Mormon missionaries at it again!

[Holly3278]

This just shows they aren’t the ripest fruit on the tree.

After everything with the shrine in Colorado, they have the nerve to do something like this?

I can’t wait to see what the LDS leadership has to say about this.

To call Mormons fruit is to insult all true Christian religion.

This “incident” is just absolutely horrifying. I can’t believe those missionaries were actually allowed to do this! If I had been in that congregation, I would have immediately called the police.

 

[twopekinguys]

To call Mormons fruit is to insult all true Christian religion.

This “incident” is just absolutely horrifying. I can’t believe those missionaries were actually allowed to do this! If I had been in that congregation, I would have immediately called the police.

I think you may be over reacting just a tad.

That phrase could be replaced with…This shows they aren’t the sharpest tool in the shed, or even the brightest crayon in the box, A few bricks shy of a load, etc. etc.

It is simply referring to them not using the best judgement in a given situation.

 

[Paul_G]

I don’t think people care enough about this “event” to get more information. At any rate, the story in the SL Trib says the Catholic community wanted nothing to be done to the missionaries or the LDS church.

The Priest may not have had an appropriate response, but it is understandable considering the overt and aggressive rrecruiting of Mormons, and our view that they are leading people into a man-made startup religion that has no basis in any truth.

As for how missionaries act, some Mormons treat other Mormons much differently than they do non-Mormons. And, there is that pecking order. A Mormon missionary absolutely is taught and believes that they are above the people they are teaching. Especially when talking to a woman. When I talk to Mormon missionaries, this is very palpable. And growing up Mormon, this was the social norm. When Mormon men talk to other Mormon men, it is different. They talk as equals, or differ to one another based on their calling.

This is what I see in some of the Mormon men, here, as well.

Sorry, your comments appear to be filled with personal bias resulting in rhetoric and polemic, which you are certainly entitled express. As a result, for me at least, I find it difficult to have a useful exchange of ideas.

Paul

 

[Paul_G]

To call Mormons fruit is to insult all true Christian religion.

This “incident” is just absolutely horrifying. I can’t believe those missionaries were actually allowed to do this! If I had been in that congregation, I would have immediately called the police.

There appears to be a disconnect between your first and second statement as relating to “true Christian religion” don’t you think.

Paul

 

[zaffiroborant]

More missionary shenanigans here:

elderwithers.net/2008/11/da-de-los-muertos.html

Saturday was Dìa de los Muertos, Todos los Santos, or whatever you’d like to call it. President Mora urged us to go to the cemetaries and “lift up our voices” to the people visiting their relatives’ gravesites. Our idea was to stand outside the entrance and sing hymns about the plan of salvation, having a missionary stand up between each one, announcing a certain part of the plan. We started that out, but our singing wasn’t very loud, and everyone was pretty much inside already. We decided that it would be better to go in and talk to each group of people. Unfortunately, we were denied entrance by the cemetary personnel. They decided that they didn’t want us “changing anybody’s religion.” There was a mass going on inside the cemetary at a little group of benches they had spread out. I would have liked to listen. I’ve never been to a Dìa de los Muertos activity like that. Nevertheless, we decided to take control of the situation. Across the dirt road from the cemetary, there was a perfect pile of sand and rocks. Conveniently, the wind was coming from my back and blowing toward the entrance of the cemetary. I invited three other enthusiastic elders up to the top of our little mountain, and we proceeded sing with all the diaphragm we could muster. We chose hymns that spoke of resurrection, restoration, hope, and light. After each one, we took turns shouting to the multitudes.

 

[nebula]

I try to take it easy on the missionaries. These are young fellows under extraordinary pressure to do miracles for the LDS church. I’ve had them be rude to me even as I was starting to leave the church (very, very pushy) but I keep in mind that they are 19 yr old young guys who get weekly calls wanting to know how many people they are planning on baptizing.

If anything should be the focus of the criticism, it should be the LDS missionary program which is deeply flawed in many critical ways. Missionaries are very ill eqiuped in understanding their own religion, let alone the religions of others. They are taught to be salesmen selling a basic script using pressure tactics (the commitment pattern). That’s it. They’re subsequently cut off from speaking to their family except through letters and 2 days of hte year, not to mention friends… and God forbid they crack under pressure and come back with dishonor.

