Main image: author Laura Parry on her mission in the Sure, Uruguay West mission, May 2005 – December 2006.
Two sister missionaries walked home quickly from their last appointment of the day. It was a dark winter night and they were eager to get back to their apartment. The rural street had few porch lights and only the very occasional bobbing of car headlights along the road. Suddenly, a man appeared and grabbed the missionaries.
This is not a scene from the new Hugh Grant move, Heretic, this is an experience I had on my mission in Uruguay.
Earlier that day, my companion and I’d had a great time visiting and taking pictures with members and investigators. We knew we were both being transferred to new areas soon, and even though it was not advised, we brought our digital cameras along that day to take some pictures. By our last appointment of the night, we found ourselves 15-20 minutes away from home, a walk which required crossing the interstate. While we walked, a man in a mask came running up behind us, asking if we had any money, and before we could even respond, he wrapped one arm around my neck, and one around my companion’s neck. He turned us around, back toward the way we came. He held a pistol to my companion’s cheek.
He started telling us a story about how he had 4 kids and he was an escaped prisoner. I don’t remember more details, but he was trying everything he could do to intimidate us. He licked my companion’s cheek. After walking for a while, he asked for our money. He let us go to get money out of our bags. Then he hooked his arms around us again and we continued walking. The road we were walking was raised, and sloped down on one side, leading to trees and shrubs as tall as I was. Our attacker stopped again and told us to go down into the bushes. I told him I wasn’t going in there, and that we were representatives of Jesus Christ. He pulled my hair and grabbed me from behind, and then started to unzip my jacket. He put the gun into my companion’s breast. He grabbed us again and my companion said, “In the name of Jesus Christ, leave us.” He started a little at that, but kept us walking until we came to a fork in the road. He pointed his gun at us and told us to give him our bags, and then he took off running on the intersecting road. My companion and I ran home, holding hands and crying, thinking about the terror we’d had for those moments and how it could have been much worse.
We made it home to the apartment above a member’s home. The member called the police and our mission president. I had 50 pesos and some teaching materials in my bag; fortunately I had tucked my digital camera into my coat pocket that night. My companion lost her camera with her stolen bag. I spoke to the mission president on the phone. He asked why we had our cameras, and I said, to remember the people here. He asked how we knew we would be transferred, and I told him we’d asked one of our leaders and he had told us we would be transferring. In my mission journal, I wrote the mission president, “kind of chewed us out” but I don’t know what was actually said. I believe it was advised, but I can’t remember for sure, that we not tell our parents what had happened. At the time, that seemed like the best decision to me. But looking back, my companion and I needed so much more support than what we received.
Despite our experience the night before, we went back out to make our appointments the next morning. It was a foggy day, which added to the eerie feeling we shared. We were both so jumpy, and frankly, traumatized. That would be normal. But the story gets stranger. We had assumed this attacker was just some random person looking to steal a few bucks. But during a visit to a less active member that morning, we met a man at this member’s house, who we’d interacted with a few times previously. He asked us how we were doing and we told him we were leaving the area soon, and he said, “Yes, it’s not safe for ladies out on these streets….” As soon as we left the house, I turned to my companion and said, “It was him, wasn’t it?” And she looked at me and burst into tears. We both had a clear and distinct impression that he was the one who robbed us, that we could only attribute, at the time, to the Holy Ghost. In our minds, the mugging was targeted, because this man knew we’d been out taking pictures with people we’d taught.
The following day my companion and I were transferred to different areas. In my new area, I had a difficult time being out at night. I had startle reactions for some time when I heard noises while out after dark. My new companion wondered what was wrong with me. Beyond checking on our physical safety right after the event, nothing was done that I remember to check up on our mental health, or see how we were doing in the days or months following what happened.
Having left the church in the years following my mission obviously changes my perspective on my mission as a whole, and what happened during this event. In rereading my mission journal, what I took from this was a warning from God to obey the mission rules with even greater exactness. How not obeying with exactness led to the robbery. That I would only be blessed if I followed the rules even better than I was following them (which was pretty well, if I say so myself.) For me, serving a mission was a very intense time with lots of anxiety, and this event ratcheted up the pressure I already felt. If I could go back and visit my younger self at that time, here’s what I would tell her: “Sometimes bad things happen. This wasn’t caused by disobedience. It’s ok that you are scared. You don’t have to be strong and act like nothing happened. It’s ok if you want to call your mom and cry. (And you should be allowed to call you mom.) Your mental health matters and you need to talk to a professional about what happened.” While I don’t have lasting effects from what happened, I am not planning to see Heretic. Sitting in a dark theater for two hours to be reminded of how vulnerable missionaries are would not be my idea of a good time.
