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Here’s my rebellion story: I’ve been obsessed with the music of Gustav Mahler (classical composer) since I was 7 years old. Our mission had a rule that you could listen to classical music if it was composed before 1900 (I guess classical music after 1900 is of the devil?). Mahler died in 1911 and much of his greatest music was composed in that last decade. I rebelled by listening to it anyway! 😮😮😮 Nobody was ever smart enough to know the difference, except for maybe the Mormon God.
@@Richard.Atkinson Mahler is great! I was in a college symphony and we performed Mahler, A+ experience. Out of curiosity, did they distinguish to avoid gay composers? I love Tchaikovsky.
The most rebellious thing I did was hug my brother in the MTC (we overlapped for 8 weeks). My branch president heard about it and told me to never do it again. I thought that was ridiculous and gave my brother a hug every chance I got.
One rebellion story from my mission. I had several abusive companions, but one in particular dragged me by my hair and broke my wrist as retribution for letting slip to the elders in our district that she never got out of bed before 11 am unless it was to lock me out of the bedroom after I got up to go to the bathroom in the morning. I took off my missionary clothes and badge and drove myself to a nearby town and went to a clinic to get my wrist treated. I still had to be companions with her for a few more weeks before she finally went home. I didn’t tell anyone that I’d driven myself to a different town to get treated until I left the church last year. I didn’t want anyone to know that I’d broken a rule. Now I can’t believe that I was so brainwashed that I drove myself back to the apartment and lived with her for a few more weeks after that just because my president told me I had to stay with her until she went home.
The “no swimming” rule makes me so sad. Water is such a comfort to so many people what is the point of making one of gods most essential and beautiful creations something evil and scary ugh
There was a missionary in my ward whose mother would send him care packages every two weeks. He got American candy that was hard to find in Canada. She also sent a lot of books and magazines that were not on the five book reading list for missionaries. I remember she sent about 40 books written by anti-Mormons. Basically any book against the church. He rationalized it by saying it would make him a better missionary. He could then do a rebuttal to any born again types who wanted to rag on the church.
My friend told me that he downloaded breadtube videos (Philosophy Tube, Contrapoints, other channels like that) into a google drive folder and listened to them regularly on his mission as a way to stay sane
I know of one case in Australia where my bishop served. He told me one of the elders got the branch president's wife pregnant. So much for the arm's length rule!
My mission president banned us from ever seeing any other missionaries, took away our dvd players, banned card games, and cut our email time down to half an hour 💀 it took me most of half an hour to write to him since my Portuguese wasn’t great yet, so I barely got to talk to my family 😭
My mission rebellion moment was music related like another person here. Before my mission started in 2021, I got the fattest micro sd I could find for my bare bones mission android and loaded it up with tons of jazz, classical music, Black gospel music (they sing better than fucking anyone in Utah), and pretty light progressive rock. The catch was that I successfully hid some more extreme things in there and took the bet that no missionary would ever find it in the sea of music. These hidden treats included progressive metal as well as a single death metal album. No one ever found them and it was amazing. There were some missionaries in leadership who didn't like that I had an unsearchable stash and tried to get a mission rule to limit how many songs you could have on your phone, but it never got anywhere. Late 2022 was when they started cracking down on "google drive piracy" and made everyone delete stuff they downloaded. They thought they got me, but I owned what I took with me pre mission and never downloaded anything because I was content with what I had. Even then, I have my views on piracy that boil down to Gabe Newell's "it's a service issue" and don't blame anyone downloaded shit they couldn't access otherwise on their missions.
I was in Durban, ZA, and the mission rule breaking there was so commonplace that it made my own rule breaking seem mild. We didn't have smart phones or anything, just the small portable DVD players. They had a slot for an SD card and a USB, so if someone had one of each they could actually transfer files over using the DVD player. I had a 32g SD card and every Monday I'd spend 2 hours after emailing using TH-cam to mp3 on public internet cafe computers to get more music downloaded. The music was like currency and we would trade with other elders when guys had certain albums etc. Lots of us would burn cds and share them with eachother. We had lots of EFY nonsense and hymns etc. But under my drivers seat I had a cd holder containing everything from Fleet Foxes to Circa Survive and Saosin etc. Pretty well none of my companions cared and I corrupted numerous new elders when they'd arrive and we would just throw on Twenty One Pilots or something. They'd be confused by that, but honestly with some of the horrible things we saw and endured there, it was nice to go home and just crank sole tunes through shit ear buds and hang for a bit. Oh, and we would buy bootleg movies from markets and watch whatever we want. And play video games at anyone's house who let us. And I didn't even die from my disobedience.
This is mind-blowing to me. I remember feeling guilty because an investigator had the Grammys on low volume a small TV in the corner of the room during our visit, and I sneaked a few peeks! Your experience sounds a lot healthier.
I love the idea of an episode about mission romance stories. I fell in love with a man (I’m a man) in Taiwan on my mission and it literally was the most beautiful experience. I need to write a short story or something for posterity haha!
Here in Utah I think in the bountiful area last year a father physically assaulted his son because the son confessed he did not want to serve a mission
Corporal punishment is becoming more normal in Mormonism. I was horrified my mother was beaten & hair chopped off as a teen way back when, but I hear similar stories these days of fathers doing the same to their disobedient daughters
@@stellaarthur2739I’ve heard my mom recount horrific stories of abuse from her Mormon parents, but she is convinced that they were the best people who ever lived. They lived really far away from us, didn’t know our names, and never visited us. Now they are dead and I’m not allowed to be relieved.
My biggest act of rebellion: We had a zone activity where we got to play touch football on a black sand beach none of the tourists ever went to. When we were done, we obviously HAD to use ocean water to wash off all the black sand before getting into mission vehicles, and it wasn’t swimming if we only went in far enough to splash our legs. But at one point I crouched down so that when a wave came in, it was enough to lift my feet a half inch off the ground. - just so I could say that “technically” I’d swum in the Indian Ocean.
