So I heard from my Mormon sister, (she has a son on a mission), that it's the rule now that missionaries can only go to people's houses and have dinner ONLY if there's an investigator there. Must suck to be a missionary now that there's less and less people joining the church or even interested. Correct me on this if it's wrong. Maybe it's just her son's stake.

Nope, it's not just her son's stake. All missionaries have to do everything with their companion except for showering, going to the bathroom, those kind of privacy things. But even then, they aren't given much privacy because they also have to sleep in the same room.

They tried that here in my ward (in Michigan) a long time ago. When it went in to effect, the missionaries had almost no people sign up for dinners.

That rule didn't last very long.

This is absolutely true or at least it was for a while. It was true for me at least.

I don't think that happened here, b/c the few mos. i investigated which i didn't join i was never asked to go and eat @ someone's house.

Several years ago, when I was still Kolobian, I asked two mishies to help me and my son move. We took them out to dinner as a thank you. As (bad) luck would have it, members of the ward were in the restaurant. They snitched and the elders were reprimanded. Controlling jerks.

This is one of those practices where the church's interest in control, repression, and groupthink led on the one hand, in part, to your disaffection (one more crappy thing about the church to put on your shelf so when it came tumbling down, here was this bit of ugliness) and leads normal people, "worldly" people, to see it as a controlling cult.

(My MIL, a Nevermo, said to me, now that I am open about my disgust with the church, that she always found it too controlling. My FIL's lifelong friend, "Uncle Bill," confided in us that the Mormons "control teenagers like puppets.")

If the church were a mainstream religion there wouldn't be such a focus on recruiting new members; there wouldn't be the need for so many missionaries and for laying out so many rules for them--even to the point that when they give service to members, helping a family move, and then are thanked by being taken out to dinner, they are reprimanded for not eating with an Investigator. "Who cares about your giving service? We want our numbers! We want our recruits."

If the church were a mainstream religion, there wouldn't be the recruiting, the missionaries to be controlled, the unkind reprimanding, which require people not just to humble themselves but to abase themselves, to negate themselves for the good of the organization. In other words, the church would be a kinder, more loving, more enjoyable, friendlier community to be a part of instead of a militant cult that seeks obedience and discipline in its members BEFORE adhering to any Christlike virtues. Disgraceful.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/12/2011 12:24PM by derrida.

In the past ten years, I've lived in six stakes, and sometimes investigators were required for dinners, and sometimes they weren't.

Coincidentally, I may be feeding the missionaries soon. They may eat, but they may not pray.

Oh, you wanted the missionaries rules. They can use anyone they want to play the role of "investigator", even an unbaptized child.

I've always heard about that rule but I've never seen it enforced. They would starve!

When the mishies were at my dad's the other day, the greenie from Boise was literally shoveling food in his face like he was starving. I said, boy you sure are hungry elder! He then told me they haven't had many dinner appointments recently and they only get $3 A DAY for food!

Disgusting cult.

It's well known that cults use hunger as a way to make people physically and mentally vulnerable to indoctrination.

You'd think that by the time missionaries are in the field and out of the MTC that they'd be hook, line, and sinker believing zombies in the cult.

Clearly the COB knows that even among its missionary force there are budding apostates and people dissatisfied with the calling who are interacting more with the world and bare to the questions of the world. Thus the continued emphasis by the COB on indoctrination and control, even of the missionaries--perhaps them most of all. If the COB can get them through the missionary experience then the chances increase that that individual will be a beast of burden for the church for life.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/12/2011 02:38PM by derrida.

The way the big 15 treat its front line, you'd think they hated them.

Still, it was the same for the British in the First world war: Lions led by donkeys.

Another rule they had was that the meals coordinators priority was to call less-actives and ask them for a date that the missionaries could eat at their home. Total fail.

At this point the missionaries ended up with no meals at all, so some of the members started giving them groceries or feeding them on the sly. Then they decided that the host family had to have an investigator present, and was also amended to include taking the missionaries to an apointment at a less-actives home after dinner. While there was a slight increase in meals, they were still getting very few.

It was also about this time that their food allowance was cut.

Incidently, it was this very topic that I first encountered RfM.

Still a TBM at the time, I saw a search result that said starving missionaries or similar and clicked on it. It linked to a whole thread of missionaries in the same situation as ours.

I was surprised that this was such a widespread problem! It wasn't really a revelation that our MP had had, it was a set of experiments at the highest level with no concern for anything but results.

It's been a rule in the last two stakes I've been in, but in reality it didn't work. At times we were reminded of the rule but it would fade away fast along with the other rules for feeding the missionaries, or else they wouldn't have dinner appointments. Then in our stake someone came up with the idea of having three appointments a week with part-member families, less active or investigators, still didn't take off too much. Nobody is going to be calling the "inactives" to ask them to feed the missionaries and the part-member families usually needed to consult with a spouse before having he missionaries over and rarely they did.

D

...the reason they wanted ward members to supply dinners and actually a free living space, is to save money. TSCC is all about money making. Ergo, this won't last long.

Some months ago in my area, the rule was that a family was not allowed to invite the missionaries over for dinner unless either an investigator OR an inactive member was present. He – llo, leaders. WHERE do you think all these hot-to-learn-about-Mormonism investigators are going to come from? And when inactive guests realize that they have been USED—invited to dinner ONLY so the hosts would be permitted to feed the poor mishies—do you think this will elicit from those inactives, fond thoughts of returning to church activity?!

Even your average TBM immediately recognized the futility of the stupid rule.

The rule did not last long.

Interesting....so a Mormon family has to invite an investigator to dinner before mishies can join them???? The LDS are so screwed up!!!

Over the years I have had the miishies over and fed them. They knew not to talk mormon to me. Most didn't and had a good time. they kicked back,,visited about family and friends at home,,ate B-B-Q,,seemed relaxed. I even had some women misshies over and cooked a meal or two for them.

This is how it was on my mission in Minnesota '99-'01. It was a mission wide requirement, though I think having a less-active or non-member present justified it in some instances. Needless to say we rarely ate over at member's houses.

And even though they deprive them, starve them, and make them live in squalor, they expect non-beievers to take pity and pick up the slack by feeding and caring for them.

It's a sick system which only mormons can fix. Little dinners here don't change anything in the long run.

We had the same rule applied in the mid '70s. It comes and goes, depending on how the missionaries used the time. If it was in-and-out, then it wasn't a problem. If they used it as a time to goof off for the entire evening, then the MP and staff would crack down. Regardless, we still had to give some type of discussion and/or message.... and bug the charitable members for names of their friends.

the degree to which the mishies followed it depended on how nazi different mishies are and what the MP said. they had lots of trouble getting meals with people, frequently people would deliver food to them.

another workaround that i see frequently is the mishies will come to a "quick dinner" with members that happens very early in the evening, stay long enough to eat, leave a quick message and leave so they can get back to tracting. i was at a LDS pals home recently and the sisters showed up for dinner at 4:15 and my friend was moving like lightening because they had to be "gone by 5 to get back to their jobs." i was helping her set up, etc and heard the sisters talking about the very important evening activity of...yep, tracting.

right along side the missionary. They've been there, done that, and want to feed these poor guys. This is why I wish they'd come to my house!!!!