Those Who Served Missions...
In our mission, it was all peer pressure. As I mentioned, each week you had to write down your goals and accomplishments for the week on the chalkboard in front of the entire zone so that the more committed ones could be praised and the rest excoriated. Each month we received "El Chasqui," the mission newsletter. Most of the newsletter was dedicated to printing the numbers of baptisms for each companion that month. The top baptizers occupied the "Rocky Box," with their names in large print in a double-bordered box. At the opposite end of the spectrum was the "Zero Page," which you can guess the purpose of. One of my companions would just make up numbers for the weekly report.
The pressure was so great to baptize that people would bring in investigators for a baptismal interview, and when I would ask them who Joseph Smith was, they would look at me with a blank stare. I would tell the missionaries these people weren't ready for baptism, so the missionaries would just go to the branch president, who usually obliged. Even when I was working in the mission office, people berated us because we only had one or two baptisms a month.
One big problem in our mission was lack of financial support. We had many Bolivian missionaries, who received a monthly allowance from the church, which, depending on the exchange rate, was $50-$90 US. Even in Bolivia, that was not nearly enough to live, so we would pool our money and both of us would go hungry. At one point, we were eating only one real meal a day. The other two meals consisted of a piece of bread and a cup of hot chocolate. I lost a lot of weight. I'm 5'8", and I weighed at one point 114 lbs, while my 6' tall companion weighed 130. But people who were sick were derided as wusses and "fries."
We lived in horrible conditions. The first six months of my mission we had no running water. I remember reading a letter from two missionaries who spent P-Day digging a latrine. It was cold and windy, and we had no heat. Some missionaries had kerosene heaters, but after Elders Drennan and Bons asphyxiated, everyone was afraid to use them.
I could go on, but yeah, it wasn't easy. Tal Bachman was ridiculed for his description of his mission, but he was just south of us, and it sounded just like my mission (well, minus the poisonous frogs).
The pressure was so great to baptize that people would bring in investigators for a baptismal interview, and when I would ask them who Joseph Smith was, they would look at me with a blank stare. I would tell the missionaries these people weren't ready for baptism, so the missionaries would just go to the branch president, who usually obliged. Even when I was working in the mission office, people berated us because we only had one or two baptisms a month.
One big problem in our mission was lack of financial support. We had many Bolivian missionaries, who received a monthly allowance from the church, which, depending on the exchange rate, was $50-$90 US. Even in Bolivia, that was not nearly enough to live, so we would pool our money and both of us would go hungry. At one point, we were eating only one real meal a day. The other two meals consisted of a piece of bread and a cup of hot chocolate. I lost a lot of weight. I'm 5'8", and I weighed at one point 114 lbs, while my 6' tall companion weighed 130. But people who were sick were derided as wusses and "fries."
We lived in horrible conditions. The first six months of my mission we had no running water. I remember reading a letter from two missionaries who spent P-Day digging a latrine. It was cold and windy, and we had no heat. Some missionaries had kerosene heaters, but after Elders Drennan and Bons asphyxiated, everyone was afraid to use them.
I could go on, but yeah, it wasn't easy. Tal Bachman was ridiculed for his description of his mission, but he was just south of us, and it sounded just like my mission (well, minus the poisonous frogs).
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_KimberlyAnn
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That breaks my heart, Runtu. I'm so sorry you lived in such despicable conditions, and as I mentioned on Shades's blog, the fact that a church as wealthy as the LDS has missionaries living in abject squalor is unforgivable. What a deplorable bunch those old geezers running the church are! Bastards.
KA
KA
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_Black Moclips
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I can't think of any special words we used, but we did have some funny slip ups with words like "marido" which means husband and "mierda" which means s***, and "cono" which means ice cream cone and "conyo" which is a slang for female genitalia. Missionaries also thought they could use the reflexive form of the verb "correr" which means to run and conjugate it using "correrse" to say something like "Tenemos que corrernos". They meant to say "we have to run" but they were really saying "we have to masterbate" (i.e - to run yourself).
We also never called each other "Elder", despite the many declarations by the MP that it was disrespectful not to say "Elder Smith" and just call him Smitty, or some other derivative. I was sometimes called "The Source" or "Sory Baby" based on my last name. Weston became "Westy Dance", and this one elder who's directory photo had is hair sticking straight up was called "The Heat Miser" (from the old clay-mation easter cartoon). There were all sorts of names like that. I guess it was our way of building comradery and friendship. The very serious ones always used the correct Elder Last Name combo. I just couldn't force myself to be that stiff all the time, despite my strong TBM-ness at the time.
