I served in Korea from 1993 to 1995. And while three, our MP, along with a couple of us missionaries, traveled to Japan to attend a seminar on the "Ammon Project" for a couple of days.

This Japanese mission (Fukuoka, I believe) was a testing ground for this new way of working with the ward members around proselyting, blah blah blah.

There was a handbook, training, the whole shebang. Does anyone remember being involved with this, or know where any of it went?

I started in Fukuoka in 1996 and caught the aftermath.

The Ammon project failed spectacularly, with missionaries forgetting the principles and just generally goofing off instead. As a result, the next MP in had us doing hard-core door knocking constantly. The member aspect failed badly, so we didn't work on member missionary work at all. The membership rolls were filled with inactives who didn't even know they were members.

It took the full term of the previous MP to counter what had happened, the pendulum didn't start swinging back to a middle ground until he was replaced with the subsequent MP, who started to move things back to a balanced, typical mission program.

That's funny, and not really surprising, that it totally failed. I remember being pretty excited about it after attending the training because all they could talk about was how amazing it was and the incredible results and how this was the ONLY way to really do missionary work.

The Mission Pres in Japan who developed it (an American, I can't remember his name) seemed like a pretty dynamic guy, but his AP seemed like a bulldog enforcer type.

Either way, we tried to implement some of it back in Korea and it fell completely flat. "Ammon Project" became a dirty word with the local ward leaders because of all the extra work required. It was awful, but predictable and kindof funny when I look back on it.

Ammon Dendo was a dirty word in Tokyo North (98-00) as well. Someone would pull it out if they felt we were doing too much fellowshipping and not enough streeting/door knocking/chirashi/etc.

From what I heard, the basic principle was that before Ammon started preaching, he earned the king's trust by becoming his friend. While it sounds good on paper, what it ended up being is a program that gave missionaries permission to do almost anything (within reason) as long as it was with a non-member.

So what you got was a bunch of Americans playing basketball (or whatever) and inviting some nihonjins to play with them all day and calling it "the work."

Looking back, that would have been a much better use of my time than what I actually "accomplished."

Lots of basketball, hanging around with nonmo youth, watching movies and then tying in the gospel (literally you would watch Star Wars with them and then liken the Force with the Spirit at the end).

I think Albert Einstein had a nice relevant quote:

“In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not.”

It's true that in Japan it's all about Kankei (relationships), and the theory was to build it before moving on to the gospel. In practice the 19yo Elders tended to forget the point of what they were doing.

And another program comes....and goes. In 86' in the Tokyo North Mission the genius APs started a "Book of Mormon" program. This consisted of forcing the BOM into the hands of anyone you could. (a bit like forcing an actual BM now that I come to think about it).

Anyhow, the statistics chase changed on a dime and, instead of focusing on number of discussions taught, we were now focusing on number of BOMs placed. We were then supposed to follow up and teach after the person had a chance to read the BOM.

The theory was based on GBH saying the BOM is the cornerstone of our religion. These idiots thought the BM (sorry, couldn't resist) had so much "power" that many of the people accepting the book would be "touched" by the spirit and then be ready to take the discussion.....Yeah. Riiiiiiight.

I love how this forum helps bring back these memories and how I can laugh about it now.

Wow, that brings back memories! I remember one if the things was we had to take a day, pick a secluded spot, fast and pray, and wrestle with the lord.
We had to separate ourselves from our companion so we couldn't see each other, but close enough to hear. And pray for 3 hours or whatever.

I took a nap. I liked it better than housing, or streeting though.

Here is an article I wrote back in 2010 about the Ammon Project:

http://elderkikuchi.blogspot.com/2010/04/ammon-project.html

When I was a missionary in Japan, I got paper copies of a couple posts from elderkikuchi.blogspot.com. I've been trying to get PDFs of them, as well as read other articles from this blog, but I haven't been able to.
Specifically, I'm looking for the article you referenced: "The Untold History of Mormonism in Japan: The Ammon Project" as well as a second article: "The Untold History of Mormonism in Japan: Manipulation and Missionary Work."
Why is your blog down, and would you be willing to put it up again or send me PDFs of those/anything about Kikuchi, Groberg, etc?
Also, if ANYONE could link me to other copies of those articles, or any secondary sources (about the church in Japan) that rely heavily on primary sources, I would be super appreciative.

If you want dirt on the Kikuchi-Groberg era, there are several older threads here by RMs who served at that time. Just use the "Search" function for either name, Tokyo South, etc.

Here's an excellent one to get you started.

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1557737