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Yeah, I agree that this is leadership roulette. I never needed healthcare for myself on my mission, but I did have a companion who needed to get surgery. He was having a lot of pain in one of his legs and talked with the mission president about it. The MP told him to have a doctor take a look at it, and they found a growth inside of his femur. He had to have surgery which required a two week hospital stay, about a month on crutches, and then he had to spend the rest of his mission in areas where a car was available (only our ZLs had cars). For a while, they were considering sending him home, but he convinced the MP to let him stay. And, his father had recently been laid off, so he was worried about how they were going to pay for it, but the church ended up paying for everything. I’m sure it could have gone very differently with a different MP. Going to a website that focuses on missionary health issues is going to find the outliers. It certainly isn’t the majority, but the outliers do exist, and they deserve to be listened to. We can learn a lot from them. Rather than looking at this article as someone who is trying to shame the church, and yes, I believe that the author’s underlying goal, we can take the article and look for truth in it. It is easy to get defensive. That doesn’t help missionaries in the future. We do have missionaries whose health issues are not met. That shouldn’t exist. Ever. If we are so concerned about malingers in the mission field, maybe we need to change our culture of who goes on a mission. Increased quantity of missionaries does not mean increased quality of missionary work.
My SIL should have spoken up and let his leaders know that his collarbone issue wasn’t resolved. He didn’t know how to do that. Maturity, cultural background, trust, and social connectedness were all players in that. He resented the MP wife not caring enough to follow up with him. That was his perception. She was the “mother figure” and he hadn’t reached a point in his maturity to see his health needs as his own. He could have and should have let her know there was still a problem.
My BIL who was unconscious for two days was failed by his companion — not the system. That is a maturity issue.
My brother in Perth with the ulcers .. That was many years ago. That entire mission has a mess at that time. I hadn’t believed my brother when he talked about his mission. The ulcers were just a side note. I didn’t believe it was possible that a mission could have so many problems. It wasn’t until I heard it from multiple people that I could wrap my head around the thought that an LDS mission could be run so poorly, inadequately, and unrighteously.
If we can take this article and use it as a tool, maybe we can shine a little more light into some of the darker areas and make sure everything on The Good Ship Zion is up to appropriate standard.
By validating the feelings of these missionaries on this site who felt so uncared for, maybe we can start a dialogue that brings them into the fold. They feel disenfranchised. They are the 1 out of 99. Instead of stating their health issues aren’t the norm, aren’t significant, or do not matter, let’s work on taking care of them. Let’s look at where they were wronged, and see if we can make it right.
amateurparent wrote:We do have missionaries whose health issues are not met. That shouldn’t exist. Ever. If we are so concerned about malingers…
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By validating the feelings of these missionaries on this site who felt so uncared for, maybe we can start a dialogue that brings them into the fold. They feel disenfranchised…
I wondered about lawsuits as I read these comments. I think it’s in the best interests of the church to take care of its missionaries. A few angry parents suing the church could more than make up for any money saved by being cheap about healthcare.
I tend to think that most missions try to take care of their missionaries healthcare needs. When my wife was a missionary she got hit by a car and spent time in an expensive, private (non-US) hospital and was treated very well. This may be offset, however, given that 18 and 19 year old men and women are generally very inexperienced. The missionaries in my ward leave a lot to be desired and I could see either of them trying to tough out something that should be checked by a doctor or being afraid to ask for help.
On a related side note, I did read that statistically those on a mission die at a much smaller % than their non-missionary counterparts of the same ages. Makes sense given some of their peers last words are, “Hold my beer and watch this.” I think it says more to not doing stupid stuff that young adults with less than fully formed prefrontal cortex’s general do. I had an apostle come to my mission and his words of advice were, “don’t do anything stupid.” The buzz afterwards was, “what missionary somewhere did something really stupid?” I have been thinking about this for a few days. Life is full of messy decisions. If these young people were home then the healthcare decisions would be made by themselves, their parents, and the Dr. with input from what will and will not be covered by the insurance company. This is not a perfect system and bad decisions do get made – sometimes resulting in suffering, death, and lawsuits.
If these same people are on missions the healthcare decisions are still messy. Now the decisions are being made by themselves, the mission authorities, and the Dr. This too is not a perfect system and bad decisions do get made.
In general, I really like the thoughts of AP.
amateurparent wrote:If we can take this article and use it as a tool, maybe we can shine a little more light into some of the darker areas and make sure everything on The Good Ship Zion is up to appropriate standard.
I would love to see some of the best healthcare practices from certain missions expended worldwide – while still giving each MP authority and leeway to make adjustments for the needs of his particular area.
Just saw another follow up. Missionary health horror stories were solicited exclusively from the exmormon subreddit. That’s some lazy journalism right there. http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2015/10/slick-and-far-from-truth ” class=”bbcode_url”> http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2015/10/slick-and-far-from-truth lepidolite wrote:Just saw another follow up. Missionary health horror stories were solicited exclusively from the exmormon subreddit. That’s some lazy journalism right there.
http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2015/10/slick-and-far-from-truth ” class=”bbcode_url”> http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2015/10/slick-and-far-from-truth Agreed, and it does call into question the validity of the claims – although I still don’t doubt there is some truth to them. I reread the article a few days ago and did take note that the majority of the cases happened long ago.
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