They can't call themselves missionaries in Russia. The news didn't indicate much about this except that the mormon church is working to get them released.

This is scary. I worry about my young grandkids who are on missions no matter where in the world they are.

Here is a link from KSL

https://www.ksl.com/article/46505119/russian-police-detain-two-latter-day-saint-volunteers-in-novorossiysk

"In July 2016 Russia implemented an anti-terrorism law that included a provision banning missionary work."

So LDS Inc. still goes ahead and sends missionaries to Russia but instead calls them volunteers? Why? Are they looking for trouble? The "volunteers" can't go door to door but they still proselytize in peoples houses. Isn't the very definition of a missionary one who proselytizes? Does LDS Inc. think the Russians are stupid?

I hope they pull all missionaries out of Russia ASAP.

heartbroken Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

>
> I hope they pull all missionaries out of Russia
> ASAP.


Agreed. Foolish to leave them there. But then, this is Mormonism and the q15

Such practice indicates a profound lack of integrity.

The word games that they play usually aren't even half as clever as they think they are and insult the intelligence of the people they're trying to deceive.

+++++++++++

It's not adultery. It's a "dynastic spiritual union" (symbolically sealed and confirmed by a noisy, grunting boinking exercise).

It's not secret. It's sacred (meaning you can't tell anyone).

It's not a false translation. It's a revelation that was made possible by a simulation of a translation process that acted as a catalyst that opened up the mind of the prophet to enable him to receive the revelation.

Brigham Young was not a false prophet who worshiped a false god. He was a true prophet who just had some funny private opinions about Adam/Michael that he usually kept to himself, except when he was preaching it at General Conference. In other words, it was a fleck of history or, more precisely, just a little oopsie. A little oopsie. No big deal. Repeat after us: "No Big Deal".

We never really taught in any definite way that God was once just a regular man like any other human man. We had a couplet that seemed to say something like that. But that was a couplet more than anything else. Cute little couplet. Nothing to be concerned about. Time to move on. Couplets are like twinkies. They taste delicious, but they don't really mean anything or have any substance to them. Surely you're not obsessing over twinkies? That would be ridiculous.

They aren't missionaries. They're volunteers. Completely different. One starts with the letter "m" and the other starts with the letter "v". How much more different can you get? What do they do as volunteers? What kind of question is that? Naturally they do volunteer stuff. They don't do missionary stuff.

++++++++++++

I wouldn't be surprised if Dallin Oaks, the Sophist in Chief, came up with the brilliant idea of calling them volunteers. But there is no shortage of sophists in the top leadership, so I guess it could have been any of them.

You crack me up, whilst making really good points!

We believe in obeying and sustaining the law as long as it doesn’t get in the way of what we want to do.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/05/2019 09:29PM by babyloncansuckit.

I find it interesting that the dad said they are getting food. What don't we know?

Without these tough mission experiences young mormon men wouldn't have the opportunity to prove to themselves how much Jesus the saviour and Elohsquirrel the father, love them.

Remember, everything happens for a reason, as part of Elohsquirrel's Master Planned Community.

Snort

to placate the various people Maybe ChruchCo will spin this as a 'local mis-understanding', don't be alarmed...

It's hard to make much sense of the situation.

The report says that they were arrested for "teaching English without a license".

Logically, it seems to me that "teaching English without a license" is not the same thing as "public proselytizing."

The report also indicates that it's perfectly fine under the Russian law against public missionary work to preach/proselytize inside church meeting places.

The whole "missionary" vs. "volunteer" semantics game is ridiculous on its face. There is not likely any provision of the law against having the title "missionary". (They have a forkin' "Mission President" and official "Mission" and "Mission Home" in Russia.)

The law is presumably against a type of public activity that fits within a reasonable definition of public proselytizing, public missionary work or public cult recruiting. You can call it whatever you want, but if you're out in public initiating contact with complete strangers in order to urge them to join your church or cult, you're probably violating that law.

I suspect that they publicly advertised their "regularly scheduled game night in English" to get people to come to their meeting place so that they could then...drum roll...proselyte...in English and Russian. The police were probably trying to be clever by sticking them with the "teaching English without a license" charge. The "volunteers" were trying to be clever by engaging in public proselytizing under the pretense of providing a free English learning experience at their church.

They all look stupid and made me just that much more pessimistic about the future of humanity.

Did they have FP callings as missionaries, along with the customary recognition?

Did they attend a LTM ?


there's your answer, folks

What a harrowing incident for these missionaries which I sincerely hope ends well.

As I've shouted over and over the MormonCult's youth missionary
program is Child Abuse that the cult is accountable for. I say bring all the youth missionaries home now. Then, you the church, still has a missionary program manned by adults who are old enough to have made the decision to be a missionary based on a fully developed brain and life experiences that this is what they choose and want to do.