I will argue tooth and nail that ordinary Mormons are NOT brainwashed fools, but if anything comes close to crossing the brainwashing threshold, the missionary program does.

 

[ChristianKnight]

Eh, I guess some people decide to get their message out in other ways…

I do not think you should be allowed to do that, and get away with it, thats not right, isn’t their a law against that or something?

 

[Teancum]

I have a lot to say about this topic so I’ll start off with a few thoughts about anti-LDS junk in general and the title of this thread in specific.

I personally find the title of this thread offensive because I was what they call a “Mormon missionary” (although I do not think of myself as “Mormon” since Mormon was what you might call an ancient historian who compiled the books that make up the book that bears his name merely because it was he who compiled them. I am not that man and he is not my religious leader, nor is he the founder of my religion. It would be like calling you “Jerome” or “King James” instead of Catholic or Christian. Maybe not the best analogy, but you get it. I believe in and try to follow the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. To say I am a “Mormon” is to use a term that was invented to create a caricature of the LDS faithful and portray us as bizarre people with strange beliefs. Since those who use that term generally don’t know who Mormon was and haven’t read the book he compiled, those who use call us “Mormons” automatically tell us, the members of the LDS Church, that they are ignorant of who we are and what we believe, generally don’t want to take the time to know who we are and what we believe, and will work to spread false rumors and gossip concerning our practices, traditions, beliefs, and customs. If you want to appear intelligent in a conversation on LDS doctrine, events, and general matters, don’t use the term “Mormon” to refer to us or start a sensationalist topic thread title like, “Mormon missionaries at it again!” The idiocy of the thread title alone makes me want to throw up.

For those who really want to know the truth there’s a lot of places I’ve seen that start a thread with something like, “The truth about Mormonism” (which is a laughable combination of words, since they do not understand enough of the LDS Church to say its name right when they want to try to “expose” the practices of our church…and believe me, we are much more dull than most churches I’ve seen in terms of our practices). Instead, I suggest you go to mormon.org (created for the multitudes who only know us only as “Mormons”…if we had just lds.org no one outside the church would come), call up your local missionaries or talk to a bishop of our church to find out about us. Here, as a former missionary I will seek to “expose” the truth as I see it concerning this specific story. Again, I see a lot of “former missionaries” seeking to “expose the truth” when they really became discontented because they didn’t like all those rules, broke them, and obviously broke the first rule of missionary work from the get-go: know what you are talking about. I think this audience will be very enlightened and educated by the time they are done reading my post based on the mindless comments I have seen posted so far. I mean no diss against the people who posted them since they don’t have the proper knowledge to make a judgment, except insofar as they spoke as if they knew the truth without actually knowing the truth, basically breaking the commandment to not bear false witness against your neighbor. This I would enthusiastically condemn in a royal diss.

 

[Teancum]

I hope my sensationalist title drew you in to read this piece. It will be very enlightening to you and will have nothing to do with the title of my post at all. I was a LDS missionary and I always won scripture contests with the pastors and priests who wanted to argue scripture with me so I wouldn’t know how to beat a “Mormon” if I wanted to!

The LDS Church specifically instructs its missionaries to avoid screaming matches, Bible bashes, or whatever you want to call them, with other churches. In nearly every case of Bible bashing it is the local pastor or preacher who initiates the fight by defaming Joseph Smith or saying something nasty about the missionary’s beliefs. They then draw them in with a question like, “Romans 3:23 says what you teach is a lie because you are a sinner and so you’re a liar and so what you just said is a lie!" How would it make you feel if someone said something nasty about your church or about you personally? What if I was writing about some particular aspect of your church I did not like and wrote something so absurd and outrageous it even made your cat cringe! You certainly would want to “stand for the truth,” right? In a sense, that is why I am posting this right now and that’s why I do it knowing someone will inevitably reply to this post with some nasty, incoherent, and uneducated comment. That’s okay. It’s the price I pay for getting the truth out there. Anyway, back to my thought–the missionary is instructed to just walk away when it comes to Bible bashing (which is hard to do because it is so easy to put a pastor in his place since he generally doesn’t know what he is talking about when he says those nasty things about our faith). In the mission I served, we were also asked to not visit other churches unless a member of that church specifically invited us to do so. Rule or no rule, we are so busy with our own work visiting those within our responsibility we do not have time to visit every church service in town even if we wanted to. You wouldn’t want the local bishop telling your Mission President you missed blessing the sacrament in Sacrament Meeting to go to some Christian Reformed Church where a christian rock band is playing, would you? Missionaries are the busiest of people. If you’ve seen a missionary, they were probably talking with someone or walking somewhere to talk with someone. Even when they are sitting on a park bench, it is just to wait for an investigator to meet them there or talk with passers-by. I’m sure you’ve seen us out and about.

