But I asked questions while we 'hung out'...

They were very passive and hard to keep on point, I had to act dumb and ask them questions...

We spent more time talking about Playstation games and where they had been before they came here.

They don’t know much about the first vision - waffled – and couldn't explain it. Didn't even bring up the gold plates.

Hadn’t read the King Follet Discourse or even heard about it. I had to send them a copy (I'll bet their morg email will stop it at MP in Billings).

They had a hard time explaining about levels of heavens

Couldn’t explain what the WoW was, gave very vague explanations and I don't think it was because they were giving me the 'soft sell.' They said caffeinated soda was still prohibited by WoW.

Couldn’t describe the difference between levels of heaven - telestial heaven is a place you go to if you are bad in this life and they send Missionaries to educate you until you are qualified to get into the CK.

They had never read and didn’t even know about the JoD – They asked me to look it up on Wikipedia and tell them what it was.

I asked why I would do something nice for people and they said it was the Holy Spirit...

Not really morg related, but they didn’t know who Charles Manson was. Ditto the Tate-LaBianca murders. (kids, made me feel really old) I had to explain that, too. They said Charlie was destined for the Telestial heaven.(For you 'youngsters' here's a link - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Manson)

Told him to come back and I'd feed 'em and let them play video games...



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 10/25/2012 10:40PM by John_Lyle.

I guess if they get a big bunch of 18 year olds now, they can send them out without any time in the MTC to English speaking areas. Obviously they don't need any training.

Yikes.

I remember tracking into a guy who was sick in some way. It was a cold night, and as he was saying he was not interested, is asked if there was anything we could do for him. He let us in and we warmed up and we just chatted. He showed us his artwork. He kept asking what we were doing in the country. I would briefly answer and change the subject. When the comp would try to talk gospel, I changed the subject. After we left and were heading for home, the comp asked what I was doing, and why I avoided the church conversation. I didn't have an answer for him, but I just wanted to feel human for a while and not cause this cool guy any undue stress. That comp has since left the church, and after all these years understands my one evening of wisdom in the field.

Like their founder, they are just making it up as they go along.

Well of course they don't know anything about church history or doctrine. If they did they probably wouldn't be on a mission in the first place. They would have been smart enough to stay home.

What it maybe demonstrates is that there is perhaps a marked difference between missionaries now and when I was out 20 or so years ago.

I remember having lots of 'deep doctrine' discussions with companions and interested members and it wasn't uncommon to find people that were well versed in the JoD, History of the Church volumes & Lectures on Faith etc.

I recall Elder's Quorum lessons before my mission where we discussed deeper doctrines, unlike now where they teach a lesson on the sacrament from the Gospel Principals manual.

I bet as a result of continued correlation and dumbing down in lessons over the past 20 years, on the whole the poor saps now simply won't have heard of half of this stuff.

They didnt know who Charles Manson was? Do they live under a rock?

Sheesh...my MP used to preach from the KF discourse at Zone Conference. I guess those were the good old days. We were deluded but at least we knew what we were deluded about.