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My second oldest son got his mission call yesterday. He reports to the Brazil MTC in December, a couple weeks after his brother returns from Chile, and will serve a mission in northern Brazil. Frankly I was hoping for a stateside assignment, but I’m happy for him because he’s happy. He likes the assignment, and it’s one of the no suit missions. I’m secretly hoping for a visa delay at the moment. 
Congrats. Carrying on the family tradition of serving a mission below the equator. nibbler wrote:Congrats. Carrying on the family tradition of serving a mission below the equator.
Indeed. His is very close to not being south of it, though!
I have actually been thinking about this while awaiting his call (which took only 2 weeks BTW) and may bring it up on the regular forums. It seems that the majority of missionaries from our stake are called to South America or the western US (often Spanish speaking). We have three currently serving in Las Vegas missions. Not that we haven’t had any go to Europe, but none in recent memory have gone to the South Pacific/Austraila/New Zealand and none have gone to Africa or Asia. When I left for my mission I lived in Texas. There were several in my stake who had served in New Zealand and Australia. The only other missionary from my ward out at the same time was in Japan. The son who got his call went to BYU for a year and many of his friends are from the Provo/Salt Lake metro area – and many of them were called to Asia.
I am not naive enough to believe that every single one of the hundreds of calls made each week is “inspired.” I like the recent openness about the process, actually, although I think it has to happen faster than portrayed in the examples. My question is, do you notice similar regional assignments depending on where the prospective missionary lives? Is it the lot of upstate New Yorkers to likely serve in South America and Texans likely to serve in Oceania?
Edit: I did a bit of research, and of currently serving missionaries from our stake (not counting those with calls but not yet serving) three are in South America, two in Europe, one in Asia and 12 in the US (all west except one). Perceptions can be interesting sometimes, although I will say that one of the reasons I like the high council is mission reports – and several have just returned from South America. We also have another missionary in our ward with a call, she is going to CA Spanish speaking, and a sister who just returned who was in WA ASL. We have friends in two neighboring wards with sons with calls – one to Mexico and one to Russia.
You might be on to something. Nearly all the gringos on my mission were from Utah. 
But seriously, an inordinate amount of kids in our stake end up in Utah. A few end up in Montana. We only have one or two out of many serving abroad. I chalked that up to the missionary bubble. We’re pegged on our visas. Where are we going to stick an extra 15,000 kids? Where there’s more infrastructure. At least that was my reasoning as to why we were sending nearly everyone to Utah. It was so out of control that I was thinking: if my kid were old enough I’d tell them to wait a little longer for the winds to change before submitting his papers.
:shh: Could it be a function of when the papers are submitted?
Example (made up dates): In the North America Northeast and North America Southeast area transfers occur on August 4th. Some missionaries are going home so some missionaries need to be assigned to replenish the mission. Perhaps the people that submitted their applications in the lot of applications that arrived on July 28th are more likely to be assigned a mission in one of these two areas because those missions are the ones that are flagged with the immediate needs during that time of the month.
Transfers come up on August 11th in the Asia North area. Perhaps the people that submitted their applications in the lot that arrived on August 8th are more likely to be assigned to a mission in that area.
Etc.
How does this tie back in? Say you have a stake president that sits on several applications and has an agenda item to send everything to Salt Lake on the 28th of each month. Those people are more likely to end up in a NA-NE or NA-SE mission because that’s when those missions are always considered.
Of course stuff probably doesn’t work that way in the modern age but that’s my thought.
Another possibility, the process isn’t as central as we think. Bro. MissionAssigner is in charge of assigning missionaries to a small subset of available missions and he receives applications from a small subset of all stakes. People from the same stakes end up in the same missions.
Here’s another explanation. I don’t know the one succinct word for this phenomenon so I’ll have to use lots of words again:
When someone in a SUV cuts us off in traffic we might generalize. People that drive SUVs are rude jerks. Our memory might even get selective. We can remember all the SUVs that cut us off in traffic because that’s what SUV drivers do. We either don’t notice or don’t remember all those other non SUVs that cut us off. It doesn’t have to be an SUV, it can be cars with a bumper sticker for a certain political affiliation, anything that makes someone stand out in our minds. It’s easy to remember all of those instances because they stood out. Conversely it’s easy to forget all the other cases because they didn’t stand out.
