Inspired by the current JW threads, I thought I’d hang out my shingle and answer any questions about Mormon missionaries.
I was raised Mormon and was a Mormon missionary for two years in Argentina. Since then I have left the religion (and become an atheist), but my family is still very much Mormon.
Mormons strongly encourage all 19-year-old Mormon men to “serve a mission.” (Women aren’t allowed to go until they’re 21 and they aren’t encouraged to go. Why? Because this would delay them from getting married and having kids. That’s why female Mormon missionaries are so much rarer. ) Missions last 2 years (1.5 years for women) and you don’t get to choose where you go. You get sent to a single country (or area within a country) and spend the entire two years there. However, you are moved around inside that area every 4-6 months. Most missionaries go to North and South America and Europe. Most of China is a no-go, as well as any Islamic countries. There is only a very limited presence in India. Africa is very limited as well, and is mostly staffed by African Mormon missionaries, but not exclusively.
Mormon missionaries do not get paid; on the contrary, you have to pay $400 per month for the privilege of serving. In most cases (and in mine), the parents of the young man pay the entire amount. That means my parents paid $9,600 for my mission (not counting all the stuff they had to buy for me). I guess it’s cheaper than tuition.
So what did we do all day? Try to figure out ways to baptize people. These are not charitable missions (excepting a tiny minority of specialized “welfare missionaries”) and we were only required to do a couple hours of charity work per week. The rest of the time was spent trying to find people to convert.
How to find people (from most-effective to least-effective):
- Visit people who are already Mormons and ask them if they have any friends that are interested.
- Visit people who have been baptized Mormon but don’t go to church. They may have unbaptized children or spouses.
- Visit people who called that 1-800 number requesting a free Bible/Book of Mormon or who visited a Mormon temple open house and were foolish enough to write down their address.
- Wander around and talk to people who are out and about.
- Knock on doors (door-to-door proselyting).
In many countries, door-to-door proselyting is prohibited, so the Mormons have to find ways to work around it. During my mission in Argentina, we never liked going door-to-door because it arouses a lot of hostility and almost never works, but we had quotas for number of contacts made and so forth, so we often did it. (Fun fact: where I was in Argentina, most yards were fenced and gated with no doorbell, so you would clap your hands to get the homeowner’s attention, since there is nothing to knock on.)
Oh yes, we had quotas for everything, including hours spent proselyting, number of people contacted, hours spent studying, etc. Each mission sets its own rules, but in mine, we had to speak with 35 people each week. The 35 conversations had to be in-depth, not just approaching someone and getting brushed off. Basically, the whole thing is a sales funnel. You have to talk to 300 people to find 10 people to teach; you have to teach 10 people to find one person to get baptized.
Once we found a person willing to talk to us, we had a series of six lessons (this has since been changed a bit) where we explain a very limited amount about Mormonism and its teachings. This usually required six visits. The most important things were getting them to commit to stop using tobacco, alcohol, and coffee, and stop having sex outside of marriage. These were hard because cigarettes are addictive and divorce is slow and expensive to get in Argentina. Most people just separate and start living with their new spouse without getting anything official. We couldn’t baptize them if they were living with someone and still married to their first spouse. This was probably the biggest obstacle to baptizing people.
What wasn’t included in the lessons? Any mention of polygamy, racism, funny underwear; in short, any thing the least bit negative or in-depth about the church. After the six lessons, the person had to attend church twice, submit to an interview (to make sure they were still not smoking or having sex), and then we could baptize them. The problem is that attending a church twice is hardly enough time to see if it’s a good fit or even get to know anyone. Also, the people we taught were friends with us, the missionaries, not the local members. This is why Mormons have abysmal retention rates of new converts.
So what do I regret? I regret lying to people about polygamy (both implicitly and explicitly), I regret making people feel bad about something as innocuous as drinking alcohol, and I feel bad that I dragged some people that I grew to love into a religion that I feel has a net negative effect. I did enjoy living in a foreign country for two years, even though my time was mostly wasted. I often wish I had joined the Peace Corps instead, because I would have been providing an actual service for poor people, instead of selling them a religion. However, I did get to meet and hang out with a large number of cool people, so I guess the experience was a net positive for me, if not for Argentina.
So, any questions? I know there are a lot of other former Mormon missionaries on the board, so I’m sure they can fill in the gaps about missionaries in other countries.