Guest author Laura Parry owns Roots & Branches Wellness, a counseling center in Lehi, Utah specializing in maternal mental health and couples therapy. She holds a Master’s of Social Work from the University of Utah, and in 2019 became certified in perinatal mental health (PMH-C). In addition to helping clients through the perinatal period she enjoys working with those experiencing faith transitions. She earned a clinical yoga certification in 2021, and loves using the healing power of yoga, nature, and therapy for clients and for herself. She lives in Lehi with her husband, 3 kids, 2 cats, and 1 dog, and loves reading, hiking, and playing the piano. Please visit her website and Instagram @_lauraparry for more of her work.
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7 Responses
I’m transcribing my mission journals. It’s been many years since I was a full-time missionary. There were many good memories, but they didn’t seem to outweigh the bad. There were so many experiences we just let pass because we didn’t know how to talk about them. On several occasions my companions and I were targeted by aggressive men. I look back on it with horror. The worst was when a fellow missionary developed a crush and tried to force himself on me. Like Joseph in Egypt, I ran away. I felt so much shame and could never talk about it. Looking back, I hope there are ways for a new generation of Sister Missionaries to address the fear and trauma caused by these kinds of unwanted advances instead of holding it inside like the Sister Missionaries of my generation did.
I cannot even fathom the amount of fear that experience must have been. I’m so sorry that happened to you and your companion and that the mission president treated it the way he did…
During the past year or so, there have been many podcasts featuring episodes of “dangerous situations that happened to me on my mission.” From lack of nutritious food, lack of healthcare, lack of mental health support, lack of awareness by MPs that missionaries can be targeted, MPs who groom the sisters for sex, and downright violent assault, our missionaries need to be respected enough to be proactively protected. The church needs to stop the practice of confiscating their passports when they arrive in the mission. The MPs need training in working with humans. Everyone needs to stop the nonsense that being victimized is the victims lack of obedience. Everyone needs to stop the “missionaries have special divine protection” fantasy.
What a terrifying experience! And that your MP felt it appropriate to chew you out afterwards boggles the mind. What a pompous ass!
I think I just violated the language rules. Sorry, everybody!
I watched Heretic last night and I can’t quite see the connection between the film and the church’s defensive take that “we do too keep missionaries safe!!!” Like, this is not the actual critique of religion levied by its makers. It’s more cerebral, more philosophical than that, which makes me think that the institutional church selected a straw man defense because addressing the helfier matters of faith, belief, miracles, etc. in a press release doesn’t make for effective apologetics.
What I’ve found more interesting is the discourse online about the safety of missions in general, and how a bunch of returned missionaries see, in hindsight, that many of the miraculous, faith-promoting, or trial-before-blessings stories are actually tales of the mission hierarchy not taking individual safety or health (mental or physical) seriously. On my own mission, we had a group of teenagers regularly try to peek into our windows and a man exposed himself to me in my first area. The local police officer (a ridiculously handsome Spaniard who watched me struggle to find correct terms in my Spanish dictionary) we told on patrol just chuckled at me, even though we spotted the same man rapidly following and calling after another young woman about 30 minutes after he’d pulled his penis out and made eye contact with me on a public walkway. I don’t think we told any of the elders–what would they have done other than be awkward about it? In my second area, a man crossed an otherwise empty street while we were hustling to the bus stop because rain was starting; he made sure to cross my path so he could grab my breasts in his hands as he hurried past me on a narrow sidewalk. That was it. A grab and go. It was over before I fully knew what was going on, but I did manage to push him off and then he was on his way. With that one, we did call the elders who were over an hour away. My district leader said he was sorry to hear it and asked if I was ok; embedded in his voice was that same question I inherently understood from my first area–what could he do about it? What could the mission president do about it? Not let us go out? Stuff happens on the mission. Men will take advantage when the see women in vulnerable positions, or if they perceive them as naive. It could’ve been worse. How many baptismal dates did you set this week, Hermana? My experience was never brought up again.
As I think back on these events, and others like them, I realize just how much accepted risk is baked into the experience of a mission, and we compensate for it by assuring missionaries they are protected and watched over by angels, guided by the Spirit, and specially blessed for serving with obedience. This is how we romanticize the experiences that are traumatizing. And while the men who exposed themselves and grabbed my body without my consent do not haunt my dreams, they drive home systemic and cultural realities of predation and depravity that we continue to overlook or accept as necessary evils of mortality. I mean, just look at who we in America elected as president for a second time. Will we be blessed for our willingness to shrug at assaults as things that happen and say we are still protected when we are being obedient? The calls for unity and healing certainly feel like the compensatory rhetoric missionaries experience as a way to justify the trauma they encounter trying to do the Lord’s work along the way.
Stories like this make me so angry. We shouldn’t be sending our young people to dangerous areas, and when bad things do happen there needs to be a lot more support for the experienced trauma. We hear too many similar stories.