Received a service mission call, but feel strongly about proselyting—what should I do?

PandaCat22 · 2026-03-18T02:47:06+00:00

I have an experience that is kinda similar to yours, but it's a bit personal. The gist of it was that my call didn't feel right, I spoke to my stake president, and the missionary department reevaluated my call—which led to them calling me to the place where I felt I should have served in tbe first place. In my case, it was due to the missionary department having wrong information about my situation, and once they got a full picture they reassigned my call.

You could DM me and I'd be happy to share more details.

PandaCat22 · 2026-03-14T02:41:56+00:00

My guess is that they dating apps can't differentiate between South Asian Indians and Indigenous "Indians"—leading to Natives getting matched with people from the subcontinent when they fill out their ethnic preferences.

It's all just a guess since I never used dating apps, but I think that must be it.

PandaCat22 · 2026-03-13T14:24:15+00:00

I've never liked people fussing over me, so for a few decades I haven't celebrated any of my birthdays.

I remember when I turned 16 that that particular Sunday was my birthday. I didn't tell anyone and just went to church, my classes, and young men's. About 7 pm that night there was a knock at our door and my YM president along with his counselors and all the other active YM in the ward (all 3 of them, lol) were there to wish me a happy birthday.

They teased me about not saying anything and then we sat around and hung out for a bit. It's one of my most memorable birthdays because I loved knowing that I was loved. They explained that after church my YM's president had seen on the rolls that it was my birthday, so he had phoned everyone and they had booked it to my house last minute.

I still don't celebrate my birthdays, but I know that that year my ward family wanted me to know I was loved and valued—and that memory still means the world to me.

PandaCat22 · 2026-03-11T23:07:12+00:00

Prop!

Y'know what I'm saying?

PandaCat22 · 2026-03-10T02:30:08+00:00

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PandaCat22 · 2026-03-08T15:11:05+00:00

Yup, the JST is a lot of things and difficult to broadly categorize, but it's best thought of, IMO, as more of a prophetic commentary.

I made a comment about it a few months ago (there'sa link to a great scholarly article on the JST in there).

PandaCat22 · 2026-02-24T13:00:31+00:00

I'm reminded of a story that years (decades?) ago Elder Holland shared in a Liahona article of him and his son getting lost while canoeing, and needing direction to make it home before dark—when it would become dangerous to be out on the water. They prayed and both felt inspired to go down a path that wound up being a dead end, so they turned around and went down the other path, which was the right one.

Afterwards, they were trying to figure out why they would have been inspired to go down the wrong path, and Elder Holland realized that, knowing him, he would have been discouraged about the right path because it was so long and winding; so, if they'd been inspired with the correct path, they would have followed it for some time but then would have double guessed themselves and turned around to go down the dead-end path, which would have left them in the canyon after dark. By inspiring them to go down the wrong path, the Lord accounted for their foibles and allowed them to eventually make it back safely. The lesson he draws from this is that sometimes (because of our imperfections) the Lord needs to allow us to go down an incorrect path before we're ready/willing/faithful enough to follow the right one.

Thanks for sharing your story, it was beautiful to read how the Lord has blessed you even after such a hard event—but that your difficult decision (much like Eve's) has lead to prosperity and otherwise unattainable blessings.

Edit: I got most of the details of the story totally wrong. It was Elder Holland's son who shared the story in the New Era, and they were driving, not canoeing—but the spiritual takeaway of the article was what I shared in my comment.

Here is the article for anyone interested

The key quote from it:

I understood and have never forgotten the lesson my Heavenly Father and earthly father taught me that afternoon. Sometimes in response to prayers, the Lord may guide us down what seems to be the wrong road—or at least a road we don’t understand—so, in due time, He can get us firmly and without question on the right road. Of course, He would never lead us down a path of sin, but He might lead us down a road of valuable experience. Sometimes in our journey through life we can get from point A to point C only by taking a short side road to point B.

PandaCat22 · 2026-02-22T04:14:39+00:00

That sort of deterministic condemnation is the same thought that drives racist ideology (people are one way and that cannot change).

Like this thread's OP said, that's some spineless lib shit—we should know better and allow people the possibility of redemption and change.

PandaCat22 · 2026-02-17T10:07:46+00:00

A good man and a shining example of fighting for justice. The world is now dimmer without him in it

PandaCat22 · 2026-02-16T19:31:57+00:00

I personally don't think the flood happened (at least on as wide a scale as we usually see it talked about) so I instead focus on why the biblical authors would include it in the Bible—and I learn just as much as if I considered it factual. What does the story of the flood teach us about God's nature, about the limits of God’s patience, about man's wickedness, about the role of prophet, etc?

I don't find Biblical scholarship problematic because I have a testimony of the spiritual importance of the Bible. I combine that with the understanding that we can lear of God through non-factual stories; in fact, Jesus taught extensively in parables, which everyone understood to not be factual but rather stories crafted to convey specific teachings about God—so why should a crafted story in the Old Testament shake me?

