I'm not sure if this is a church wide program, but I just found out that they had sent a rogue message to my wife's cell phone. What floors me is that they never identified themselves until quite a ways into the conversation. Also, why are they messing with my dear wife and not respecting me as the patriarch or head of the household? That's playing with fire with some jealous types.

M- Sorry, we have this number saved in our contacts in the phone, who are you?

DW- (thinking he/she was a known contact or acquaintance) replied: Tell me who you are and I will tell you who I am. I don't have your info saved in my contacts nor do any records from this #. I doubt that I have ever spoken with you.

M- I'm a missionary of the church of Jesus Christ (no mention of latter day saints). I'm in (a city 60 miles away from my area) and my name is Elder ______. Your phone # is saved in a chip on the phone as Goop.

DW- I was a member many years ago, but I left the church with my husband. We were treated poorly and have moved on with our lives.

M- Oh no! What happened?

DW- I don't want to discuss it. We are not interested in returning and are working on our resignation letters.

M- I'm so sorry. I don't know who hurt you or offended you. As an official representative of the church, I apologize [Obviously he is unaware of Oaks~ The church offers no apologies. Never!]

M- Do you read your BoM?

DW- No I'm not interested in that phony book. It's all a fraud and JS stole all the temple rituals from the masons.

End of conversation. Number blocked

And the first part of the conversation was in Spanish. My wife is bilingual.

Stalking.

WHO ON EARTH C/WOULD COUNT THIS TYPE OF CONVERSATION AS 'FAITH PROMOTING'?

The MP and the APs!

I have faith that it will help with my disassociation

I just don't respond to strangers. Especially when they can't identity themselves in the first place. Who has time for spies, scams, stalkers, fraudsters, phish...?

At least they know what to do with that number now: DO NOT CALL. lol

messygoop Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> M- Oh no! What happened?
>
> M- I'm so sorry. I don't know who hurt you or
> offended you. As an official representative of the
> church, I apologize


Sadly, there are probably people who fall for this sort of attention.

Perhaps the missionaries aren't having any luck finding fresh blood and are focusing on the inactivies. Maybe they think the inactives are feeling lonely and vulnerable during the pandemic and are looking for a community. LDS Inc. likes to prey on people during difficult times.

I recently received a Book of Mormon in the mail from someone I don't know in Salt Lake City. The xeroxed copy note inside read: "I felt inspired..." That's as far as I read and then chucked it into the dumpster.

I wonder if this is some sort of pilot program. On some level, it makes sense that if you can't sell door to door thanks to COVID19, then you try to make the mishies so something else.

There might be a handful of jack Mormons who would show up at least a few times.

Still, there are more former Mormons than practicing ones so this is not going to be a successful effort.

thanks for the heads up about this. I would feel so frightened if some mormons contacted me. I don't want them to know where I live.I have moved two times in the last year and never updated my address with the post master as to avoid mormons. MOrmons are far and few in the state I live in.

frankie Wrote:
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>
> MOrmons are far and few in the state I live in.

Where I live you could hardly throw a rock without hitting a Mormon. Of course I would never advocate such a thing ;-)

Lol!

Shinehah Wrote:
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>
> Where I live you could hardly throw a rock without
> hitting a Mormon. Of course I would never advocate
> such a thing ;-)


You wouldn't advocate throwing a rock without hitting a Mormon?

hehehe! ;)

My companion and I were looking for a specific inactive - I believe at the behest of the skip-tracing morons of the Church.

We knocked on the purported address, and an old woman answered. The person we were seeking had the same name as her husband but was considerably younger. She broke down crying - her husband had only died a few months before.

We apologized. Profusely.


I remember getting very angry at whatever muckety-mucks had passed us the name, and I don't remember ever acquiescing to doing such a search again.

Tyson

I find it really offensive that the missionary asked if you had read the BoM after you made it clear that you had left the church behind a long time ago, and would be resigning.

Always be selling, I guess.

Missionaries do this crom time to time. About once e ery few years they'd show at mt door asking for my deceased wife.

I'd politely tell them no one with that name lived at my address.

If they were polite I'd let the dog loose in the front yard and they'd spend about 30 minutes playing with him.

If they were rude I'd just slam the door on them.

Heartless Wrote:
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> Missionaries do this crom time to time. About once
> e ery few years they'd show at mt door asking for
> my deceased wife.
>

Why don't they update their records?

