Posted by:
oldpobot
(
)
Date: May 13, 2017 05:35AM
I have been a long time lurker here and am fascinated by the whole Mormon story. Never been one though, and never will. However I did finally get the chance to talk to the missionaries when they came by today, and I got to hear their story first hand for the first time.
Both about 19, one was a farm boy type from St George, Utah, the other was a monosyllabic Polynesian. I treated them well, gave them a drink and we had a nice chat in the autumn sunshine.
They gave me a Book of Mormon and took me through the whole ridiculous story by showing me the pictures at the front of the book. I asked them to confirm that they believed the magical stuff about the American civilisation, the visit by Jesus, the plates etc, which Elder N. did, but he did admit that he had had to pray a lot about it before he was convinced of its truth. He said that the plates were taken away by Moroni because otherwise everybody would see the evidence of the truth and there would be no reason to have faith. I didn't try to argue with this irrational position, but I was looking to see from his expression if he really believed it, or was just going through the motions. He was pretty flat, rather than enthusiastic, and I suspect he was having his life-force sucked from him by his whole experience.
They were a bit bemused by the fact that I was pretty well informed about their religion but that I had no spiritual needs or any belief in God. They asked me to pray to get some confirmation of the story, but I said that I could not see myself praying to a God I didn't believe in.
They seem to have it reasonably comfortable here in Perth, living in a flat in a pleasant inner suburb, driving a car, but also using bicycles often, which is pretty easy in this flat city with its cycle paths and dry weather. Their beat is the affluent western suburbs along the beaches, but of course no time for swimming. They said there were 140 missionaries in Western Australia (a giant state, but most of the state's population is in Perth), which seemed quite a lot to me.
In conversation I asked Elder N for his first name, as I'd missed it on his introduction. Turned out his name was Elder N. I got him to tell me his first name (Josh) and suggested that he use his first name when introducing himself to people, especially here in Australia, where we tend to avoid formalities as much as possible. He said they use the term Elder as a mark of respect to the Church. As if other people should have respect for his self-proclaimed religious status. Not so different to a Catholic priest or protestant Bishop or even a university professor using an honorific title, except that this is a 19 year old kid.
Anyway, I figured there was no point in being argumentative, but I did make my scepticism clear when asking him to tell the magic story. He told me how to reach him if I wanted to talk about it more, and suggested another meeting next week if I was interested but I said I was only interested in a sociological sense and not in spiritual guidance.
I felt sorry for them both, not least because they were such different types that I could not imagine how they could stand spending so much time together. But, at least they are in a safe city and unlikely to get into any serious trouble. Josh is going to go home in 12 months and do business studies at something called Dixie University (I think), the other chap was nearly done with his 2 years and already had a frangipani flower behind his ear, no doubt keen to get home too.
Josh said that he was making a twice-yearly Skype call home tomorrow, and that they are not allowed much contact with home. We agreed that they would probably get too homesick if they had more contact. I asked about the passport confiscation, and he said that they willingly handed them over to avoid the risk of losing them (really?). He agreed with me when I suggested that he would be allowed to go home if there was an emergency, but didn't respond when I mentioned that imagined it was hard for them to go home early for any reason, and that people expected them to put in a solid two year shift.
Anyway, now that I have done that, I probably don't need to do it again, but it was a reasonably interesting way to spend a half hour on a Saturday morning...