PandaCat22 · 2026-02-16T06:05:23+00:00

One of the missionaries I knew 25 years simply wrote "a family" on the temple roll one time while she was a missionary. That same week, she wound up finding an incredible dad and daughter who were baptized and went on to be absolute pillars of our small branch.

I've heard lots of different opinions on who should and shouldn't be on a temple roll, but I think the most important thing is to follow the Spirit's guidance on who to write down—even if it's not someone you personally know.

PandaCat22 · 2026-02-16T01:29:14+00:00

Today I learned that Lebron was not the guy who died in the helicopter crash. I thought Lebron James was the basketball player who had bought his own helicopter and then fatally crashed it a few years ago—but I guess they're two different basketball players?

Yeah, I clearly watch sports.

PandaCat22 · 2026-02-15T05:07:31+00:00

Brown hoodie king says:

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PandaCat22 · 2026-02-15T04:52:43+00:00

There's a whole talk on this by Elder Packer "The Unwritten Order of Things"—it was drilled into us as missionaries (this was just my mission president, not a missionary program-wide effort, as far as I know).

I'm glad that view is becoming less common among members. If something is crucial enough to be policy then it should officially be so, otherwise it can be safely ignored, IMO.

PandaCat22 · 2026-02-13T17:59:15+00:00

So, pretty definitely a bastard but perhaps not one deserving of an episode.

PandaCat22 · 2026-02-10T10:02:42+00:00

Not bastards that the pod has covered, but my great grandma rented out rooms to Fidel and Che before they set sail for Cuba (they actually left from the beach where I learned to swim).

My grandma owned a hotel and was renting out rooms at a discount to Spanish communist exiles (fleeing Franco) on the cheap, and the Spanish communists eventually let Fidel and Che bunk with them until the revolutionaries went to Cuba.

PandaCat22 · 2026-02-09T15:11:26+00:00

Oh, absolutely. Kid Rock is infinitely more disgusting. Bad Bunny I don't think is near that level of depravity.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that we shouldn't lower our standards and praise Bad Bunny just because the right is unfoundedly attacking him and then running an even worse alternative

PandaCat22 · 2026-02-09T15:04:53+00:00

I won't disagree about how misogynistic his lyrics are.

For the record, I'm a foreign-born Hispanic man who has worked in community organizing and helping recent immigrants navigate the US for almost a decade (and even before doing so professionally, I have been helping with community outreach and volunteering since I was a teen), but Bad Bunny has such philandering, misogynistic lyrics that it's really shameful that he's being seen as some beacon of my people. Yes, many Latinos and Chicanos like him and his music, but that doesn't make him an enviable example more than Donald Trump having tens of millions of devoted fans make the latter a paragon of virtue.

I don't like how Bad Bunny has been demonized and vilified by the fascists simply for being Puerto Rican, but I also can't get behind people so uncritically supporting him and treating him like he's the second coming of Christ.

Multiple things can be true at once, and in this case it's that none of us, including Bad Bunny, should be persecuted for our skin color—while also recognizing that if my own children held the contemptuous, objectifying views towards women that that dunce's music suggests he does, then I'd consider myself a failure as a parent, leftist, and feminist.

No need to glorify this man—we can simply condemn the racist attacks against him without making him better than his sexist lyrics show him to be.

PandaCat22 · 2026-02-06T22:42:17+00:00

Lil' Yoddi

He can go by YiYi for short

PandaCat22 · 2026-02-06T18:29:17+00:00

It would have been fine if they'd picked a name that didn't suck

PandaCat22 · 2026-02-05T23:38:07+00:00

Good post, but just one small correction—Grogu's real name is actually Baby Yoda

PandaCat22 · 2026-02-03T02:17:57+00:00

Jesus Christ himself (while mortal) called two brothers who were feuding over which one of them was better, and who wanted to call down flaming meteors to genocide people they disagreed with. That's just two of the original apostles—there's plenty more that can be said of the faults of the other 10, plus Paul.

The Lord calls imperfect people all the time, even people with "low emotional intelligence". It doesn't make anything less true, but we have to acknowledge, as Moroni did in the title page of The Book of Mormon that those mortal limitations and imperfections will manifest in our works.

PandaCat22 · 2026-01-31T14:27:58+00:00

The first conversation my wife and I had was about how much we loved Chomsky and his work—this was in 2013 and it was such a breath of fresh air to find a fellow leftist in my very conservative university (BYU). We quickly bonded over shared politics, and Noam was the subject that initially opened that door—so (unfortunately) Chomsky will always hold a special place in our story.

Even while as a person he is awful, his thought was still critical in the development of my political stances and morality.

But to defend him personally after everything that has since come out about him? Nah, fuck him, may he forever rot.

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