Everybody Wang Chung wrote:If your mission was anything like mine, you probably had several branches and/or wards comprised primarily of "kooks and crips".
Yes, very much so.
We also had a number of non-members who liked to dress up as missionaries with their own home-made flip charts and follow us around. One of these guys had a flip chart full of nothing but pictures of birds in it. Like you, I never wondered at the time why we attracted so many unusual individuals, probably because I was too busy trying to learn the language and memorize the discussions.
The Kook Factor seemed to bother my mission president a lot more than it did the missionaries. He told us specifically to avoid "kooks and crips" and concentrate on families.
keithb wrote:The people that we baptized seemed to all have severe mental problems...
Lol! I guess it's easier to swallow the Joseph Smith story if you have a preexisting affinity for kooky beliefs.