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Posted by: WiserWomanNow ( )
Date: October 23, 2011 03:15PM

(i.e. during years OTHER than when you served an official mission for the Church)

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Posted by: bingoe4 ( )
Date: October 23, 2011 03:22PM

Yes. I am ashamed now, but at least he fell away very quickly and quietly.

When I was in boot camp I baptized a buddy of mine. Mormon church was the longest service and allowed for the longest time away from drill instructors every Sunday. They provided letter writing material and even paid for and mailed the letters.

It wasn't hard to get non-mormons to come to church with me. I was a very rare RM Marine recruit. Boot camp is another one of those life altering stressful occasions where playing with emotions of a young person is very easy. "Don't you feel good when you come to church?" Of course he did. He got to sit in an air conditioned comfortable room and relax a little.

Stupid cult.

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Posted by: baura ( )
Date: October 23, 2011 06:36PM

No, I was tremendously ineffective as a "member missionary." My problems was that Mormonism made sense to me so I just told others the story I was told. I didn't realize that it was an absurd story and that it had to be presented in a clever and even deceptive way to be effective. I just told it matter-of-fact as I had learned it growing up a BIC Mormon.

Once when I had gone through it with a friend [first vision, Moroni and the plates, translating with magic spectacles etc.] my friend who had been TREMENDOUSLY patient asked, "what happened to the plates?"

"They were taken back up into Heaven," I answered.

He nodded without rolling his eyes or otherwise letting on that he thought the story was totally absurd. But at that moment it first struck me what a "the dog ate my homework" story it was. From that moment on I realized how weird and strange Mormonism was. Although I was a believing Mormon for another ten years I never tried to be a "member missionary" again. I had enough to keep me busy just trying to make sense of what I believed until, finally, ten years later during Priesthood Meeting the shelf collapsed under the weight of it all.

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Posted by: Cristina ( )
Date: October 23, 2011 07:54PM

I was in my teens and on fire with the spirit of every member a missionary. Of the five who were baptized, not one lasted a whole year. This is one reason I know for sure that the membership numbers given by the church are way off the mark. All of those people were single when they joined. None of them bothered to get their names removed, they just went back to normal. On church records, I'm sure all five are counted as members 30 years after their close encounter and quick departure from the Morg.

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Posted by: cludgie ( )
Date: October 24, 2011 12:29AM

He got baptized, attended a couple of times and left the church. Missionaries found another guy and had him taught in the faithful Cludgie home. He got baptized without ever coming to church first (an innovation of the President Vacari administration in the Frankfurt Mission), and also never came to a meeting thereafter. He joined yet another church within a month. To TSCC, these two are part of the Fourteen Million, no doubt.

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Posted by: forestpal ( )
Date: October 24, 2011 12:58AM

I'm so ashamed. I brought in a whole family, who were friends and neighbors of mine. The mother (my age) said she was interested in making her own bread, and by coincidence (it was meant to be!) our ward RS was having a Saturday RS work day on making whole wheat bread. The ward members and the missionaries were the pushy ones. They invited her daughter to church. Her daughter had a big crush on my son, and my son was terribly embarrassed to have her come to church. The mother, father, and all four children were baptized. I was a real hero in the ward, for a while. The father's brother and all of his children were baptized a few months later. They loved Primary. The brother's wife was a Catholic, and this caused trouble in the family. Eventually, both families got out.

A young man in the same apartment complex at college claimed that he was in love with me, but I wouldn't date him because he wasn't a Mormon. (Yes, I was raised to be a total jerk about that.) He was actually a cool guy--handsome, charming, president of his fraternity, and had been on the football team--but I wasn't in love with him. Without my knowledge, he took the missionary discussions, and surprised me by getting baptized. Unfortunately, that didn't make a difference. I don't think he ever went to church. He never got married, either, and is happy in his life as a rich jet-setter.

Yes--10 more heads for TSCC to count as theirs!

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