down to “come to a service and then you’ll get your answer”.

And when I asked them questions about their specific point of view, not about their religion’s overall beliefs, they still couldn’t answer. They kept going back to “well the church teaches…” I didn’t want to know what the church taught, I wanted to know your opinion.

Anyway, I just wanted to let y’all know that, if you’re genuinely interested in learning about the lds point of view if the missionaries come to your house, you’re going to be frustrated with their answers. Be patient with them. Don’t be mean. They’re just kids who don’t know why they believe what they believe, they just know “because the church elders said so”.

Also, completely unrelated, when I was speaking to them, I recited the prayer of St. Francis, and one of them said “that’s a great prayer of thanksgiving”. I am genuinely worried for his comprehension skills. It’s not a prayer of thanksgiving? Not once does the prayer say “thank you”? It’s a prayer of service, asking God to work through the person, so they may help those in need and bring genuine comfort and hope and goodness to the world.

Idea for all you pagans and witches out there: If you get Jehovah’s Witnesses or Mormons or those sorts knocking at your door, instead of politely turning them away, don on your most witchy, out-there, non-christian-friendly accessories and attire and open the door.

Be cheerful and welcoming! Say you’re more then open to chat about spirituality, take their pamphlets, try to show them any books of your own you have, hell, even invite them inside for a cup of tea by your altar to Odin.

I don’t know how it’ll go down, but I’m almost certain the interaction will be funny af.

[r7-b7]

"He's a bad guy! He's a sith! He's manipulative and evil! He's just Plagueis's errand boy!"

Qimir/The Stranger:

Asks for consent, maintains boundaries, doesn't push it farther if it's not going anywhere (see Osha watching him bathe, Osha and the prospect of leaving, Osha and choosing to stay, Osha and the helmet, Osha and being an Acolyte, Mae and the mind wipe)

Has never self identified as a Sith

Has never mentioned the Rule of Two, only the Power of Two

Holds people accountable for their actions no matter who they are (Mae agreed to the deal, which includes do it or die, and the Jedi for being trained assassin monopolizing colonizers who persecute religious minorities)

Doing his own thing

[hcnnibal]

hey man hey man

[growingupmormon]

A friend from work texted me and told me Mormon missionaries had come in to use the computers

I mentioned they were probably there for their weekly communicate with family time and she just

[alias-fern-mason]

This is absolutely true. The worst lie thst you hear growing up in the church (imo) is that it's the only way to actually be happy. Providing a counter-example will require either that they believe that you're lying to yourself or them, or more likely, that they have to intentionally introduce some nuance or even doubt into that belief, which is much needed in the church.

So I came across a Korean version of "The book of Mormon," musical on YouTube and it unlocked a memory for me.

We have a book of Mormon in our house because when I was a kid, around preschool age, my mom liked to let them in whenever they would come here. She'd make tea and have a chat with them, about religion and life, sometimes they would debate, sometimes not. She was raised Catholic, she wasn't great at being Catholic apparently the priests hated her(I fully believe they did), so she was pretty knowledgable on the subject.

It was an interesting time, I thought they were kind of weird but was otherwise content to have tea parties with the weird white boys in ties.

The fun part is, my mom got our house blacklisted because the ones who visited us consistently would start questioning their faith a little bit because we were very much not like how they described the outside world to be. And like she did the whole thing, she accepted their book and listened to them speak and she sometimes even gave them advice on life, and it really impacted them.

The point of this is, be nice to your local missionaries, yes they are annoying and weird and they come to your house way too early in the morning, but please be nice to them. Maybe even be the one to disprove the biases they've lived their lives under, you might change their world view.

[samwisethewitch]

On the topic of exmormon stuff, being a cult survivor is so fun because every time one of my old church friends reaches out "just to check in," my gut response is to throw up as many mentions of my sinful lifestyle as possible so they know I'm a lost cause.

Someone with a temple photo as their profile pic will message me like, "Oh, I saw you got married last year! Congrats!"

And I'm like, "Yes, I love being married to my PARTNER, who I met at an LGBT MIXER at my UNIVERSITY. We really enjoyed WRITING OUR OWN CEREMONY based on our favorite PAGAN wedding rituals from history!"

And of course, the conversation ends there because they were trying to find an in to invite me to church with them.

The gay doormat effect is real, y'all.

[queerprayers]

thinking about when a door-to-door missionary asked my dad if he had a personal relationship with jesus and he replied, deadpan, "I eat him."

[icarianlibrary]

Thank you to the non-LDS folk who let me talk to them about the LDS religion and share the gospel. I will not be able to go on a mission in the near future due to my transness. But I have such a strong testimony in the church and want to share that with others. Thank you for listening to me. Asking questions. I love the questions, and I love researching them to help you. I genuinely love teaching others. I just talked to someone about the Nephites & who they were. I know it is just a peak of interest to them, but for me it is an opportunity to teach. To be like my savior. I know that to them it is so minuscule. To me, I get to serve like my older sister, even if it is in different ways. Thank you.

[freaky-wasatch-range]

"mormonism is american exceptionalism" has gotta be my least favorite anti-mormon take out there like you could talk about literally anything and THAT'S what you're going with????????? like you can talk about our weird relationship with manifest destiny and colonisation (extremely valid talking points!!!!!!) but to act like some kind of specific allegiance to the united states as an institution is inherent to our doctrine is so..... silence......