I used to work with an Ex Mormon guy who managed to sneak an entire PSP on his mission by convincing people it was like some kind of new fangled fancy cell phone like this was in the mid 00’s like right before the first iPhone came out and people were getting funky with cell phone designs Also traditionally the brown powdery stuff on top of a tiramisu is espresso grounds, I guess you’re eating the coffee and not drinking it so…
Yes it’s cocoa powder. The sponge cake (or lady fingers) at the bottom of tiramisu is soaked in brewed espresso. But you are still eating it! Nom nom 😋
We had a neighbor who was about our age. IF he saw us outside(either coming home or leaving home) he would lean his head on the window and yell "JEHOVAH!!!!". And after a particularly rough day he did it again and threw half a can of pepsi at us(east coast baby!). We went to his house in the dead of night and let the air out of all his tires. Kids these days will never know the sheer joy of how much mischief you could get into in the era before cameras were everywhere. We actually had a pool at the house where we rented an upstairs apartment but we wouldn't DARE swim.
So many mission stories. We always had the poverty apartments with many things wrong with them. One had no hot water - in the middle of winter. Freezing and fast showers. One was infested with rats. Another with a zillion roaches. One apartment was a dank basement of an old house. Once in bed there a spider went in my ear. My comp drove me to the hospital to get it out. The mission office called me and asked me about going to the hospital, as if it was wrong. The mission office called me and was like this bill is big. Oh well. So, pay it? I didn't care if he thought it was rude. I gave zero Fs. I didn't have money, I was a damn Mormon missionary. One companion was extremely pious. He'd sing hymns all the time, and a deeply sad tone. His social skills were awk to the point of being inept. The mission prez joked he didn't know who else to put him with. I saw the mission prez at church, stopped him in the hall, and told him to separate my comp and I, or i'm leaving. I gave him two days. He listened. (I should have left.) In one apartment, in Vermont - the tiny town nearest the pedophile child r*p*st Joseph Smith's birthplace - our bedroom in an old house was near a church bell that went off every hour, and the drunkard couple next door usually screamed at each other at night. We stayed up until midnight, then went to bed. We often went jogging around the town square at night. EVERYONE in that town with a population of 80(!) already heard TOO MUCH about Smith, and absolute ZERO interest in talking to us. There wasn't much to do, other than go for long, long, long, long, long walks. Every day. Hardly any houses around, usually very distanced from each other, and usually they were empty. My comp was going home soon and wanted to be tan. We'd go to fields and lounge in the sun. Sometimes he'd go on the roof. I didn't care. I wasn't his babysitter. I'd sit inside and read the scriptures. One comp wanted to be a body builder. The bishop of the ward's daughter married a non-member who was a body builder and he gave us tickets to a body building contest at some arena in Connecticut. We went. I'm sure it was out of our zone. Nobody in the packed audience paid attention to us. I wondered if we were breaking rules. I also didn't care. I also don't understand why anyone would want to be a body builder. Oh, on my birthday, an investigator invited us to her dorm to have birthday cake she made. Some girls from other rooms showed up in their underwear to help sing me happy birthday and get some cake. LOL. That rocked! I baptized two people on my mission. I had been warned the mission was low baptizing. I was often told by missionaries "New England people are educated." As if THAT was a problem. How dare they be educated! Oh, I had a stalker on my mission. I never met her - that I knew of. Had no idea what she looked like. She'd write me letters, and call me, telling me how attracted she was to me. I'd move to a new area, and she'd call. Once describing what I was wearing. I had no idea where she was outside as our windows could be seen from various houses and buildings. The strongest feeling I got from my mission was that it was an absolute and COMPLETE waste of time.
0:21 Hey that's me with my mouth gaping open behind both of you! I can't wait for the clayverse debrief of the trip to hear what you really thought about all of us 😇
My second companion wanted to take the training wheels off to give me experience for when I eventually became a senior companion. So he would often defer to me to be assertive when we had been in somebody's house for too long. He just wouldn't say anything even if it was getting really late or we were doing something we weren't supposed to be doing. This led to us teaching somebody and then me not be able to say no as they turn on the horror movie Legion because our lesson reminded them of it for some reason. We watched the whole thing because I was too awkward to say we needed to go. I found out after my mission that it was rated R, so that was the cherry on top. 😂
This whole video was extremely claythartic!!! I love that I never have to find out what kind of rebellion I would have done on a mission. I do remember my first R rated movie as a teenager, deliberately deciding enough was enough and I had to watch Silver Linings Playbook at 1am on my phone. No ragrets!!!!
So sorry you had to deal with a cyst on your ovary. I’ve had PCOS since I was ten and doctors would not take me seriously about the pain for over a decade. They always tried to convince me it was just period cramps and I needed to, “get used to it.” I totally related when you said that the pain was so strong that you worried that it was appendicitis ❤
My companion and I played star wars risk with a 10 year old and his fam. Lego Batman was on in the background too. It's amazing how strong I was trying to fight the urge to watch. I had lessons longer than 1 hour. A couple we taught really liked to hang with us and ask questions. I was like well beats knocking on doors in the streets of Vegas late at night. 🎉
When you told the story about the missionary who didn’t work at Halloween, I got an image of opening my door to two missionaries on Halloween night, assuming that that was their costumes, and handing them the candy bowl. I’m sure that must have happened.
Most “rebellious” thing I did on my mission was probably eat lunch at a different time than we should have or visit this lonely woman for months even though we knew she would not join the church.
