I wish I had been told this before I left. It would have taken unnecessary pressure off me.Spicy McHaggis wrote: ↑Mon Jul 30, 2018 10:25 pm "You are an adult and you are a volunteer, you can do whatever you want. Make sure you are treated with respect".
The problem is: I wouldn't have believed it. Will your son believe it, understand it? I didn't believe it, and I felt (as I had been groomed to feel) that even though I was "legally" an adult, I still had to obey bishops, stake presidents, mission presidents, apostles.
It was pounded into us that "obedience is the price" of success as a missionary. This was an insidious idea: that if I obeyed every rule perfectly the Japanese people I was proselytizing would somehow lose their free will and decide to take the Book of Mormon, keep commitments, come to church, get baptized, etc. And the converse idea was especially insidious: that if the Japanese did not choose to do these things, it must have been because there was some rule I wasn't obeying well enough!
These two realities prevented me from realizing I was an adult who could make my own choices about my life. Even if I chose to volunteer as a missionary (which is a problematic idea itself because of the "commandment" to go), I then relinquished all further choices for 2 years to my mission president.
I really wish I had understood that my perfect obedience would not change people's choices. I wish that I had understood that because I was an adult, it was OK for me to sleep until 7:30 every once in a while, or lengthen P-Day when needed, or go to cultural events, or listen to a favorite band. Because regardless of my perfect obedience to rules (many of which were arbitrary), people still could make their own choices, and my numbers, my stats, would reflect that.
I don't know what kind of relationship you have with your son, but if I had one I would definitely get into those specifics. He might or might not really believe it, but I would definitely try.