There have been very few cases over the history of the LDS missionary efforts when some young men act very intolerantly and uncivilly towards the religious faith of some others. Those young men are disciplined harshly and are removed from the mission (sent home) and receive further church disciplinary action and shame from the LDS community. The LDS Church apologizes in these instances (and they have before) and usually closes that area to missionary work for many years and may even close the mission down entirely. Again, these cases are very few (otherwise your local missionaries would be in college at BYU instead of knocking on your door). However, in my own experience it is the LDS missionaries that are instead very commonly the object of ridicule, scorn, mockery, vile hatred, cussing, lies, violence, and bigotry. One kid in my neighborhood was murdered in cold blood by someone who didn’t like the missionaries in town where he was serving a mission. Shot like an animal while he was walking down a sidewalk, on the way to an appointment. The bigot was recently convicted and sentenced to life in the US prison system.

The greatest persecutors of the LDS Church are those who are false teachers (meaning here that they aren’t teaching their own faith as they believe it to be but are really just tearing down the faiths of others) and those who follow false teachers. Now, don’t get angry. Just because I say a man can be a false teacher (and a false witness) doesn’t mean I think that that man represents any larger community of believers, but his actions are merely a reflection of the imperfect man in question. And in this case I think it was a case of simple human frailties that created this misunderstanding. We can be fairly certain the priest believed he saw what he reported, since he would not risk being exposed as a liar to his congregation. However, that does not mean the missionaries’ perspective of the incident was the same. I believe an outside, third-person perspective would reveal a much different story than the priest declared happened that day.

 

[Teancum]

So finally I’d like to give you my thoughts on what happened from the perspective of a missionary that’s seen similar things like this happen in my own life before.

We can be reasonably certain the missionaries did not barge in the church in a frenzied attempt to convert the whole congregation. What, do you think we are stupid? You can call us many things, but most missionaries are very good at what they do. I don’t know of any missionary so stupid they would think to go into a church whose members slam their doors, cuss them out, spit on them, mock them, and say they are destined to burn in a fiery pit for all eternity. It just doesn’t jive with the whole reason they are on their missions. It would be like Moses going back to the Egyptians after he’d done so much to get away from those guys instead of focusing on the people he really can help (don’t be offended; if you are offended you know you’re conscience is telling you that you are numbered with the Egyptians so get over it). It’s better to be a wandering Jew than a drowned Egyptian.

First, you could look at the typical missionary. The typical missionary is a decent, good, hard-working young man that is trying to do the right thing and teaches others all the time that doing the things the Jesus Christ would want us to do brings the greatest happiness to them. Talk to the next missionary you see for one minute and you’ll see that. Not only is their entire purpose to invite others to come unto Christ, they are closely supervised and mentored to become the kind of person they are teaching others to be. The typical missionary is supervised by three more senior missionaries (a district leader, one or two zone leaders, and two assistants to the mission president) and gives a daily accounting to his leaders concerning his activities and whether he followed the strict guidelines for missionary service as outlined in the Missionary Handbook. These guidelines include everything from proper dress and attire to the daily schedule to how to administer priesthood ordinances (like giving a blessing for those who are sick). On top of it all, every missionary is supervised and instructed by a mission president, who is an upstanding member of the LDS community (very often chosen are successful business leaders, civic leaders, doctors, etc). The typical missionary meets with his mission president in counsel to report on his missionary efforts (and more stressed in this interview is an evaluation of his spiritual, physical, mental, and overall health and well-being). Given so many guidelines and methods of accountability, as well as the high standards LDS missionaries live by (a missionary should not watch television, listen to the radio, read a novel, or hang out with friends or even find a girlfriend in the mission) it is highly improbable that two missionaries would go bad at the same time, manage to escape notice from their mission leaders and the other missionaries in the mission as well as the membership (who are in contact with the Mission President), and out of the blue barge into random churches and say they were going to proselyte whether the priest liked it or not while the priest is piously and patiently pleading for the peace of the chapel while the evil missionaries go on in a mindless robotic rant chanting, “No, we will proselyte. We must proselyte here. We must proselyte!”

