I couldn't help but notice that LDS inc employee Scott Trotter first said there were between 100 to 150 missionaries in the Sendai mission.

http://www.localnews8.com/news/27163342/detail.html

Later it was reported by the church that all 72 missionaries in the Sendai mission had been accounted for.

That is quit a spread in numbers. I guess I should give Trotter the benefit of the doubt of just mis-speaking.

Or then again, maybe LDS Inc. only has half as many missionaries "in the field" as they claim to have.

It may be interesting to note that Trotter was 'estimating the number' of missionaries in the area.

Why would he need to estimate, do they not know how many missionaries they have?

What people will remember is the subconscious message that with 100-150 missionaries the work is spreading at an amazing pace.

The later numbers will only be a reasurance that the mishies are safe, but locked into future testimony mode is the message of Japan needing 100-150 missionaries because there is so much growth.

CRACKPOT_CONSPIRACY_THEORY_MODE = ON

Or maybe, just maybe, there were 140 missionaries in the area and 68 of them were killed in Tsunami, an "act of God," but the Church is sweeping their existence under the rug since it would not be faith-promoting for that many missionaries to be killed by God.

CRACKPOT_CONSPIRACY_THEORY_MODE = OFF



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/15/2011 08:57AM by baura.

It used to be that most missions had 100 to 150 missionaries. Now that the church is shrinking in places like Japan, the missionary numbers are way down. He probably just hadn't caught up to the fact that these missions are shrinking. It wasn't that long ago that Sendai probably did have 100-150 missionaries.

It doesn't surprise me the estimated numbers were inflated.