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Ok, so this is probably a really dumb question..But when you send out letters to a missionary are they read by anyone before the missionary actually gets it?

cscloth wrote:Ok, so this is probably a really dumb question..But when you send out letters to a missionary are they read by anyone before the missionary actually gets it?

The answer is no.

Thank you. (:

I don't think it's typical, but there have been reports of Fascist mission presidents who insisted on opening and reading all incoming mail before forwarding it to the individual missionary.

Hopefully that's the exception.

I don't know if they read our letters but they sure stole my companions cash inside them. The problem I ran into was with our zone leader. One of the perks of being zone leader was that you were entrusted with the money for 6 or 7 missionary apartments to pay utility bills, rent, etc. This zone leader was spending enormous amounts of money. Most Latinos were poor so many questioned how this zone leader could spend so much. The hunt for answers got even more intense as utility services were cut off in missionary apartments in his zone for lack of payment.

The mail first went to the main mission office. Missionaries serving there have every oppurtunity to read that mail as well as the mission president. Then the mail is entrusted to the zone leader. If you saw that your letter had been opened and retaped shut, there was a good chance the $10 your mother sent you in a birthday card would not be there. This ZL kept this laundering scheme going for almost the entire 12 months he was zone leader. By the way, he was zone leader because he had no problems falsifying records of baptisms performed. He'd just make up a name and address and send it in for credit as a convert baptism. The mission president often publicly applauded his great faith and success. The leadership must have known but they sure didn't change anything until they excommunicated him a month after he had returned home. Stealing money from the church will get you excommunicated more surely than adultery, but in this case apparently not as quickly. I saw several bishops excommunicated where I served for stealing tithing funds.

It may not be practice for the leadership to read personal letters, but they certainly have every oppurtunity to do so without you knowing about it. So IMHO, you really can't know. I wouldn't write anything you don't want read and that includes journals. I was stupid enough to leave my journal in an area apartment after being transferred. The missionaries who came behind me read it and told everyone about it. It's probably best to write and then destroy anything you write for therapeuitc purposes.

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?

Regular mail was unreliable at best. Most mail to this particular Latin American country was done through the "pouch," service coordinated by the Church. Nearly all missionaries in my mission used pouch. There were other ways to send money even way back when I was a missionary but some people still resorted to dropping cash in a birthday card. I know that sounds stupid. I assume it was just because of the hassle of it all. Any way you did it, the zone leader had a lot of power and oppurtunity to cause accounting discrepancies. And in my particular mission, this missionary got away with doing it fairly consistently for over a year.

I don't think it's typical, but there have been reports of Fascist mission presidents who insisted on opening and reading all incoming mail before forwarding it to the individual missionary.

Hopefully that's the exception.

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.

bcspace wrote:
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.

bcspace wrote: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.

You're missing the point. When a Fascist mission president decided to read the missionaries' mail, he would command that all mail be sent to the mission home first, then he'd have it forwarded it to the individual apartments after opening and reading it.