A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the missionaries coming around to my new house in central Wisconsin and it made me think of something.

I never went on a mission. I bailed just before that was supposed to happen. (That is, I filed the initial paperwork but never followed up on it). But I have often heard it said (for instance this guy from Brazil posting below) that it's all about baptism numbers.

So first question: if missionaries get an inactive member to start showing up again, what kind of credit do they get?

And what happens if you stop caring about numbers (or about the mission in general)? Do they make life tougher for you? Do they just leave you alone?

Holy Cow, I'm glad I wised up before I was out in the field.

the whole reason to re-activate people is that they will have a whole circle of friends that are non members and possible converts. In the Philippines we did a LOT of re-activating.

There wasn't any recording of how many people we re-activated, at least in the PI.

I think I got 1 or 2 people to come back to church once or twice. (shudder)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/21/2010 12:27AM by bingoe4.

If you stopped caring about numbers and the mission, you would be like me, a junior companion for the whole two years. They actually did kind of leave me alone. I was in the furthest area from the mission home for six months, and had companions that didn't care either. After that I was put in an area with the same companion for three months, we both went home at the same time, we did a lot of community service and little to no proselytizing for three months. From my experience with inactive members, you don't get credit, you get a lot of gossip from members about that person.

My mission had no way of tracking re-activation numbers, either. There wasn't a whole lot of focus on re-activation where I was, except when we were instructed to clean up the ward lists to see who was moved out of the ward, etc. I guess 20% or less activation rates were just a little too low and the leadership was trying to get some inactives off their ward rosters. Proselyting was by far the most important job of a missionary where I was. Everything else was just secondary.

About missionaries who don't want to do much, my mission's policy was along the lines of what dino said. Most times they would just stick that missionary with another "troublemaker" until they went home, as long as there was no huge "sin" committed or anything like that.

We were required to teach 30 discussions a week. Not getting 30 was a sign that you were wasting time and brought greater scrutiny. Lots of times we would be out on the streets, in public plazas, or at parks forcing conversations on people the night before we had to report on our numbers.

During the first year of my mission (when we were baptizing kids left and right) it was considered a poor week if you didn't have at least one baptism. During my second year we laid off on the kids but it was still bad if you didn't get at least one baptism a month.

We kept no stats on reactivation rates or the retention of the people we baptized. That was not our purpose. When I completed my mission I was certain that no one I had baptized remained active. There were two that remained active for most of my mission but they fell away a couple of months before I left. I was heartbroken and felt like I had wasted time preaching the gospel. My best memories are about doing community service and exploring the cities I was in on preparation days. Learning Spanish and developing the abilitiy to strike up a conversation with just about anyone was also cool.

This is what the church needs to do with the missionary program. It is a massive failure and the only reason they keep it up is because it costs them almost nothing to run. It costs LDS families billions, but the LDS, Inc. doesn't give a damn about LDS families' finances, as long as the tithing keeps rolling in.

Missions should be a cross between study abroad and peace corps. It should be designed to teach young LDS about service and about the the world. They should be sent to areas to shore up the wards and branches, provide service to ward members and to their communities, and to learn the language and culture of a new country. Right now, they are deified sales people who generate more negative image for the LDS, Inc. than they do good. Their conversions are weak and shallow. Missionaries come home despondent and disillusioned. No one really benefits from this scam, least of all the missionary's family. Imagine how upset they are that they spent $12k to send their child on a mission, who comes home angry and bitter towards the church.

I didn't leave the church on my mission, but I was well on my way out. I had bad dreams about my mission until I finally quit the church. I became cynical about the organization and felt guilty that I hadn't been more useful to the world as a missionary. Knocking on doors was the biggest waste of time of my life, and I hated every minute of it.



ex missionary Wrote:
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> best memories are about doing community service
> and exploring the cities I was in on preparation
> days. Learning Spanish and developing the abilitiy
> to strike up a conversation with just about anyone
> was also cool.

I was wondering myself if it wouldn't be useful to require (like the Peace Corps) a BA or BS before going on a mission. That would mean that many missionaries would be older, but also wiser and smarter. Of course, by that age, you will also have fewer missionaries. Still, it would be worth it if it helped move the mission field away from numbers.

