DiscussMormonism.com

beastie wrote:
Whyme's response is interesting, and not due to the fact that he acts like a bot and just repeats some trite phase without substance. It's interesting because whyme's one purpose is to insist that all is well in zion, no matter what, and no matter that his own personal devotion to the LDS church is minimal in real life. He's reverted to "you all are lying" because he can't think of a way to spin this positively, and that's what is interesting.

I think this is definitely a sign that all is not well in zion, and they know it. They woulnd't make changes like this unless they felt they had to, that the alternative of leaving things as they were was not an option.

If the number of missionaries has greatly increased, it only makes sense that some will come home early. This is only natural. I see no reason to be negative about this. Also, I have pointed out that each mission is different depending on the missionary president. I can't see the sister missionaries doing nothing all day. My own daughters spent a lot of time on the streets making contacts. Now some may do nothing but certainly I can't see the mission president okaying this.

The missionaries in my stake are going door to door and also meeting people on the streets. They can also do service projects, if asked. I see no major changes in this mission field.

Mayan Elephant wrote:the lds church would increase its conversions and number of volunteers exponentially if they changed all the missions to 100% service missions. the missionaries could be learning trades, and actually serving people for two years. the church could be building schools and goodwill, rather than wasting 2 years of everyone's life and annoying the hell out of people.

Well, we have a problem here. It seems that the missionaries main purpose is to preach the gospel like the apostles of old. This is their main mission and not as service missionaries. And once the church builds schools, what then? Who are the teachers? What should these schools teach? Where should they build schools? And who keeps the schools funded? Are they public or private?

But the main vocation for missionaries is to preach the gospel.

why me is doing his job. la la la la la la la la la la. i can't hear you. la la la la la. the church is true and you're a liar. la la la la la la la la. i can't hear you.

going door to door and contacting people on the streets has not become less efficient. it is exactly the same in its effectiveness as it was when we were on missions. what has changed is, not so ironically, the same thing that has changed for the joseph smith story, the book of abraham yarn, and the Book of Mormon origination tale - the internet changed.

going door to door and giving out books on public transportation is going to get you the exact same yield it provided 20 years ago - a lunatic with mental illnesses that will not stay active, will likely piss off the members, and may or may not get baptized in less than a week. only now, the missionaries have enough resources online to know that this was a BS proposition for the last 50 years and they just are not putting up with it or doing it as much. and, the not-crazy so-called investigators that the missionaries would have been able to get a conversation with are more informed now than they were generations ago.

you have to love why me though. "we can't build a school because who would work there and what would they teach? we can't build a hospital because who would we cure, nonbelievers? we can't help people without them being obliged to believe? they have to believe before we help, they have to believe before we teach, they have to believe before we cure."

this project of monson's is doomed. it is a trainwreck. jesus, the local SLC paper is writing about it already and it is only a year old. now they are going to give ipads to missionaries to make them more hip or something? what a waste. give them a hammer and an education and let those kids really do something good for somebody, rather than waste their time and everyone else's time.

Mayan Elephant wrote:why me is doing his job. la la la la la la la la la la. i can't hear you. la la la la la. the church is true and you're a liar. la la la la la la la la. i can't hear you.

going door to door and contacting people on the streets has not become less efficient. it is exactly the same in its effectiveness as it was when we were on missions. what has changed is, not so ironically, the same thing that has changed for the joseph smith story, the book of abraham yarn, and the Book of Mormon origination tale - the internet changed.

going door to door and giving out books on public transportation is going to get you the exact same yield it provided 20 years ago - a lunatic with mental illnesses that will not stay active, will likely piss off the members, and may or may not get baptized in less than a week. only now, the missionaries have enough resources online to know that this was a BS proposition for the last 50 years and they just are not putting up with it or doing it as much. and, the not-crazy so-called investigators that the missionaries would have been able to get a conversation with are more informed now than they were generations ago.

you have to love why me though. "we can't build a school because who would work there and what would they teach? we can't build a hospital because who would we cure, nonbelievers? we can't help people without them being obliged to believe? they have to believe before we help, they have to believe before we teach, they have to believe before we cure."

this project of monson's is doomed. it is a trainwreck. jesus, the local SLC paper is writing about it already and it is only a year old. now they are going to give ipads to missionaries to make them more hip or something? what a waste. give them a hammer and an education and let those kids really do something good for somebody, rather than waste their time and everyone else's time.

+1!

Winning hearts might be more productive than trying to sell an iffy proposition door to door. A couple of Mormon Mother Teresa's would do more to improve the image of the LDS church then 80,000 teenage missionaries.

Oops! Don't tell anyone, they just might do it.

Quasimodo wrote:A couple of Mormon Mother Teresa's would do more to improve the image of the LDS church then 80,000 teenage missionaries.

i love that, quasi. i am making that my new signature. it is effing brilliant.

i know runtu and others have written complete books about their missions. and we had the 750 day daily journal that was posted on here. some missions were a shitshow, and some were really profound and great for people. i had a great and profound mission despite all the crap that went on. it is ridiculous that monson is making good missions less probable and, given all the goodwill that is available to him, he is pissing it away and wasting everyone's time and money.

I'll give an anecdotal example of missionaries inflating numbers to meet the pressure levied on them by Mission Presidents.

When I was in the field we'd stop people in the street and do a quickie 1st charla... A streamlined version if you will, and we'd count it on our tracker. We found that our odds of roping someone into a second discussion was a little better if we could relationship-build with the 1st one.

So. There you have it.

- Doc

Exactly.... We used to do 50-60 a week. On the street, on the bus, on the doorstep first discussions. Useful tool to determine quickly who was receptive and who was not.

SteelHead wrote:Exactly.... We used to do 50-60 a week. On the street, on the bus, on the doorstep first discussions. Useful tool to determine quickly who was receptive and who was not.

My second mission president, who went on to become a GA, started a program where we would knock doors and within 5 minutes of being in the house, we were to challenge the people we had just met, to be baptized. Needless to say baptisms skyrocketed. His homespun philosophy was dunk em first, convert them later. Now that country has one of the highest inactivity rates in South America and perhaps the world.

Fence Sitter, were we in the same mission? Mine was in Brazil....