Here’s a scenario that looks much closer to a rational view of reality, as I see it, having been a regular missionary, a district leader, a zone leader, and an assistant to the mission president for two years from 2006 to 2008: The missionaries were teaching a member of the congregation. The missionaries invited the member to visit the LDS services and the member invited the missionaries to their special service in return, or some deal was made that the missionaries would go to their church if they would go to the LDS church. This kind of deal is not uncommon. The missionaries call their district leader the night before and tell the district leader they have made this deal and will be at the Orthodox Church service the following day. The district leader may approve the event but will also have to report it to the zone leader, who is a much more senior missionary. If there is any problem, they might consult with the missionaries in question and talk with the assistants to the president who could independently decide the matter or approve a call to the President of the Mission. The President would then either approve or not approve the event. Clearly, in this case the missionaries had planned nothing out of the ordinary, since a deal like this is not uncommon, so it was probably only reported to the district leaders, who told the zone leaders (who were okay with it) and it stopped there.

 

[Teancum]

…continued from last post (this is it!)

Everything in order, name tags on and Missionary Handbook in pocket, perhaps even bringing their own set of scriptures with them in a leather case, the missionaries travel to services at the local Orthodox Church. They enter the building. The priest sees these two young men walk in all dressed up like they always are (and he’s probably seen them out talking with people looking just as they are now) and wrongly thinks they are there to steal his show and preach to his people. They are dressed to preach, aren’t they? The man doesn’t wait to consider whether his train of thought might be wrong and whether they could be here for a very innocent reason. Instead, he gets angry and starts talking to the young ministers as if they were the devil’s children sent from Hell to cause a stir. He doesn’t see that it is he who is causing the stir and gets even more angry when one of the missionaries (the more senior one, since the younger one is too scared to speak at this point) tries to explain that they were invited. “Surely,” he thinks, “I did not invite them here!” The member in question is now too frightened to be seen as the one who invited the nice young men to church with him or her so the member doesn’t speak up.

After trying to clear things up and failing to do so (since the old priest is too caught up in anger to listen and continues to create the horrible scenario he would later tell the media), the missionaries decide it’s impossible to deal rationally with the old priest and leave without further comment, just as they were taught to do. This further enrages the old priest and he does everything he can to obliterate the missionaries’ presence in his neighborhood and further seeks to harm the church they represent, effectively calling on the government to silence the church and its members’ practices.

I am convinced this was the case here because of the stance the priest took following the incident. An innocent man would not seek to obliterate a fellow church. No, a man who is not patient nor meek and who cannot control his rage is the kind of man that would call for the end of the LDS Church in that entire country based on anything two missionaries did, no matter what they did. The priest’s own actions reveal the true incident because he is shown to be the very kind of man that would not listen when two young missionaries from a “rival” church walk in all dressed up in what looks like proselytizing gear. The priest in question did not call for a meeting with the Mission President to discuss the matter; instead, he placed full blame on the entire Church structure in the country and called for its extermination. To any reasonable person that cries of a man who does not care to either listen to or engage in any kind of civil dialogue with those outside his chosen group.

And if this man is so close-minded to finding truth and is so consumed with his own sense of supremacy and infallibility, then who is to criticize the member of his congregation for inviting a few humble young men into their home?

 

[amontoya]

…I am convinced this was the case here because of the stance the priest took following the incident.