If two people in my stake ever get called to the country that I served in I’m going to start thinking that we’re a pipeline state. Even if there are 200 that didn’t get called there.
I do think you’re on to something though. I’ll have to take a poll next time I visit the wall of missionary plaques in the stake center.
I think it is pretty cool you have 2 missionaries and going to places where they get some different cultural experiences. Will they see each other before the younger goes off for 2 years?
Heber13 wrote:I think it is pretty cool you have 2 missionaries and going to places where they get some different cultural experiences.
Will they see each other before the younger goes off for 2 years?
Yes, they will. The older son returns the week before Thanksgiving and the other one leaves Dec. 9 (unless there’s a visa issue, I suppose
😈 ). I’m actually pleased they will have some time to spend together. They fought quite a bit as teens and were very competitive with each other, but both have matured. The older son has become quite progressive while on his mission (thanks in part to his president) while the younger one is pretty much black and white. I am able to say things to the older one that I would get pushback on from the younger one – but the older one might be able to say such things. The younger one wanted to leave earlier but ended up having to work through a couple things (4.0 student at BYU who didn’t realize he would be asked about porn in the interview😯 ), then the older one ended up extending one transfer (6 weeks) so we thought it very unlikely they would see each other. I was also inactive when the older one left.DarkJedi wrote:The younger one wanted to leave earlier but ended up having to work through a couple things (4.0 student at BYU who didn’t realize he would be asked about porn in the interview
😯 )
oh geez…🙄 Heber13 wrote:DarkJedi wrote:The younger one wanted to leave earlier but ended up having to work through a couple things (4.0 student at BYU who didn’t realize he would be asked about porn in the interview
😯 )
oh geez…🙄 Older son knew something was up because he expected the call to come at the beginning of summer as was planned. He didn’t want to ask and embarrass his brother, but he did eventually ask me. When I told him what the issue was he said he wasn’t asked about that ever. He also said it wasn’t an issue. The current missionary son was interviewed initially by our (now former) bishop here, his brother by his BYU bishop. I don’t doubt the BYU bishop asks everyone about porn, but it does bring some leadership roulette into the picture (with the caveat that the BYU bishop may have been inspired to ask). Had the younger son waited for his initial interview just a few more weeks (about 3 weeks, actually) until he was home he may not have been asked. The BYU bishop set a three months porn free time frame, and I have not been able to ascertain whether that is standard. Our bishop honored that time frame, but that may have been because that’s what my son told him in the interview and our bishop is very new. In the end he ended up submitting the application a couple weeks shy of three months and he was not asked the question by the SP. Were the SP to ask he planned to say that he did have an issue in the past but is now porn free without specifying a time. He also told me he did not regularly look at porn but he happened to have done so right before the interview with the bishop. I did compliment him for his honesty and courage.
Good for him to have honesty and it may bless him with confidence and good feelings. I’m not sure there is a standard, and I guess part of it is just being willing to submit and let the chips fall, but the roulette is not really fair to everyone.
In the end, he gets to go and good for him.
My daughter was guilt-tripped by a BYU Idaho bishop, who didn’t say she couldn’t go on her mission, but after talking to him and reading Miracle of Forgiveness disqualified herself as not worthy…and I was furious how this bishop failed to teach her properly to not put more pressure on herself than she needed to. She’s a perfectionist. The bishop didn’t help her at all. And she never went. Sad. But my daughter just is too hard on herself. I wish I could get her to lighten up and just go on her mission and feel good about who she is, imperfect and all.
Makes me want to tell my sons (16 and 12) to just answer short yes/no responses…but not sure how to tell them that. I’ve told my 16 yr old to not answer a question on porn but not sure how he processes it. He told me on Sunday he wants to go on a mission. So…I am hoping to prep him to make sure he stays clean to answer a question that he is clean…and not reach back in his history if he “ever” patched porn, just simply he doesn’t have a problem with it.
