A couple of years after I joined, I had great respect for the young missionaries in my ward. To assist “the two best years of their lives”, I decided to be sure to talk with them and to get to know them a bit. But then, just as they and I reached a nice rapport… they were transferred.

The next assigned pair showed up. I again made an effort to talk with them and help them feel welcome in the ward; and again got to a mutually comfortable space. But just then, they were transferred.

After this very same thing happened the third time, I stopped making any effort to get to know any young missionaries. It was just too frustrating to start to get to know them, only to have them whisked away forever!

When you were Mormon, how did you deal with the ever-changing pairs of missionaries in your ward?

They change so frequently in my ward no one has bothered to even invite them for dinner these days. No one cares as much about them as much in our ward because they change so much.

It has become painfully aware that 15-20 years ago that mission are for the missionary.


They are easier and easier. Younger. Less structured. Less pressure. more areas.

May people have disconnected the missionary memories they grew up with, developing relationships with these kids and now just see them as the referral personnel.

These changes came about as the inactivity rate among prospective and returned missionaries sky-rocket it.


Now it is little more that a semester abroad.

The last set that I invited over were just plain rude. I prepared a homemade meal and they were over an hour late. They had cell phones in 2009 so I was within reason to be pissed off.

-They ate very little.
-They said even less.
-I walked one down the hallway to the guest restroom. He got lost on his way back and I found him looking through my photo albums in a spare room.

This was 10 years ago (And I already considered myself an ex-member that was never going to return). My wife pitied seeing them a few days earlier and wanted to cheer them up. Well, it didn't work and made me wonder why we even bothered to invite them at all.

They are not doing themselves any favors sending them at 18. They have no manners, no experience, are addicted to cell phones, are irreverent, boorish, ignorant and boring.

sb Wrote:
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> They are not doing themselves any favors sending
> them at 18. They have no manners, no experience,
> are addicted to cell phones, are irreverent,
> boorish, ignorant and boring.

It is unfair to say that they are ill-mannered, that is not always the case. I occasionally meet them on the street (very rarely TBH, they concentrate on the university area) and they are quite polite.

However, they do lack experience, and are often boring. Cell phone addiction is a general curse of the current generation and is brainwashing many of them right now. This is not LDS-specific.

At that age, I can't help thinking many of them think mostly about sex. Maybe with the other missionaries, or investigators. Maybe these sexual fantasies are bound up in marital fantasies to make them more palatable. Funnily enough, one of my friends was on the bus one day, and overheard missionaries making facetious sexual remarks about investigators - who they thought attractive and unattractive etc. They obviously thought they weren't being watched at the time, but word got back to me.

The question is whether this sabotages their missionary efforts. Maybe they should wait til after college and then they would be more rounded.

messygoop Wrote:
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> The last set that I invited over were just plain
> rude. I prepared a homemade meal and they were
> over an hour late.

Let's analyze this. What you are talking about is a common problem.

* "Just plain rude" - there are many factors here, but it is worth mentioning tiredness and bad sleeping patterns make you grouchier.
* "Homemade meal" - they get given these all the time. When someone cooks me a homemade meal, I'm very flattered because it only happens now and then, but with mishies, it happens all the time so they become indifferent.
* "Over an hour late" - one of the perils of continually moving around mishies is that they don't have time to get used to bus timetables or even just to know the road networks. This is a major flaw.

> They had cell phones in 2009 so
> I was within reason to be pissed off.

Yes, you were.

> -They ate very little.
> -They said even less.

Probably sick of talking to people and tired. But still, ill-mannered.

> -I walked one down the hallway to the guest
> restroom. He got lost on his way back and I found
> him looking through my photo albums in a spare
> room.

You must have a big house! His behavior was inexcusable, and I understand why you would be upset. I wonder if the boy was trying a bit of escapism in a bizarre way. They can acr like they have a God given right to do this, but he definitely crossed a boundary there.

