Got a tweet from the ward on Saturday morning that an investigators baptism had been canceled, the name is the same as some investigator that canceled his baptism when i was ward mish leader a year and a half ago. Wasn't there a time missionaries would drop an investigator if it was never gonna go anywhere? Must be really hard times if it's dragged on for that long

Same person or different people with the same name?

Odd as my name is, there are four more men with the same name within 300 miles of me. And I don't know any of them.

Why do I care about this?

The mishies are stringing this poor investigator along and it's a pathetic waste of time for everyone.

I believe missionaries schedule baptism whether the person wants it or not.

Absolutely they do.

It's part of the high pressure sales tactics employed by missionaries. Psychologically speaking, people who you have pressured into a commitment like that are more likely to go through with it, just to get you out of their lives.

Obviously not all go through with that, but when you are desperate for even a single baptism, it improves your odds as a missionary.

Indeed.
On my mission, I scheduled around 40 baptisms.
Four actually went through :)

40 baptisms scheduled and 4 went through and you served in France, right. That's pretty impressive Hie. I didn't know the French ever converted. How close were you to the mission president, if I may ask? I'm not too familiar with the missionary structure so you might need to explain.

BYU Boner Wrote:
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> 40 baptisms scheduled and 4 went through and you
> served in France, right. That's pretty impressive
> Hie. I didn't know the French ever converted. How
> close were you to the mission president, if I may
> ask? I'm not too familiar with the missionary
> structure so you might need to explain.

In all modesty -- yeah, it was impressive. I was considered something of a rock star for having 4 baptisms, most France missionaries had 0-1.

We snared a young newly-married couple in Caen, they took the dunk just 4 weeks after first contact.
I baptized a young immigrant kid in Paris (Boulogne-Billancourt) that had been taking lessons for a while (before I even got to France), I just cleaned up what others had started. And finally a young Chinese immigrant girl, who was very sweet and cute, and felt very lonely in France...initially she liked us mishies 'cause we spoke English (she was from Hong Kong and didn't speak French very well). I'm certain she got dunked expecting one or more of us to offer to whisk her away to the promised land of Utah!

As far as close to the mission president (R. Dean Robinson) -- I wasn't, really. I got bumped up *really fast* to senior companion then DL, having a French surname and having taken 4 years of French in high school, language wasn't an issue, and for the first half of my mission I was as righteous as they come.

The MP apparently did have plans to make me ZL then AP, but when reports got back to him that I'd gotten less enthusiastic about the work during the second half of my mission (all the baptisms happened in the first year), that all went out the window. I got a couple of talking-tos about my lack of enthusiasm, and got encouraged to repeat the "amazing success" of the first half of the mission, but to no avail...by then I was already well down the road to non-belief, and was just marking time until I went home. And the MP knew it (probably because I told him as much!). :)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/01/2016 10:38AM by ificouldhietokolob.

How often is this happening nowadays!???