In my opinion there is not another program in the church which shouts uncaring, selfishness, and criminality than this youth program. The cult is taking advantage of youth and using their enthusiasm, their indoctrination, their energy, their naivite, and their love for others to sell the corporation's product and to further indoctrinate these young people to be minions for life in the cult.















\\\\

program is effective or not, I think it's reasonable to assume that the program would be vastly more effective and less costly overall if the church switched over to a program based on something like the following:

(1) All people called to missions must have completed an advance degree in theological studies or achieved an equivalent level of knowledge confirmed by passing a series of tests that confirm a minimally acceptable level of knowledge in areas such as (1) canonized texts (Bible, PoG, BoA, BoM); (2) comparative religions; (3) LDS history; (4) Christian theology, history and philosophy.

(2) Missionary positions are full-time, PAID positions that can be for periods of anywhere from 3 years to 10 years.

(3) For foreign-language missions, intermediate level proficiency/fluency in the target language is mandatory for consideration. All else being equal, candidates with advanced proficiency will be preferred over less-proficient candidates.

(4) Only people who are 27 years old or older will be eligible. Married couples may apply, in which case each spouse will receive full missionary pay. Assignments of married couples with children will be made to locations that are appropriate for children. Single adults are also eligible, provided that they meet the other criteria outlined above. In the case of unmarried adults, something similar to the current "companionship" arrangements will apply. Single adults may marry during their mission.

(5) Employment as a full-time missionary will be conditional upon passing periodic "worthiness" (i.e. loyalty and compliance) interviews and reviews. Criminal conduct and other improper behavior will be grounds for immediate termination of missionary status.

(6) Experience and excellent performance as a full-time paid missionary will be integrated into various related paid career paths within the larger church system, including Church Educational Service positions, church university positions, missionary training center positions and mission administration positions.

I think something along the lines of the above program would attract the best of the best available (such as that may be among people who still believe in the thing). Such people will present a much better image to the general public. And very few of the problems associated with having thousands of immature, ignorant young people out there will be eliminated. For example, you will no longer have kids fresh out of high school pretending to be missionaries because they have been socially pressured into it. Full-time, paid, mature missionaries will also likely be much better equipped to know how to maintain compliance with the rules and cultural norms of the locations they are assigned to. Since foreign language proficiency will be much higher, you also won't have young kids spending anywhere from 12 months to 24 months saying things that nobody can understand, while also failing to understand what people are saying to them.

is that the full-time, paid missionary positions would involve a much smaller total number of missionaries overall and therefore would be less costly than the current program that really is just a waste of time for everyone involved.

The paid, full-time missionaries would be better qualified in every important aspect and would therefore be much more effective. The mission periods would be longer and benefits of experience and stability would accrue.

I think you, Wally Prince, have a job waiting for you somewhere in some religion connected to their missionary program which will surely make you a millionaire.

IF the objective is really to project a positive public image and have a reasonable amount of success in recruiting new members.

Sending out a bunch of know-nothing kids (with maybe a few exceptions) fresh out of high school is just nonsensical.

Even in the early days of the Church the missionaries were well into adulthood, typically married men, who went out there.

The funniest thing is that the only people in the Church who receive generous compensation, benefits and expense coverage for lifetime employment (until death) are the same guys who insist that ONLY their positions are important enough to justify being full-time, fully compensated work (other than people who actually manage the real business of the church business, such as lawyers, accountants, real estate managers, etc.). Funny how that works.

But what if the objective is not really to expand membership but rather to put missionaries through so much pain that they cannot bear to think they went through that for something that is not true?

If sunk costs keep people involved in foolish ventures, it follows that the greater the sacrifice, the greater the loyalty.

I think that the "sunk costs" trap may have been more effective in the past. In recent years, however, I'm coming across more and more exmos whose "Morxit" decision largely crystallized as a result of what they were exposed to as missionaries.

In the past, discussions about the church between missionaries and 95% of the strangers they met along the way could be characterized as ignorance meeting extreme ignorance. Even though the typical missionary actually knew very little about the church's actual history or doctrines, they almost always knew more than the typical non-Mormon they encountered, so they could write off all the rejection as being due to ignorance and bad life decisions.

Nowadays, I expect that most missionaries frequently encounter people who can fact-check them in real time using their smart phones...and all the missionaries can do is mumble and grumble, telling themselves that the fact checker is probably wrong, but later finding out that, for example, the temple endowment did indeed include bloody disembowelment and throat slitting gestures up until 1990.

It's hard to say for sure, but my best guess is that the program no longer does a good job of accomplishing any reasonable objectives that produce a net positive result for the Morg.

