I am part of a neighborhood app called Nextdoor. People post all kinds of things on this app. Today, someone shared a copy of a FB post, placed by a Mormon missionary (wearing his name tag in the photo) offering their services. The Nextdoor person encouraged other Nextdoor followers to reach out to these fine, young men. There were comments back and forth about how the men were members of the Mormon church. I remember, back when I was a member, the way the church pushed us to find converts, and how the missionaries always hoped beyond hope that their service would lead to conversions. I am a bit tempted to warn the throngs who are showing interest in taking the missionaries up on their offer of service, but have decided to keep my mouth shut. Here is the post:

Hi Everyone! My friend and I are both interested in offering FREE community service for people living in (name of town)! We can do yardwork, fire abatement, painting, moving furniture, and any other form of service. Please give us a call or text us at (phone number) or direct message me so we can set something up~!



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 10/26/2021 02:43PM by momgyver.

... I'm waiting for the sister missionaries to offer massage services ...

elderolddog Wrote:
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> ... I'm waiting for the sister missionaries to
> offer massage services ...


They could offer house cleaning for the stressed out stay at home moms with multiple tittle children at home. Or they could do grocery pick up for the elderly. Volunteer at a soup kitchen and peel some carrots.

subeamnotlogedin Wrote:
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> elderolddog Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > ... I'm waiting for the sister missionaries to
> > offer massage services ...
>
>
> They could offer house cleaning for the stressed
> out stay at home moms with multiple tittle
> children at home. Or they could do grocery pick up
> for the elderly. Volunteer at a soup kitchen and
> peel some carrots.

I did not see that video.

Their buyer market has been exhausted. They have tracted out the towns until there are no new people to contact. They would probably be better off to go home Go to college and become productive local citizens.
It saddens me to see such a waste.

"My friend and I"? Misleading.

How do you know they are Mormon missionaries? Does the ad state that somewhere? (OK, dumb question - if it did say that your post would be different - but I mean, how do you know?) :)

Long after I had left the church (short term "convert"), missionaries stopped by (several years ago) and offered to do yard chores for me. I made it 100% clear I wasn't interested in the discussions or in converting (can't remember if I told them I was associated for a time) and they still came by a few times to wash outside windows and cut the lawn. I appreciated it and I'm sure they were happy to be doing something for a few hours other than knocking on doors. I gave them groceries to take back to their apartment. Then they just stopped coming. Maybe they got transferred or a leader put a stop to that activity or who knows.

The ad you've seen sure lists a variety of tasks that many people would love to get free help to do. Maybe the missionaries will get plenty of responses to their ad. It will keep them busy for a while and less bored perhaps but, unfortunately, may indicate to them that the Lord's work rolls forth etc when really people just need help or want free labour. So, a relationship that starts with a misunderstanding. Sounds about par for the course.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/26/2021 02:14PM by Nightingale.

About twice a year we get mail from our "[Redacted] Neighbor", where the [Redacted] part is the name of the nearby elementary school.

Of course, it's not really from anyone who lives in the area. It's signed by a made-up name, and the mail is postmarked from some Silicon Valley zip code.

The idiots at Nextdoor have decided like bad real estate agents that our neighborhood needs a name, so they chose the elementary school; but neighborhoods in our fairly urban suburb don't actually have names, and never have had them.

Ultimately, like Patch publications, Nextdoor is a platform for marketing doorbell cameras and paranoia. They're bottom feeders trying to organize posses of vigilante twits, under a veneer of downhome goodness. A pox on them.

Tyson

I do too.

I don't think its creators anticipated the politicization, the paranoid rants, and the accusations with, and photos of, alleged wrongdoers. The moderators where we live try to nip that stuff in the bud but they aren't online all the time and they sometimes make mistakes, resulting in long threads with appalling content.

Part of the problem may be that the timing of the launch coincided with a very bad period in US politics. Or perhaps we're just learning again what earlier generations intuitively knew: that good fences make good neighbors.

Yes, it’s a marketing ploy, but the missionaries are also bored out of their minds, and need **anything** to fill the time. I would have much preferred yard and house maintenance to tracting.

You can throw sand on them w/out bringing mormonism into this. Ask them on Nextdoor -

1. Are they licensed and bonded? (they're not)

2. Who is liable if they get injured or any property is damaged?

Interest in their services should go way down. The more intelligent people of the neighborhood will get the message and not hire the kids. The dumber ones can fend for themselves and expose themselves to the risk.

I think that I shared my experience of a couple of elders who attempted to do indoor construction at a member's house. It was a disaster and the dum dums even took pictures of their shoddy work. It was a big joke to them!

Holes everywhere, crooked.

Think of that standard carpenter's motto: Measure twice, cut once.

