Recently I found myself on a blog of a missionary that served in my ward about a year ago.
He's from bountiful, and from what I can gather quite a well off family. Anyway, to my surprise, in his letters home (which were published on the blog) he was openly mocking and slating the members of the ward. The ward does happen to be situated in a very deprived area in the north west of england, and there are various parts of the letters where he is making fun of peoples homes, lack of money, race, food they served and even the way a woman who had suffered a stroke spoke.
I couldn't understand how much of a contradiction this was from the rest of his letters where he rambled on about eternal salvation etc.
I understand that the members arent perfect but I don't believe that good charitable people should be mocked by some ignorant little shit from the utah bubble.

Seriously, that's how mormons view their mocking and constant carping.

Link?

Well, as you've discovered, money is no relief for ignorance. At midlife, my observation is that sooner or later life has a way of biting most people in the butt. He might develop some insight and compassion as he ages. Or not.

19 year old boys are still going to be 19 year old boys even if you hang a label of Elder on their chests.

When I served my sentence I was probably the most naive of them all. I had grown up in the middle of White Bread Utah and had an ego that matched my elevated position in the Universe. I was chosen. I was special. I was reserved for the latter days. I had a work to do that nobody else could accomplish......you get the idea.

I served my mission in Portugal and I recall with shame how superior I felt. The sad thing is, I really couldn't see how far superior so many of those people really were when compared against my Utah culture and mindset. I wish I had a do-over. There is so much I could have learned.

One memory your post sparked is a quote I heard often on my mission. "If the church weren't true, the missionaries would have destroyed it long ago". This quote usually accompanied a story of a stupid act by missionaries somewhere that really embarrassed the church. Funny how the church can twist significant acts of stupidity into faith confirming miracles.

Anyway, as a former member of the culture that has insulted your countrymen, please accept my apology.

Stunted

What a dick. I would love to see his blog and let him have it.

Actually one of the main reasons we decided to stop looking into the church, was the attitude of LDS in Utah(not all of them). I still feel bad about saying it but the attitude out here is just well different.

The first time I moved out of Utah as an adult I actually enjoyed church a little bit. Having instant friends was kind of cool since we had just moved 2k miles away from home. The community of saints was quite a bit different than in Utah. In fact, I started saying things like: "the church is truer in the Mission field". I think moving back to Utah was the best thing that ever happened to me. It drove me out of the church!

There was a missionary serving from our ward who sent his weekly email out to everybody in his contact list no matter how distantly he knew us. He started doing the same thing an openly sharing his investigator’s struggle with pretty much his entire home ward. Bro. _____ is still having problems with the _____ so we challenged him to stopped ______ing. You get the idea. So, I hit REPLY ALL and forcefully told him his emails were in appropriate but they never stopped and he showed no evidence that he ever read my reply.

Please share the link with us.

Letting the Mission Pres. know about this.

Locally here in Houston (Texas) Some Mishies had posted about being in 'da ghetto' and also linking pictures of out homes and people here.
I've posted about this before, but to make it shorter, it stopped, even those who were done with their missions removed their posts.
Ya kids will be stupid, but they need to learn where to limits are.

I can't figure out why these guys would all want tofrined me on Facebook, etc and do this.
<edit> and while I have only know approx. 45 Mishies, the ones from Utah are the oens who end up doing this.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/15/2011 12:38PM by nomilk.

I would link it but I don't feel it's fair on the missionary, plus for anyone in my ward lurking it'd be a dead giveaway as to who I am.

I will post a few exerpts though.

-First Sister ******** cornered me (i was warned, NOBODY can understand her) and she just mumbled to me for about 10 minutes straight! I couldnt understand a word she was saying either so i just laughed.
-Being here is making me English, the other day i cracked a tooth. pretty soon i'll look proper English! Mentions how brits have only just discovered dentistry. (might be semi funny if it was coming from someone else)
-He mentions how one woman was 'easy' 250 pounds and is built like a line backer and it was impossible to baptise her. ( didn't think the description was necessary at all)
-Refers to the town as "ghetto ghetto", and gross.
-Mentions how he was embarrassed to bring investigators to the ward.
-Pictures outside chinese halls of residence at a certain uni pulling his eyes to the sides (you know what i mean)
-Calling people in the ward 'chavvy' and poor.(you brits will know what i mean)
-ignoring calls from elderley sisters in the ward because their food is 'gross'.
-Commenting on the state of peoples houses.
-MANY very un-PC comments about african investigators.
There's more but you get the idea.
They're not major but I'm still irritated.

Elaine,

I was able to find the blog by searching google for some of the text you posted. It may lead back to you, anyway.

He talks about an 11yr old girl who tells them that her parents won't allow her to speak to them. Instead of respecting the wishes of the parents and telling her they can't answer her question without her parents' consent, they start telling her about the gospel, anyway. No respect for their boundaries whatsoever. If that was my child, I'd be pissed.


I agree, his comments are inappropriate. But I'm not surprised.

I remember missionaries making inappropriate comments all the time. But so did the other guys and girls of the same age.

I come from a family with a lot of heavy family members. My ex'd father for example is probably much larger than this woman - and I'd be appalled if they convinced him to come back to the fold and then commented on the FREAKIN INTERNET about the logistical challenges of his baptism.

I'm not saying I'm perfect, far faaar from it in fact. I know it's shameful but I'd probably laugh about it - if I heard it from the woman herself, or maybe a family member or friend who said it in good humor about someone they love very deeply. It's that old "intent" problem. I think a close family member has a little bit more invested in the relationship than, say, a smartmouthed prick from the Zion Skidmark who's eager to get the highest score at the celestial nintendo game.