Yes, I agree with all of this.

Where you find all of the RMs necessary to fertilize the YM’s ovums?

Something appears to be wrong with this sentence.


:-)

Either that or the church has become far more open-minded than I remember. . .

what about service in unstable countries/environments?


isn't that what started this thread?

would some current countries be eliminated from consideration?

would missionaries be able to bail when they're uncomfortable?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/06/2019 01:38AM by GNPE.

For example, the full-time paid missionaries assigned to Russia would receive training from legal professionals concerning the ins and outs of the law against public proselytizing. They probably would have to develop a more active public-service oriented program (e.g. soup kitchens, blankets for puppies, disaster relief, etc., while studiously avoiding any overt recruiting vis-a-vis strangers).

Curious people would still likely wander into the church buildings from time to time. The Church itself could probably advertise special programs and events using signs on its own property.

The type of people assigned to a place like Russia would have the types of skills and abilities that would make them well-suited to conducting and managing the types of programs that would be possible in Russia.

Certainly some extremely dangerous countries would not be open unless and until the risk levels became reasonably low. (That's the case now. There would be no reason to send paid missionaries into virtual suicide zones.)

Under a salaried missionary program, there would be no reason (and probably no legal right) to prevent them from bailing if they wanted to bail. But they would probably have much fewer interested in bailing than there are now. Incentives for not bailing would include the monthly paycheck, which they would lose if they quit. If they bailed without any good reason, they could also be required to pay their own transportation/moving expenses back home. Some missions may also include subsidized housing, health insurance, etc.--all benefits that would be forfeit if someone just bailed because they didn't want to do it anymore. Plus, since the gig would be something that people actually competed for (a paying job, serving the Church that they love), people who didn't really want to do it in the first place would automatically be screened out (as in they wouldn't even apply).

Salaried older mishies means they won't have an annual fresh crop of young sex starved males dying to get married.

are always sex starved. Presumably, they are still commanded not to have sex until AFTER they get married in a Mormon temple.

Of course the ability to violate the rules is easier for a young Mormon guy if he's not constantly shackled to another guy ("companion") who will snitch on him.

Since they are mostly useless as missionaries in any case, I guess the LSD Church could come up with some other way to keep them thirsty for a period of two years, so as to better control them, while causing them to lose any kind of independent faculty for reason and critical thinking.

Maybe a 2-year "Priesthood Boot Camp" somewhere in the remotest areas of Alaska or the Yukon. Who knows? It could actually do them some good, if they focused on useful skills (e.g. foraging for edible nuts, berries and herbs; building shelters using twigs, mud and leaves; fishing; reading good literature; fighting forest fires; honing computer skills; practicing public speaking...).

I guess the only problem with that scenario is that it's hard to imagine the church leaders promoting a program that would actually help members be more self-sufficient and acquire useful life skills.

You could still send the youngsters out to the "mission field". But instead of being missionaries, they would be interns and assistants to the full time people.

No more knocking on doors and harassing people on public streets. Just helping out with church social events and programs designed to make the church more appealing to outsiders. Under supervision of the full-time missionaries, they could grow organic crops (in appropriate mission areas) for distribution to church members and needy people generally. They could help with emergencies.

There are a lot of effective volunteer programs that can be devised for people in that age group. But the current missionary program is not effective and is generally a waste of time for everyone involved. Most importantly, having children as the front line for recruitment vis-a-vis outsiders is just not working. I'm sure there are some exceptions to this general rule, but they are outliers.

According to the article, an offer to release the missionaries was conditional upon the surrendering of their visas. The church shot it down so the two missionaries remain in detained in jail.

It's time for the parents to bypass the church and get the U.S. embassy involved.

All those parents of nubile YW need to have hope that their years & $$$ spent on grooming their daughters to hook a (wealthy / wealthy potential) RM.


just sayin'!

It sounds like the parents are now getting really worried. I am worried about my family members who are in other dangerous countries with dictatorial leaders. These kids are so sheltered growing up and don't really have the street smarts in these places. What if the Russian Gov't won't release them? What is the end game with these young men?

gemini Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It sounds like the parents are now getting really
> worried. I am worried about my family members who
> are in other dangerous countries with dictatorial
> leaders. These kids are so sheltered growing up
> and don't really have the street smarts in these
> places. What if the Russian Gov't won't release
> them? What is the end game with these young men?

And the government WAS willing to release them UPON the condition that their VISA was terminated-revoked with the agreement that the the kids would not re-apply for another 5 years.

It's the church that BALKED and determined that it was unsatisfactory for THEM (LDS Corp). The church really thinks it can play hardball when it has nothing to offer.

Will the Mormon leaders:

Sic a team of apostles on them?

Pronounce a cursing upon their country and people?

