Sometimes, but in my mission most of the baptisms fit one of those last categories you gave. Otherwise we would have gone months sometimes without a single baptism in the mission. Our mission president wanted "higher quality" baptisms, but he also didn't want our numbers to go to zero, so he generally told us that the gospel was for everyone.
All our mission president cared about was numbers not quantity. All that mattered was the number of baptisms and if we were meeting our goals.
However, the local bishops and ward missionaries wanted us to be converting quality members.
So there was always a bit of a tension. The bishop has no authority to determine if a non-member gets baptized into his ward or not - that decision is up to the 19 year old missionary that does to baptismal interview.
Mission Prez - "Baptize everyone! Do whatever you have to, everyone needs the blessing of baptism! Look among the poor and the meek"
Bishop or Branch Prez - "Um, I understand that everyone needs to be baptized, but he seems mentally deficient... Can't you find someone, um, that will, um, add to the ward?"
We weren't taught any sort of thing like this on my mission. In fact the opposite was the case. The people with the characteristics you mentioned were the bread and butter in the attempt to meet the weekly numbers. It would be rare for anyone else to listen to us and "progress" through the discussions.
When I was in poorer areas we would have many 1st discussion teaching opportunities but a very low level of commitment to continue. The opposite was true in affluent areas; very few people to teach but those that we did were at least a little more committed to having us teach more.
I disliked being in affluent areas for this reason, we were always getting chastized for not meeting the teaching goal number every week.
I never did see a whole family converted, like what is seen in the missionary propaganda videos churned out by the church(usually white and affluent).
Not to my knowledge. My mission was pretty elated if you could convince anyone to go into the water. Although, if we could get someone to church who had a education and a job, they were generally better received than when we hauled in a toothless gypsy who had more years than baths to his name.
I live in the midwest. You should see how shocked Utah TBM's are when they get transferred here and see our ward of misfits. Who do they think is being baptised out here. In the last 25 years we have had 2 golden convert families. The rest have ranged from pretend cripples looking for welfare to crazy chanting whicans. Our highest ranking PH was a couple teachers who loved being in charge.
Missionaries are desperate for baptisms due to the pressure for numbers from their mission president (who is also under the same pressure from the GA's). As long as they're not totally, mentally ill, they'll baptize 'em!
It's the ward members who might raise a stink becaue they are the ones who are gonna have deal with them afterwards. They don't want one more inactive on their hometeaching list that they will be pressured from their superiors (who are also under the same pressure from the GA's) to have to home teach and try and activate.
I went to Korea on my mission. It was extremely easy to baptize high school age girls because they loved american missionaires. They would join just to make us happy and probably had the fantasy of becoming a girlfriend.
Anyway, there were so many of these girls being baptized, that we were told to stop teaching them and focus more on getting men into the discussions.
I served in Korea too! Our mission president was very clear on the whole if a girl wants to be a member, send them to the sister missionaries. And you are right, they did follow us around and giggle, a lot.
Did you ever see any of them try to hitch a ride home with a missionary at the end of his mission? I saw a couple attempts but some of the younger women to try and suggest marriage so they could get a "free" ticket to the states.
Poor, illiterate, uneducated, handicapped is all we really had an opportunity to teach/indoctrinate.
One lady we taught, couldn't read or write, lived in a shack that as about to fall over, with dirt floors, she had more facial hair than most men.
She really had no comprehension level to speak of. We eagerly baptized her anyone. She really had no idea what we were trying to teach her. The best tool was pictures we used and think something about Jesus stuck in her mind. I think it was the only thing she could use as a reference point.
She walked eight miles round trip to go to church.
my brother served in the southern united states, back in the mid 1970's. They were told that if a black person answered the door, encourage them to attend the church of their choice and move on...quickly.
We were teaching a single woman in her late teens, had very minor disabilities. Her family was very poor and not interested in the church, but they liked having us come visit and we were desperate for something to report. So we kept having "discussions" with this girl and her family. The bishop called us into his office and told us to drop her and go find some "nice families". There hadn't been any baptisms in their ward in ages and we couldn't find "bad" families who would give us the time of day, much less nice ones. The bishop blamed all lack of baptisms on the missionaries, drove off anyone he didn't approve of and refused to let members help with referrals, because he was one of the first native Spaniards to serve a mission after the country was opened to missionary work. All he ever did was go door to door and he thought referrals were a lazy cop out by bad missionaries.
The mission president told him that referrals were a church policy and by refusing to encourage the members to give referrals, the bishop was going against the church. So he reluctantly agreed. The MP also said that bishop would have no good baptisms until he was willing to accept whomever the Lord sent him - that the ward and the bishop were being tested to see how Christlike they were. I was glad to see that bishop chewed out but some MPs would have agreed with the bishop and some bishops would have accepted any baptism.
I served in the late seventies in Northern Europe. We were directed not to teach Pakistanis, Turks or Africans. We were told that we were called to teach the people of the country not foriegners. My Mission President was a certified racist. We found investigators from Chile, and indonesia and we were told to drop them.
I recall reading a mission newsletter (the one circulated among all the missionaries in the mission each month) about 45 or so years ago. I remember it because of the rather startling advice it gave to the Missionaries from the MP. It said to not go after the riff-raff but to seek out "that future Stake President" etc. Even as a TBM at the time I thought this to be not exactly WWJD.