On the mission I recall white-washing an area, which RMs know means that both elders (or sisters) assigned to an area transferred out at the same time. This is rare, because it's important to maintain good relationships with ward members and investigators and white-washing means starting fresh. This usually happens when there have been shenanigans going on.

We opened up the area book and saw that there was a "golden family" in our boundaries that had recently taken a first discussion. We hopped on our bikes and headed right over.

When we got to the house we discovered it was an immigrant family who spoke no english, which was fine because we were spanish-speaking elders, and upon being invited into the house we could feel the weight of sadness and depression pervading the premises. It was palpable.

On the couch was a shell of a woman, the mother, covered in blankets who we soon discovered had terminal cancer and was very close to dying. It was the fact that she was literally on her deathbed that made this family "golden."

My senior comp told me after leaving that based on the conversation I had difficulty following (I was still pretty new) that she had only weeks to live, and that we should return to continue discussions within 1 week of her dying because they would be ripe for a lesson on eternal families.

True to this we returned a month later to find the mother had in fact died a couple weeks after our visit and we went straight for the kill. We told the father and his grieving children that if they joined our church they would be with her again in heaven, implying that if they didn't join they would never see her again.

I remember feeling ashamed.

After that 6 week transfer my senior comp transferred out and I became the DL of the district and therefore a senior comp. I used a black marker to completely erase any record of that family in our area book and never mentioned them to anyone. We never went back.

I just couldn't do it, not even when I was still a gung-ho missionary. Even then I knew it was wrong to leverage someone's grief in order to sell our afterlife insurance policy.

As a 16 yo priest in San Antonio; We were sent out for 2 weeks to do 'mini-missions' around town. At a zone conference, Don't remember if it was the MP or a Stakie; we were taught to go through the obits to look for potential golden contacts

"we were taught to go through the obits to look for potential golden contacts"

Heck, missionaries in Latin America would go further than that; they'd copy names and birthdates off of tombstones, and fill out baptismal papers and send them in to the mission office as convert baptisms.

kolobian Wrote:
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>> I just couldn't do it, not even when I was still a
> gung-ho missionary. Even then I knew it was wrong
> to leverage someone's grief in order to sell our
> afterlife insurance policy.


Evidence that some morals are cultural universals that are innate, and that indoctrination isn't always absolute.