Single men serving full-time senior missions


clwnuke
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I didn't care about this question when I was young, but a friend of mine recently lost his spouse and it made me think that I would be very disappointed if I lost my wife and could not return to serve in Japan as a full-time senior missionary. It's something that I have prepared for all my life.

Can anyone point me toward an article or a previous discussion on why there is a different policy for senior single men and women? The FAQs on the Senior Missionary site really don't address why, they simply point out that single men can serve service missions instead.

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59 minutes ago, clwnuke said:

I didn't care about this question when I was young, but a friend of mine recently lost his spouse and it made me think that I would be very disappointed if I lost my wife and could not return to serve in Japan as a full-time senior missionary. It's something that I have prepared for all my life.

Can anyone point me toward an article or a previous discussion on why there is a different policy for senior single men and women? The FAQs on the Senior Missionary site really don't address why, they simply point out that single men can serve service missions instead.

Since all missionaries need companions (married or otherwise), I suspect the policy difference has to do with it being easier for young women  to serve with a much older women than it is for young men to serve with older men, or vice versa. There was a single male missionary in my mission who was in his mid to late 20's, and he found the difference in age more than a little off-putting. Imagine were he two to three times that old?

But, what do I know?

Thanks, -Wade Englund- 

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I visit https://seniormissionary.lds.org/srsite/ fairly often and look at the opportunities to serve. I guess I just can't see a whole lot of difference between getting up every morning and working at the Family History library, or the Temple, or getting up every day and working on the Tokyo mission finances. However, if I'm a single widower I'm not currently allowed to do the latter. 

If I ever become single again I guess I could just move to Tokyo and serve an unofficial full-time volunteer mission for a few years :)

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1 hour ago, Jane_Doe said:

Honestly, with the way so many policies are getting revised reverently, I could see this one being easily modified by the time you reach your retirement years.

I hope you are right! The whole dynamic of serving missions could change as things move forward.

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I know several reasons of why this was policy (though, as mentioned it could change) and was held in the past.  However, even as conservative as this forum leans, me talking about those reasons probably could bring about a controversial subject which I'm not wiling to have pegged on me in starting, at least today..

However, in the past the reasons, I feel, held up pretty well in the logic of the time.  In our modern day morality, some of those reasons may bring up controversial conversations in the same way we mention why ladies used to have to wait until they were 21 while the young men could go at 19.

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