"Hold my root beer" - the Russell M. Nelson thread

[RC Vikings]

Nothing too dramatic, just worse than three hour letter writing. I was fairly lucky with companions. This guy had a bad temper, yelled a lot, tried to pick fights with people sometimes, and had a lot of run ins with the mission hierarchy. Once he threw an iron across the room into a wall after a particularly heated game of spoons.

We were companions for 3 or 4 months. Shortly afterward, he bought an electric guitar, and sent me a tape of his playing it on the roof of his apartment building, an original composition with a lot of Van Halen-style riffs and the main lyric being a shouted "Doooooowwwwwwwwwwnnnnnnn with unrighteous authority!!!!!!!!!". I wonder if I still have that tape somewhere.

I also had a companion who had legitimate mental health issues. Shortly after we parted ways, he convinced a few sisters that they were possessed and he needed to perform exorcisms. I happened to be in the mission home one day when one of these sisters was thrashing around like Linda Blair on a bed in a guest room. The MP wasn't around, and we were trying to decide at what point we should take her to the hospital. We finally ended up bundling everyone in a mission van and heading over, where the staff treated us like some evil cult who had done something terrible to this poor girl (she was native Chinese, but in our defense, my ex-companion, who was the driver of the whole thing, was as well). Anyway, he didn't make it into the bottom two because while I was with him, he was merely eccentric rather than full on nuts.

Have you ever checked on FB to see what ever became of these two. I had one wild Maori comp and I looked him up on FB about six months ago, I pretty sure he would sneak off to smoke pot with some of the Indian kids and he looks like he is still smoking today. Nice guy just didn't want to keep any of the rules.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Due to my recent calling, I get weekly emails from a ton of current missionaries. Lots of excitement for the new phone call rule, but most of them are saying that they planning to phone home about once per month going forward. I am sure they will settle into some kind of equilibrium. Will be interesting to see how this plays out.

[hostile]

Due to my recent calling, I get weekly emails from a ton of current missionaries. Lots of excitement for the new phone call rule, but most of them are saying that they planning to phone home about once per month going forward. I am sure they will settle into some kind of equilibrium. Will be interesting to see how this plays out.

This past summer I spent 3 weeks in Peru with HEFY, a humanitarian organization that provides service opportunities for youth around the world. Although not directly affiliated with the church it was founded by and is overseen and managed by returned missionaries. One of their goals is to try and provide a “digital detox” for the kids and give them an idea of what mission-life is like. Part of that included no phone calls to parents.

We had one kid who really struggled with not being able to talk with his mom almost daily. Great kid but he would get totally overcome with anxiety about not having the ability to talk with her. He had graduated from HS and was up front with the fact that he wasn’t planning on serving a mission because of this. I wonder if the new policy will make serving easier for YM/YW with those types of issues.

[myboynoah]

This past summer I spent 3 weeks in Peru with HEFY, a humanitarian organization that provides service opportunities for youth around the world. Although not directly affiliated with the church it was founded by and is overseen and managed by returned missionaries. One of their goals is to try and provide a “digital detox” for the kids and give them an idea of what mission-life is like. Part of that included no phone calls to parents.

We had one kid who really struggled with not being able to talk with his mom almost daily. Great kid but he would get totally overcome with anxiety about not having the ability to talk with her. He had graduated from HS and was up front with the fact that he wasn’t planning on serving a mission because of this. I wonder if the new policy will make serving easier for YM/YW with those types of issues.

I gotta think that if a kid is having anxiety over not being able to talk to his mom on a daily basis, there are other factors that would make going a mission a mistake.

[hostile]

I gotta think that if a kid is having anxiety over not being able to talk to his mom on a daily basis, there are other factors that would make going a mission a mistake.

I agree. And I think this kid is an extreme example. But I would bet there are some who have less-severe symptoms that might benefit.

[Bo Diddley]

This change drew much more discussion than I initially thought it would.

I wonder how often I would have wanted to call home. It was probably too expensive to do every week, but I remember wanting to get more info on the happenings than they were sending in letters, so an occasional call would have been nice.

Hey, sometimes when you're in the Army, whether that's the Lord's Army or the US Army, you have to go for extended periods of time without talking to family. But now I'd talk to my family weekly if that was always possible. Maybe I've become a snowflake too.

[myboynoah]

I agree. And I think this kid is an extreme example. But I would bet there are some who have less-severe symptoms that might benefit.

