I haven't talked about my mission much on this blog. I guess it's because I would rather forget most of it. I didn't like it. I didn't enjoy it. I did my time so I could have the proud title of RETURNED MISSIONARY.
Rules and regulations. Every minute of every day was detailed for us. The MTC wasn't too bad. There were just classes all day, every day. The pressure to confess unresolved past transgressions was intense! They really turned up the heat and the guilt. If you were serving unworthily, then your soul was in real danger of damnation. I had an unresolved issue with a past girlfriend, but damnation was better than getting sent home from your mission. I never confessed it until years later.
The real hell began once I arrived at my first assignment. My first companion, or trainer, was the drill sergeant from hell. He ate, drank, and slept the mission rules. He was so adamant on following the letter of every rule that I quickly grew to resent him. I'll try to describe the situation but I don't know if it's even possible to truly portray what it was like.
It started one day shortly after arriving when I sat down to write a letter. At the beginning of my mission, I received a lot of letters from family and friends. I figured that by replying to one or two a day would keep the reply pile small. My trainer quickly put an end to that. We were not to use any of the lords time writing letters, except on P-day. He gave me his lecture and then used the standard "will you?" tactic. "Will you only write letters on P-day?" When that bastard was in the shower, I would write letters. A weeks worth of letters meant hours on P-day, and I had better things to do than sit there and write letters all day!
From there it only got worse. The guy watched everything I did and was constantly there to tell me how wrong I was. He constantly had his hand on the telephone, threatening to call the mission president if I didn't conform to what he wanted. Afterall, it was me in the wrong because the mission rules were given to us by a true and living prophet. If you didn't follow all the rules, then you were in open rebellion against the prophet. Even though I knew the rules were bullshit, how could I argue against that and not get a label?
This was my reasoning... The church is really big on claiming that only their worthy members have the "spirit" to guide them. I grew up with the idea of following the spirit. So I get on a mission and the "spirit" was replaced with the rule book. I never heard, "follow the spirit" on my mission. It was always, "follow the rules." That was my first indication that the missionary program and the church in general were not run by inspiration.
I nearly had a nervous breakdown. I don't know how I survived for three months with this asshole dictator without breaking his damn nose. He was such a jerk, and that's putting it nicely.
I remember that one time, while praying, he actually said, "Please help Elder X (refering to me) to gain a testimony of the importance of closing his eyes during prayers." Yes, he actually said that. I never have been one to close my eyes in a prayer. So sue me. Besides how would that hypocrite know my eyes were open unless his eyes were open too? And if the Mormon god is so shallow that he will take the spirit from me and cast me into hell just for keeping my eyes open, then that god can go fuck himself! If I remember right, I did not say "amen" at the end of the prayer.
I endured manipulation of this sort daily from this asshole. I'm damn tempted to put his name here just to spite him. I never broke his nose for the fear of being sent home, but if I ever see that jerk now, I will smash his face in. I've never hated anyone until I met him. And I am a very gentle, non-violent person who would rather just walk away than make a big deal of something. But this guy is genuinely deserving of a good face pounding, and I would be thrilled to inflict it.
I'll tell a few more stories about my time with him, but keep in mind that these types of things happened every day.
Elder Cocksucker was so into the rules, that he would make little posters of them and hang them all over the apartment walls. Remember his idea that none of the lords time be wasted? That included any type of housekeeping. Dishes? Forget it. He wouldn't let me wash the dishes but once a week (on P-day when I had a million other non-godly errands to get done). Naturally, they would pile up in the kitchen. I finally got tired of all the dirty dishes and I made a little poster of my own. It simply said, "Never go to bed with dirty dishes in the sink."
Suddenly this little poster became law! If I left so much as a spoon in the sink, he would hound me to go wash it. It suddenly became MY job to wash the dishes every single day. Well, one day I went to bed having left a single cup in the sink. He tried to get me out of bed to go wash it. Obviously he didn't understand the difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. Anyway, I didn't wash the cup.
The next morning I woke up to find that he had taken down the poster and had written across it diagonally with a permanent marker, "DISHONORED". I was so furious I could have killed him. What a pompus jerk! What a hypocrite!
The mission rules stated that we were to go to bed at 10:30 PM. Well, one day I was so exausted that I went to bed as soon as we got home (my personal dictator had us out knocking on doors from sun-up to sun-down). Naturally, we had companionship prayer every night before bed. Well guess what? This jerk wouldn't pray with me because it wasn't 10:30 yet. That's right. Because it wasn't 10:30.
Well, when 10:30 rolls around I'm good and asleep. He suddenly comes bouncing into the room, turns on the light, wakes me up, and actually expects me to get out of bed to pray with him. I told him to go ahead and pray and I would stay in bed. Oh no! That's not going to happen! He wants me out of bed and on my knees. Well, sorry, but I'm just not going to.
To make a very long night short, this jerk carried on for hours and hours trying to manipulate me out of bed. He did everything he could to prevent me from going back to sleep: keeping the light on, banging on furniture, singing loudly. He carried on for hours! He was so used to being in complete control that he would not let me win. But I refused to get out of bed. I think he finally stopped after about three or four hours. The next morning he couldn't understand why I was upset with him and wouldn't talk.
Imagine living with an asshole of this magnitude for three months, unable to defend yourself because he was nobly "following the prophet". This guy turned his priesthood authority into a nightmare and I am sure that he terrorized the poor girl that he later married.
Folks, this kind of behaviour is what you get when you turn your will completely over to the church. They will take every single one of your freedoms and turn you into a fucking robot. That's what they do in the missionary program. That's what they do at BYU. Give the church your will, and they will take it all.
This is why I am horrified at the thought of Mormonism spreading across the entire world. Just imagine if Mormons ran the government. We would have no freedom. In the name of righteousness, they would take away all our choices in order to "save" us.
In the pre-existance a similar form of government was proposed by Satan. Really makes you wonder, doesn't it?
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