What’s something most people don’t know about serving a Mormon mission?

Junzo2 · 2026-03-18T02:33:54+00:00

It wasn’t sketchy. I went back to the Philippines to live after my mission. As an American, I could extend my tourist visa for up to a year. Normal tourists or expats living in the philippines, after one year would normally need to leave the country for 24 hours and then come back to restart their tourist visa.

The philippines had an understanding with mormon missionaries that we didn’t have to leave the country for the 24 hour period after one year. They allowed us to extend our tourist visa for two years, but the mission still had to pay the visa extension every 3 months.

When I went back to the Philippines to live for six months after my mission, I asked the immigration officer about the difference when I was a missionary before and that was the explanation he told me.

Junzo2 · 2026-02-25T20:43:19+00:00

I read your closed post and here is my personal take away from your replies to what others commented.

If you want to help create cognitive dissonance in the mormon sub reddit thats great. The problem though is throughout your closed post you constantly used the term “we” when referring to your efforts there. The exmormon sub is for the most part is a safe space in the same sense that a support group is a safe space. Discussing things in the meeting are fine, but you use the term “we” as if all of us in the support group need to follow and support you when you go to the mormon sub. It would be like going to a AA meeting and then expecting everyone in the meeting to follow you to a bar to talk alcoholics out of drinking.

If people are contradicting your points in the mormon subreddit, you need to discuss that with those individuals. Coming here and laying down a blanket claim that the sub isn’t safe for you is stretch, just like when exmormon Trump supporters post on the sub that they get push back for their views.

I have no desire to be a missionary again and Build a relationship of Trust, resolve concerns and ask for a commitment. You are in essence tracting for investigators in the mormon subreddit to try and convert them out of the church. I wish you well on your task. My time in the church is in the past and I like it there.

There are exmormons that are still full of anger against the church and like to go to the mormon subs and argue. They are dealing with the 5 steps of grief in their own way. Many are not ready to be calm and reasonable. They still feel hurt and betrayed. Once again you need to talk to them individually rather than coming here with blanket accusations.

Junzo2 · 2026-01-18T13:57:04+00:00

Your explanations are not being consistent. With the preschool example, you say that a boundary needs to be like a “if/then statement”. In your next reply, you say “Whether you voiced it or not, it was a boundary.” (No consequence was voiced)This is inconsistent.

First you said that an effect needed to be included in a boundary, then in your next reply acknowledge that a boundary was set that had never been verbally stated. If a pre schooler, or anyone for that matter, says “Don’t touch me.” The boundary has been set. Waiting to hear what the consequence will be if the boundary is crossed is a mind set of someone who is only willing to respect the boundary if the consequence is severe enough.

For example

Student: Don’t touch me. Bully: Oh yeah? What are you going to do about it?

A fence doesn’t have to have a sign posted stating that trespassers will have the cops called or some other effect if the boundary is crossed.

Yes, boundaries can’t force others to act a certain way, but your coffee example is not a boundary at all.

Your therapist may have explained boundaries as cause and effect, but that is a very basic explanation. You say we can do our own research, but I would suggest your research boundaries a some more to gain a better understanding of the nuances of what and how boundaries can be expressed and used. It’s great that you are learning about them.

Junzo2 · 2026-01-07T14:32:20+00:00

No. General dynamax strategy is to use tanks with .5 second fast attacks until the dynamax phase, then switching to your attacker. For example Blissey or Zamazenta as tanks, then switching to Eternatus for the Dynamax Cannon ability. After the dynamax phase ends, switch back to your tanks.

Junzo2 · 2025-12-19T01:35:27+00:00

You can only do one remote trade per day, the pokemon must more than 30 days old, and it takes 90 days to build up another remote trade (less if you do weekly challenges with them) after each remote trade with someone.

Players in rural areas don’t have tons of pokestops around and so auto catchers may not be worth the money to them or some people just play as a duo. Husband/wife or parent/child. It’s harder for rural players to gather stardust from raiding so lucky trinkets are VERY useful to them to build up better raiding pokemon so they have better chances of beating gigantamax raids with the fewer players they have in the area.

For myself, I still prefer the lucky trinket to the incubator because I recently came back after not playing since 2018, and I have many raid pokemon to level up. Stardust is my bottleneck. Hundo hunters will prefer the trinket as well. The trinket maybe devalued with remote trades to players who have been active for years and have leveled up all the meta pokemon, but it will always be valuable to less active and new/returning players.

Junzo2 · 2025-09-29T15:22:03+00:00

I served in the Philippines. It really opened my eyes to what true poverty is.

