So as a 2-year FULL time Missionary DUPE way back when...did I earn the right to NOW label the 18-Monthers as ERM's???

Just kidding Y'all...but I gotta admit that the Missionary sentence reduction to 18-months AFTER I had already served my 2-year sentence certainly did ruffle my feathers at the time way back when as I recall!!!

Never really did make rhyme or reason out of it other than the LARD was just experimentin' again with HIS Missionary program.

Or so it seems to me...

Even back then they were just trying to save [make] (keep) more money.

I'm imaging this scenario:

A two-year guy is out in the field. He's been there five months. He hates it, already has parasites, is losing weight...

Some greenie comes in, fresh off the boat. Only this greenie is an 18-monther, due to new revelation.

The two-year guy looks at him, realizes he will be going home a month before HE gets to go home...and loses it.

I would have paid to see that. :)

I have a relative who was involved in the decision to go to 18 months. He said that the church had more missionaries than interested investigators. Rather than sending people out into the field who would have nothing to do, thereby inviting disillusionment, shortening the mission to 18 months seemed wise. It was an indirect way of shrinking the missionary force by 25%.

The decision to return to a two-year format was made, I'm told, because in the non-English-speaking missions the missionaries didn't really have much impact until the last few months of their sentences. So the church felt that the 18-month missions were causing the number of converts to diminish. Not sure if that was accurate.

In any case the import of this is that the church has had a surfeit of missionaries for decades: Kimball's "every young man a missionary" policy was unrealistic given the level of global interest in the religion. The situation must be much worse now that social norms have shifted against unannounced house visits and the internet holds sway. There have to be tens of thousands of missionaries who are bored silly by compulsory time on social media.