Missionary travel
My daughter recently informed me that she was joining a church that does missionary travel and religious tours. When I questioned her about this, all she really told me was that she was going to be using her savings to travel abroad and spread the word of God. I said that I was all for spreading the word of God, but to use all her savings seemed to me to be a bit over the top. She assured me that she had made many friends through her church and that many of them had already done their mission travel and that they found the experience helped grow their faith and build their character. I expressed my concern about the costs of airfares for travel overseas; however, she assured me that she would be eligible for Church Airfares and that they would be much lower than what the average person would pay to travel.
She told me that the church had already set up all of her Missionary flights and that everything was already booked. I asked her about the cost of accommodations abroad, but she assured me that her church already had accommodations set for each place that she was going to travel too. She assured me that there would be other missionaries from her church going with her on each mission, and that she would never be traveling alone.
Quite honestly, the whole thing sounded a bit cult like to me, and I was getting a bit concerned. When I asked her about her job, she assured me that she was taking a leave of absence for religious reasons, and that they were fine with her going on the mission for the next year. When she returned, she assured me that her job would still be waiting for her. I asked her if when she returned she would have any savings left at all, and she said she thought she could be frugal enough to save some of it. She also said that during her mission work, that she would be allowed to send me letters, but I would not be able to contact her. Honestly, when I got off the phone with her, I told my husband all that she had told me, and we looked up this church together on the internet. Well, at least we did find out that it was a real church, and did not have any grievances filed against it. I was still concerned, but at least I knew this wasn't a cult.