On my mission I was the queen of contraband. I had multiple flash drives of music from video games (specifically Zelda), movie soundtracks, Jazz, indie music, musicals, etc. to be fair they always talked about Jesus or I would feel like they brought the “spirit” whatever that means. I was very spirit of the law, and if my companions complained I would tell them how much I could feel the spirit listening to Studio Ghibli music compared to MOTAB. I also had the CES letter, Saints, and this weird PDF of the Book of Mormon put thru different translations (modern English, gangsta, Hawaiian Pidgin, etc.) I also had the jehova witness Bible, and a couple movies on flash drives. I really was living my best life just messing around on my mission, and I never felt bad about it. My mission president would put the suicidal missionaries with me because he knew I could cheer them up. Some people need a break. We would listen to music, make cookies, volunteer at horse farms, all under the guise of “service”. I would also sing a lot. The worst thing I ever did was go over to some elders house and film silly videos there, we built a blanket fort and just goofed off. We tazed an elder as a prank. We also made funnel cake at a family’s house while watching the wedding ringer (I think it’s rated R). Hmm also I went to the Opera and I went to a favorite member family of mines graduation for their daughter, and I went to multiple birthday parties for members. The members loved me. My STLs did not😂
I had a few little rebellions. From the UK, served in NZ and some British people moved into the apartment below us (i was a missionary in the days before skyping home weekly etc and my phone calls at Christmas and mothers day were strictly 40 minutes long) we used to go round there house for dinner parties and just shoot the breeze with them way past 9pm. Would nip outside to report that we were home and give our numbers over. It was like a taste of normal life back gome for a few evenings. In the same area we were also just down the road from the local library. Got a card and took out some books on Māori culture because it was way more interesting than personal scripture study. Later in that same area but different companion, he was really struggling with his mental health one day so we just stayed home and made up our numbers in the phone call that evening. Now i come to think of it, all my rebel behaviour was in that one area. Probably because it was in the arse end of nowhere and the newrest companionship were like a 45 minutes drive away.
Apparently I've always given off snitch energy so I never had missionaries (or anyone else in my family, or my time at BYU, haha) try to entice me to do anything remotely "bad" in fear I'd report them. 😭😅🤣
My trainer gave me her pink sports bra to exercise because I didn’t have one. (You are only supposed to wear white or cream bras) I felt a bit bad, but kept it because I did really need one.
1:42 The fact that Kelly Powers from RM and the cool YW leader/aunty in Mobsters and Mormons is now on RHWSLC (Brittani) is truly giving me full circle joy.
I never served a mission was downtown Provo saw two missionaries walking towards the temple I was blasting my unapproved church music the sisters just kind of looked at me.
Regarding animal abuse, any anthropologist will tell you that it's the common pastime of children in low technology cultures. Yes, I feel bad about 19 year Olds harming frogs. That smacks me of bullies venting. I'm no authority or expert on anything however. But oddly, though we like to think of children and low tech cultures being better, animal abuse is very human.
There's a culture somewhere in South America that chinchilla is their main protein in their diet. They raise the chinchilla in the house, they just run around, no cages or anything and treat them like pets until dinner, they grab one or two and there ya go! So odd.
Super interesting to hear how young people rebelled in the Mormon church. Especially because I was a very, very naughty teenager with a pretty serious drug problem. And while I find these rebellious stories super wholesome, it also makes me really sad that you all didn’t get to actually express yourselves and just be a young person making mistakes! Obviously don’t make the mistakes I made lol, but still.
Also - Richard Dutcher is no longer associated with the church. I worked on God’s Army 2 with him, and am still in contact with people who are still in contact with him. He was definitely nuanced at the time, and released an official statement when he fully left.
I know a missionary who met and baptized a 12 year old and her entire family. Years later he went back for a visit. The girl had turned into a beautiful woman aged 20. They married and he brought her to the U.S. They have been married for 20 years now.
Fun fact- I once went to the hospital with an ovarian cyst and was misdiagnosed with appendicitis, so had an unnecessary appendectomy! Even though I told them that I have endometriosis and known cysts... I've also heard of other people with endo not catching appendicitis because it was so similar to endo pain! I guess it's similar?
My cousin's on a service mission right now, and from what I can tell he just wears his missionary tag and goes golfing. And occasionally says racist things at family dinners.
RE: the frogs… I immediately thought of the frog bit from The BOM musical! The lyrics are: “Joseph Smith, do not fuck a baby, I will get rid of your AIDS, if you fuck this frog” 😂 WTF
Hi, The 3 constants in life are death, taxes and ironically “change” itself. Facing change… we either migrate, mutate or we die. Migrate correlates to moving away from change, mutation is like adapting doctrine to accommodates change and dying in this case may be viewed similar to a spiritual death, possibly atheism, agnosticism, apathy, loss of direction or faith, purpose, etc. In lieu of change, there still appears to be many people suffering in life who could use assistance. Our choice can change to focus more directly upon the physical needs of others, we simply loose the concept of some spiritual reward beyond the simple acts of kindness. At risk is the concept that our being at the top of the food chain, possessing the ability to think and create in the world around us somehow suggests we possess a consciousness or soul, which can potentially reduce the value of our meaning.
One potential solution could be to address it mythologically. Mythology allows the student the option of rationalizing a given situation, weighing the pros vs cons with or without a dogma. For instance, a return missionary who learns the church history is not consistent with what he/she was taught has the option to continue to be obedient… obedience is a quality trait while protecting one in the fold. There also lies the choice of honor… is it more honorable to follow such changes or oppose them? It’s not a must, rather a choice. An agnostic or atheist can continue to help people in need while not getting caught up in following and any future necessary changes. Serving others is equivalent to serving God…. King Benjamin When you are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God. Book of Mormon It a matter of freewill and the level of achievement one chooses to strive for. To strive for a lesser light, is to strive for light. And though light is objective, one’s perception of light is subjective thus, in the eye and mind of the beholder.
One needs to keep in mind the story of Daedalus and Icarus who were trapped on an island. Daedalus, the father, made wings of bird feathers, leather and wax and warmed his son to follow his path, not to fly too close to the sun or the sea. Icarus disobeyed his father and soared higher in the sky. The wax melted, the wings fell if and he fell into the sea. The moral; beware your weaknesses, beware going beyond what you can endure… know yourself, holster your desires. The dens of Medusa and the Minitaur were home to the bones of many a fallen hero!
don't have names, but about a mission gen or two before mine, the West Indies mission was full of rich kids as elder so it is rumoured as being super outta control, Stories of a few elders winning surfing contests in tabago, my training companions told stories of being told "hey wait a minute one of your buddies left something behind," and they come back with a child. Would assume between 1985-1998, story goes mission pres around 96 or 98 (i think) started cleaning house and sent a bunch of elders home there was an arcade across from the mission office with a huge screen playing one of the vitua fighter games, my prez was cool in many way, but there was no argument i could make to get an hour to play on a pday
I knew of a case where the elder would visit women on three local campuses in Durham, NC. This was to teach. However the young women would either dress up for the occasion or lounge around in skimpy outfits with everything on display. He should have referred these women to sister missionaries. However him and his companion these types of women who thought the elders were cute. The guy was a senior elder and took liberties with his status. He would sneak out sometimes at night. One time he went to a party off campus where some of these hot women were. Needless to say he got into trouble and was only transferred for the transgression.