We also never called each other "Elder", despite the many declarations by the MP that it was disrespectful not to say "Elder Smith" and just call him Smitty, or some other derivative. I was sometimes called "The Source" or "Sory Baby" based on my last name. Weston became "Westy Dance", and this one elder who's directory photo had is hair sticking straight up was called "The Heat Miser" (from the old clay-mation easter cartoon). There were all sorts of names like that. I guess it was our way of building comradery and friendship. The very serious ones always used the correct Elder Last Name combo. I just couldn't force myself to be that stiff all the time, despite my strong TBM-ness at the time.
“A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take away everything that you have.”
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_Inconceivable
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Mission Motto:
Commit their face off (or in other words, don't take no for an answer)
no kidding.
Baptismal Challenge: "If/when you find out the church is true will you be baptised"? It was either a yes or a no and never a maybe (that hot or cold thing). This was a challenge given the investigator to commit to being baptised within 7 days of our first discussion. The mission president expected this challenge to be made on the first discussion.
This was one of several reasons the members were apprehensive about letting us teach their friends and neighbors.
no kidding.
Baptismal Challenge: "If/when you find out the church is true will you be baptised"? It was either a yes or a no and never a maybe (that hot or cold thing). This was a challenge given the investigator to commit to being baptised within 7 days of our first discussion. The mission president expected this challenge to be made on the first discussion.
This was one of several reasons the members were apprehensive about letting us teach their friends and neighbors.
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_Black Moclips
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"Commit their face off"
This is just cracking me up. This is so mormonesque that you just know its true.
But I guess its better than,
"You gotta sin to baptize" or in spanish "Hay que pecar para bautizar"
Which "was" the prevailing motto when I arrived to our mission (evident in all of the crazy stories and evidenced by the fact that some areas had 400+ members with little or no one active. High 90% inactive rate. That doesn't happen by itself). Good for us that we changed that at least, though it cost us our huge baptism numbers.
This is just cracking me up. This is so mormonesque that you just know its true.
But I guess its better than,
"You gotta sin to baptize" or in spanish "Hay que pecar para bautizar"
Which "was" the prevailing motto when I arrived to our mission (evident in all of the crazy stories and evidenced by the fact that some areas had 400+ members with little or no one active. High 90% inactive rate. That doesn't happen by itself). Good for us that we changed that at least, though it cost us our huge baptism numbers.
“A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take away everything that you have.”
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_Inconceivable
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You're all a bunch of liars, you apostate anti Mormon american satans.
ha.
Seriously, if I hadn't lived through what most of you guys have mentioned, no way I could believe it.
We had the magic chalk boards, monthly baptism newsrecords, public humiliations. All there.
In addition, if we could not pass off all 8 (yes 8) discussions verbatem, we could not have a gold dot on our name tags. The mission president would stand at stake conference and tell the members that the missionaries with the gold dot were qualified to teach their friends and neighbors (toss out empathy, love, experience etc). Some kids were humiliated a good part of their missions because of memorizing disabilities. I had discussions in 2 languages to memorize. It took most of the mission to earn a gold dot on my no speak (or language) name tag.
ha.
Seriously, if I hadn't lived through what most of you guys have mentioned, no way I could believe it.
We had the magic chalk boards, monthly baptism newsrecords, public humiliations. All there.
In addition, if we could not pass off all 8 (yes 8) discussions verbatem, we could not have a gold dot on our name tags. The mission president would stand at stake conference and tell the members that the missionaries with the gold dot were qualified to teach their friends and neighbors (toss out empathy, love, experience etc). Some kids were humiliated a good part of their missions because of memorizing disabilities. I had discussions in 2 languages to memorize. It took most of the mission to earn a gold dot on my no speak (or language) name tag.
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_silentkid
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_silentkid
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Re: Not always pleasant..
Inconceivable wrote:Dag: piece of dung attached to a dog's butt hairs.
hey!
: (
LOL!!! Is the dag similar to the dingle berry? I've also heard bo-daggit, which I guess is a variation of dag.