New Announcement from Church HQ (missionary apparel)

Hmm. :think: Interesting. Also extremely vague. Missionaries can wear blue shirts and/or no tie in specific areas determined by the area presidency and MP of that area. No mention of which areas this might apply to or why. The end of the article references previous changes to sister missionary attire, but the big difference is with sisters those changes applied to all missions. FWIW, here I have yet to see a sister missionary in pants, but we don’t actually have sisters in my ward so I mostly only see them at church where they would wear dresses. My take on this new announcement is that it will be very limited and highly subject to the whims of leadership roulette.

Side note: I have a son who served on remote islands in the south Pacific. This was a “no suit coat” mission and it was made pretty clear in the call materials that not only was a suit coat not required they didn’t want them brought there. DW was a member of the mission’s Facebook “missionary moms” group. Time and time again people would post about the coats often ending with “Missionaries wear suit coats and I don’t care what they say, my son is taking his suit(s).” It got so bad that at one point the MP chimed in and in a very pointed message made it very clear they were not to bring the coats – they are put in storage in a hot humid place for 2 years and they come out moldy – the elders are not permitted to take them to the islands with them (the were only allowed one suitcase on those small island hopper planes). The moral of the story: some people are so unwilling to depart from tradition and what they think is “right” that they won’t do it.

(What really needs to happen for the church as a whole is that some GAs start wearing non-white shirts to GC.)

Before the sister missionary dress standards were extended to all missions they also did a similar thing where it was up to the mission presidents to decide. This might similarly get extended to all missions in a year or two.

What I don’t like is how you still need white shirts or dresses for church meetings. I get there’s a cultural idea of “Sunday best”, but I really doubt God cares what color your shirt is or whether you wear pants. In my mission we had to wear suit coats to church on Sunday, which was torture in summer when the chapel air conditioning didn’t work. We would eventually just take them off or wear short-sleeves shirts underneath.

My mission turned me off of suits and ties for good. Since getting home a few years ago, I became a bit rebellious and I stopped wearing ties and occasionally go for a blue shirt. Maybe I’m just a trend-setter. I also did two hour church before it was cool 😆

Thanks, MM, for sharing that. I’m glad to see the leadership is starting to become more lenient in this way, even if it be happening a bit slow. I agree with Nibbler said: Progress is progress.

Just wish they’d apologize for their non-lenient ways in the past; being told that it’s a sin, giving into temptation from satan or not being respectful to your priesthood when you Skype for longer than 45 minutes on Christmas with your family, removing your coat because it’s 100 degrees and the AC isn’t working, etc. If those were opinions of men, then they need to stop sharing them. If not, then God changed his mind big time as missionaries can now Skype weekly with their family.

Hi All.

FWIW, I know a guy who was an LDS missionary in the jungles of Central America in the early 1970’s (50 years ago). Their standard attire was a white short-sleeved shirt and jeans. No tie.

I was in a no suit coat mission but we had to have them for the MTC and the plane rides. We lugged our unused suit coat from town to town during transfers.

I was in Hawaii 40 years ago. We wore suit coats for church and a couple of similar occasions. The one oddity when I arrived there was that we were only allowed to wear dark, solid color ties. No stripes and certainly like the “aloha” ties that were available. The next mission president loosened up that rule, though.

I remember hearing of missions in… Tonga? where missionaries could were lava-lavas, and that was decades ago.

We had missionaries arrive from Tonga occasionally with their white shirts, ties, flip-flops, and lava-lavas. I had one, really just a couple of yards from a bolt of cloth, that I’d wear around home like a robe. IIRC they’d serve a three year mission, half in Tonga and half in Hawaii or elsewhere.