But I'm shocked that the church isn't doing better monitoring of these blogs. Hell, I know from personal experience that they read every message written on seminary "write to a missionary" days, you know where they have everyone write a letter to another student as if they were away on their mission?

If they proofread those, what the hell are they doing letting kids post shit like this for the whole world to see?? I guess that's why we're seeing reports of MPs cracking down on facebook/blog posts.

What's most embarrassing is that this could have easily been me. I've made so many statements during the course of my life that make me want to just crawl under a rock and die. So many things which I was utterly oblivious to what they really said about myself.

I wonder if I'd be any different if I'd grown up in a diverse state, instead of podunk Narthern Yewta.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/15/2011 10:53PM by apatheist.

Ahh yes, I've seen many a photo of a terraced house with a dumb missionary stood infront with a caption like: "Can you believe people actually live in these?!?!?! CRAZY!"

Americans, particularly ignorant, undereducated, and untraveled ones, are often guilty of judging others using a harsh and unequal standard, that harsh standard often simply not being American. It's not like being American is intrinsically better, or anything (it's not like the US ain't got chavvy ghetto dwellers), but when you're ignorant, undereducated, and untraveled--particularly when you're young and wet behind the ears--you perceive wide, sweeping, and stupidly wrong things. It's wrong for someone in his capacity of a missionary, a person "serving" (as Mormons like to say) another people to be judgmental of them. Now, if he were going on vacation to Scotland and kept having to run over and put coins in one of those stupid provincial meters in order to watch TV, that would be a possibly valid complaint. But to be holding oneself out as a "servant" and then say these awful things, makes me want to bitch-slap the kid.

Honestly, so many Mormon missionary kids will act as if Vernal, Utah, is the end-all of haute civilisation, the Seat of Western Societ, as if Vernal doesn't have its own toothless and slack-jawed obese population. I just dealt with some guy who was saying terrible things about "backward" Canada--and we're not talking backwoods Nunavut, but like BC and Alberta. I said, "Have you even been there? It's like the fucking Promised Land up there! You must not get out much." He admitted that he didn't even have a passport.

Maybe it's not just an American phenomenon, but the attitude to harshly judge non-Americans is rampant here in the states. I suppose that it could just be the individual's age, the kid's own maturity or lack of it, and non-exposure to other places on the planet. All I know is I hate it, and it makes me want to pound somebody whenever I hear it.

I used to cringe when seeing some American tourists acting horribly overseas. You want to explain to those they offend that it isn't all of us.

Personally, I love the European lifestyle. It's so much more unhurried and relaxed than our own.

We got this ALL the time in our predominantly American Ward. ALL the time. ALL the effing time.

Our houses are too small, our roads too narrow and windy, its too cold and wet, our food not American, we're too left wing, we don't have Walmart - you wont believe how often we heard that one. You guys rescued us in WW2 when we didn't know what we were doing. On and on and on....

Left our whole family with a tendency to wince when we heard an american accent, but we are over that now. We have an American SIL and also we don't want to be like the yahoos we went to church with.

Sheesh, how you must suffer! How do you all come by your "Made in China" throwaway items? Who comes in to run local businesses out of town?

Every time I hear the "we rescued you in WWII, I cringe… CRINGE." it's kind of funny because my fellow Americans tend to get a bit bent out of shape if a Brit quips "remember us? We created your country."

Lol

I'm sorry. I have to say sorry for these people. I guess I would be considered to be an 'untravelled' American, but my views on other cultures are not that of ignorance. I believe that these people are making a choice to be ignorant. It makes me cringe as well.

DW, too. We love the place. DW is a die-hard Anglophile. We love Germany, too, where we lived for 13 years. Also got 4 years invested in Rome. It became harder and harder to return to the states each time we did, and part of the reason was the ignorance we were exposed to. We'd say, "Germany was great!" They'd say, "But I thought you were in Europe."

Americans are a sad case, indeed.

They're teenagers, what'd you expect?

Ron

They weren't predominantly teenagers in our old ward. They were doctors, dentists, pilots, mechanics, nurses, whatever it takes to run the airforce.

I guess that's what passes for quiet dignity these days.

I grew up in Bountiful and it was not a great experience. The town is mostly wealthy and well off. It was not fun being lower middle case growing up there.

My college roommate and I hitchhiked in the UK and part of Europe in the mid 80's. We saw lots of ugly americans. We had a routine called "Harry and Mildred" where we would have mock conversations about what we saw as perceived by an american midwestern couple.

When we were in Notre Dame an american woman told an old woman who was praying in a side altar to move so she could take a picture. we tried to lay low and not act offensive. My roommate was born in france so we had the advantage of language, and I had taken german and spanish, so with that base in languages we were able to communicate.

I'm a teenager, its no justification.

One of my low moments at the MTC was going to a class taught by a sister RM in her 20s. It was one of those large group lectures about something like culture/manners/conversing with non-LDS. Anyway, this woman was SO offensive - talked about the members in her mission like inferior Utah-Mo wannabes and the non-LDS were just fair game for her jokes. I couldn't believe a teacher was copping such an unChristlike attitude and wrote her a letter (which I bravely signed with my real name since that passive/aggressive crap is not my style) and told her what I thought of her attitude and her condescending remarks about nonmembers. I wish I kept the letter she wrote back - a combination of sheer spitefulness and Mormon two-faced sweetness that was a classic. I understood why my comments made her mad but I just couldn't let it slide, I was so mad by at the outlook on others she was modeling for those going into the mission field.