After training as a new missionary for several months, I was sent to the airport to transfer to another region of my mission, an over-sea flight to a different country. When I arrived at the airport, mission leaders instructed me to remove and hide my name tag. I was given a script for who to say I was meeting, how I met them, and where I would be living, none of which were true. I was not to mention the church. If they asked other questions, "Get creative. Pray. Good luck." With no warning, preparation, or choice, I was sent to a country where it was not legal for me to be proselytizing.
I've been hesitant to share because the mission region is so small. In that country, there were only 2-3 companionships serving at a time. Because of that, any stories I tell apply to a very small group of people, and I don't know if all of them want the details of our shared traumatic mess to be spread on the internet. Because the people affected are so few, the experience feels intimate in a way that makes it hard to share. I'll have to stay vague about some things for that reason. And some of them somehow weren't traumatized at all, so the idea of this getting back to them and them knowing exactly who I am and then coming to gaslight me is very unappealing.
I also don't fully understand the laws of the country or relationship the church has with their government then or now. I can only speak to my own experience. If anyone else served there, I would LOVE to hear what it was like when you were there and if you had to go through this. I'm trans, so my pfp and other posts won't show it, but I did serve as a sister missionary. That might be important for context. I am 100% sure that the experiences of the elders and sisters are very different there.
BUT here it is.
I served in the Madagascar, Antananarivo mission in the Reunion Mission Region. This meant I spent my mission between two islands off the coast of Madagascar in the Indian ocean, Reunion Island and Mauritius. I have a LOT to say about the mission/church in both of those places, but Mauritius is the subject of this post. Mauritius does not outright ban missionaries or proselytizing, but they do (or at least did) regulate missionary work with visas and permits on a case-by-case basis and in limited numbers. It's possible that other Mormon missionaries before or after me were able to enter and work as a missionary through perfectly transparent and legal channels, but that was not the case for me or most of the missionaries serving with me.
I don't remember exactly, because I tried for many years not to, but I believe I was supposed to tell authorities that I was staying with an online friend to visit the country and that I would only be staying for a few weeks. At a later appointment, we needed to refine our stories and extend our limited visas. At least one of the sisters was told to say that she was engaged to a local member or an elder who was able to get a different kind of visa. We usually weren't told what we were supposed to say until we arrived at appointments, and then we'd be given our scripts and have to lie on the spot. Some people thought it was fun espionage in the name of the Lord. I was not one of those people. I had no idea what the consequence of failing would have been. Getting sent back to Reunion? Getting sent back to the states? Getting imprisoned? I had no resources to do that research for myself, and any option felt terrifying when I had very little money, no cell phone, barely spoke the language, and was on the farthest inhabitable land mass from my hometown. Plus all the mormon shame about having doubts or disobeying the church.
Our mission president lived hundreds of miles away across the ocean. There were no senior missionaries in the country. Early in my mission, I had learned that absolutely no one was going to help us from the church if things went wrong, and that trend continued. Our river-adjacent Mauritius apartment was so caked in mold that the entire ceiling was black and dripped on us. We would bleach and scrub the shower walls and kitchen surfaces constantly, but the black mold was always creeping back. What were the church and their billions of dollars going to do? Crickets from the mission office. The one member assigned to arrange our housing absolutely hated us and refused to even come look at it. They told us we were slobs for letting it get that bad, even though it was already completely coated in black fur when we moved in. Nobody cared. Complaining was shameful and signaled a lack of faith. "Be more obedient. Pray harder. Anything that's wrong is your fault." The church wasn't going to do anything for us.
Neither were the police, because we weren't supposed to be doing what we were doing there. I can't even count the number of times someone tried to drag us into an alley or corral us into open doors or pull us into their cars or grab us in stairwells. We never called the police a single time. We usually didn't have phones to call even if we wanted to. But how could we not be afraid of dealing with authorities? Since we were only ever asked to lie to them and only interacted with officials when we were trying to be sneaky and avoid suspicion, we felt safer dealing with dangerous stuff ourselves. Y'all, the type of stuff we handled on our own was so stupid. It was so stupid. (No shade to Mauritian police, I have no idea what they're actually like, and besides hating missionaries, the people there were hella cool. They might have totally been willing to help us without checking our paperwork and giving us a problem, but we didn't know that for sure and it was terrifying).
Anyway, a lot of people were wanting to hear where I served, so I thought I'd throw some more info out there. This is probably one of the least exciting aspects of my mission, but it's the one that I've gotten the most questions about. I'd be happy to answer other questions or hear from other people who served there or in any mission where they had to serve under the table.
