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The Latest Anti-Mormon Deception: "Futuremissionary.Com"


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You know, dropping these quotes and then acting like you are blissfully unaware that anyone would have a problem with them is beyond naive, which is why I believe that you know exactly what you are doing. Your site is full of controversial "sound bites" that lack context.

WW

And apparently has been for quite sometime as you presented some pretty good analysis last time this site came up on the board in February.

I just don't follow how someone could find some of these obscure claims through research and yet miss out of other more positive facts (such as JS having a free the slave platform). At the very least that demonstrates what type of site he favours for his research and an inclination not to check on sources with other sites such as FAIR which he could easily use to inform his own writings even if we are 'too wordy' to send teens too (and considering how we have had teens working with FAIR in the past, I think assuming that all teens wants 'easy' is very unfortunately, I love that FAIR tries to offer both the simplified version and then the more detailed in support of its claims...reorganizing to place the summary first, rather than last meets the needs of both type of individuals, the ones that wants soundbites and the one that wants details...and hopefully those in between).

Edited by calmoriah
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In my mission, dinner appointments were discouraged (dinner takes a long time in Italy)

Cooking our own food was the norm. One of my favorite ways of meeting people was to ask for recipes in the market.

I was able to practice the recipes in the apartment and by the time I was done with my mission, I was a pretty good Italian cook.

That sounds like fun. My brother served in Italy, too ... (As a missionary, it isn't a country for the faint-of-heart! ;))

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You ate food? I thought we were supposed to live off the dew of the universe when we didn't have investigators.

We had Manna from Heaven in my mission, so ... neener-neener! :P;):D:rofl:

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I served in Brazil. I never ate dinner. It wasn't because of any "No investigators, No Dinner", it was because dinner didn't exist (at least in my area of Brazil). You ate a quick breakfast, a massive lunch, tried to stay awake with a full stomach and a hot day, and then went home, had a small drink/meal (I guess you could call that dinner) and went to sleep. The idea of having an hour or two set aside for dinner is foreign to me.

How widespread is that in Brazil?

It is very widespread in Brazil and not just among missionaries. Brazilians tend to eat a very small breakfast (coffee, bread, cheese), an enormous lunch (heaping plates of rice and beans), and a very small dinner (coffee, bread, cheese, leftover rice and beans).

Futuremissionary if you read this post I think you need to give a little more context about your statement that you are not allowed to eat dinner unless you have an investigator present.

For those who would like a little more context here it is:

In Brazil in all of the wards that I am aware of the missionaries eat lunch everyday with a member of the ward in which they are serving. This would be the equivalent of the dinner appointments with the members that are very common in the US. Some missionaries also began scheduling regular dinner appointments with the members in addition to their daily lunch appointments. Once again for comparison this would be the equivalent of missionaries in the US scheduling lunch and dinner appointments each day with the members. This was discouraged for a number of reasons, but the dinner appointments with the members could continue if an investigator was present. There was and is no rule in any mission in Brazil that prohibited missionaries from eating dinner on their own.

There are however cultural reasons why dinner is not regularly eaten as mentioned above. This culture naturally affects the habits of the missionaries and I do not doubt that there was and is a tradition of not eating a formal dinner amongst the missionaries, but I flat out deny that there was ever a rule that prohibited them from eating on their own.

Futuremissionary I believe you may have mistaken a cultural habit in your mission for a hard and fast rule, that in fact never existed.

-guerreiro9

Edited by guerreiro9
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I just don't follow how someone could find some of these obscure claims through research and yet miss out of other more positive facts (such as JS having a free the slave platform). At the very least that demonstrates what type of site he favours for his research and an inclination not to check on sources with other sites such as FAIR

I have a strange feeling that futuremissionary knows exactly what he is doing with his site. I think that he may be just a little bothered with the church and he has become influenced by MT and other such sights. So, he wishes to set the record straight with future missionaries. However, he may be just naive and actually believes that he is helping future missionaries to become better missionaries.

Edited by why me
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FM,

It's good to have direct contact with you.

I never said you wouldn't do what you can to not be seen as anti. I just said that you were anti, and trying not to seem it. See the difference? ;-)

The site seems to try to add just a little bit of LDS-like content, to make the Trojan horse strategy complete. But I'm sorry, it isn't unclear to me what you're up to.

Rather than defend what you're doing, why don't you change it? Create an honestly, forthrightly critical site designed to give "the other side."

Deception is still deception, even if you see it being for a good cause.

If LDS kids want to seek out the data that anti-Mormons want to give them, that should be up to them. The decision shouldn't be made for them, through trickery, by you.

That's all I'm saying.

Don

Opening a copy of Bartlett's, we find that John Wycliffe is supposed to have said to the Duke of Lancaster. "I believe that in the end the truth will conquer."

I join you in calling for futuremissionary.com to come out in the open with its criticisms.

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Judasfreakingpriest Pa Pa, are you awake when you write?...

You know, I edited copy for about four years in high school and college. Would you like me to critique all of your posts for grammar, punctuation, style, spelling, and so on? In doing so, would you like me to extend to you as much charity as you've extended to Pa Pa? (I doubt you'd enjoy the experience.) I'm not sure about the "Questing" part, but you're right: "Beast" is right on the money ...

QB has been removed from the thread. Everybody get back on topic.

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In Brazil in all of the wards that I am aware of the missionaries eat lunch everyday with a member of the ward in which they are serving. This would be the equivalent of the dinner appointments with the members that are very common in the US. Some missionaries also began scheduling regular dinner appointments with the members in addition to their daily lunch appointments. Once again for comparison this would be the equivalent of missionaries in the US scheduling lunch and dinner appointments each day with the members. This was discouraged for a number of reasons, but the dinner appointments with the members could continue if an investigator was present. There was and is no rule in any mission in Brazil that prohibited missionaries from eating dinner on their own.

