My mission president, under direction from Salt Lake, told us we needed to convert more men.
by forbiddencokedrinker Apr 2012
Actually, what he said was that we needed to concentrate more on finding more golden converts, which he described as those would be strong priesthood leaders. This was back in 1997, and the church was noticing that its teenage elders were really good at converting girls, welfare recipients, and crazy people, but not so good at finding future bishops.
He even said that there was nothing wrong with converting women, but we needn't spend so much effort on them, since they would find their way to the church, but men needed a tighter focus.
Does anyone know if this trend continues today? Sounds like they either need to give women the priesthood, or start sending out more sister missionaries.
cludgie
Re: My mission president, under direction from Salt Lake, told us we needed to convert more men.
Same for us back in 1969. But over and over again we were led to crazy folk.
Stumbling
Re: My mission president, under direction from Salt Lake, told us we needed to convert more men.
I thought God helps you find investigators if you pray hard enough.
Either God wants you to convert crazies and women or the legions of missionaries aren't praying hard enough.
Stray Mutt
Same in the early '70s.
I've told this before. My "inspired" MP encouraged us to commit a truly lame and counterproductive con in order to reach the type of men the church craved for converts -- white-collar guys. His scheme was for missionaries to show up at offices unannounced and tell the receptionist they had an critical message for the boss regarding the well being of his family. In the deluded mind of my MP, the receptionist would happily buzz her boss without further questions, and the boss, thinking it was some sort of emergency, would certainly want to see us right away.
I was a dumb 20-year-old, but even I knew that wasn't the way things worked. And the MP should have known that, too, since he had been an executive in civilian life.
So, even if we lied our way into an audience with the boss, and got to tell him the eternal fate of is family was in jeopardy unless he accepted the One True Church®, he'd have to be a complete fool not to feel conned by unethical jerks. Oh yeah, that's the image of the church we want to spread.
Fortunately, I didn't have to try this stupid ploy because I was assigned to a subset dedicated exclusively to proselytizing "Lamanites," among which there were no suit-wearing executives.
darksparks
We had that problem in the Philippines
This was back in the early seventies. And I am sure that this continues. There are plenty of pretty young girls who will listen to the young handsome missionaries and be baptized. And the missionaries love to teach this kind of "investigator."
Eventually the Branch is filled with young women and there are no local Priesthood bearers to lead. So the mission president comes out with an inspired message that we are only to teach families if the "man of the house" is present.
It didn't work and it never will. People are interested in listening to these young missionaries primarily because they are cute and they are foreigners.
That too is why the missionaries at Temple Square are of the attractive sort. Sex appeal always sells...
danboyle
we got the same instructions, France 1979-1980...nothing changes
imaworkinonit
But wait, it wasn't YOU doing the converting. It was the SPIRIT
So maybe the Holy Ghost/God didn't get the memo on who they were supposed to be working on.
bc
Re: My mission president, under direction from Salt Lake, told us we needed to convert more men.
Your mission president was way off.
Clearly the focus should be to convert as many women as possible thus increasing the female/male ratio for polygamy in the next life. What would be the point of going around baptizing celestial competition?
GQ Cannonball
Re: My mission president, under direction from Salt Lake, told us we needed to convert more men.
Same...western Europe...early '80s. We got the crazies, and talked to plenty of young attractive women. The ONE normal family we taught and made strong progress with was rescued before baptism by an American baptist minister.
delt1995
Re: We had that problem in the Philippines
Not to be sexist, but women stereotypically are more likely to make emotional decisions. If a woman feels the LDS faith and Book of Mormon are good things, they are more likely to act upon them.
My father would dismiss door-to-door salesmen with "not intererested". My mother would listen longer to sales pitches.
nomo moses
Re: My mission president, under direction from Salt Lake, told us we needed to convert more men.
My experience many years ago in the Madrid mission was that men would listen to us more. The women were too focused on their catholic religion, but the men already didn't believe in their religion. That was one reason Madrid had a stake prior to some of the other spanish missions even though the southern mission had twice as many members at the time. Church organization requires penis holders.
delt1995
Re: My mission president, under direction from Salt Lake, told us we needed to convert more men.
A husband and father could influence the family tp convert more than the wife.
Stray Mutt
It's not just young single women
SOmetimes it's the wife and kids but not the husband -- the kind of guy who doesn't go for that religious stuff.
sayhitokolob4me
Re: My mission president, under direction from Salt Lake, told us we needed to convert more men.
Ours said that too, but for the most part everyone just baptized teenage girls.
Raptor Jesus
Heavenly Father should have just made it rain men. Hallelujah!
Stunted
Yep, same thing for Portugal in the early '80s.
The MP was always looking for the strong, male, future Stake President type of converts. We were instructed to always ask to speak with the man of the house and if he wasn't home to schedule a visit when he would be home. Of course this never worked.
dk
Clearly, something for all those single sisters to do
Mateo Pastor
When were you there? I was active in Barrio 5 until 2005
nomo moses
Re: When were you there? I was active in Barrio 5 until 2005
I was there in 1982-1984. Spent 1/2 of my mission in Valladolid (I was assigned to teach piano to members there) and a lot of time in Burgos. Was in Madrid the first 4 months and Alcorcon the last 3 or 4 months.
order66
Re: My mission president, under direction from Salt Lake, told us we needed to convert more men.
My inspired mission president (in Washington state) told us that the lord called the best missionaries to the US cuz that is where the most tithing is generated. lol
Mateo Pastor
Thanks. I was little then but perhaps you met my family
UK-Sinner
Re: My mission president, under direction from Salt Lake, told us we needed to convert more men.
Same here.
Infact, our Mission President specifically told us to tract the nice areas of town, between 6-8pm in the evening & also during Saturdays & Sundays, when working men would be at home.
Of course we didn't actually baptise any future priesthood leaders, we just continued finding & baptising single mothers & their children from the poor areas of town which we tracted during week days.
That was 20 years ago & I'll bet my last £/$, that things are exactly the same today
steve benson
Back in the 1970s in my mission to Japan, we were told to focus on baptizing men so that they could use their "special" priesthood power to run the wards and branches . . .
We were able to baptize (and manage to keep active) many more women and youth than adult male potential priesthood leaders.
What ended up happening was that the full-time missionaries became the branch presidents, trying to manage and expand tiny congregations that were short on Mormon men.
That's what you get when you're using an outdated, sexist, impractical patriarchal model to build the "kingdom."
Joe Laban
Re: My mission president, under direction from Salt Lake, told us we needed to convert more men.
I heard a missionary state that he was going to target upper middle class to rich so the church could receive more tithing.
"Recovery from Mormonism - www.exmormon.org"