Gotcha…Glad you could make some sense out of my awfully disorderly post.
Every single one of them stop at my house and bang on the front door. I don’t care where their mission is supposed to take them or what city they are supposed to be in,. but every one of them have a layover at my door.
“Mission” is defined in the Oxford Dictonary as “the act of bashing about Seven’s front porch.”
Damn… I want to go to Rome. That’s it. I’m converting and letting the church pay for it. 
I’ve met a number of missionaries here in Japan.
Most of them are on proselytizing missions. One of their primary tools seems to be free English lessons (English lessons being extremely popular and somewhat expensive) in which they teach from proselytizing texts. IIRC they use the Book of Mormon (is that the proper name?).
On the language issue, almost all of them I’ve talked to have fairly good Japanese skills, considering the time spent studying and the time in country overall. I recall using some study materials originally published by them during my student exchange time, including a nice mnemonic chart for hiragana that I remember well.
This jibes with what I know of my brothers experience, in addition to the proselytizing they taught free english lesson’s, though I knew they used materials published by the church I was under the impression that they did not teach the missionary discussions at these free english lesson’s. I will try to get in touch with him and ask him sometime this week.
Yes, the proper name is The Book of Mormon, another testament of Jesus Christ.
When he returned home he became reluctant (he refuses) to speak the language when he encounters someone who is Japanese. He says he fears they will feel insulted because he speaks it so poorly. He does however chatter at his daughters in Japanese when he’s cleaning ketchup or purple marker of them. I just know (from childhood experiences) that he’s smiling away and talking in sweet tone whilst calling them rotten godzilla snot buckets or something.
Abby
I don’t know, but I hear its damn near impossible.
“I’m a secular humorist . . . I make fun of religion.”
—I LOVE that! You’ve made my week; I’m going to use that as an answer when anyone asks my religion—with your kind permission, of course!
I have a friend, a Jack-Mormon which is a “fallen” Mormon (I guess that would be the phrase), who contends that the purpose of the mission is not so much to convert the heathen, although they will accept those handful of converts who buy into the religion. Instead, it is to reenforse or reidoctrinate those Mormon young people (the missionaaries themselves) who might otherwise be questioning their religious beliefs at about that point in their lives.
He contended that if one is asked to defend a moral belief in an otherwise hostile environment that belief is made stronger through that defense (thus the sending them to “foreign” or “strange” places). He said this is especialy true if you have a regular reindocrination each evening when you and your fellow missionaries get together.
I posed my friend’s theory to a pair of mormon missinaries who came by the house the other day and they agreed that they did indeed see their belief in their church grow while on their mission and they further said that they had yet to convert anyone to the LDS church although they felt they planted a number of seeds (religious seeds here, of course).
Who knows, he may have a point.
TV
Well I normally don’t try to announce/push my religion (as ironic as that may sound considering what will be in the rest of this post) but you asked so here goes.
What I Did on my Mission
First I decided to “accept a mission call.” Generally this is done by a local church leader usually the bishop asking you if you would like to serve a mission. A lot of folks will approach the church leader instead. After the local leaders have held interviews with you to verify your worthiness, an aplication is sent to the church administrative offices in Salt Lake where the official call is issued and you will be asked to serve in a particular geographic region and language. For example one of my cousins served in the New York-Harlem Spanish speaking mission. I was called to Brazil-Salvador (a large city on the North East coast).
Once called I was given several months to get prepaired. My family had already been saving money as the church does not cover the costs. Each missionary is expected to pay their own way.
Then I repoted to the Mission Training Center (MTC) in Provo, Utah. Here I was taught the basics of Portuguese, and the basic format of the “Discussions.” As someone who was learning a foreign language I spent 8 weeks in the MTC. Those not learning a language spend only 3 weeks. The language courses are fully immersive and have been adapted for use by other programs including the CIA’s. You spend about 12 hours a day in classes and spend all your time with others learning the language. From about the first week on you use only the learned language which can be frustrating but it is very effective in teaching basic conversational skills.
