Letters to the Editor
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Romney's mission
As both a Salon reader and a former Mormon missionary, I think it's important to point out that Mitt Romney did not get to choose where he would serve his LDS mission. He ended up in France, but he could just as easily have been sent to Guatemala instead. Or he could have been sent to Mexico, or Taiwan, or Connecticut, or any number of places outside or inside the United States where the LDS Church then had an organized mission. Prospective young LDS missionaries have no idea where they might be sent (Third World or First World, hot climate or cold, foreign or domestic, receptive or non-receptive), and they don't find out until they receive the official letter from Salt Lake extending them a call to serve in a certain mission. And then there's no opportunity to lobby for an alternate location -- one either accepts the call to serve in a certain mission, or doesn't go at all.
Though I'm not a Romney supporter, I don't question his sincerity in serving as a missionary. (I myself served as a missionary in the Philippines during the Marcos martial law era, several years after Romney did his stint in France.) For most young Mormons back then, it wasn't a matter of trying to avoid serving one's country by working for one's church. No, they were merely trying to serve God by temporarily giving up everything else in their lives -- college, work, romance, recreation, and, yes, serving one's country -- in sacrifice to what they considered a greater good. And for this service, they received no salaries or stipends from the Church; all their living expenses were paid by the missionaries themselves or their families.
The only place to which a prospective young Mormon missionary can be pretty sure he won't be sent, is whatever city and state was his home when he filled out his paperwork.