Mission Memories - Here goes folks - My mission reflections

[_KimberlyAnn]

SoHo, your poems are good. Really.

It's fitting that you married your girl back home. What woman can resist a suitor who writes poetry in her honor?

Three little girls will be just lovely. Congratulations!

KA

[_SoHo]

SoHo, your poems are good. Really.

It's fitting that you married your girl back home. What woman can resist a suitor who writes poetry in her honor?

Three little girls will be just lovely. Congratulations!

KA

I wrote her songs too.

Thanks for the compliment.

On the newbie, we're working on a name ...

[_John Waite]

I liked some of your poems. I liked ‘Hughette’ and ‘Unmarried Couple’. But I don’t understnad some of what seemed like unjustified digs against Mormons or the church. Things like-

The Renoir Bather on the wall
Will have to come down
(Pornography is the work of Satan, after all)
We’ll put a picture of the Salt Lake temple in its place


I don’t beleieve that Mormons are such prudes that they would consider a Renoire bather pornogrphy. Maybe some would. but not most.

good stuff, though. I can tell your mission was hard. still it sounds like you enjoyed the people you met.

[_SoHo]

I liked some of your poems. I liked ‘Hughette’ and ‘Unmarried Couple’. But I don’t understnad some of what seemed like unjustified digs against Mormons or the church. Things like-

The Renoir Bather on the wall
Will have to come down
(Pornography is the work of Satan, after all)
We’ll put a picture of the Salt Lake temple in its place


I don’t beleieve that Mormons are such prudes that they would consider a Renoire bather pornogrphy. Maybe some would. but not most.

good stuff, though. I can tell your mission was hard. still it sounds like you enjoyed the people you met.

It wasn't a dig at the Mormon church, it was a comment on how, as young missionaries, we sometimes fail to see how much change we are asking people to make to become members of the church - the personal and social costs - and the speed with which we are asking them to make that change. If it's a dig, it's a dig at the naïve 19-year old idealist eager to convert - believing that everything will be better for the converted afterwards, even if the conversion is made quickly. The Renoir Bather actually stems from a true experience, with a companion who once asked to switch places with an investigator so that he wouldn't have to look at it. To the celibate, hormonal young missionary - it can be seen as pornographic.

http://www.renoirgallery.com/paintings/ ... r-hair.jpg

I was active with no intention of disaffection at the time these were written. They comment through my eyes as missionary, not long after the fact.

The only other one that may seem diggish, I think, is Lourdes - but I'm sure that Beastie will back me up on that as being pretty accurate - at least as to a good number of missionaries.

[_beastie]

The only other one that may seem diggish, I think, is Lourdes - but I'm sure that Beastie will back me up on that as being pretty accurate - at least as to a good number of missionaries.

Absolutely. Mormon missionaries tended to be dismissive and judgmental about Catholicism in general in my mission, and the claims of Lourdes struck them as quite outlandish and even ridiculous. The irony, of course, went unnoticed. Being told, all one's life, that one has the "one true" religion can breed a bit of a superiority complex.