Missionary Letters

[_The Nehor]

How mail is processed depends on the Mission. On mine all mail was sent to the Mission Office and the Office couple forwarded them through the mail to where the Missionary was serving so that parents, friends, and family didn't have to keep up with changing addresses. They would hold them for a few days if transfers were in the next few days to make sure none went to the wrong address. In areas with reliable mail service this seemed to be the norm. Most of these areas now use e-mail instead.

Some missionaries then preferred direct mail and had their parents send the mail directly to where they were, updating the addresses for their parents each transfer. This avoided a slight delay in the mail (usually only a day or 2). The Mission Office thought this was pointless but never prohibited it. Most of my friends reported similar organizations.

In areas with bad or non-existent mail service they tend to distribute the mail to leaders and filter down (ZL to DL to Missionaries) to give it to the individual missionaries.

I have never heard of Mission Presidents reading mail. I can't imagine why they would want to. Sounds incredibly boring.

[_The Nehor]

cscloth, the lesson to be learned here is to ALWAYS send mail for your missionary to his or her actual apartment. Do NOT send it to the mission home address with the expectation that they'll just forward his or her mail without opening it, reading it, or tampering with it first.

ajax18: Why did you have your friends and family send your mail to the mission home? Why didn't you have them send it directly to your apartment?

This seems unnecessarily paranoid. It's a hassle to keep track of changing addresses.

[_ludwigm]

Back in my time, before the bar was raised, I think some missionaries' communications were monitored but that would be hard to do since letters were sent to the missionary's actual address and not the mission home.

In mine the all letters were sent to the mission home and forwarded from there. I was never aware of any reading of mail going on.

Ehm...
As one PR man of Microsoft has said:

In our software there are no undetected errors.

[_The Nehor]

In mine the all letters were sent to the mission home and forwarded from there. I was never aware of any reading of mail going on.
Ehm...
As one PR man of Microsoft has said:

In our software there are no undetected errors.

Why would mission leaders want to read their missionaries mail from parents, siblings, boyfriend/girlfriends, friends, etc?

I would never assume wrongdoing when I can't come up with a motive. And even assuming a Mission President wanted to establish a fascist police state mission (unlikely) how would reading letters help? You'd think that they'd want to keep the mail from getting out as opposed to reading what is coming in. What are they going to do? Counsel them to ignore their parents or something?

I've never heard of a Mission collecting outgoing mail so I can't see how it would work as information control.

Assuming wrongdoing when there is no motive seems paranoid. It's not comparable to Microsoft's declaration. It wouldn't be an oversight. It would be at least an unethical act and (in most countries) a crime.

[_ludwigm]

Ehm...
As one PR man of Microsoft has said:"In our software there are no undetected errors."

Why would ...
I would never assume ...
I've never heard of ...
Assuming wrongdoing ...

"There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
.
.

----------------------
I write this slowly, one character in every half minute (to be understood by You).
"undetected error" means something erroneous I/we don't know about. (As it is so, I/we can not fix it.)

Back in my time, before the bar was raised, I think some missionaries' communications were monitored but that would be hard to do

Got it? It was said by bcspace, not by me. HE is the expert.

[_The Nehor]

Got it? It was said by bcspace, not by me. HE is the expert.

No, he isn't.

[_ludwigm]

Got it? It was said by bcspace, not by me. HE is the expert.

No, he isn't.

You said.
Please harmonize with him. I am innocent.

[_The Nehor]

Please harmonize with him. I am innocent.

No interest in doing so. I think he's wrong.