My parents were not members of the LDS church, but my father came from pioneer heritage and he felt that he could do worse than encouraging his children to join the Mormon church. My sister and I took the missionary discussions from two handsome missionaries. I was 11 and my sister was 9. I honestly had not absorbed anything from my studies with the elders...I was just infatuated, and excited at the thought of being baptized by them. I am willing to bet this happens all the time! Due to my youthful ignorance, I had no grasp of how the church worked and that the missionaries were going to move on to their next victim as soon as they had us dunked.

oh honey I was right there with you.
I have a thing for tall men and my missionary was tall and handsome ohhhh mama!

But my parents were there too... so its their fault ha ha ha ha what idiots we were.

AIC, how old were you when you joined?

I was 13 or 14 it tooks us long to get it done so that was the time frame!

I was 14 and totally in love with my handsome Argentine missionary. I seriously fantasized about running away with him. My home life was so fucked up at the time.

Same...anything but home.

It was a sad situation of out of they frying pan and into the fire sadly!

Or did they just give permission for you to join?

parents don't consider any religion a cult, even though, technically, in the original definition of the word, they all are.
What is considered dangerous is subjective opinion.

I can understand it to some extent if a parent is a brainwashed mormon and forces children to join.

What doesn't make sense is parents who are not mormon allowing kids to take morg lessons and join up. There's no excuse for that in my opinion.

They may believe the "high values" TSCC always touts and boasts about and therefore may figure that their teenagers will be less likely to get into trouble if their Mormon church is telling them to keep themselves 'clean' & 'pure.'



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/29/2011 02:46PM by WiserWomanNow.

I served my mission in Utah and girls around that age were our most common convert. They're too young to have any idea about the doctrines of the church and they join for social reasons. They're easily persuaded by the fun/cute missionaries. They were easy dunks.

Mormon proselytizing so pathetic.

In the Philippines we joked about it, but it was real. As Americans we could be very popular with the females there. I was approached many times by women my age or younger. I was grabbed whispered about and even kissed. This was an amazing boost to a young man with pretty bad self esteem.

I pissed off a couple of my comps who were offended by my allowing the girls to hope. I don't know what they wanted me to do? Wear a bag over my head?

I am only comfortable with this because I can honestly say that I didn't know any better.

I was easily old enough to be their mother.

But I had spent nearly two decades in a brutally abusive marriage and was nearly destroyed in a hideous divorce because my ex had more money to buy bigger and meaner gladiator-lawyers than I did. I felt beaten and isolated emotionally.

And these Mormon kids were so sweet, with their stories about warm and happily family lives, and they introduced me to still more nice people, who seemed to appreciate me instead of treating me like garbage.

It was all too seductive to someone who was very, very emotionally vulnerable.

I was stunned, years later, (as a TBM) to hear, at a youth fireside that we hosted, to hear a guy tell wannabe missionary youth to DELIBERATELY look for emotional wounded people.