When I was a teenager missionaries would come back and give great talks about who they taught, who they baptised, etc. You could hardly get them to shut up and sit down. It was an inspiration to me as a young man. These guys would come back and have these agreat spiritual experiences and had great stories to tell. That was the 50 and 60's. You knew they knew that the two years were hard work and that they converted people.

Fast forward to two weeks ago. Return missionary of a family well known in our area. Comes back and gives his talk. Nothing about who he taught,how people accepted the gospel, etc. No stories excet to say it was a wonderful mission. He was assigned a topic too by our great ministering Bishopric. I actually felt sorry for the guy for wasting 2 years of his life and his excitement of being on a mission clearly showed as he read his talk and never looked up. This seems to be the norn these days of returning missionaries in our stake.

I was at a big hospital yesterday and walked by a waiting area. 6 males and 2 female missionaries were singing in an empty waiting area. My initial impression is the guys really wanted to spend time with the sister missionaries all dressed in their pants. It seemed so different. Like a "we need something to do so lets go to the hospital and do something."

Yeah, the hospital gig!

hoping that someone / anyone ( a patient) would invite them into their room.

Horny missionaries? Really???


ChurchCo dying? unless - until they divulge / release crucial information, that's going to remain subjective, methinks...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/15/2019 11:09PM by GNPE.

Flies.

‘e’s not dead, ‘e’s resting.

Missionaries have been silenced for many years, now, at about the same time as the Mormons decided to discourage families from having missionary open houses. No more "farewells" no more "homecomings."

I went to hear my nephew's son speak at his ward (his father was in the bishopric), when he came home from his mission. I drove 2 ½ hours each way to hear him read an old GA conference talk, which he had been assigned. Afterwards, we stood around him in the foyer, while he explained why he looked like an emaciated corpse. He had suffered from a painful tooth abcess for the last 4 months, and had been unable to eat or sleep. The cult leaders refused him a visit to the dentist, and made him wait until he got home. Myh brother picked him from the airport, and took him straight to the dentist's office, where the dentist gave him novacaine and, drained the abcess. It was the first time he had been out of pain in 4 months. The dentist gave him antibiotics and pain killers, and the poor RM slept for 3 days, waking up just in time to put on a white shirt and read that speech someone put into his hand.

A few months later, I found out about the bishopric father's scheme to steal money from our family business, and was able to stop him. His other scams caused him to be released from his bishopric calling, and to lose his fancy house, which he had been renting. He has been moving from town to town, throughout Utah and Idaho, in search of new scamming opportunities and new relatives to mooch off of. I was glad the Mormons caught onto him. It makes me hope that the Mormons are catching onto other scams, too

was its ability to somewhat function as a community, with the church serving as a focal point, but not obliterating the normal human social events and interactions that make a community a positive thing (such as celebrating a young person going on an adventure (mission) and returning, funerals that focused on remembering the deceased, etc.).

In the past several decades, the leaders have managed to get rid of all of the human-oriented aspects. Boyd K. Packer got the ball rolling when he insisted that funerals should focus on the church and not the deceased. Now it appears that the missionaries don't get any special rite-of-passage attention from the community either. Just more of the same centrally controlled messages. Add that to the long-standing anti-social temple wedding practices and it looks like the value of the church in serving as the glue for community building is rapidly declining.

I'm sorry to hear about your nephew. I can't believe that the mission president wouldn't let him get that abscess taken care of immediately. Not only can that be one of the worst kinds of pain ever, it's also dangerous to let an abscess go because the kind of bacterial infection involved can easily spread to other parts of the body, including the heart.

https://www.lafayettedentalexcellence.com/from-abscess-to-emergency-room-the-dangers-of-an-untreated-tooth-abscess/

If no competent dental care was available in his area, they should have sent him back to the states or to the nearest country where good treatment could be had.

I had to go through that for only a week once a few years ago...and I can tell you that the pain is so bad that you literally cannot sleep and no over-the-counter pain relievers even make a dent in the pain. The pain is so bad and constant that it makes one want to jump off a bridge or something just to get rid of the pain. I'm glad your nephew survived the 4 months of torture. I don't think I would have.