There are however cultural reasons why dinner is not regularly eaten as mentioned above. This culture naturally affects the habits of the missionaries and I do not doubt that there was and is a tradition of not eating a formal dinner amongst the missionaries, but I flat out deny that there was ever a rule that prohibited them from eating on their own.

Futuremissionary I believe you may have mistaken a cultural habit in your mission for a hard and fast rule, that in fact never existed.

There could be a hard and fast rule about no dinner at a member's house without an investigator. And it is possible that the rule could also include the fact that if you don't have an investigator, that you just work through the dinner hour and wait till you get home before eating (or missionaries might just assume that). But knowing that he only has heard of this "rule" from other missionaries who served in Brazil or other latin countries (that also have large lunches), it makes a lot of sense and it is completely acceptable to me. As you said, guerreiro9, it would be analogous to US missionaries scheduling large lunches with members in addition to their scheduled dinners and I would expect a Mission President to crack down on that behaviour.

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As I'm sure most of you know, showing up in the mission field is quite a shocker.

Nothing shocked me about arriving in the Mission Home in Salt Lake, the Language Training Mission in Provo, or Germany. ... I don't think I had any companions who where shocked when they arrived in the field.

I have to confess that I was one of those who was shocked, and quite terribly so. I was completely unprepared for some of the things to which I was exposed as a missionary. For example, the handful of other missionaries I met who seemed turned off by the whole experience because it actually involved work and sacrifice instead of endless member-supplied meals and fawning accolades. And then there were the ones who, utterly unfamiliar on a personal level with the process of conversion, had no idea how to help others experience the transforming power of the Saviour and so instead translated the mission opportunity into some kind of numbers game.

Of course, maybe I'm just easily shocked. For example, it's a shocker to me that the author of the website under discussion could use the word 'objective' with a straight face ... and seem to think that people are going to fall for the whole 'no spin' angle, too.

Anything I can do to not be seen as 'anti', I will (emphasis added).

This at least is an honest statement.

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There could be a hard and fast rule about no dinner at a member's house without an investigator. And it is possible that the rule could also include the fact that if you don't have an investigator, that you just work through the dinner hour and wait till you get home before eating (or missionaries might just assume that). But knowing that he only has heard of this "rule" from other missionaries who served in Brazil or other latin countries (that also have large lunches), it makes a lot of sense and it is completely acceptable to me. As you said, guerreiro9, it would be analogous to US missionaries scheduling large lunches with members in addition to their scheduled dinners and I would expect a Mission President to crack down on that behaviour.

At the very least, futuremissionary needs to rewrite his text about the subject. One could say for example, that on the mission field, the mission president can set rules that may seem crazy or arbitrary. And then give an example. And then, write that one is not alone in living the rules since there will be many missionaries who will need to follow them too. All for one and one for all.

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1965....is there any evidence this goes on nowadays?

None that I know of and that's why I was specific. The MP was manipulative in his rules and control. He had district and zone leaders spy on missionaries, along with policies that encouraged dishonesty. When he was replaced by a kinder, more understanding MP, there followed a period of chaos, not unlike the ensuing chaos after the fall of the USSR. The new MP was not lenient, it was just that some missionaries did not know how to respond once the restrictive rules were lifted.

Edited by bcuzbcuz
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For a balanced but realistic perspective on serving a mission, this article is worth reading:

http://www.realclear...th_busting.html

You're absolutely right. That is worth reading ... very much. Although I can never think of the film God's Army without lamenting its creator's exit from the faith, reading that article called to mind the feeling I had when I first saw that movie: Finally! Here's somebody who 'gets it'!" If missions aren't all "sweetness-and-light," neither are they all "dullness-and-drudgery": they're some mixture of the two (and various points in between), so that the things on the undesirable end of the spectrum make missionaries appreciate, all the more, the things on the highly-desirable end of the spectrum. Thanks for passing that along. :)

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Not that we need any more evidence of this guy's dishonesty, but until I called him out on it he was presenting a Joseph Fielding Smith anti-evolution quote as an excerpt from a First Presidency statement. Even if the quote in question hadn't contained the phrase "I say most emphatically", which would be ridiculous in a statement coming from three people, there's no way that kind of thing was an honest mistake. He also said that Bruce R. McConkie's "Mormon Doctrine" is an official church publication because David O. McKay authorized its reprinting. (Never mind that it isn't even published anymore.) Of course when I messaged him and pointed out his deceit and hypocrisy, he had the audacity to keep defending himself and playing "Mr. Innocent". Don Bradley's use of the term "anti-Mormon" (which I try to avoid as well) is more than appropriate in this instance.

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Not that we need any more evidence of this guy's dishonesty, but until I called him out on it he was presenting a Joseph Fielding Smith anti-evolution quote as an excerpt from a First Presidency statement. Even if the quote in question hadn't contained the phrase "I say most emphatically", which would be ridiculous in a statement coming from three people, there's no way that kind of thing was an honest mistake. He also said that Bruce R. McConkie's "Mormon Doctrine" is an official church publication because David O. McKay authorized its reprinting. (Never mind that it isn't even published anymore.) Of course when I messaged him and pointed out his deceit and hypocrisy, he had the audacity to keep defending himself and playing "Mr. Innocent". Don Bradley's use of the term "anti-Mormon" (which I try to avoid as well) is more than appropriate in this instance.

Yes, back when the site was still in beta I had some mistakes in there. Thanks again for pointing that one out. I removed it long before we went out of beta.

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