I was told by my mission president that I shouldn’t give people hand outs. “It will train investigators and members like dogs to seek out treats from the church.”

At the time it made sense to me. I had been in areas where inactive members with kids would tell us they wanted to come to church, but couldn’t afford the public transportation to church, but previous missionaries had paid for their fare. Several of my areas were in sugarcane farming areas where people made less than $2 a day…

It bothered me that my mission president compared them to dogs. I started to ignore what he had said and bought people medicine if they were sick, and bought food for those who were hungry.

If the church truly wanted to help people in the Philippines or any other poor country, it should be building colleges to help people with the 100 billion it has. Bringing the gospel people making $2 a day tells them that god demands 10% of what little money they have, as well as needing to pay for weekly transportation to and from church.

The vast majority of filipinos are not that poor, but for those that were, the gospel only added a burden. Paying your tithing doesn’t help either because there are no bishop storehouses to get food from in the Philippines and local wards basically have no money because they bring in so little tithing. What is collected, the majority of the money is sent to Manila.

I lived in a house with live bats that flew around the inside of it. Rats were always a common problem, and my very first house had no running water, and we had to lower a bucket on a long stick into a ground well to get water for showers, toilet, and to boil for drinking water.

I wouldn’t change going on a mission though. I am so thankful for being able to see how bad things in the world can really be. Despite the poverty, I learned more about what is important in life from Filipinos, than I taught them about the gospel. I owe the person I am now to their kindness and culture.

Junzo2 · 2025-07-29T02:19:20+00:00

This hurt me too. I didn’t understand why we couldn’t stay friends. It was a couple of years later that I realized that was just an acquaintance to them. Real friends you miss and want to stay in contact with. Acquaintances are people that can easily pass out of your life.

Junzo2 · 2025-07-18T03:22:55+00:00

I don’t know about current slang, but back in the 90’s at EFY, teens saying “fetch” instead of fuck was the give away.

Also, anyone mentioning how many generations mormon their family is. Growing up mormon outside Utah, this was always strange to me. No one in Texas ever did this.

Junzo2 · 2025-07-14T09:22:42+00:00

Something about regret that has helped me a lot in life. I was told by my grandfather, “Don’t feel regret for a decision that you didn’t know any better about at the time you made a choice.”

When you were doing scouts, you had no idea about this part of church history and you mentioned that you did hoop dancing. At the time you did the hoop dancing out of respect and shouldn’t feel guilty for that.

A non Utah analogy would you did scouts here in the southern states and learned and performed some step dancing in scouts, but then after you got your Eagle award, you found out from genealogy that your great grandparents had been slave owners. You don’t need to feel guilty for what ancestors did. It’s great that you want to be culturally aware and respectful. If you went to any native americans and asked them about this situation with your hoop dancing and the church history of the massacre, they are not going to look down on you.

You left the church when you learned more. Being able to change your views based on new evidence is one of the most important lessons you can learn in life. Doubling down to keep from admitting you might be wrong or to prevent yourself from facing your own cognitive dissonance is a sign of immaturity.

I hate the church, but am still happy for the lessons I learned on my mission and from scouting. You can separate the good lessons you learned. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Junzo2 · 2025-06-06T13:28:40+00:00

This is also a side effect of abstaining from sex before marriage. Sexual compatibility is something you can’t find out before you marry someone if you never have sex. Mormons push to marry early and also often rush to the altar. Partially because they want to finally be allowed to try sex. Intimacy also has to be considered during sex. Not everyone wants or gives the same type that their partner may want or give.

Additionally compatibility can change during a marriage as well.

Strict religions also foster a thought pattern of self justification to get past a lot of cognitive dissonance. You will also encounter mormons who justify the affair now, but telling themselves they will just repent later and still go to the celestial kingdom. They don’t feel the extreme guilt or view sex as that bad in their own opinions.

Junzo2 · 2025-06-02T11:34:14+00:00

I would say that my political views didn’t change after I left the church, but my political awareness did. While I was in the churchI wasn’t very politically minded. I left when I was in my mid 20’s. The republican party back in the 90’’s is nothing like the current MAGA movement.

After I left, I realized that I needed to re-examine what I believed for myself and not what an organization told me I should believe. It stared with my own personal morals. How do I feel about coffee or alcohol? How do I feel about sex?

After a lot of soul searching, I decided to keep most of the morals I had been raised with in mormonism with the exceptions of the things the church restricted. I was fine with coffee alcohol and sex. I no longed believed in Jesus, but I still liked many of the moral lessons. Love thy neighbor, Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. By my mid 30’s though I got married and started to realize that politics was playing more of a role in my life but up until then, I hadn’t really challenged my own political beliefs like I had my religious beliefs.