In my case once the time in the MTC was up my Brazilian Visa still had not been cleared, so I was asked to go to Montgomery, Alabama (in August - blech (don’t get me wrong nothing wrong with Alabama except August)) until it had. After two months in Alabama my Visa cleared and I travelled to Brazil. Once in Brazil I was assigned a companion (I had several), and an area to work in (again over the corse of 20 months I worked in several areas), and I got to work. In my case tha language was not so hard. I had studied Spanish and Latin in School and as the LDS church is large and growing in Brazil almost all my companions were native Brazilians so I was forced to learn the language to even make small talk. (By the end I spoke well enough most people thought I was a native Brazilian, although usually they caught the hint of an accent and assumed I was from Sao Paulo.)
The regular schedule was
6:30 Get up. Eat. Shower, shave etc. Read, study etc.
9:30 Go to work. Generally we would try to avoid going door to door. It is much more pleasant to talk to those who want to talk to you, and more productive as well. So Johnny Angel or Seven they generally don’t want to be knocking on your door any more than you want them knocking. It is just frequently they aren’t very inventive and can’t think of any other way to meet interested people and feel more productive doing that rather than nothing. Our primary purpose was to “preach,” but we usually did 10 to 20 hours of community service a week as well.
1:00 Break for lunch.
2:00 Back to work.
9:30 Get back home.
10:30 Go to bed.
This sounds a bit regimented and it was quite bit more flexable than this. But generally about 11 hours a day of service and/or prosylitizing is about right.
On Sundays we spent much of our time helping out at the church. And thus we wern’t able to have as many appointments on Sundays as during the week.
Mondays were given over to preperation and recreation. That was the day we would go shopping, do laundry and do the tourist thing. But even then we generally spent 3 hours in the evenings at teaching appointments.
I did teach English frequently. In most areas I had a regular class several times a week. It was a great way to participate in the community. In one area we taught our English classes in the basement of the local Catholic parish. Generally most of our students were taking other English classes and used me as a resource to practice pronunciation etc on. Actually it was occasionally very entertaining. Portuguese has no th sound. And having a room full of Brazilians trying to repeat: “Thirty thousand thirsty thieves thrashed through the thick thistles thursday” is a hoot. They usually got their revenge with the difference between Avó/Avô or lhe.
As far as recreation etc. goes. There simply isn’t much time for it. In addition as we were the most visible members of the church we were encouraged to hold ourselves to a higher standard. I certainly do a lot of things now I wouldn’t have done at that time. I hope this partially answers you question.
TV time To comment on a couple of your statements. Converts vary widely from area to area. Some places are far less ‘productive’ than others. Some missions only average a convert or two a year per missionary, Northern Europe and Asia for example. Some are very ‘productive’ with dozens of converts per missionary a year, Latin America for example. Some like the US and Canada fall in between. Some missionaries do experiencing the reinforcement you talk about. I personally left my mission more open, questioning and free thinking. I am still ‘practicing’ but am a touch contraversial for some of the members of my local congregation. So YMMV.
The term the church would prefer for your friend is “less-active.” In fact he could be doing tours campaigning against the church and they would still refer to him as a “less-active member.” The PC brigade strikes again. As an aside Jack-Moromon used to be the name given to non-member church suporters by detractors. Thus a senator who voted for Utah statehood at the time would be called a Jack-Mormon, short for Mormon supporter or almost Mormon. How it came to its current meaning is unknown.
Who wants to bet that this thread ends up in GD?
Bartman:
Thanks for all the infomation and the first-hand point of view. It clarifies a bunch.
TV
No problem TV time. I generally feel that on issues like this the first hand point of view is helpful. Sure it is great to know what the ‘party line’ might be. But for me that ends up being too dry and doesn’t express what something is really like to experience. That said I almost didn’t post, because I generally shy away from anything that smacks of witnessing unless someone specifically asks me a question. I am happy to hear that at least someone got something out of it.
