I saw the rules as guidelines that should be kept unless there was a good reason not to. "Because I felt like it" was not a good reason.
That said, some of the missionary leadership (APs, ZLs) thought I was a rebel.
In my mission in the Philippines, you were expected to be on the streets working at 6:30 a.m., and then come in for breakfast at 9:30 a.m. One morning, we returned to our apartment about 15 minutes early to find one of our ZLs and one of the APs waiting to go on splits with us (unannounced). The AP chewed us out for coming in early. He insisted that a good missionary leaves at 6:30, not 6:35, and comes in for breakfast at 9:30, not 9:25, not 9:35. My companion and I let him know we thought he was an idiot, that the most important thing in that regard was to put in a full day's work, and the schedule needed to be flexible to the situation. We also pointed out that by leaving the apartment at 5:45 a.m. to teach seminary, we'd already broken the rule, so maybe we wouldn't do that anymore.
About 6 months later, my companion got sick one Monday evening (Mondays were p-days) with a very swollen neck. Our landlord was a doctor and suspected it might be mumps, and he advised us to go into Tacloban to a certain hospital to have him looked at. But Tacloban was not in our zone. That fact didn't seem very important to me, so Tuesday morning, we went to the hospital in Tacloban. As we left the hospital, we thought we'd take advantage of the situation and buy some ice cream (which was hard to find in the Philippines) at the shop right across from the hospital. As we come out of the shop, who should we run into but the ZLs of the Tacloban zone.
They railed on us pretty good and reported us to the MP. In my next weekly letter to the MP, I wrote a rambling tirade about pharisees and saducees. At the time, communications in the Philippines were mostly pretty primitive. We had no phone in our apartment, there was no telegram office in our town. To truly keep the rules in the situation was pretty much impossible. To contact our ZLs, we would either have to take a 4 hr bus ride to their apartment, or taken a bus to the nearest town and send them a telegram and then wait for a reply - either of which would have broken the rule about leaving our area without ZLs permission. Or we could have kept the rules and gone to the small, dirty hospital with poorly trained personnel in our little town. (The Tacloban hospital had a large staff of American- and Australian-trained doctors, and much better equipment.) I asked the MP in my letter what I should've done.
Even after I tried to explain all this to the Tacloban ZLs (and believe me, you couldn't miss my comp's swollen neck), they still gave me grief. On the other hand, my mission president's next communication was simply "you did right, thanks for all you do, and keep up the good work".
That said, some of the missionary leadership (APs, ZLs) thought I was a rebel.
In my mission in the Philippines, you were expected to be on the streets working at 6:30 a.m., and then come in for breakfast at 9:30 a.m. One morning, we returned to our apartment about 15 minutes early to find one of our ZLs and one of the APs waiting to go on splits with us (unannounced). The AP chewed us out for coming in early. He insisted that a good missionary leaves at 6:30, not 6:35, and comes in for breakfast at 9:30, not 9:25, not 9:35. My companion and I let him know we thought he was an idiot, that the most important thing in that regard was to put in a full day's work, and the schedule needed to be flexible to the situation. We also pointed out that by leaving the apartment at 5:45 a.m. to teach seminary, we'd already broken the rule, so maybe we wouldn't do that anymore.
About 6 months later, my companion got sick one Monday evening (Mondays were p-days) with a very swollen neck. Our landlord was a doctor and suspected it might be mumps, and he advised us to go into Tacloban to a certain hospital to have him looked at. But Tacloban was not in our zone. That fact didn't seem very important to me, so Tuesday morning, we went to the hospital in Tacloban. As we left the hospital, we thought we'd take advantage of the situation and buy some ice cream (which was hard to find in the Philippines) at the shop right across from the hospital. As we come out of the shop, who should we run into but the ZLs of the Tacloban zone.
They railed on us pretty good and reported us to the MP. In my next weekly letter to the MP, I wrote a rambling tirade about pharisees and saducees. At the time, communications in the Philippines were mostly pretty primitive. We had no phone in our apartment, there was no telegram office in our town. To truly keep the rules in the situation was pretty much impossible. To contact our ZLs, we would either have to take a 4 hr bus ride to their apartment, or taken a bus to the nearest town and send them a telegram and then wait for a reply - either of which would have broken the rule about leaving our area without ZLs permission. Or we could have kept the rules and gone to the small, dirty hospital with poorly trained personnel in our little town. (The Tacloban hospital had a large staff of American- and Australian-trained doctors, and much better equipment.) I asked the MP in my letter what I should've done.
Even after I tried to explain all this to the Tacloban ZLs (and believe me, you couldn't miss my comp's swollen neck), they still gave me grief. On the other hand, my mission president's next communication was simply "you did right, thanks for all you do, and keep up the good work".
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