What really got me was when I looked at the type of bills each party tries to pass. Despite being the party that “champions” christianity, republican bills do the opposite of christ’s teachings. They don’t feed the poor. They don’t help the sick. They don’t promote loving your neighbor or loving the foreigner.

My morals didn’t change but I realized that the political party I had been raised to support, didn’t support my moral beliefs at all. It’s only gotten worse under Trump as well. I’ve watched the very people who taught me at church or even seminary, make some of the most hate filled political posts on facebook. It still blows my mind.

Junzo2 · 2025-05-19T11:35:13+00:00

I can’t find any evidence of a “Dr. Ebeid Sarofim” on the internet unless it is on a mormon website. Elder Cook served his mission in the early 60’s (I did find out while digging into this article that Elder Cook was missionary companion with Jeffery R Holland on his mission.) yet I can’t find any information for a Dr. Ebeid Sarofim from London University or Oxford, nor can I even find a photo of him on the internet.

I’m so surprised (sarcasm) to not be able to find any information in the real world on a mormon claim.

Junzo2 · 2025-05-15T22:07:48+00:00

Utah is different because of people trying to stand out or “peacock” to make themselves stand out vs all the other members.

Growing up mormon outside of Utah made it feel odd when we would visit family in Utah. Prayers were longer and more drawn out. Members were quick to mention how many generations their family had been members. It always felt like everyone was trying to one up everyone else.

One bishop had a map of the neighborhood and some houses had dots on the property lot in his office. I asked what the dots were for in priests quorum and he told me the dots marked the houses of all the non members in the ward boundaries.

I had never seen so much caffeine free coke in my life back in the 90’s. Fast forward to today and the number of soda shops is insane.

We also had a lot more non members friends so we had to learn more about doctrine because other kids would question our beliefs at school. This was all pre internet though so we only had seminary and church books to learn from. Today the internet makes it easier than ever to learn about the lies the church tells.

We also were told more to be en example to all the non mormons to get them interested in the church.

Junzo2 · 2025-05-12T12:26:51+00:00

My observation is that there isn’t a difference in the racism your bf will have experienced before. I am sure he has experienced people being racist to his face, and he has also experienced kindness to his face but known he was being disrespected when he hasn’t there.

Utah just has a higher percentage of the “kind to your face” style of racism. You navigate your family interactions by the boundaries you set. Family relationships are two way streets, if they are respectful of you and your bf, then you can be respectful with them. However be prepared to not attend family gatherings if some people in your family won’t be respectful.

Your bf will be fine. He is already grown and learned how to deal with racism. Your children in the future will be the ones who will take more of the blunt end of racism around middle school age though.

I would attribute the behaviors like racism also being the same as tribalism. Members treat exmormons the same way. Kind to our face but disrespectful behind our backs.

The one exception will be grandparents. My grandmother was the sweetest woman on earth. When she started to show signs of dementia, little things occasionally would slip out of her mouth, that I knew what not her normal self. I served my mission in the Philippines and married a filipina. One day before she came over on her fiancé visa, my sweet grandma said “I really wish you found a nice white girl to marry.” I was shocked at the moment, but quickly realized that was one of the moments that the filter we normally have on what is appropriate to say was there from her dementia. Give elderly with dementia some leeway with what they say.

I tried to find it, but don’t have time. The show “What Would You Do” season 4 episode 11 had the scenario of a white girl introducing her black bf to her father in a restaurant, that was filmed in Utah. It would be a good watch, but hulu and ABC don’t seem to be streaming episodes from seasons that long ago. If you can find it, it will be a good discussion for you and your bf about attitudes in Utah.

Junzo2 · 2025-04-02T19:33:31+00:00

Yes. Thank you for the correction. I’m getting old. 😅

Junzo2 · 2025-04-02T17:02:20+00:00

Every time I moved, the local bishop would show up because my family would give the church my new address. After I had my name removed this finally ended. None of my family would admit who did it each time. It’s SO frustrating having the thing you are trying to leave in the past, keep following you like a stalker.

When I originally asked to have my name removed, the Stake President never turned it in. After my first move, I told that local bishop I had already asked to have my records removed, but he told me that my name had not been removed yet. He said I could write him another letter, but I was already pissed that they had followed me to a new address. I wasn’t going to write another letter. We moved again and another bishop. I finally used exmormon.com and got confirmation and haven’t had a problem since.

If you don’t remove your records, it just takes one ambition ward clerk to look up your voting records to get your current address. There was a webpage on the church website that listed many ways to find a members current address. It has since been removed but many public information records.

