Will you serve a Senior Mission for the LDS Church?

[thesaint258]

I know a guy who just spent over $17k on a dog and training. You'd have to pay me at least that much to be willing to take on a dog. No interest at all. Thankfully, my wife is of the same mindset on pets.

My wife thinks she should have given more weight to my anti-dog stance when she was deciding on whether or not to marry me. I just tell her that she knew what I was when she picked me up.

[Copelius]

My wife made me promise to take her on a mission when I proposed. I intend to fulfill that promise but the mission will likely be one in which we are based in our own home seeing as I cannot see retiring ever based on my current financial situation.

[SteelBlue]

Not a chance.

[wuapinmon]

Wasn't it your mission where the pres wouldn't let you take the plastic wrapping off of the beds too, so you slept in a puddle of your own sweat?

Yes, but only on the newer beds during the 2nd president. I only had to endure that for about 9 months.

[Walter Sobchak]

Didn't you just hang out at the mall every day on your first mission?

No malls in 台灣 dude. We played a lot of ping pong though, nearly every day.

I don't get the senior mission hate. Barring any complications with health, it seems like a slam dunk. Gonna miss your future grandkids? Then time your mish to serve when the little tykes are shitting all over themselves. When you get back you can take them fishing and to BYU football games.

[Northwestcoug]

A buddy of mine had Ed Pinegar as his president in London. Still talks about him and can do a pretty good impression. I know because EJP was my MTC president.

I never had an apartment inspection

"I love you I love you I love you!!!!"

[Pelado]

The thought of wuap huffing an empty Dr. Pepper can is pretty funny.

I did not read "huffing" correctly the first time through. At first I thought it funny, but then realized that could be very painful.

[hostile]

Wow. You all had some weird missions. I count myself lucky to have fallen among normal mission presidents. Ed J Pinegar and Blaine P Jensen were both pretty awesome. I suppose that has influenced my desire to go back and serve another one. Senior couples do have quite a bit of say in where they go. I'd like to go back to England. Of course since I'll be retired military, they'll probably ask me to go to a military base somewhere since I'll have unfettered access to the base.

A buddy of mine had Ed Pinegar as his president in London. Still talks about him and can do a pretty good impression. I know because EJP was my MTC president.

I never had an apartment inspection

[Bo Diddley]

Wow. You all had some weird missions. I count myself lucky to have fallen among normal mission presidents. Ed J Pinegar and Blaine P Jensen were both pretty awesome. I suppose that has influenced my desire to go back and serve another one. Senior couples do have quite a bit of say in where they go. I'd like to go back to England. Of course since I'll be retired military, they'll probably ask me to go to a military base somewhere since I'll have unfettered access to the base.

[Joe Public]

I remember a directive we had several years ago to pull a list from the ward's membership data that listed couples over a certain age that were potential candidates for senior missionary service. The directive was basically to get some of them to go out. The church put out some materials that were geared to guilt persuade these couples that it was better to show your grandkids that you're a hard-core LDSer than to actually spend a couple of years around your grandkids. [If you can't tell, I wasn't much for that angle.]

Anyway, as part of that, we received flyers from SLC that we posted in the meetinghouse that listed current opportunities. It looks like it's available online now as well:

https://www.lds.org/bc/content/ldsor...s.pdf?lang=eng

Is rather pay to live abroad and be able to do whatever I want instead of having to check up on missionary apartments or teach business classes. Chances are MJ will want to serve one so I'll tag along but I'll be the dead weight companion that just wants to eat out and see tourist sites.

To be clear, the couples pay to go on a mission as well. The flyer linked above shows estimated monthly costs. Places like Panama are around $1,700/month; a place like London is going to be around $4,000/month.

[Uncle Ted]

Jesus, no wonder you dudes don't want to go on another mission... which is an easy 'yes' for me.

Didn't you just hang out at the mall every day on your first mission?

[Uncle Ted]

Yes, apartment inspections are a real thing. I wrote about it the other day. The MPW took all my Beatles cassettes and told me to throw away my empty Dr. Pepper can that I used to smell when I would get homesick. She also told us that we had to make our beds every single day. Nevermind that I just had a simple sheet on top of my inch-thick mattress in a place where it was 95F with 95% humidity all day every day, she wanted blankets and bedspreads put on. Never happened.

The thought of wuap huffing an empty Dr. Pepper can is pretty funny.

[Northwestcoug]

Silly caninophobes. I can treat my dog like crap and she still loves me. She doesn't even remember the nights I've forgotten her outside. Best friend evah!

[Pelado]

How much do we have to know about polygamy?

Wait - are these polygamy missions?

In my first mission the apartment inspections were serious stuff. You had to leave the apartment for at least 45 minutes to allow for inspection, then you would return to an apartment filled with passive aggressive sticky notes placed all over your apartment. "Is the floor an appropriate place for the garment of the priesthood?" "Would Jesus leave dishes in the sink?" were a couple of good ones I remember but my all time favorite was "Thr Lord loves a clean toilet!". I really wish I'd have kept some of these.

How often was Jesus cleaning toilets?

I still have the occasional nightmare about getting called to serve another mission, and I still prefer the mission option. My wife hasn't pushed incredibly hard to get a dog yet because she's incredibly busy and she knows that for me to even consider it, she'd have to agree to feed, water, and clean up after the dog. (Yes, I know that will probably last two days.) In a moment of weakness I tried to find a dog that would be good in cold weather, but not too big. I thought a shiba inu might be a possibility until I did some research and saw that those puppies sell for around $2,000 a piece. Moment of weakness over.

I know a guy who just spent over $17k on a dog and training. You'd have to pay me at least that much to be willing to take on a dog. No interest at all. Thankfully, my wife is of the same mindset on pets.

[imanihonjin]

retired couple missions that involve pros are a huge joke and basically a long vacation. Think back to when you were on your mission as a youth....you didn't take the senior couples seriously, their language skills were usually awful, and you resented them to some degree because they didn't work very hard and didn't have to. You sure as hell didn't entrust them with serious investigators as they fumbled around trying to even manage to read a scripture in a foreign language.

so if the question is "do you want to go on a really long vacation with your spouse when you retire," I would say that I'm open to it!

Don't forget that it is a tax deductible really long vacation with your spouse.