I just remembered a stupid role-play assignment we had to do in the Roanoke, VA mission zone conference where we had to practice asking a member to turn off the radio or the TV when riding in their cars or visiting their homes.

Just a side note of the most embarrassing training, our mission pres excused the sister mishies from the chapel and then he said to the elders, whispering and side stepping like a Disney cartoon rendition..."elders, we need to have a talk about a serious problem....(looking side to side around the room)...its maaaaasssssturbaaaaaaaation" LMAO!

What were some of your ridiculous trainings on your mission?

I don't have any personal examples, since my mission was presided over by a very nice man as his final assignment after a lifetime of service to the church. Also, there was no need for 'training' because the elders were all baptizing like crazy. This was back in the era when the thought was that membership would reach 100 million by the year 2000, based on the numbers being put up at that time.

I submit that the reason there are now all the ridiculous training schemes we hear about is because of the missions where there is no appreciable growth, and the MPs of those missions are looking for inspiration that will change things, and thus make their name.

I'm sure Jesus was constantly appearing to the original 12 apostles to provide them with new proselyting gimmicks!!

I have to go with elderolddog on this one. I think he is 1-2 years older than I. I did my mission from 1969-1971. It was a time that is incomparable to now. Mission presidents were, by and large, not the assholes they are now. It was a also a different time in that missions were still voluntary. Vietnam was going full blast, and the US still had the draft. All kinds of people could not go on missions, and a whole lot of boys and women (note how I didn't say either "boys and girls" or "men and women"; the boys were boys, and the sister missionaries were grown women) chose education over missions. There was no sense yet that Mormonism was coming unravelled.

Best I can remember, we had no weird role-playing, no stupid activities, no attempts to keep the boys from masturbating, anything like that. In my particular mission, roughly the size of California, all spread out over only 18 cities, with the two islands of Sardinia and Sicily, which required either flights or overnight ferries, it was hard for the mission president to cover us all. We saw him infrequently. The only negative guy I ever dealt with (other than 2-3 bad comps) was Thomas Monson, who appeared to be a dick. Fortunately, he was always on his way to Greece, where for some 20 years he tried unsuccessfully to talk authorities into letting the Mormons enter. Maybe that is why he was persistently pissed off.

I do believe some of the people serving in the ward I was in, in Rome, served the same mission as you and same time frame. I'll bet you knew each other.

Entirely possible. I also lived there for several years much later, and might have known people you knew/know.

I was in Catanzaro, sassari, Roma 3. 2011-2013

At a zone conference each missionary had to stand up, and then everyone in the group had to tell the missionary what they were doing wrong. This was a real team builder. We all learned to hate the MP.

No. Johnson

No. It was Jasper McClellan, who presided from 1965 to 1968 in the Mexican Mission.

Hedning Wrote:
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I was present when Moscon related to our zone that an elder from another had tried to lie to him on the phone. The more the elder lied the more a spiritual force choked the poor lad until....he stopped!

After I returned home and saw Star Wars for the first time the origins of that story were obvious. I do give the Prez credit for not adding the line, "I find your lack of honesty disturbing."

So as you probably know LDS missionaries are pressured to aggressively "invite" investigators to be baptized. On my mission, we were instructed to try to use the word baptism in every section of each discussion we had. Most discussions had about 7 sections. In other words, if we were teaching the First Discussion, we would find ways to sneak the word baptism 7 times into the discussion. This would subtlety "prepare" their minds to accept the idea of getting baptized (subliminal message).

I took it one step further in a training. I had the zone try and say "baptism in every SENTENCE!" LOL

Are they for real!?? This was a missionary training activity!???

It's all cult-like stuff. #notacult #mormonsgonnamorm

I was told by some of the older missionaries that the previous mission president (the mission changed presidents when I had been in Italy for 2 or 3 months) said (if I can remember the exact quote 20+ years later) "you're not going to start baptizing until you stop masturbating. And I'm not talking to the elders."

He was talking to himself? :o)

It wasn't training, but we used to have two day zone conferences.

We would all overnight at the Hiroshima chapel and en masse go down the street to a sento or public bath. The mission pres and his family too. The mrs would bathe with the sisters and the prez would bathe with us. Fuck no, thanks for asking.

No way could I keep it down, so I stayed and did a basin bath. Didnt want to pop a boner and get outed in front of the damned prez.

What is interesting to me is that most of these issues were not anywhere near the foreground when I went out proselyting in 1958.

The center of focus was get the investigator to attend meetings, read the Book of Mormon, and get dunked. The money scam came a little later.

One set of AP's had the idea of 'The commitment calendar'.

It was an A5 printed, 31 day month & on the first discussion you would fill the calendar in with the remaining 5 discussion dates, Sunday church visits, a couple of family home evenings and of course drumroll......the BAPTISM date.

No need to wait for the spirit to convert them, when two teenagers could just give them the hard sell on the first visit & sign them up there and then!

We were told we only had one day to live but we could give a broadcast speech to the world as our last words. Of course, it was just a passive-aggressive way to force us to bear testimony. We all gave the most over the top, tear jerking speeches we could think of. I'd be so embarrassed if a tape of that ever appeared on Youtube.

I was in a stake priest quorum meeting the purpose of which was to make us youngsters holier than thou. We were told to come up with a statement about our lives that we wanted ghawd to take into account when he judged us. I don't remember what I came up with, but I was very pleased with how holy I sounded.

One by one we healthy young righteous masturbators gave our little spiels, and then along came this guy, who looked just as holy as the rest of us, who said, "I want to be a great disc jockey." It was a very jarring moment!

I don't know about the others, but I felt super righteous as I compared myself with that impious kid. Of course years later, I realized that he was well ahead of me in knowing the truth.

Were I in charge of missionary training, I'd add a new class to the curriculum: "Hands-Free Masturbation."

I'd preface my speech by noting that divine revelation has recently clarified the church's teaching on masturbation: it's now okay to pleasure yourself as long as you don't touch yourself. Smearing a little baby oil in the slot between the sofa cushions and then having your way with it is fine and dandy, for example.

After I'd finished my short speech I'd task each student with conducting personal experiments until they'd each found a satisfactory method. Then at the next class I'd ask for their reports.

Just to see the looks on their faces would make it all worth it.

It's not quite mission related but we did have Stake President who would fill the font up during Stake Conference so any investigators who felt the spirit during it could get baptised right afterwards.

He would announce this from the pulpit at the beginning of conference so I can just imagine the sort of pressure put on investigators for the next two hours.