Well, it seems like you’ve got it all wrapped up in a neat little package, except for the fact that you weren’t there and don’t actually know what happened. But, you sure can tell a great story.

I can understand being upset by people saying mormon when you think they should say LDS, but it is a little ridiculous to completely dismiss an account of missionaries doing what they shouldn’t and make up your own version of what “really happened.” LDS missionaries may be monitored as closely as you say, but that hasn’t prevented some of them from behaving badly in the past.

There’s no reason to assume this priest is lying just because he wants to push the LDS out of his community. If you’re wrong, and everything happened just as the article says, then it is logical that he wants to remove the LDS influence from his parishioners, and from his church. It may not be the best response, but it certainly make sense.

 

[mystified]

Teancum:
I’ll preface this by saying that I’ve met and worked with some fine members of your church. Most were polite, hard-working and had a benevolent sense of humor. I have never met any LDS person who was upset by being referred to as a Mormon.
About the term “Mormon”. For several years, there was a series of commercials and other material on television (I don’t have a TV anymore, so don’t know about now) that read and had a voice-over that said, “brought to you by the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints–The Mormons.”
I did notice, at the SLC visitor center, that the docent used the term “Saint” rather than LDS or Mormon.

 

[Teancum]

Well, it seems like you’ve got it all wrapped up in a neat little package, except for the fact that you weren’t there and don’t actually know what happened. But, you sure can tell a great story.

I can understand being upset by people saying mormon when you think they should say LDS, but it is a little ridiculous to completely dismiss an account of missionaries doing what they shouldn’t and make up your own version of what “really happened.” LDS missionaries may be monitored as closely as you say, but that hasn’t prevented some of them from behaving badly in the past.

There’s no reason to assume this priest is lying just because he wants to push the LDS out of his community. If you’re wrong, and everything happened just as the article says, then it is logical that he wants to remove the LDS influence from his parishioners, and from his church. It may not be the best response, but it certainly make sense.

I’m not saying he’s lying. I’m saying he doesn’t know he’s not telling the truth. I’m saying he got all worked up and didn’t size up the situation well. Who knows what really happened?! I certainly do not claim to know. I presented it as a realistic view of what I think probably happened, given what I know of how people react to missionaries and put up a wall of defense when they feel their religion is questioned. It would be logical in his mind to want to get those missionaries out of his city but to shut down the church in the whole country? That’s just plain overboard.

 

[Teancum]

Teancum:
I’ll preface this by saying that I’ve met and worked with some fine members of your church. Most were polite, hard-working and had a benevolent sense of humor. I have never met any LDS person who was upset by being referred to as a Mormon.
About the term “Mormon”. For several years, there was a series of commercials and other material on television (I don’t have a TV anymore, so don’t know about now) that read and had a voice-over that said, “brought to you by the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints–The Mormons.”
I did notice, at the SLC visitor center, that the docent used the term “Saint” rather than LDS or Mormon.

Yes, true. The old commercials (and the new mormon.org website) are directed towards those who don’t know the stigma surrounding the term Mormonism. Most Latter-day Saints choose to let it slide because it’s so common. Recently the Church has tried to fix the problem because the title is not an accurate description of the people. We aren’t Mormons, but followers of Christ. I would also kind of draw back if I talk to someone who thinks they are a saint and calls themselves “Saints” because we all know we are far from saintly most of the time! We try to do the right thing, though. So it’s a very sticky and shifting issue regarding what it will settle on once the term Mormonism is wiped out of people’s vocabulary. However, knowing what I know about the word I laugh when someone writes something like, “Mormonism Exposed!” or “The Truth about Mormonism!” It should be written, “The Truth about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints”…but don’t tell them that or we we’ll have to read more articles because we won’t know who’s an ignorant commentator from the title and who isn’t!

Saying “a member of the Church of Jesus Christ” might be a mouthful to some. To them I would say try to be one for a day and see which is easier!

 

[Brigadoon]

Well I was raised Mormon and everybody called themselves Mormon and no one thought 2 whits about it. And I was in the deep south bible belt area.

