DH and I were having dinner with old Church friends the other night. They had just come back from serving a "senior mission". I'm not sure what their intentions were whether it was their hope to rescue us or because they really loved us...? We had a very pleasant, civil conversation when the wife said that their nephew had just been called to Haiti. I could not help to exclaim "That's disgusting, religion is the last thing those poor people need! Not only do they not have a pot to piss in, but they do not have clean potable water to drink!" They were polite and did not take me on with my exclamation of disgust... we just continued the conversation as though it was just one more running thread in the whole conversation! I should have mentioned that he will most likely come back home sick and deseased for the rest of his life! Want a little cholera?

This is crazy that anyone would let their kids go to Haiti to try to convert anyone. If my child wanted to go for a humanitarian reason and had proper facilities for housing etc. I probably wouldn't mind. However, having served a mission, I know what kind of conditions the missionaries may have in Haiti. I know how much the church leadership in SLC don't give a rats ass for the well being of these kids spending their own money to bring souls to the church coffers.

TBM's likely think, "the lard knows best and will protect my child from any harm." And if something does happen, they will say, "oh that is the lards will and a growing experience. Everything happens for a reason."

K I need a bowl to wretch.

It'll be like the Church in the Bahamas and the poor parts of Miami...they'll send naive young white boys out there only to discover that no one will talk to them because they think they're government agents. Best case, they get spat on and sent to the back of the bus. Worst case? It'll be pretty damn ugly.

I wish I could be a fly on the wall the first time some imported stuffed suit gets to explain that unlike Catholicism, Mormons shouldn't be practicing voudon on the side.

You are right. Any religion they may have should be expressed in caring for themselves as best they can and protecting their kids. They certainly don't need to be thinking of tithing 10 percent if they could even BE converted. Do you think the mishies would tell them that if they were all just Mormons that horrible event would have never happened???

I protest the gratuitous remarks by Aussie Lurker (voodoo is a valid religion, not a serious of witchcraft spells) the AIDS rate is way down from past years, cholera is a recent event brought by Nepalese troops (there has never been a case of cholera until now and easily avoided if you drink clean water), crime is shockingly low if you bear in mind the utter squalor of the people caused by U.S. intervention, U.S.-led dictatorships, native corruption, and now the earthquake.
I was in Haiti last summer and I never felt very unsafe. To be sure, I was not roaming the streets of Cité Soleil in the capital at two in the morning but the Haitians are very kind people if you try to connect with them.
For me, the big beef with the TSSC is the fact that they do not really care about the people. Exhibit A: In Leogâne, a town that was hit harder by the earthquake than Port-Au-Prince (or Pòtoprens in Creole), the LDS church refused to let its doors open to the locals when a tropical storm swept away people's makeshift hovels. It was for members only. Other churches were available. Desperate people were turned away. Mind-blowing hypocrisy!!!
Exhibit B: The TSSC has actually given very little to Haiti, especially in view of the great need and in comparison to other churches. Some of the money going for the City Creek Mall could go a long way in Haiti. They need some sort of housing, albeit temporary. They need everything. They need a lot. The U.S. owes Haiti a lot for the predicament Haiti is in (not the earthquake but the country of the country that allowed for thousands of lives to be lost). Even Bill Clinton acknowledged that he brought misery upon the Haitians when he forced President Aristide to allow for subsidized US rice to be imported without tariffs, thereby driving thousands of farmers off the land and into the teeming squalor of the capital. The U.S. media quite simply fails to report the details and Americans blissfully go on living their lives without knowing what their government has been doing in that poor, benighted country over the years (read Peter Hallward's Damming the Flood or read some of the essays at http://www.haitianalysis.com/ for more information).
Sending LDS missionaries down there is really pointless if they are not going to be helping the local people there (and not conditionally). Sure, they will have converts. The people are that desperate though in their hearts they will also be loyal to the Vodou practices, at least in the countryside. Right now, there is a whole gaggle of evangelical missionaries there trying to convert the Haitians from their traditional religion. For many, the earthquake is a golden opportunity to wean them away from the religion of their ancestors. They are using their deep pockets of cash to win over for Jeeesuz desperately poor people with nothing to lose. God, I hate those missionaries. It is in Haiti that I remembered an expression "God made me an atheist".

They have had these major life-changing challenges (the earthquake and every other damn problem possible). The LDS church teaches that these kinds of people are the right target, and the situations in their lives will make them humble and "receptive of the gawspel," i.e., "easy marks." It is, after all, about the numbers and keeping up the appearances of growth. A freebie is also getting fuzzy, feel-good stories out of it that will be published in Church News, thus validating the work there.