The other problem is that after you leave college, you probably can't afford a mission. How soon until some enterprising predator offers high interest mission loans? Or does that happen already?

If you have student loans, you can't go on a mission. There is no way to pay your student loans on a mission.

"Reactivation" has no specific definition, there's no formal "ordinance", so there's no missionary "credit" for someone coming back to church, but we did report "reactivation hours". That is, time spent on reactivation activities.

We reported a long list of figures. Hours spent, broken down into "finding, teaching, retention, reactivation, and service", to name most of them. We reported #'s of people contacted, books of Mormon given out, discussions taught, baptisms per week (almost always zero), etc.

As for getting in trouble over numbers, yes, but "trouble" only means nagging, nothing more. The explict job of a district leader, zone leader, and assistant to the president ("AP"), is to nag their missionaries about performance. The first ecclesiastical figure to a missionary is the mission president, not district & zone leaders & APs, thus, their ONLY job is to nag you about performance and some of them get zealous.

I even got nagged for too MANY service hours! They said I needed to back off and do more proselyting. We were spending a day a week at a "soup kitchen" and another day a week at a state veterans home.

This nagging is easy to brush off though, EXCEPT in your conscience if you believe "whether by my voice or the voice of my servants it is the same", which I did. So the pressure FEELS worse than it really is, because you think GOD is coming down on you and that the sins of all these people you're underserving are on you.

This was my experience too, we had to record how every waking hour was spent and the categories were, teaching discussions, placing BoMs, retention (so working with new converts), reactivation, getting referrals (usually from members, inactives and new converts) and service hours.

We were supposed to do 20 hours a week of reactivation work, maybe it was only 10 I can't remember anymore. The emphasis was definitely baptisms but retention was also a big deal. And the reactivation was seen as a way to get more baptisms because there may have been family and friends of the inactive that would want to convert.

Our Zone Leaders came down hard on my comp and me because our discussions and books placed numbers were low. Our total proselyting hours were good; we just weren't finding success.

So, instead of hitting the more affluent areas, we went to a part of town where we knew there would be lots of people at home with nothing to do. Of course, we had a bunch of discussions and placed a lot of books. It was such a facade... most of the people probably couldn't read.

So... thinking we were just getting the ZL's off of our back, we were treated with a congratulatory call from the mission office, and were the highlight companionship on the weekly mission newsletter.

Fortunately, nobody ever followed up on our week's "successes."

We were simply the success story of the week. It was all about numbers regardless of quality. I knew of quite a few companionships that did little work, and made up numbers to keep the mission office happy.

Within our numbers game, we had different categories to itemize -- proselyting was obviously the most targeted. We also had "other non-member" time, and "working with members" time. So, as long as we did the regular tracting time, we were okay with doing some of the other.

In my mission (SLC,UT) baptism of non-members was the only thing they cared about. In fact, if you spent too much time working with less actives, you were chastised and told your PRIMARY purpose as a missionary is to bring people to baptism. You reported the number of hours on teaching less actives and "service" hours but those didn't "count" for anything. In fact service was LIMITED to only 4 hours a week! The rest was to be spent proseletizing.

There were no goals to reach for reactivation efforts. The only goals set were for baptisms (and discussions). Very rarely did we spend time talking about reactivation efforts. Reactivation efforts weren't actively sought for. If you happened upon an inactive and you ended up teaching, that's fine just don't spend a lot of time doing it.

Missions outside of the corridor may have been different and I bet there's more emphasis on reactivation now that the church is bleeding members and converts rates are slipping (as well as converts not being "strong" members anyway).

My dream when I went on a mission was to do service, but I got sent on a strictly converting mission instead. I started doubting the message, especially since we were treated like vaccuum cleaner sales people. And I started wanted to do service. First, they sent the MP's daughter to be my comp for a few weeks. Then, I get yanked out of the mission field and spent a week at the mission home. My job? Help Mrs. Prez with housework. The only thing she said to me the whole week was that I needed to finish my mission, then go home, get married and have babies. Well that sh@t didn't work on me. I did my own thing, and as others have said, got demoted to jr. for the rest of the mission. They eventually sent me as far away as possible -- 19 hour train ride to get back to the mission home when I was going home. The result of their attempts to mind control me? 9 months after I got home, I got the courage to leave for good. Over 20 years later, no regrets.