Their attitude was if Bro ____ didn't like it, he could do it himself.

I had a companion goofing off in the yard and he stepped on a rake, which promptly nailed him in the groin.

Some sisters went to paint a room. They took the paint can into another room and wrecked the corner of an antique table.

Think carefully about inviting them on your property.

I'm pretty sure both times it involved wallpaper.


The first time, it was a ward project where we were helping to clean out a lot of trash and fix up a dilapidated house that a member family were renting. I remember us putting up that god-awful fuzzy salmon-colored wallpaper that was up in the majority of chapels and several missionary apartments in France.

A word of advice: don't fix up rentals. After we fixed the place, the landlord tossed the family out. On the ward's side the story was he wanted to raise the rent, but I suspect that repairing the place might have violated their lease too.


The second time, I helped remove wallpaper for an investigator couple who were restoring an inn they had purchased. I have to say that one was fun, though it hardly seems like reasonable service all things considered. (I wish I could remember the name of the inn.)

Tyson

Anybody who is going to be swayed the change their religion because a teenager cleaned their shed is not going to heed a warning from an internet stranger.

Sounds like this could make an episode of Reno 911 where they could run a sting operation on such an offer. Hilarity would ensue when Dangle has some interaction with them trying to coordinate some service. Or if Nick Swardson was one of the missionaries and wearing roller skates.

I am an admin on some local FB groups and have had some missionaries try to offer their "services" in the group. I don't allow advertising in the group and I consider the missionaries as advertising, so I just block them and remove their posts.

I can't imagine anyone taking them up on their offer, but people are stupid enough to go to timeshare presentations and buy stuff from telemarketers, so maybe they would.

Fabulously incredible idea..

It has so little to do with yard work or cleaning and everything to do with building back community again, post pandemic!

They probably don't even know..

Gotta give em credit tho..
Peeps will do really just about a-n-y-t-h-i-n-g to help break the secluded isolation brought on by the past pandemic.

All-powerful mormon ghawd is probably a little upset at the church's apparent inability to coordinate with him regarding what they should have been doing during this repeat pandemic episode. The church had, basically, a century to learn from the previous episode, not to mention getting divine instructions if the former was too hard to figure out.

Sometimes the church acts as out of touch with ghawd as all the other religious variations on the theme.

elderolddog Wrote:
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> All-powerful mormon ghawd is probably a little
> upset at the church's apparent inability to
> coordinate with him regarding what they should
> have been doing during this repeat pandemic
> episode. The church had, basically, a century to
> learn from the previous episode, not to mention
> getting divine instructions if the former was too
> hard to figure out.
>
> Sometimes the church acts as out of touch with
> ghawd as all the other religious variations on the
> theme.

When the word "Church" is properly maybe defined without anything much to do with Morm-ØŽism, it truly ends up being less about buildings and much much more about simply a body of believers.

Weird how that one got all turned around.

I'm looking for help to get it to Habitat For Humanity. I wonder if they could arrange for a truck? Jimmy Carter hasn't returned my calls.

If you were serious about donating to a Habitat for Humanity ReStores, you'd already have done it without making a snarky comment about Jimmy Carter. That said, here's the link for furniture donations:

https://www.habitat.org/stories/does-habitat-offer-furniture-donation-pickup

As is unsurprising, not all locations can offer furniture pickup, and whether they'd want your supposed farmhouse full of furniture would depend on whether they can resell it. Like any charity, they have guidelines on condition and which specific items they'll take.

(I'm personally disappointed that the one local to my mother isn't interested in most of the kinds of furniture she has to donate because it's large and dated.)

Tyson

I am in touch with the local Habitat. They have two trucks, but haven't been able to get a driver(s) to work for them. The furniture is dated but sturdy, dating from the 1930s to the 50s, before the era of cheap imports.

Anything they can't take becomes firewood.

This thread has given me the idea of checking with the local stake and see if a couple of missies might be available. I could rent a U-Haul and work with the kids to load and unload it. I'd appreciate people's thoughts on that--whom do I call, how to go about it, etc.

Re: Jimmy Carter, a "botched joke" as a current, prominent public servant would term it. Although Carter was problematic as President, he was aces-up as a humanitarian, and Habitat was a major beneficiary of his time and attention. My point was, "If I can't get a top dog like Carter to help, can anything be done?"

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/28/2021 01:48PM by caffiend.

caffiend Wrote:
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> Although
> Carter was problematic as President, he was
> aces-up as a humanitarian. . .

Agreed on both scores. He was an incompetent president and his later interventions in diplomatic affairs, e.g. NK negotiations in the 1990s, did a lot of harm. But he has used his prestige to admirable effect as a humanitarian since leaving office.