What? Tanner, You were wearing your P-day clothes underneath, ready to sin all along? I feel so dumb and dom- ed. Hey, in the land of the morning calm, far, far away from here, my Mission President flew all his missionaries to an island technically not included in any mission’s boundary. He went off grid for our mission conference. He was 3 months from being released and feeling trunky. What were they gonna do, send him home? He was a local! He had our passports. While it was an event no one could forget, it was as much to show anyone and everyone he could afford to do it, could manifest whatever he wanted, and ultimately live up to his name, Tiger Man, as it was any of his many possible motives. It was done on short notice, EARLY in the calm, morning darkness, in a jet from a domestic airport. It was an entire mission gone wild, but the ladies pearl diving from the cliffs kept their clothes on, and the statuary stone haruban as well as the turtle boats were stoically silent. That same evening after the conference, a big storm started to build, ours and all commercial jet service back to the mainland for the next morning was cancelled. There were no hydro foils available, so a vessel was procured which had room down in the iron hull to fit all of us between its metal ribs. Rough seas and 9 hours later, it was morning. 200 of us were back safe on the peninsula with our faces of different nations, all miraculously, quite white now, with nary a hint of delightsome. The good ship returning us home through the Devil’s dangerous waters, was hastily re-christened Satan’s Little Handmaiden by the elders before we scattered post haste to our respective regions. I know the church is true - ly a church slash corporation, in the name uh cheese n rice, Amen. Our whole mission went rogue!🤣🤣🤣
I served in Long Beach CA back in 2008. We had a super strict mission culture. The girls were required to wear pantyhose while they were proselytizing…you can only imagine garments + pantyhose in CA heat 🥵😵💫. I decided one day I wasn’t going to wear them and was seen as a rebellious missionary afterwards 🙀😉. I guess I cared more about my vaginal heath than gods mission commandments 🤷🏻♀️
A'ight. So when I was 13 or 14 (so '92 or '93) and definitively out of the church, a couple missionaries showed up after I got home from school and before my mom got home from work. I told them that I wasn't up for religious discussion but offered them hospitality. My mom arrived home to a couple well dressed 19 year old strangers eating pop tarts and playing SNES. An employer, privy to this story, laid into me when i was about 25 about corrupting the missionaries. Absolutely none of her business. She wasn't even LDS. She was certainly dead wrong as I was the juvenile in that story. Anyway, I'm curious what is the LDS stance on that scenario, not that I'd respect their take on it.
1. I like you guys being more playful with your call to actions. 2. Every time you talk about missions I just deeply want the opportunity to provide a safe place to breathe for these brainwashed kids. Before I would have sent them away out of hand due to my own religious trauma but now I'm really hoping to get the opportunity to let them talk in the AC.
“Mormons gone mild” is hilarious! Screw Alex Boye honestly. The whole thing with how he abandoned his family, plus the fact that he performed at a Mormon TTI facility and maybe supported it in other ways… just a big no thank you from me on him.
@@ZelphOntheShelf Oh, the Northeast. I'm from the South myself, but the Northeast has beautiful warm-water beaches, it's a cruelty they didn't let you enjoy them.
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Here’s my rebellion story: I’ve been obsessed with the music of Gustav Mahler (classical composer) since I was 7 years old. Our mission had a rule that you could listen to classical music if it was composed before 1900 (I guess classical music after 1900 is of the devil?). Mahler died in 1911 and much of his greatest music was composed in that last decade. I rebelled by listening to it anyway! 😮😮😮 Nobody was ever smart enough to know the difference, except for maybe the Mormon God.
Completely love this, obviously
@@Richard.Atkinson Mahler is great! I was in a college symphony and we performed Mahler, A+ experience. Out of curiosity, did they distinguish to avoid gay composers? I love Tchaikovsky.
@@rebeccacrow9427 Tchaikovsky died in 1893, so God was OK with that!
The cover picture of Tanner ripping off his shirt AND THERE IS ANOTHER SHIRT UNDER is peak humor, oh my god.
THERE IS ALWAYS ANOTHER SHIRT UNDER
The most rebellious thing I did was hug my brother in the MTC (we overlapped for 8 weeks). My branch president heard about it and told me to never do it again. I thought that was ridiculous and gave my brother a hug every chance I got.
Ahhhhhh
One rebellion story from my mission. I had several abusive companions, but one in particular dragged me by my hair and broke my wrist as retribution for letting slip to the elders in our district that she never got out of bed before 11 am unless it was to lock me out of the bedroom after I got up to go to the bathroom in the morning. I took off my missionary clothes and badge and drove myself to a nearby town and went to a clinic to get my wrist treated. I still had to be companions with her for a few more weeks before she finally went home. I didn’t tell anyone that I’d driven myself to a different town to get treated until I left the church last year. I didn’t want anyone to know that I’d broken a rule. Now I can’t believe that I was so brainwashed that I drove myself back to the apartment and lived with her for a few more weeks after that just because my president told me I had to stay with her until she went home.
Oh my god! Broke your wrist?! Gahhhh 🩷🩷🩷
I feel like there is a lot of missing information here
@@jeteazethere is. I didn’t want to leave a really long comment.