I still have nightmares about being sent on a mission again.

I'm 65 and I still have occasional nightmares of being on mission again in same backward country. At least, these recurring nightmares are now just occasional.

My best month was 17 people baptized in one month (families). My area was featured in the mission newsletter as a result (a nice touch to not put our names in it, I didn't want to brag about it - it wasn't about the numbers).

I was never certain how to record the number of discussions I had. If I taught a discussion was it really one discussion or was it 20 if 20 people above the age of 8 were part of the discussion? I gave up caring and just called it one because I didn't care about numbers. It was funny when I got transferred and the new senior to take my place was saying they had 70 - 80 discussions a week.

My mission was a very unique experience - I regret going looking back... but I would also regret losing the memories.

the numbers game. We made them up and goofed of a lot.

Upon making a baptism goal that was not as high as the MP would like....

"WHERE IS THE FAITH ELDER!!!!???"

ahhh such good memories of being yelled at and being told that I didn't have enough faith, that I wasn't obedient enough, that the mission rules were COMMANDMENTS for missionaries because the MP was called of god. blaaaah

Horrible experience. I occasionally see the missionaries around town. I feel bad for them because I know how bad it sucks.

I hear you anon. I also was yelled at by the MP concerning numbers.

Five months before I was to go home, at my last Zone Conference, I had the usual interview with the MP as every missionary did. But as the usual “blame the Elder” one sided interview commenced, the MP became unusually hateful and vindictive toward me because this time he stood up from behind his desk and yelled into my face saying point blank that “I was a failure as a missionary” as he pointed out my lack of baptisms and the low number of investigator discussions indicated from the reports I would send in every week. Every Zone conference always produced a similar tirade from him but this time was the last straw for me with this GA-wannabe pin head.

Too many times did I sit through similar interviews with him and said nothing but this time I decided to fire back at him. I stood up from my chair too, leaned over his desk and yelled back into his face, using several colorful metaphors in the process, that he was a failure as a mission president for blaming me for things I had no control over and if he was incapable of offering any kind of encouragement, support, or compassion for myself or any other missionary who gave up everything to be in this armpit place, he should pack his bags, take his clueless wife with his dumb ass children, and get the hell out of our lives.

This man was not the kind of man used to being put in his place by anyone let alone a lowly elder. In all my days there, I have never seen him madder but I did not care anymore. He went beyond red faced to purple and he began to drool onto the desk. He was so angry he could not speak anymore and I had run out of colorful metaphors to continue.

As I turned to walk out the door, my last words to him were that I would never speak with him again. I walked out on him and his puddle of drool and I never did speak to him again for the remainder of my mission. I was no longer going to take anymore shit from him. After that exchange, I just sat outside the church building for the remainder of the Zone Conference and fed squirrels from a jar of Planters Peanuts.

That day, any belief in any divinity of the Mormon Church and any spark or ember of faith in God or any belief that God cared about me became extinguished. I knew now that the whole Mormon Church was a bowl of excrement. I had been swindled out of two years of my life by being tricked into laying onto the “Fools Alter of Forfeit” my girl, my education, my car, and my freedom.

For the whole mission I was used, abused, stepped on, lied to, humiliated, and condemned constantly by the leaders for any imperfections I had no matter how trivial. I was worn out and fed up with the Mormon Church. The whole missionary experience left me extremely bitter and I became convinced that the Mormon Church is the only church that persecutes its own missionaries.

I came to see that the Mormon Church had a love/hate relationship with its missionaries. They loved them when they accepted the call but beat the crap out of them mentally & emotionally for the 2 years they served.

I never could understand why the Mormon Church would treat its missionaries with such contempt. What are they afraid of? If it were any other church, they would have fallen down at your feet for being so generous with your time and money and efforts.