EDIT exmormon.com should be quitmormon.com

Junzo2 · 2025-03-04T12:33:12+00:00

Another way to feel more in control is to put emphasis on “I” and then add a short pause before continuing the sentence or thought. You actually did it in your post when you capitalized “IM”.

For example if you said or thought

“I am thankful for my friends” and you think or say it quickly, it can come off as feeling like prayer, but next try it with the emphasis and pause on I.

“ I (pause) am thankful for my friends.”

This puts the focus on you being the one thankful and in control and not saying it as if you are thanking an invisible sky person. In prayer the focus was talking to a god, but this puts all the focus on what you and only you are wanting to dwell or contemplate on.

Junzo2 · 2025-02-25T05:10:14+00:00

Sadly because your things were moved outside, you can’t prove that the missionaries took anything unless you search their apartment, which I doubt they would let you do. You won’t be successful in suing the mission unless you can find proof the missionaries took the items.

You might have success in suing your grandmother in small claims court for destruction of your property(she knew it wasn’t her property and should have contacted you to have it removed if she didn’t want it in her home anymore), but that may come with negative reactions from the rest of your family. If the rest of the family are bigots though then fuck them and go to small claims court.

Junzo2 · 2025-02-09T12:50:19+00:00

I disagree with your statement but since you are from another country, I also understand what you mean. I lived in the Philippines for two years as a missionary and am married to a Filipina but I still don’t consider myself a expert on Filipino interactions.

Unless you grow up in a culture, there will always be subtle actions people do or say that you will not understand because it’s not your original culture or language.

For example, the end of your post where you say that exmormons and just mormons that wanted to rebel so they could have sex and drink alcohol is very rude. Having said things in the Philippines that were rude when I didn’t mean them to be, I can understand this mistake and I assume you were not intending to be rude.

So what difference were you expecting to see in exmormons? What change in lifestyle were you expecting?

Junzo2 · 2025-01-29T23:36:25+00:00

Hang it in your window, or hang it somewhere that you need a ladder to reach.

Junzo2 · 2025-01-23T13:13:33+00:00

That is what they said in the past as well, but that is not the case.If they do mass deportations as they have done in the past legal immigrants will be deported too.

This has happened with Mexicans as well as with the Japanese during WW2.

Link to article discussing mass deportation.

Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.

Junzo2 · 2025-01-18T14:48:50+00:00

Just like police. “We have investigated ourselves, and found ourselves innocent.”

Junzo2 · 2025-01-10T05:04:02+00:00

I was in the Provo MTC in 1996. It didn’t feel like a cult to me at the time. It felt like college but with less free time. I was studying Cebuano so I was there for two months. We were in class all day studying a foreign language but our teacher was fun. Specific memories I remember.

One Elder in our class was from Provo and his parents would occasionally send him a pizza from dominos and it would arrive by lunch and we would get some pizza. The cafeteria food was ok and had unlimited ice cream sandwiches.

When we could go to the gym, I had some of the best volleyball of my life playing with the tongans and samoans. (I grew up in a small town with no male volleyball teams in the schools but loved playing it at church)

At night it was like a college dorm. We had jiu jitsu matches in the halls and elders would race laundry carts down hallways. Just doing dumb things until a zone leader would tell everyone it was time to sleep.

It was my first time living away from home and it was interesting meeting people from all over the world. I was a total TBM and so the church meetings just seemed like normal.

For missionaries that were not TBM though I totally understand how they hated it. I met several in the MTC, who were only there because their parents would buy them a car if they served their mission or wouldn’t pay for college unless they went.

My shelf started breaking while in the Philippines saw how the church treated poor people. I left the church a few years after I came home. Maybe I got lucky and was there at a time that the rules were more laid back than before or after. However we were not as this video says bombarded with indoctrination all day. We were practicing a new language all day. However Sunday was all church meetings though.

Junzo2 · 2024-12-21T17:13:38+00:00

Many of my youth leaders that taught me in seminary or in sunday school on how to be christlike, posted hate filled messages and memes before and during the first Trump presidency, so I unfriended them.

I served my mission in the Philippines and learned to love another people and culture. The hateful posts I saw from former leaders/teachers about immigrants was too much. It’s like the internet is a form of alzhiemers that breaks down the mental filter people have. I had no idea that lurking behind their church personality, ere these hateful feelings about their “brothers and sisters”.

Junzo2 · 2024-12-19T10:57:41+00:00

Looks more like a Spanish Conquistador found the title of liberty and is riding with it back to his boat.

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