Far too much emphasis was put on obedience. Now, don’t misunderstand, obedience is eternally important, but this focus on obedience came at the expense of a focus on love, which saddened me to no end.

I found myself in exactly your situation. I tried talking with my zone leaders, but they refused to listen. As a result, I was left with exactly your dilemma. My zone leaders kept coming up with new “rules” not stated in the handbook, and one was disobedient for not following them, and I was entirely unsure of what to do.

At length, after much prayer, I came to the conclusion that I had to explicitly disobey them, because there was something that I was meant to teach them, something that only I could teach them. Now, I’m not saying that I’m some amazingly spiritual person, because I’m far from it. Nor am I advocating this line of action, because questioning leadership is one of the very first steps to apostasy, as one can read about in Teachings of President Brigham Young. I’m only saying that the Lord had a purpose for me in this specific instance.

After coming to this conclusion, I entered into a six-month… disagreement, we’ll call it, with my zone leaders. They kept calling me to repentance and telling me that I should be doing better, and I kept telling them to keep their opinions to themselves and ignoring them. During this time, I prayed, on average, one hour every evening just to make sure that I was indeed doing the correct thing. I questioned my initial conclusion more times than I can count. At one point, to my great consternation, one of these zone leaders became AP, which meant that the Mission President trusted him. I prayed for the better part of the night after that happened, because I wasn’t really trusting someone that the Mission President did.

Anyway, to make a long story short, everything turned out beautifully. After about six months, the zone leaders finally became so frustrated that they pulled me aside and we talked for about an hour and a half. Just the three of us, my companion wasn’t even there. They finally listened to me and realized the error of their ways. Today I have a better relationship with each of those guys than I did before this experience and the zone leaders and APs changed their stance and the mission benefited greatly for it.

Now, in conclusion, I guess my advice is this: follow the Spirit, man. There were others on the mission in my position that decided to trust the zone leaders and obey them. It could go either way for you. Just follow the Spirit. There really is no telling what the Lord is doing; for all those other missionaries knew, their situation would never have improved. For all you know, the Lord has prepared another person to do exactly what I did. Maybe that person is you. Maybe there is no person meant to do that for your leaders at this time; maybe they’re supposed to learn this lesson at some future date. We can’t know the the Lord’s plan for us. We just have to follow the Spirit.

12 Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

13 For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.

14 Do all things without murmurings and disputings:

15 That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world;

It hit me as strongly as if it had hit me physically in the middle of my forehead. I really felt that the Lord was telling me to stop my murmuring about my callings and how I had felt with my last release. Keith did not see it that way. He feels that one has the right to say how they are feeling about how a leader is or is not doing their calling.

We all have to decide what is right for us. I wish there was an easy answer. If you ever come up with one let me know!!