> Let's analyze this.


What you meant to say is, "Let ME analyze this for you..."


I don't mind not having the same degree of certainty as you seem to possess. Perhaps life for me remains more of a mystery. I am not saying my way is better, but personally, as in, speaking only for myself, I like being curious and learning, just for its own sake. I think it's a distraction having to restrict one's self to those 'facts' that support one's preconceived notions.

I think the missionaries are purposely moved around a lot so they don't form attachments.

heartbroken Wrote:
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> I think the missionaries are purposely moved
> around a lot so they don't form attachments.

They are, and it is designed to get people to lean on the church, not individuals.

However, it also comes at a cost. When people finally agree to get baptized, it is often because they like or trust particular missionaries. Move those missionaries away quickly without ward support and you lose those members.

My mom had the mishies over... one of them in the middle of a conversations got the "spirit" and started to pray. We gave him his space and were quiet... he was on his knees (drama), but after 5 minutes went by, the looks started to be exchanged... after 15 minutes his companion started giving the looks too and looked uncomfortable... my mom quit inviting them after that...

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/17/2019 03:51PM by shylock.

Invite them to dinner.

One of the few positive things I remember from my mission was interactions with maybe a dozen member families who made me feel welcome in a country far far from home.

This was a long time ago, but left a very strong impression about how good some people are.

We really didn't. I struggled to remember most of the names, as did many people. Many of the missionaries looked very similar (which was not a coincidence since some of them were related - they were even siblings of previous missionaries in a few cases)

As for them on an individual basis, I liked some of them and not others. Some I have dear memories of, and I hope they're doing well wherever they end up. Some of them were creeps, and I don't have such good wishes for them.

To be honest, I hated the constant transfers. I really liked certain missionaries and I hated them going away. I think it made me very indifferent to some of them because I didn't wish to "invest" in them emotionally. (For wont of a better word).

I am far from unique in these respects. I have spoken with other people about this and they felt similarly.

of the Mormon missionary program that has helped make it the dysfunctional and ineffective program that it is.

I guess the belief in the notion that conversions are really made by the Holy Ghost (an invisible, gaseous/electro-plasmatic being that nobody really knows anything about)--and that the missionaries are just transmission devices--prevents them from seeing the reality that "conversions" are actually the result of human relationships. Some missionaries may be charming and glib enough to make the sale in a short period of time to a certain kind of investigator who is vulnerable to high-pressure sales pitches. But for most missionaries, it takes time to develop the type of relationship of trust and comfort that would reach other types of "investigators".

Doesn't matter in the long run, since they're selling a fraudulent product. But the way they run the missionary program is still an astonishingly stupid thing to behold.

Why would it be a problem ? Everyone is cognizent of the fact

that the Missionaries travel around to find converts. ...

I don't understand. I never felt like they were my relatives

and I had to bond with them. I fed them dinner and we had

small talk about how things were going for them, its not like

I'm going to adopt them for life. They are hungry guys so

I feed them. Or take them out to dinner.

When I was still active back in olden times, we had ward and stake missionaries. They were just local members who got an onerous calling. They were the ones who worked with missionaries. Supposedly. Other members had very little interaction with full-time missionaries.

I understand that they got rid of the "Seventies" quorums for the commoners after I left. Maybe they were worried that using the same name for the ordinary guys at the ward/stake level as for the GA Seventies somehow diluted the prestige of the GA Seventies.

The ward-level Seventies quorums were always a bit weird. Just a few guys who seemed to be going through a trial period to see if they were worthy of being elevated to "High Priest" status. If they really worked it hard with the missionaries, they had a shot. But most of them didn't and probably got busted back down to "Elder" status when they eliminated the Seventies.

Mom and dad invited mishies for dinner almost every fast Sunday. Most were nice guys. One was an asshole.

I mostly ignored them....except when they got invited out to the farm for F&T Sunday dinner.