The “no swimming” rule makes me so sad. Water is such a comfort to so many people what is the point of making one of gods most essential and beautiful creations something evil and scary ugh
There was a missionary in my ward whose mother would send him care packages every two weeks. He got American candy that was hard to find in Canada. She also sent a lot of books and magazines that were not on the five book reading list for missionaries. I remember she sent about 40 books written by anti-Mormons. Basically any book against the church. He rationalized it by saying it would make him a better missionary. He could then do a rebuttal to any born again types who wanted to rag on the church.
My friend told me that he downloaded breadtube videos (Philosophy Tube, Contrapoints, other channels like that) into a google drive folder and listened to them regularly on his mission as a way to stay sane
Can’t fathom being cool enough for ContraPoints on a mission haha
I know of one case in Australia where my bishop served. He told me one of the elders got the branch president's wife pregnant. So much for the arm's length rule!
My mission president banned us from ever seeing any other missionaries, took away our dvd players, banned card games, and cut our email time down to half an hour 💀 it took me most of half an hour to write to him since my Portuguese wasn’t great yet, so I barely got to talk to my family 😭
My mission rebellion moment was music related like another person here. Before my mission started in 2021, I got the fattest micro sd I could find for my bare bones mission android and loaded it up with tons of jazz, classical music, Black gospel music (they sing better than fucking anyone in Utah), and pretty light progressive rock. The catch was that I successfully hid some more extreme things in there and took the bet that no missionary would ever find it in the sea of music. These hidden treats included progressive metal as well as a single death metal album. No one ever found them and it was amazing.
There were some missionaries in leadership who didn't like that I had an unsearchable stash and tried to get a mission rule to limit how many songs you could have on your phone, but it never got anywhere.
Late 2022 was when they started cracking down on "google drive piracy" and made everyone delete stuff they downloaded. They thought they got me, but I owned what I took with me pre mission and never downloaded anything because I was content with what I had.
Even then, I have my views on piracy that boil down to Gabe Newell's "it's a service issue" and don't blame anyone downloaded shit they couldn't access otherwise on their missions.
I was in Durban, ZA, and the mission rule breaking there was so commonplace that it made my own rule breaking seem mild.
We didn't have smart phones or anything, just the small portable DVD players. They had a slot for an SD card and a USB, so if someone had one of each they could actually transfer files over using the DVD player. I had a 32g SD card and every Monday I'd spend 2 hours after emailing using TH-cam to mp3 on public internet cafe computers to get more music downloaded. The music was like currency and we would trade with other elders when guys had certain albums etc.
Lots of us would burn cds and share them with eachother. We had lots of EFY nonsense and hymns etc. But under my drivers seat I had a cd holder containing everything from Fleet Foxes to Circa Survive and Saosin etc.
Pretty well none of my companions cared and I corrupted numerous new elders when they'd arrive and we would just throw on Twenty One Pilots or something. They'd be confused by that, but honestly with some of the horrible things we saw and endured there, it was nice to go home and just crank sole tunes through shit ear buds and hang for a bit.
Oh, and we would buy bootleg movies from markets and watch whatever we want. And play video games at anyone's house who let us. And I didn't even die from my disobedience.
This is mind-blowing to me. I remember feeling guilty because an investigator had the Grammys on low volume a small TV in the corner of the room during our visit, and I sneaked a few peeks! Your experience sounds a lot healthier.
I love the idea of an episode about mission romance stories. I fell in love with a man (I’m a man) in Taiwan on my mission and it literally was the most beautiful experience. I need to write a short story or something for posterity haha!
zelphontheshelf@gmail.com pretty please 😜
I’m a writer if you need help
@@krissssssss5401 I actually just finished writing it haha! I appreciate you offering though! If it is really bad I will come back for assistance 💖
No, the mission didn't make me straight, lmao. My 10-year anniversary with my husband is next April.
Here in Utah I think in the bountiful area last year a father physically assaulted his son because the son confessed he did not want to serve a mission
Holy shit
😢
Corporal punishment is becoming more normal in Mormonism.
I was horrified my mother was beaten & hair chopped off as a teen way back when, but I hear similar stories these days of fathers doing the same to their disobedient daughters
@@stellaarthur2739I’ve heard my mom recount horrific stories of abuse from her Mormon parents, but she is convinced that they were the best people who ever lived. They lived really far away from us, didn’t know our names, and never visited us. Now they are dead and I’m not allowed to be relieved.
I know parents who bribed their kids with a new car if they served a mission.
My biggest act of rebellion:
We had a zone activity where we got to play touch football on a black sand beach none of the tourists ever went to.
When we were done, we obviously HAD to use ocean water to wash off all the black sand before getting into mission vehicles, and it wasn’t swimming if we only went in far enough to splash our legs.
But at one point I crouched down so that when a wave came in, it was enough to lift my feet a half inch off the ground. - just so I could say that “technically” I’d swum in the Indian Ocean.
I used to work with an Ex Mormon guy who managed to sneak an entire PSP on his mission by convincing people it was like some kind of new fangled fancy cell phone like this was in the mid 00’s like right before the first iPhone came out and people were getting funky with cell phone designs
Also traditionally the brown powdery stuff on top of a tiramisu is espresso grounds, I guess you’re eating the coffee and not drinking it so…
In tiramasu the lady fingers are also soaked in a mixture of coffee and rum, soooo... double mormon sinning by Italian dessert
it's cocoa powder, not espresso grounds
Yes it’s cocoa powder. The sponge cake (or lady fingers) at the bottom of tiramisu is soaked in brewed espresso. But you are still eating it! Nom nom 😋
We had a neighbor who was about our age. IF he saw us outside(either coming home or leaving home) he would lean his head on the window and yell "JEHOVAH!!!!". And after a particularly rough day he did it again and threw half a can of pepsi at us(east coast baby!). We went to his house in the dead of night and let the air out of all his tires.
Kids these days will never know the sheer joy of how much mischief you could get into in the era before cameras were everywhere.
We actually had a pool at the house where we rented an upstairs apartment but we wouldn't DARE swim.
