Cultish Behavior?

[gurn]

I’ve never really seen the benefit of isolating missionaries from their families. Now that I have a son on a mission it’s really become annoying. We aren’t even allowed to know where he lives; all mail/packages must be sent to the mission home.

Things have become more complicated now that my son’s anxiety disorder has flared up. He was on medication and received clearance from LDS family services to go. He did fine in his first area, but his second companion was a hard driving type A personality. The stress was more than he could handle. Initially he was given permission to contact me so I could help him work through the problems. The mission president’s wife has decided that it is “all in his head”. He can no longer communicate with me, nor can he call her to discuss his problem. I guess it’s the sink or swim approach to mental health. He is being transferred tomorrow and wants to stay and see how things go.

My question to this group is: What value do you see in the current policy of only mail/email contact once per week and two phone calls per year? I figure that there must be something I’m missing.

Thanks

[Calm]

We aren’t even allowed to know where he lives; all mail/packages must be sent to the mission home.

How if you are getting email, even if only once a week can't you know where the missionary lives?

We were told that this was to avoid lost packages, packages sent to old addresses might never get to the missionary. Even in the US we found this to be a good practice.

[Ares]

This is a serious issue that needs to be discussed with the mission and your local leaders. Not hashed out on a discussion board.