I apologize if my responses smacked “or witnessing”, indeed my intent was to answer the question(s) as asked.
GargoyleWB wrote:
Get thee behind me, Satan! You’re blockin’ the view!
By the way, Mormon missionaries in Guatemala, who make their rounds in pairs, are referred to by the locals as “juevos” (“juevos” being Guatemalan slang for testicles).
(Or maybe that was Jehova’s Witnesses. I get my missionaries confused.)
That would be huevos – and you have learned only the Latin American slang meaning, technically it means “eggs” as in huevos rancheros.
Thanks for the spelling save, bughunter.
Of course I know that the “official” definition of “huevos” is “eggs.” I’m pretty sure that’s not what the Guatemalans meant to call the missionaries, tho…
Eve wrote:
Are you kidding? I’ve been trying for years to get it to catch on.
Bartman wrote:
I wasn’t ofended exactly, but I was amused at the clumsy approach. Honestly, I think they ill prepare missionaries for the work they are asked to do.
That’s interesting. The Catholics seem to like “lapsed,” and among Baptists it’s “back-slidin’.” I wonder if NeoPagans have a term for those who have strayed from the fold.
I’m not sure if the LDS experience is the same, but from my experience in doing English lessons with a religious group, we used materials which were sanctioned by our church, but we didn’t really do lessons on how to be saved (or become a member of the church as the case may be); we simply looked at the texts and helped people to learn English and interpret Biblical texts according to the dictates of the religion that I was doing this with at the time. It was not exactly outright proselytizing, but close enough that you got the main idea of it.
Not that converting others isn’t important, but IMO it seems that the main goal really is to reinforce the faith of young people at a critical juncture in their lives. After all, I have lots of stories of old friends who seemed quite like less-active members and came back from their missions trying to convert me.
I didn’t mean to imply that you were AbbySthrnAccent but I’ve lurked on this board and others long enough to know that religion threads tend to explode more easily and violently than most others. I generally stay clear of them. this one has been remarkably good natured so far. I think that it is because most folks are trying to stay as close as possible to the original question.
Yes Johnny Angel they are ill preprared. On my mission we once gave our discussions to a group of Baptists studying to be Pastors. They knew 2000 years of religous philosophy and quite literally tore us a new hole. After two appointments we cut off additional contact as they seemed more interested in insulting us than learning or teaching. After that, I made a very strong effort to learn as many other belief systems as I could. It seemed wise at the time as there was always someone wanting to debate. And the best way I found to defuse that was to show that I understood their viewpoint but disagreed. But the LDS church is almost entirely volunteer and untrained. This has its good and bad points, but it does leave the earnest young 19 year old missionaries unprepared for secular humanists in the wild.
lel I’m kind of ashamed to admit that it didn’t really occur to me to use my English lessons for proselytizing purposes. To be honest it was nice every time an opportunity arose to engage people in a non-religious setting. I was very happy doing what I was doing, but I enjoy lots of things I still like to get breaks from. Because US culture was so pervasive we would generally work with pop-culture for our classes. Which would lead to us helping them translate things like Madonna’s - Like a Virgin. I think the students always had a good idea what the raunchier stuff was about and just liked seeing us squirm. They were the same folks who would pull out their photo albums with the pictures of their trips to the nude beaches while you visted them. Gotta love the Brazilian sense of humor.
As a “former” Mormon who has come to not only question my faith, but denouce it, I must say that I maintain the utmost respect for missionaries. I feel they are truly good people doing what they believe is some of the most important work in the world. My family is still Mormon and I believe their faith to be a very special part of their lives.
That said, Bartman, from trying to mail you, I see that you don’t accept emails from here on the board. I was wondering if you perhaps grew up in Southwest Virginia. Forgive my forwardness if this is offensive to you - I thought from some of the things you said that we might know one another from high school. 