I realize I don’t have the same standards bishops do…so it is hard for me to see the value in some things they do. Because I disagree.
Heber wrote, Quote:Sad. But my daughter just is too hard on herself. I wish I could get her to lighten up and just go on her mission and feel good about who she is, imperfect and all.
I am going to thread jack this just a bit, when I read the above line in Heber’s comment I thought of my own daughter. She is 26, unmarried, college graduate, attending a singles ward. She too is a perfectionist, rule follower, syllabus follower – she is now pushing hard to attend the temple. She wants to go so that she can be more spiritually blessed, closer to God, etc. When she was at BYU she prayed and felt that a mission wasn’t for her, even though the majority of her chic-friends did. But now it seems like she is in a panic, as if somehow her being unendowed makes her less in God’s eyes. I don’t mind her getting the endowment, I just think her expectation of what it will do for her is so over the top, that it will not serve her well. She goes and does baptism’s nearly every week. If being the building doing baptism’s doesn’t get her closer to God, I don’t know what the endowment will get. But we use language that implies things and it twists reality. My daughter isn’t less of a person to God, but she thinks she is. In a way I feel like DJ’s son is now going to have to wrestle with that, and it makes me sad. And Heber it makes me sad for your daughter also.
The God Who Weeps only seems to apply to we outliers over here.
DJ – congratulations on your son’s opportunities. I wish all of you well. Two years is a long time apart.
mom3 wrote:My daughter isn’t less of a person to God, but she thinks she is.
Exactly.And I don’t really care if she goes on a mission or not. I just don’t want her holding it over her own head that she “wasn’t worthy to”. She could, if she would let herself.
I think this is part of her own journey. While her strict obedience helps her at BYU-Idaho, the burden she carries is perfectionism. And she will have to learn on her own to work through that. She has her own path. I’m proud of her.
I am disappointed in bishops who don’t help the younger generation with more support. But in the end, it is my daughter’s life to work through things in her environment.
Congrats to him. I used up my time writing a longer comment in another thread, but I am happy for him.
DarkJedi wrote:Frankly I was hoping for a stateside assignment, but I’m happy for him because he’s happy. He likes the assignment, and it’s one of the no suit missions.
Congrats to him and your family!
The older they get, the more it boils down to, “You’re happy? Then I’m happy.” Sure wish they could get going sooner, though. My daughter had a lonnng wait before the MTC and is kind of “feeling it” now on the other side – the being out of school for so long. All said, though, she’d still go.
Ann wrote:DarkJedi wrote:Frankly I was hoping for a stateside assignment, but I’m happy for him because he’s happy. He likes the assignment, and it’s one of the no suit missions.
Congrats to him and your family!
The older they get, the more it boils down to, “You’re happy? Then I’m happy.” Sure wish they could get going sooner, though. My daughter had a lonnng wait before the MTC and is kind of “feeling it” now on the other side – the being out of school for so long. All said, though, she’d still go.
He has expressed some concern about the long wait – it’s a full 4 months before reporting to the MTC. I’ve heard from several sources that’s probably because Brazilian visas can take a very long time. There’s actually a missionary who was in our ward who was assigned to Brazil and was sent here to await his visa which never came. He will end up serving his whole mission here. My son’s report date is Dec. 9, so he can’t do another semester at BYU because though the semester ends 9 days later. He feels like he’s losing a semester. He works at a local supermarket not because he needs the money but because he wants something to do. He also works at the golf course nearby, but they close in Sept. I have wondered how many missionaries mess up during the wait time and become ineligible – a stat we will never know.
DarkJedi wrote:My son’s report date is Dec. 9, so he can’t do another semester at BYU because though the semester ends 9 days later. He feels like he’s losing a semester.
This was exactly our daughter’s schedule. (December 12th.) Losing a semester when anticipation is strong was easy. Coming home and being two whole years (in her case) behind in school was hard. It helps her now, though, to remember all the Koreans from her mission who had mandatory military service on top of missions.
I’m curious to know what the issue is with Brazil, because visa-waiting seems so common.
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