....when MORmONISM is finally so embarrassed about MORmONISM that MORmONISM wants to avoid being associated with MORmONISM and its name "MORmON"....

Once solid wards in large metro areas are now branches with half of the members "called" to attend the branch from outside of the branch boundaries.

Some say that he is not dead, but others say that he is dead and that he stinketh.

The sister missionaries were in the local Chevron convenience store approaching people asking if there was anything they could help them with and wishing them a good day.

Then I was walking my dogs during church one Sunday a few months ago. Some missionaries came towards me. The tall one came over to speak. He said I must go to a different ward. I told him I had resigned. He said, "OH." Then he asked if there was ANYTHING they could do for us around the house, etc. He promised if they came over to do something, that there would be NO discussion of religion. I told him thanks, but no thanks.

My daughter told me that the missionaries have NOTHING to do. They are bored to death.

cl2 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> Then I was walking my dogs during church one
> Sunday a few months ago. Some missionaries came
> towards me. The tall one came over to speak. He
> said I must go to a different ward. I told him I
> had resigned. He said, "OH." Then he asked if
> there was ANYTHING they could do for us around the
> house, etc. He promised if they came over to do
> something, that there would be NO discussion of
> religion. I told him thanks, but no thanks.

Quite the concession!!! a PURELY GOLDEN MOMENT !!!!!!

I got to spend last weekend with my family in the Midwest. My Mom was telling me that there was a big snowstorm two weeks ago, so the missionaries posted on-line that they'd shovel peoples' driveways for free. They spent a solid 8 hours shoveling snow and could hardly move the next day.

And my idiot sister was simply incredulous that NO ONE wanted to hear their message!!! NO ONE! Unbelievable!

A couple of summers ago the missionaries stopped to talk to my husband while he was working outside. They went through their spiel, and my husband told them not to bother because we're gay.

The missionary said that "The church is accepting of gays now."

My husband said, "But we act on it."

The missionary got really upset and said "How do you know about that part?!?!"

I told my husband it was a good thing I wasn't out there. I would have told them that we "acted on it" last night, in fact. Twice!

Missionaries in Utah spend more time working on reactivating (pestering) those who no longer attend than they do looking for converts.

I see the missionaries walking around my area (South SL County). They aren't even on bikes anymore. BUT..they never knock on doors that I have ever observed, so I guess accosting people on the street who are just minding their on business is the new way of tracting. Asking people if there is anything they can do for them is pathetic and actually, kind of creepy.

People are going to believe, is the church growing as it was at one time I don't know. In my area there are 3 different buildings where there used to b one. Don't think this is from growth as much as driving. As I stated u have to understand belief, as long as people are on this earth they are going to believe in something.

...when you see Monson's old Audi A8 security on Barrett-Jackson's sale listing.

All that Kevlar and it was the Diet Pepsi that got him. Not that he needed his mind much anyway.

The last 3 times they've knocked on my door, they don't even bother to leave the "Sorry we missed you card-pamphlet" with their names and numbers.

We used to get chastised by our MP if we didn't leave our calling card at members' residences.

new temple announcements & construction have gone into bizarroland...

I served in more than one mission and worked under several mission presidents. I couldn't believe how much missions differed and how much mission presidents differed.

One mission president was a tyrant and the missionaries hated him. The mission suffered. It caused some missionaries to rebel and the ones who were mentally borderline to go into deep depressions. The members even hated the guy.

Another mission president was just the opposite. Him and his wife really did care about the missionaries. If you had a health problem the president was on it ASAP.

My last mission president was trunky. You could tell him and his wife were biting at the bit to get home.

The one constant I saw in all the missions was the missionaries were bored out of having long days of nothing to do. I loved being an office missionary because I actually had real things to do. I found being a proselyting missionary the equivalent of pissing up a rope.

Because my mission was a bit unusual the Stake president and bishopric looked forward to my welcome home. No talk assignment like now. They really wanted to hear my story which in reality was not all that interesting. I just saw everyone's mission is way different and missions were not the great wonderful experience they are sold to be.