 

[RebeccaJ]

If you want to appear intelligent in a conversation on LDS doctrine, events, and general matters, don’t use the term “Mormon” to refer to us or start a sensationalist topic thread title like, “Mormon missionaries at it again!” The idiocy of the thread title alone makes me want to throw up.

You include, below, a link to mormon.org. Which, contradicts your entire rant.

Mormon Tabernacle Choir

And all those ads for years, brought to you by, “the Mormons”.

You are really worked up.

For those who really want to know the truth there’s a lot of places I’ve seen that start a thread with something like, “The truth about Mormonism” (which is a laughable combination of words, since they do not understand enough of the LDS Church to say its name right when they want to try to “expose” the practices of our church…and believe me, we are much more dull than most churches I’ve seen in terms of our practices). Instead, I suggest you go to mormon.org (created for the multitudes who only know us only as “Mormons”…if we had just lds.org no one outside the church would come), call up your local missionaries or talk to a bishop of our church to find out about us. Here, as a former missionary I will seek to “expose” the truth as I see it concerning this specific story. Again, I see a lot of “former missionaries” seeking to “expose the truth” when they really became discontented because they didn’t like all those rules, broke them, and obviously broke the first rule of missionary work from the get-go: know what you are talking about. I think this audience will be very enlightened and educated by the time they are done reading my post based on the mindless comments I have seen posted so far. I mean no diss against the people who posted them since they don’t have the proper knowledge to make a judgment, except insofar as they spoke as if they knew the truth without actually knowing the truth, basically breaking the commandment to not bear false witness against your neighbor. This I would enthusiastically condemn in a royal diss.

Enlightened…those who leave Mormonism are breaking the rules.

 

[RebeccaJ]

I’m not saying he’s lying. I’m saying he doesn’t know he’s not telling the truth. I’m saying he got all worked up and didn’t size up the situation well. Who knows what really happened?! I certainly do not claim to know. I presented it as a realistic view of what I think probably happened, given what I know of how people react to missionaries and put up a wall of defense when they feel their religion is questioned. It would be logical in his mind to want to get those missionaries out of his city but to shut down the church in the whole country? That’s just plain overboard.

While we’re sharing POV. Perhaps you should understand that the Orthodox Church under the former Soviet Union was persecuted to near extinction. Clergy killed and sent to gulags. Church property seized by the state.

After the fall the the USSR, the Orthodox church began the task of rebuilding. Not churches, but communities of believers.

They view all other churches, including the Roman Catholic Church, as pariahs, taking advantage of a bad situation, in order to assert an outsider faith. They barely tolerate the RCC. Other, non-Christian churches, such as LDS and JW, they have no tolerance for. Whatsoever.

This is to us, in the west, a foreign idea. Freedom of religion is paramount, and for the LDS, is wound up in your religious beliefs.

So, the Mormon missionaries, showing up in an Orthodox Church in a former USSR country? It is nearly as offensive to the Orthodox as a murderer of JS showing up in one of your temples.

Right or wrong, from your POV, that is the view from the other side.

 

[twopekinguys]

I’m not saying he’s lying. I’m saying he doesn’t know he’s not telling the truth. I’m saying he got all worked up and didn’t size up the situation well. Who knows what really happened?! .

Now there is an odd statement. He was there, and he doesn’t know he’s not telling the truth?

Since you apparently don’t believe this incident really happened as it was reported, how about one that happened closer to home?

Like the missionaries that vandalized a Catholic Shrine, and took pictures of it and posted them on the internet to boot.

deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,695260569,00.html

By the way, there was an extremely long thread on this incident right here at CAF.

Now, with the LDS leadership apologizing for it, and it being in the Deseret News, does that give it just a little bit more validity for you?

mormon missionaries are no different than any other churches missionaries. Some do stupid things, and make the others look bad.

I think you would come off alot better admitting that some missionaries make stupid choices than to try and say that someone who was there and witnessed the event didn’t size up the situation well.

Something to keep in mind is, the USA enjoys a religous freedom guaranteed by the constitution. This guarantee does not apply to the vast majority of the rest of the world.

When a missionary is in another country, they should be extremely mindful of the laws, regulations and customs of the host country ,and to go above and beyond to avoid **any **type of indiscretion