Mormons are hell bent on seeking data about everyone and often brag about their record-keeping.

One marketing principle is that it's cheaper/easier to get former customers to return to using your product than it is to find all new customers. That seems counterintuitive, because former customers know what's wrong with your product while non-customers don't.

Nonetheless the past decade or more, the church has targeted unbaptized members of part-member or inactive families. Perhaps they've exhausted those "golden contacts" and they've resorted to former members. And perhaps they try to contact the wife because they're supposedly more receptive to spiritual stuff than men. Or maybe they thin the wife only left because her husband talked her into it.

Back in either the real late 70s or early 80s just before the stopped having 70s in the wards and before 70 was elevated to GA status. A life long friend of mine asked me to visit some families with him.

I was hesitant because as many of us may remember, no one wanted to be a 70 and I was afraid they'd want to "promote" me.

We visited inactive families. Found those with unbaptised kids over age 8 and tried to convince their parents to allow us to baptise them.

He had success with one family and baptised two girls age 8 and 10. Never saw them at church.

I have a really nice deck of cards. I wonder if they would be interested in some strip poker?

Deceit

Deceit of your pants?

Jesus, Jesus. That joke was below you.

I give it two thumbs up.

That's between you and Jesus behind closed doors.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
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> Jesus, Jesus. That joke was below you.



I'm so high, everything is beneath me!!

That does it. Cheech is NOT doing the movie!

When a companionship changes the mobile phone usually stays within the ward/zone. This sounds like a new companionship going through their phone records updating the contacts to see which are valid and which aren't. Sounds to me like the individual Elder was simply doing that and trying to be nice about it. Nothing more, nothing less.

Missionaries contacting people on the Church records who no longer attend isn't exactly breaking news.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/17/2020 08:50AM by pettigrew.

pettigrew Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> Missionaries contacting people on the Church
> records who no longer attend isn't exactly
> breaking news.


It’s indicative of their desperation.

I moved away from Utah 5 years ago but had retained my 801 phone number.....low and behold one day I got a similar text:

M: Hi how are you?
ME: Good, who is this this?
M: This is Sister Stepford, from the cult of secret handshakes.......

It went on and on for several 'pages'. She bore her testimony. Indirectly told me I was a petty person for allowing myself to be offended. Defended JS's secret marriages to underage girls. And encouraged me to read the BoM despite my firm stance that it was nothing more than bad fiction. (I guess if you read it 10 times it turns into quality non-fiction, poof magic!!!!)

It dragged on so long that I eventually had to get rude and tell her to leave me alone and don't ever text or call this number again. I've since dumped my 801 number.

Every once in a while they have a conference talk or something about reaching out to those poor unfortunate folks who have fallen away. I've been contacted at least once by family or random Mormons who were obviously doing what they recently heard in some lesson or talk.

This is one reason I like to know what gibberish they bring up in conference. It gives me a heads-up about what they might be up to next.

dagny Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Every once in a while they have a conference talk
> or something about reaching out to those poor
> unfortunate folks who have fallen away. I've been
> contacted at least once by family or random
> Mormons who were obviously doing what they
> recently heard in some lesson or talk.
>
Exactly. These tales get told and take hold of the most zealous, pushy missionary.

"Before we left the chapel we had a brief word of prayer and I picked up a hymn book to take along with my scriptures. We knew we had to do something to invite the spirit to be with us during our visit. The person we were assigned to call on was a middle aged lady who had had nothing to do with the church for more than 10 years. She was a widow. Her name was Sister Lockhart. We knocked on her door about 9:00 a.m. that Saturday morning...

It was obvious that the spirit had touched her heart. She then confessed that she had been away from the Church too long. She committed to get her life in order and return to the fold. The stake president followed through with the bishop and relief society president to assure she had home and visiting teachers. The last I heard, Sister Lockhart had returned to full activity in the church and was enjoying all the blessings of the restored gospel."

Some of these efforts are clumsily obvious.

Worse, in my family, I always know when I’ve come up in “conversation” because I’ll hear from more than one useful idiot in quick succession. For example, not long ago I heard from both a niece and nephew w/in an hour of each other, but had previously heard from neither in more than 3 years.

The M.O. with my family gaslighters is to “worry” about their victims and manipulate others into checking on them.