Send the spirit of Ammon to smite off their arms?

- if the parents rely on ChurchCo to act in best interest of their children, that's setting them up for a bad fall.

-While the church has some missionary expenses, they're prolly not significant in the big picture of expenses since the missionaries aren't supported by ChurchCo which is what WP suggests should or might happen. So, I believe 'paid' missionaries (paid by whom?) won't be seriously considered even tho a plausible idea.

Remember, the whole plan is to cement the youngsters (younger & younger, btw) to ChurchCo, to present an image & persons for YW to aspire partnering with. I think this is about 95% of the package.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/07/2019 12:11PM by GNPE.

Why oh why are they sending missionaries to Russia?
:::SMH::::

precisely.

The image of ChurchCo as being 'worldwide' is far more important than any tangible outcomes-results.

In that sense, the individuals involved are little more than marionettes, on a short leash at that.

GNPE is right. The real purpose of missions is to cement the loyalty of the young Mormons as lifetime tithe-payers, and to continue entrapping their tithe-paying parents. Babylon is right, too, and the largest source of new Mormon members is the ever-growing pool of newborn TBM infants

It would not serve the purposes of the Mormon cult to send out missionaries who were already totally committed to the cult. What would be the point? Procreating infants into the cult produce better, and faster-multiplying numbers. Converting anyone older than 19, is just a joke, except in countries that are very isolated from any information.

In Utah, the Mormons have some power to manipulate a person's own Mormon family members into turning against him, manipulate children into putting pressure onto parents, manipulate people's employment, social life, political power, acceptance in the community, etc.

How ARROGANT for the Mormons to think they can manipulate the Russians the same way! How very EVIL that the Mormons would use these kids as pawns in their stupid power-games! The missionaries' parents should Publicly quit the Mormon church in protest, for their turning down Russia's offer of release. The kids will never get any benefit from all of this, ever, yet it is their lives these ghouls are gambling with.

This is disgusting. Let two of the leaders go over and stand in jail in the missionaries' place!

^^^ Yes !!!

While getting a passport for one son for his foreign mission, the clerk warned to get ours at the same time “in case anything happens to that kid!”

She seemed to have some insight into the “tender mercies” of mormonism.

Since I grew up during the Cold War, I was surprised that Russians see the church as too authoritarian. But maybe it takes one to know one. The games the Church is playing are disrespectful of Russia’s laws. Maybe the authorities are trying to send a message, but I’m not sure it’s the right one. The Mormon mind thrives on “persecution”. They will come out of this even more convinced of the truthfulness of their religion.

I’m a Brit married to a Russian and I live in Russia, I was also excommunicated from Mormonism in 1980 after joining in 1974. The average Russian has absolutely no time or sympathy for Mormonism,or any other " American imported religion" in my experience . Main objection is that they are perceived as " destroying families" which is ironic of course.Russian familial bonds are very strong and so is their national identity. When I think back to all the BS that was preached about the poor Russians crying out for Mormonism in the 70s I still smile

>>When I think back to all the BS that was preached about the poor Russians crying out for Mormonism in the 70s I still smile

I'll bet. Russians have their own cultural and religious traditions. What need do they have of a predatory American church?

my guess is that the Russian Orthodox experience would be exactly 563.89% more satisfying and fulfilling than anything the Church of Joseph Smith has to offer.

****

"Hi, we're volunteers from the Church of Jesus Christ Feels Disrespected if You Call Us Mormons. Have you heard of our church?

"It's really great. Instead of that ornate, richly symbolic worship service in that beautiful basilica that you've been attending, you can come to our plain-jane building and sing songs about Joseph Smith. Praise to the Man!

"Who is Joseph Smith? Why, he's the one who translated several hundred pages of ancient scriptures using only a brown rock that glowed in the dark. He's the one who revealed to us that sometimes God wants us to marry other guys' wives. He's the one who revealed the health code that we now interpret as meaning that you can't drink coffee or tea...or VODKA! He's the one who...WAIT! Where are you going? Stop!"

Wally, I think you're spot on. I play an online game with a social component. I recently messaged another player who's Russian. He apologized for his English. I said don't worry, I know only 6 words in Russian, and one of them is 'vodka'. He replied that he likes my good Russian. :D

Honestly, I don't blame the Russians for booting the missionaries out. Why should Russia tolerate a foreign predatory organization that acts like a business but poses as a church? One that would siphon off Russian money and send it to Salt Lake City? I don't blame the Russians for treating the Mormon church with suspicion. And the church is simply lying when it refers to its missionaries as "volunteers" -- even more reasons for the Russians to distrust them.

at least in political circles...is Mittens Romney, one of the most vociferous proponents of the idea that the number one enemy of the United States is...drum roll...Russia!