Television reported Apostle Jeffrey Holland stating that: “The demand for missionaries is expanding…” However, before Holland could finish that statement, KSL quickly cut to a commercial and returned to the reporters several seconds later.
I questioned that statement, whether in fact the demand for missionaries was expanding. If it was, whose demand was it? I recalled hearing that many Mormon missions had been closed around the turn of the last century, in the early 2000s. I found a website which I had previously seen, documenting this change:
...Clearly, the need for more missionaries is not for the educated of the world.
And this quote amazes me:
Church officials explained at the Saturday conference that LDS missionary president[s] have said to the leaders: “Give me more 18 year- olds. They’re sweeter; they’re purer, they’re smarter.”
Do you really think that mission presidents have been asking for 18 year olds?
Television reported Apostle Jeffrey Holland stating that: “The demand for missionaries is expanding…”
Was the word "expanding" used for a reason? Maybe that was an attempt to convey that while demand is not actually increasing, it is becoming more spread out across more landscape?
And this quote amazes me:
Church officials explained at the Saturday conference that LDS missionary president[s] have said to the leaders: “Give me more 18 year- olds. They’re sweeter; they’re purer, they’re smarter.”
Me too.
Do you really think that mission presidents have been asking for 18 year olds?
In general, no.
Oh for shame, how the mortals put the blame on us gods, for they say evils come from us, but it is they, rather, who by their own recklessness win sorrow beyond what is given... Zeus (1178 BC)
Nothing solves the needs of a yearning World like the "Maturity" of an 18 year old fresh out of High School.
Why it is amazing that Insurance companies, Rental Car companies, and other Risk based companies aren't clamoring to take on the Risk that Mormon Jesus is so happy to take on.
Television reported Apostle Jeffrey Holland stating that: “The demand for missionaries is expanding…” However, before Holland could finish that statement, KSL quickly cut to a commercial and returned to the reporters several seconds later.
I questioned that statement, whether in fact the demand for missionaries was expanding. If it was, whose demand was it? I recalled hearing that many Mormon missions had been closed around the turn of the last century, in the early 2000s. I found a website which I had previously seen, documenting this change:
...Clearly, the need for more missionaries is not for the educated of the world.
And this quote amazes me:
Church officials explained at the Saturday conference that LDS missionary president[s] have said to the leaders: “Give me more 18 year- olds. They’re sweeter; they’re purer, they’re smarter.”
Do you really think that mission presidents have been asking for 18 year olds?
Yes, because the 19 year olds know too much and ask awkward questions like "did Joseph really marry other mens wives?"
“We look to not only the spiritual but also the temporal, and we believe that a person who is impoverished temporally cannot blossom spiritually.” Keith McMullin - Counsellor in Presiding Bishopric
"One, two, three...let's go shopping!" Thomas S Monson - Prophet, Seer, Revelator
Church officials explained at the Saturday conference that LDS missionary president[s] have said to the leaders: “Give me more 18 year- olds. They’re sweeter; they’re purer, they’re smarter.”
This is insane.
Hey, let's send 4 year olds! Certainly they are even sweeter and purerer than 18 year olds!
~Those who benefit from the status quo always attribute inequities to the choices of the underdog.~Ann Crittenden ~The Goddess is not separate from the world-She is the world and all things in it.~
Madison54 wrote:Do you really think that mission presidents have been asking for 18 year olds?
I'm skeptical as well. Where I live a significant number of newly-called missionaries from our stake are going to one of the Utah missions, and, to a lesser extent, to California or Arizona (both with high LDS populations). Getting called to a foreign mission is the exception these days, at least in my neck of the woods. I'm not seeing the great urgency here.
"Moving beyond apologist persuasion, LDS polemicists furiously (and often fraudulently) attack any non-traditional view of Mormonism. They don't mince words -- they mince the truth."
-- Mike Quinn, writing of the FARMSboys, in "Early Mormonism and the Magic World View," p. x (Rev. ed. 1998)
To be fair to Jeffrey Holland, he did not specify who was demanding more LDS missionaries. This leaves open the possibility that he meant the LDS Church, and no one but the LDS Church, wants more missionaries. And if that is what he meant, then it is probably an accurate statement.
It's all completely non sequitur seeing as how it's a not a requirement or an expectation to go right after HS graduation or turning 18. The Church may indeed see an effect they planned on but the bottom line is that the youth have more flexibility. My own son will be coming back at such a time as will likely make him miss the fall semester so he goes off track on his degree (some classes are only offered in certain semester order for example) or he waits another year to get on track. Others can avoid that experience now.
The non-LDS population is certainly not demanding them. Now, if they were more involved in services, and highly qualified in medicine and education, there would be a demand.
Local city Sunday newspaper devoted nearly all of section A to a medical mission to Pine Ridge (SD).
Huckelberry said: I see the order and harmony to be the very image of God which smiles upon us each morning as we awake.
bcspace wrote:It's all completely non sequitur seeing as how it's a not a requirement or an expectation to go right after HS graduation or turning 18.
It will absolutely be an expectation to leave at 18. I'd bet my life savings on it.
bcspace wrote:The Church may indeed see an effect they planned on but the bottom line is that the youth have more flexibility. My own son will be coming back at such a time as will likely make him miss the fall semester so he goes off track on his degree (some classes are only offered in certain semester order for example) or he waits another year to get on track. Others can avoid that experience now.
Why didn't your son excercise the "flexibility" to serve a mission later when it wouldn't conflict with his school schedule? He had until 26 right? Might it be because of expectations?