So much has changed since I was a missionary. We were not encouraged to do service as it would take away from precious finding (tracting) time.

Now it seems that missionaries are mostly doing "service" aka chores. If missionaries are signing up for a two year stint painting houses, moving furniture and pulling weeds, they should be paid for their efforts with some of the interest from that $100 billion and growing tithing money just sitting there. In the very least their living expenses should be paid.

Instead, missionaries pay $500/month each to do chores. The money goes to church headquarters in Salt Lake City where it earns interest. The Mormon church is crooked enough to make money off teenagers who forfeit 2 years of college to do menial labor without pay so their church will look good.

heartbroken Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> In the very least their living
> expenses should be paid.

> Instead, missionaries pay $500/month each to do
> chores. The money goes to church headquarters in
> Salt Lake City where it earns interest. The Mormon
> church is crooked enough to make money off
> teenagers who forfeit 2 years of college to do
> menial labor without pay so their church will look
> good.

Too bad this isn't more widely known. You'd think it would be devastating to their public image.

I always felt sorry for my Mormon friends who had four sons. Their finances were already strained, despite both of them having good jobs, but between tithing and saving for four missions, yikes, they didn't have many luxuries or holidays, that's for sure. I remember being stunned by the amount of money it cost a family to be Mormon. I couldn't quite get the concept of feeling obliged to fork over money you couldn't afford to the church first before any other imperatives were looked after.

Just one more reason to feel mega-stressed as a faithful Mormon.

Back a quarter-century ago, the church was still having to pay for missionary apartments and flights, both of which could be quite costly, depending on the community.

I know the equalization of missionary expenses happened shortly before I arrived in France. Earlier missionaries in expensive areas like Europe had to pay considerably less after equalization; whereas, missionaries in cheaper missions wound up paying substantially more. I think French missionaries went from paying $750 to $400, though I could have incorrect numbers for the exact figures. A lot of that went into the cost of apartment rental.

Tyson

Do you wonder why, that after more than 100 years of parents sending checks directly to missionaries, the Mormon church now has the parents send the money directly to the Mormon church so it can then distribute the money to the missionaries? Maybe one of the financial advisors for the Mormon church did the math.

When parents sent money directly to missionaries, bypassing the Mormon church, the Mormon church missed out on money they could have invested -- money that would earn interest. They wanted members to think the church was now trying to be fair and not have one parent shell out more for their missionary in France than another parent paid for their missionary in Mexico. Well, that was partly the reason. I think it was mostly about the potential interest. How much interest?

There are approximately 30,000 missionaries. Each missionary is supposed to pay $500/month, $600/year. That means approximately $180,000,000 is being sent to the Mormon church each year. If it's put into an interest earning account at 3%, it will earn $5,400,000/year. Over a ten year period that interest really adds up.

The Mormon church can use some of the excess tithing money to pay the missionaries while the missionary money is accumulating interest. Eventually the Mormon church will make a nice profit from the interest accumulated from the missionary money.

The bottom line is profit. Not only do the missionaries pay for their missions, they also generate interest for the Mormon church.

Oops, missionaries pay $500/month, $6,000 (not $600)/ year.

heartbroken Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Not only do the
> missionaries pay for their missions, they also
> generate interest for the Mormon church.

Unfortunately for the church, it's not interest *in* the church by non-members. :)

But they're likely pretty content with the interest they're getting from all that money.

Good analysis, heartbroken. Interest-ing. :)

I should have written "income" instead of "interest."

Either works. :)

I was just kidding around. Play on words. Didn't mean any criticism.

The reason why the money goes to the church is because giving it to the church is tax deductible. Giving it directly to the missionary is not tax deductible.

If you think it is about LDS Inc earning interest on the money, you haven’t had a savings account recently.

Your math on the interest doesn’t work at all. A minor problem is that finding an interest bearing account that pays one percent is hard. Three percent, fuggedaboutit.

The big problem is they would only get a year’s worth of interest if they were able to put all that money in the savings account and not touch it for a year. They can’t do that. They spend the money pretty close to as fast as it comes in, paying missionary expenses.

If they can keep missionary expenditures under $500 per missionary per month, then I suppose they could pocket the difference. OTOH, if the expenditures were more than $500 a month on average, they’d be losing money. I expect it is pretty close to break-even.

My cousin has 3 missionaries out right now. $500 times 3 that is $1500 per month. Each of her missionaries has worked and saved up for their own mission as my cousin has 7 children and told them early on that she will not be able to pay for all their missions. The thought of what they could have done with $1500 monthly and keeping their jobs. I live in Texas for $1500 monthly that is a mortgage payment for a house. By a house and rent it out and continue living with their parents and working instead of serving a mission. Hahah I am such an apostate.