So many mission stories. We always had the poverty apartments with many things wrong with them. One had no hot water - in the middle of winter. Freezing and fast showers. One was infested with rats. Another with a zillion roaches. One apartment was a dank basement of an old house. Once in bed there a spider went in my ear. My comp drove me to the hospital to get it out. The mission office called me and asked me about going to the hospital, as if it was wrong. The mission office called me and was like this bill is big. Oh well. So, pay it? I didn't care if he thought it was rude. I gave zero Fs. I didn't have money, I was a damn Mormon missionary.
One companion was extremely pious. He'd sing hymns all the time, and a deeply sad tone. His social skills were awk to the point of being inept. The mission prez joked he didn't know who else to put him with. I saw the mission prez at church, stopped him in the hall, and told him to separate my comp and I, or i'm leaving. I gave him two days. He listened. (I should have left.)
In one apartment, in Vermont - the tiny town nearest the pedophile child r*p*st Joseph Smith's birthplace - our bedroom in an old house was near a church bell that went off every hour, and the drunkard couple next door usually screamed at each other at night. We stayed up until midnight, then went to bed. We often went jogging around the town square at night. EVERYONE in that town with a population of 80(!) already heard TOO MUCH about Smith, and absolute ZERO interest in talking to us. There wasn't much to do, other than go for long, long, long, long, long walks. Every day. Hardly any houses around, usually very distanced from each other, and usually they were empty. My comp was going home soon and wanted to be tan. We'd go to fields and lounge in the sun. Sometimes he'd go on the roof. I didn't care. I wasn't his babysitter. I'd sit inside and read the scriptures.
One comp wanted to be a body builder. The bishop of the ward's daughter married a non-member who was a body builder and he gave us tickets to a body building contest at some arena in Connecticut. We went. I'm sure it was out of our zone. Nobody in the packed audience paid attention to us. I wondered if we were breaking rules. I also didn't care. I also don't understand why anyone would want to be a body builder.
Oh, on my birthday, an investigator invited us to her dorm to have birthday cake she made. Some girls from other rooms showed up in their underwear to help sing me happy birthday and get some cake. LOL. That rocked!
I baptized two people on my mission. I had been warned the mission was low baptizing. I was often told by missionaries "New England people are educated." As if THAT was a problem. How dare they be educated!
Oh, I had a stalker on my mission. I never met her - that I knew of. Had no idea what she looked like. She'd write me letters, and call me, telling me how attracted she was to me. I'd move to a new area, and she'd call. Once describing what I was wearing. I had no idea where she was outside as our windows could be seen from various houses and buildings.
The strongest feeling I got from my mission was that it was an absolute and COMPLETE waste of time.
0:21 Hey that's me with my mouth gaping open behind both of you! I can't wait for the clayverse debrief of the trip to hear what you really thought about all of us 😇
😭💗💗💗💗 MISS YOU
The ugly truth’s gonna come out and none shall be spared
My second companion wanted to take the training wheels off to give me experience for when I eventually became a senior companion. So he would often defer to me to be assertive when we had been in somebody's house for too long. He just wouldn't say anything even if it was getting really late or we were doing something we weren't supposed to be doing. This led to us teaching somebody and then me not be able to say no as they turn on the horror movie Legion because our lesson reminded them of it for some reason. We watched the whole thing because I was too awkward to say we needed to go. I found out after my mission that it was rated R, so that was the cherry on top. 😂
My companions would do the same thing but it never got that far 😅
This whole video was extremely claythartic!!! I love that I never have to find out what kind of rebellion I would have done on a mission. I do remember my first R rated movie as a teenager, deliberately deciding enough was enough and I had to watch Silver Linings Playbook at 1am on my phone. No ragrets!!!!
So sorry you had to deal with a cyst on your ovary. I’ve had PCOS since I was ten and doctors would not take me seriously about the pain for over a decade. They always tried to convince me it was just period cramps and I needed to, “get used to it.” I totally related when you said that the pain was so strong that you worried that it was appendicitis ❤
My companion and I played star wars risk with a 10 year old and his fam. Lego Batman was on in the background too. It's amazing how strong I was trying to fight the urge to watch. I had lessons longer than 1 hour. A couple we taught really liked to hang with us and ask questions. I was like well beats knocking on doors in the streets of Vegas late at night. 🎉
When you told the story about the missionary who didn’t work at Halloween, I got an image of opening my door to two missionaries on Halloween night, assuming that that was their costumes, and handing them the candy bowl. I’m sure that must have happened.
Hahaha YES
Most “rebellious” thing I did on my mission was probably eat lunch at a different time than we should have or visit this lonely woman for months even though we knew she would not join the church.
On my mission I was the queen of contraband. I had multiple flash drives of music from video games (specifically Zelda), movie soundtracks, Jazz, indie music, musicals, etc. to be fair they always talked about Jesus or I would feel like they brought the “spirit” whatever that means. I was very spirit of the law, and if my companions complained I would tell them how much I could feel the spirit listening to Studio Ghibli music compared to MOTAB. I also had the CES letter, Saints, and this weird PDF of the Book of Mormon put thru different translations (modern English, gangsta, Hawaiian Pidgin, etc.) I also had the jehova witness Bible, and a couple movies on flash drives. I really was living my best life just messing around on my mission, and I never felt bad about it. My mission president would put the suicidal missionaries with me because he knew I could cheer them up. Some people need a break. We would listen to music, make cookies, volunteer at horse farms, all under the guise of “service”. I would also sing a lot. The worst thing I ever did was go over to some elders house and film silly videos there, we built a blanket fort and just goofed off. We tazed an elder as a prank. We also made funnel cake at a family’s house while watching the wedding ringer (I think it’s rated R). Hmm also I went to the Opera and I went to a favorite member family of mines graduation for their daughter, and I went to multiple birthday parties for members. The members loved me. My STLs did not😂
I love this so much!
When I was a Mormon missionary I literally danced on the edge of the Hollywood sign. Hollywood was not in my mission geographic boundaries. 😈 -mike
Iconic and unsurprising move from you! 🌀
Danced on your mission? You'll never get into the Celestial Kingdom.
