It is a good thing the purpose of the missionary program is to convert/retain missionaries rather than actual converts. Even with the "older" missionaries, there were serious maturity issues. There a massive maturity difference between 18 and 19 with boys. The drop from 21 to 19 for the girls was actually even more extreme. Many sister missionaries were beyond the 21 year mark previously so the average age drop was probably greater for them.

The current crop of missionaries seems to think that being condescending is an effective sales tactic. Trying to sell a defective product using even more defective methods. The last solid baptisms in my current area were...well...I don't even remember when someone fully functional was baptized. Even the "hubby dunks" of the last few years have been iffy.

The death spiral continues and is getting worse.

I think back on my life at 18, 19, 20. Off to college, being exposed to a zillion new ideas, writers, questions--Hesse, Thomas Mann, Vonnegut, Sartre, Camus, Allen Ginsburg, Ken Kesey... Trying my hand (literally) at sculpture, studying astronomy, economics, politics, history... Making love for the first time (Ellie! Where are you now?)... Smoking pot... Discovering Jimi Hendrix and Cream and Led Zep and a thousand other bands... Hiking in the Alleghanies, learning to waterski, learning to sail, seeing the Milky Way for the first time, rebuilding a Ford Econoline van, then moving 2000 miles west to the coast, crashing with bikers, working in a Chicano-owned glass company where I was the only gringo...

And not just developing myself in these crazy serendipitous ways, exposing myself to 1001 ideas and mulling them over, keeping some and discarding the rest, but helping others with their spiritual quests in the most profound ways, by staying up all night talking with them and debating and investigating, not in the half-assed cookie-cutter Mormon way but in ways that grow out of each of our individual souls and needs and fears and hopes. The real stuff, the good stuff.

The LDS missionaries--these kids--are missing that, it seems to me. They'll get back and many will plug right into the plan somebody else has told them they are supposed to follow.

Spiritual death is the worst kind.

I envy you. I missed out on life because I had to peddle a fraud.

Then there were the mature mishies who chopped the head of a statue of a Catholic saint and posed for pictures with it. Vandalism especially of things sacred to others is a great way to convert people

immature, naïve, and incredibly ignorant.

How can they presume to TEACH anything, when they have barely gotten out of high school??

I can tolerate a spirited discussion of favorite football teams, or favorite international food (Mexican, Italian, Greek, etc.) or cool places they have been, but when it comes to religion, I change the subject IMMEDIATELY.

If they represent the cream of the crop in the younger generation, it's scary.

imagine yourself as a parent of a pimple-faced snotty son/daughter, your child doesn't know Squat about life, when Mormon Mishies knock your door offering to chat with you about Jesus & his plan for Your life...


nope, that wouldn't work

Ditto in my ward. Only new 'functional' members are move in's with intact families. Some highly skilled like doctors. Surprisingly the ward I was in appears to be growing from these move-in's. University Town that is bedroom community for modest city. Was slowly declining when I was still going.

Missions are not for converting well established, educated, gainfully employed, thinking people. It's to keep control of the one's they already have such as the missionaries themselves. And hey in the mean time if they can sucker someone for a couple of years to pay 10% to a fraud and then they leave so what. Just keep sending out a sales force that pays for it's self. Lowering the age for missionaries was to prevent these kids from experiencing life in any other capacity that would give them ideas, opinions, and god forbid read any books that would enlighten them.

It was the missionaries being, as my father said, "wet behind the ears" that he could never take Mormonism seriously. They knew nothing about the world. Dad was a WW II vet and was fighting a war when they were still trying to get a date in high school. When some senior missionaries showed-up after Dad complained about the teen missionaries, they turned out to be the sappiest and most naive couple on the planet. Nice couple but Dad could debate them under the table in five seconds flat.

Thank goodness those mishies were such dunderheads. Otherwise our whole family would have been drinking the Kool Aid.

What's amazing to me is that I'd think most churches would want people to be well informed, able to handle being exposed to opposing viewpoints & NOT need to be micromanaged before being sent out as official representatives.