Technology has changed this area so dramatically that this makes sense to me. mrs. myboynoah has daily contact with our daughters and her sisters because she can and wants to do so. I think it makes life better. Our boys are less talkative, but she reaches out to them in some form almost daily.

But there is this old-school part of me that looks at youngsters these days as weak; that part likes/supports a dramatic cutting of the cord. Make 'em grow some hair on their chests. But my experience was based on landline telephone technology. That's likely a much more dramatic ask for young people these days.

So when is The Prophet going to remove our LDS fixation on facial hair and make big changes to the Honor Code and its enforcement at the BYUs? Like you would know, so it's a rhetorical question.

[Pelado]

Technology has changed this area so dramatically that this makes sense to me. mrs. myboynoah has daily contact with our daughters and her sisters because she can and wants to do so. I think it makes life better. Our boys are less talkative, but she reaches out to them in some form almost daily.

But there is this old-school part of me that looks at youngsters these days as weak; that part likes/supports a dramatic cutting of the cord. Make 'em grow some hair on their chests. But my experience was based on landline telephone technology. That's likely a much more dramatic ask for young people these days.

So when is The Prophet going to remove our LDS fixation on facial hair and make big changes to the Honor Code and its enforcement at the BYUs? Like you would know, so it's a rhetorical question.

One area that may suffer is in the development of writing skills. What little skill I possess was no doubt aided in part by the multitude of letters I penned to my family and friends as our nearly sole avenue of communication. At my 40th birthday party, one of my friends brought letters with him that I'd written to him while we were on our respective missions. Hearing him read back my words as he struggled to keep from busting out in laughter was one of the best (and maybe only) gifts that night.

[mtnbiker]

This change drew much more discussion than I initially thought it would.

I wonder how often I would have wanted to call home. It was probably too expensive to do every week, but I remember wanting to get more info on the happenings than they were sending in letters, so an occasional call would have been nice.

Hey, sometimes when you're in the Army, whether that's the Lord's Army or the US Army, you have to go for extended periods of time without talking to family. But now I'd talk to my family weekly if that was always possible. Maybe I've become a snowflake too.

I didn't get to phone home at all during the mish; like Lebowski, it would have been crazy to try to chuck 10-yen coins in a pay phone at least one per second. The one time that I remember wanting to know what was happening at home was when my mom wrote in a letter that Mt. St. Helens had erupted. I'd never heard of it and had no idea where it was, and my mom didn't say where it was, only that they got a lot of ash from it. I had to wait a couple of weeks for my inquiry to be answered. But I wasn't all that impressed anyway, since I was living in Kagoshima at the time, and it featured an active volcano, with lots of ash all the time, right across the bay.

[Green Monstah]

This past summer I spent 3 weeks in Peru with HEFY, a humanitarian organization that provides service opportunities for youth around the world. Although not directly affiliated with the church it was founded by and is overseen and managed by returned missionaries. One of their goals is to try and provide a “digital detox” for the kids and give them an idea of what mission-life is like. Part of that included no phone calls to parents.

We had one kid who really struggled with not being able to talk with his mom almost daily. Great kid but he would get totally overcome with anxiety about not having the ability to talk with her. He had graduated from HS and was up front with the fact that he wasn’t planning on serving a mission because of this. I wonder if the new policy will make serving easier for YM/YW with those types of issues.

My daughter is going to Tonga with HEFY this summer.

[The_Tick]

My daughter is going to Tonga with HEFY this summer.

I've never even heard of this thing...but damn...I want to go to Tonga. Lol.

[Surfah]

As soon as this change was announced a sister I know in a neighboring ward called her son. I don't think she read the official release.

[hostile]

I've never even heard of this thing...but damn...I want to go to Tonga. Lol.

Easiest way for a kid to go to the location they want is for their parent to sign on as a chaperone.

[Commando]

Meh. I wasn't necessarily thirsty to call home all the time. I remember one Christmas in Guatemala I had to hitchhike all morning to get to a phone that could handle my call home. Nice to talk to the family, but honestly a PITA.

[Pelado]

My daughter is going to Tonga with HEFY this summer.

Easiest way for a kid to go to the location they want is for their parent to sign on as a chaperone.

This looks really cool. Too bad my oldest is only 14. Another couple of years before he can go. Oh well, gives me some time to save up for the travel costs - I'm not a welder, you know!