I was so rebellious, I didn’t even make it past the virtual mtc (they thought I was depressed and suicidal)
💁🏼♀️
I had a few little rebellions.
From the UK, served in NZ and some British people moved into the apartment below us (i was a missionary in the days before skyping home weekly etc and my phone calls at Christmas and mothers day were strictly 40 minutes long) we used to go round there house for dinner parties and just shoot the breeze with them way past 9pm. Would nip outside to report that we were home and give our numbers over. It was like a taste of normal life back gome for a few evenings.
In the same area we were also just down the road from the local library. Got a card and took out some books on Māori culture because it was way more interesting than personal scripture study.
Later in that same area but different companion, he was really struggling with his mental health one day so we just stayed home and made up our numbers in the phone call that evening.
Now i come to think of it, all my rebel behaviour was in that one area. Probably because it was in the arse end of nowhere and the newrest companionship were like a 45 minutes drive away.
Elicit library card is my favorite rebellion!
Apparently I've always given off snitch energy so I never had missionaries (or anyone else in my family, or my time at BYU, haha) try to entice me to do anything remotely "bad" in fear I'd report them. 😭😅🤣
Good to see y’all refreshed from vacation ❤
My trainer gave me her pink sports bra to exercise because I didn’t have one. (You are only supposed to wear white or cream bras) I felt a bit bad, but kept it because I did really need one.
You’re only supposed to wear white or cream bras?! Even for sports! Whoah I had no idea
1:42 The fact that Kelly Powers from RM and the cool YW leader/aunty in Mobsters and Mormons is now on RHWSLC (Brittani) is truly giving me full circle joy.
I never served a mission was downtown Provo saw two missionaries walking towards the temple I was blasting my unapproved church music the sisters just kind of looked at me.
Regarding animal abuse, any anthropologist will tell you that it's the common pastime of children in low technology cultures. Yes, I feel bad about 19 year Olds harming frogs. That smacks me of bullies venting. I'm no authority or expert on anything however. But oddly, though we like to think of children and low tech cultures being better, animal abuse is very human.
There's a culture somewhere in South America that chinchilla is their main protein in their diet. They raise the chinchilla in the house, they just run around, no cages or anything and treat them like pets until dinner, they grab one or two and there ya go! So odd.
My former room mate told me on his mission one of the elders got an investigator, then a new member, pregnant.
Super interesting to hear how young people rebelled in the Mormon church. Especially because I was a very, very naughty teenager with a pretty serious drug problem. And while I find these rebellious stories super wholesome, it also makes me really sad that you all didn’t get to actually express yourselves and just be a young person making mistakes! Obviously don’t make the mistakes I made lol, but still.
Mormons gone wild is just 'some dude sipping coffee'
Really bad timing on the part of the ovarian cyst... I'm sorry Sam, that's truly a worst case scenario for vacation and I'm glad you're alright!
I'm having the missionaries over today for the 6th time to play Mario kart.
I 100% genuinely would not have thought airsoft guns were firearms. 😂
Also - Richard Dutcher is no longer associated with the church.
I worked on God’s Army 2 with him, and am still in contact with people who are still in contact with him. He was definitely nuanced at the time, and released an official statement when he fully left.
Y'all glowing love it. The first story adorable love it.
I know a missionary who met and baptized a 12 year old and her entire family. Years later he went back for a visit. The girl had turned into a beautiful woman aged 20. They married and he brought her to the U.S. They have been married for 20 years now.
54:20 not a boy but was raised as one, and when I was little I also "hugged" a frog until it popped so that does weirdly track
🥲
Fun fact- I once went to the hospital with an ovarian cyst and was misdiagnosed with appendicitis, so had an unnecessary appendectomy! Even though I told them that I have endometriosis and known cysts... I've also heard of other people with endo not catching appendicitis because it was so similar to endo pain! I guess it's similar?
Oh my god!!!! Ahhhhh
Did the Mormon boys you know who abused frogs know about the Book of Mormon musical f***ing frog joke? 🐸
My cousin's on a service mission right now, and from what I can tell he just wears his missionary tag and goes golfing. And occasionally says racist things at family dinners.
As Christ himself would have done 🤍
Omg the lion story happened on my partner's mission lol
!!!!!!
@@ZelphOntheShelf he was at the zoo and went home before it happened 😅
RE: the frogs… I immediately thought of the frog bit from The BOM musical! The lyrics are: “Joseph Smith, do not fuck a baby, I will get rid of your AIDS, if you fuck this frog” 😂 WTF
I love yalls outfits this video very iconic
another person who just found out they have an ovarian cyst....aparently they are way more common than i tought
i hope shes doing well now !
Man I did a lot of these things, I guess that's why I got sent home early
Hi,
The 3 constants in life are death, taxes and ironically “change” itself. Facing change… we either migrate, mutate or we die. Migrate correlates to moving away from change, mutation is like adapting doctrine to accommodates change and dying in this case may be viewed similar to a spiritual death, possibly atheism, agnosticism, apathy, loss of direction or faith, purpose, etc. In lieu of change, there still appears to be many people suffering in life who could use assistance. Our choice can change to focus more directly upon the physical needs of others, we simply loose the concept of some spiritual reward beyond the simple acts of kindness.
At risk is the concept that our being at the top of the food chain, possessing the ability to think and create in the world around us somehow suggests we possess a consciousness or soul, which can potentially reduce the value of our meaning.
One potential solution could be to address it mythologically. Mythology allows the student the option of rationalizing a given situation, weighing the pros vs cons with or without a dogma. For instance, a return missionary who learns the church history is not consistent with what he/she was taught has the option to continue to be obedient… obedience is a quality trait while protecting one in the fold. There also lies the choice of honor… is it more honorable to follow such changes or oppose them? It’s not a must, rather a choice. An agnostic or atheist can continue to help people in need while not getting caught up in following and any future necessary changes.
Serving others is equivalent to serving God…. King Benjamin
When you are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God. Book of Mormon
It a matter of freewill and the level of achievement one chooses to strive for. To strive for a lesser light, is to strive for light. And though light is objective, one’s perception of light is subjective thus, in the eye and mind of the beholder.
One needs to keep in mind the story of Daedalus and Icarus who were trapped on an island. Daedalus, the father, made wings of bird feathers, leather and wax and warmed his son to follow his path, not to fly too close to the sun or the sea. Icarus disobeyed his father and soared higher in the sky. The wax melted, the wings fell if and he fell into the sea. The moral; beware your weaknesses, beware going beyond what you can endure… know yourself, holster your desires. The dens of Medusa and the Minitaur were home to the bones of many a fallen hero!
don't have names, but about a mission gen or two before mine, the West Indies mission was full of rich kids as elder so it is rumoured as being super outta control, Stories of a few elders winning surfing contests in tabago,
my training companions told stories of being told "hey wait a minute one of your buddies left something behind," and they come back with a child.
Would assume between 1985-1998, story goes mission pres around 96 or 98 (i think) started cleaning house and sent a bunch of elders home
there was an arcade across from the mission office with a huge screen playing one of the vitua fighter games,
my prez was cool in many way, but there was no argument i could make to get an hour to play on a pday
My mission was in Kansas 😂
I knew of a case where the elder would visit women on three local campuses in Durham, NC. This was to teach. However the young women would either dress up for the occasion or lounge around in skimpy outfits with everything on display. He should have referred these women to sister missionaries. However him and his companion these types of women who thought the elders were cute. The guy was a senior elder and took liberties with his status. He would sneak out sometimes at night. One time he went to a party off campus where some of these hot women were. Needless to say he got into trouble and was only transferred for the transgression.
Tanner you could be a long list Osmond Brother!
Meant long LOST!
What? Tanner, You were wearing your P-day clothes underneath, ready to sin all along? I feel so dumb and dom- ed.
Hey, in the land of the morning calm, far, far away from here, my Mission President flew all his missionaries to an island technically not included in any mission’s boundary. He went off grid for our mission conference. He was 3 months from being released and feeling trunky. What were they gonna do, send him home? He was a local! He had our passports. While it was an event no one could forget, it was as much to show anyone and everyone he could afford to do it, could manifest whatever he wanted, and ultimately live up to his name, Tiger Man, as it was any of his many possible motives. It was done on short notice, EARLY in the calm, morning darkness, in a jet from a domestic airport. It was an entire mission gone wild, but the ladies pearl diving from the cliffs kept their clothes on, and the statuary stone haruban as well as the turtle boats were stoically silent.
That same evening after the conference, a big storm started to build, ours and all commercial jet service back to the mainland for the next morning was cancelled. There were no hydro foils available, so a vessel was procured which had room down in the iron hull to fit all of us between its metal ribs. Rough seas and 9 hours later, it was morning. 200 of us were back safe on the peninsula with our faces of different nations, all miraculously, quite white now, with nary a hint of delightsome. The good ship returning us home through the Devil’s dangerous waters, was hastily re-christened Satan’s Little Handmaiden by the elders before we scattered post haste to our respective regions. I know the church is true - ly a church slash corporation, in the name uh cheese n rice, Amen. Our whole mission went rogue!🤣🤣🤣
9:06 And it contradicts the doctrine of people receiving the gospel in the spirit world.
I served in Long Beach CA back in 2008. We had a super strict mission culture. The girls were required to wear pantyhose while they were proselytizing…you can only imagine garments + pantyhose in CA heat 🥵😵💫. I decided one day I wasn’t going to wear them and was seen as a rebellious missionary afterwards 🙀😉. I guess I cared more about my vaginal heath than gods mission commandments 🤷🏻♀️
Gahhhhhh I would die!
A'ight. So when I was 13 or 14 (so '92 or '93) and definitively out of the church, a couple missionaries showed up after I got home from school and before my mom got home from work. I told them that I wasn't up for religious discussion but offered them hospitality. My mom arrived home to a couple well dressed 19 year old strangers eating pop tarts and playing SNES. An employer, privy to this story, laid into me when i was about 25 about corrupting the missionaries. Absolutely none of her business. She wasn't even LDS. She was certainly dead wrong as I was the juvenile in that story. Anyway, I'm curious what is the LDS stance on that scenario, not that I'd respect their take on it.
Singles Ward watch party pleeeeease
I have a frog abuse story from the Philippines... :(
Ugh I hate being right today
the thumbnail 🔥🔥🔥
1. I like you guys being more playful with your call to actions.
2. Every time you talk about missions I just deeply want the opportunity to provide a safe place to breathe for these brainwashed kids. Before I would have sent them away out of hand due to my own religious trauma but now I'm really hoping to get the opportunity to let them talk in the AC.
My brother and sister also abused frogs 😔 also grew up Mormon
Nooooooo
“Mormons gone mild” is hilarious! Screw Alex Boye honestly. The whole thing with how he abandoned his family, plus the fact that he performed at a Mormon TTI facility and maybe supported it in other ways… just a big no thank you from me on him.
WHAT?!?!?
These kids are fun, a little bitter of course.
Of course!
Where in Brazil did Tanner go?
Paraiba and Rio Grande do Norte
@@ZelphOntheShelf Oh, the Northeast. I'm from the South myself, but the Northeast has beautiful warm-water beaches, it's a cruelty they didn't let you enjoy them.
Not allowed to go to the zoo??? We went all the time on Pday and it was definitely not against the rules in 2012. ;)
I would think that it works like grooming when one person wants to get the other involved in "gentile things."
Grooming? Between two adults?
@@ZelphOntheShelf could be - a person would cross the other persons lines slowingly. testing boundries.
Tanner is so cute! Please be my BF!
Too many rebellions to mention! 1973-75.
Tanner you are lucky 🍀 I wish that I had a lovely lady, like Sam with the sweet accent and funny sense of humor to hang out with ❤
You're coming across as very creepy and it's not going to be appreciated.
I've never met Sam, let alone BYU student Sam. I am willing to throw stones, however. 🤔
My husband went on a double "date" when he had 5 days left on his mission