Missionaries detained by police

[Doctor Steuss]

16 hours ago, jkwilliams said:

I lied in every letter I ever wrote home because I didn't want them to know how sick I was and how bad the living conditions were. I was relentlessly positive. 

My oldest brother served the same mission as you (about a decade later).  I think it was on his third major hospitalization that my mom found out that he had been sick at all (the first two were from typhoid, the third was from malaria) -- he went to the hospital several other times on top of that.  The only reason she found out was because she contacted the mission home when she hadn't received a letter for a while. 

The first letter she received while he was still in the hospital with malaria, he tried to make light of it, joking about how when he had visited doctors in a few areas because of severe stomach problems, they would prescribe two-liters of Coke, and send him on his way.

 

[jkwilliams]

1 minute ago, Doctor Steuss said:

My oldest brother served the same mission as you (about a decade later).  I think it was on his third major hospitalization that my mom found out that he had been sick at all (the first two were from typhoid, the third was from malaria) -- he went to the hospital several other times on top of that.  The only reason she found out was because she contacted the mission home when she hadn't received a letter for a while. 

The first letter she received while he was still in the hospital with malaria, he tried to make light of it, joking about how when he had visited doctors in a few areas because of severe stomach problems, they would prescribe two-liters of Coke, and send him on his way.

I understand. I feel bad about it, but I didn't want to worry my family. I know a lot of people who did the same thing. I injured my knee in Cochabamba, and I didn't tell my parents. A couple of weeks or so later, we were told we could extend our missions to 2 years if we desired and had parental permission, so I called home. The first thing my dad said was, "Were you planning on telling us about your knee?" Apparently, the missionary department had informed them I was injured and might have to be transferred. He wasn't very happy with me. 

[Doctor Steuss]

19 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

I understand. I feel bad about it, but I didn't want to worry my family. I know a lot of people who did the same thing. I injured my knee in Cochabamba, and I didn't tell my parents. A couple of weeks or so later, we were told we could extend our missions to 2 years if we desired and had parental permission, so I called home. The first thing my dad said was, "Were you planning on telling us about your knee?" Apparently, the missionary department had informed them I was injured and might have to be transferred. He wasn't very happy with me. 

I think it's something that's innate in some of us.  I still regularly sugarcoat stuff when my parents ask.

[jkwilliams]

Just now, Doctor Steuss said:

I think it's something that's innate in some of us.  I still regularly sugarcoat stuff when my parents ask.

Come to think of it, I do too. When the depression was bad, I never told them how bad it was. Now things are going really well, so I don't have to lie.  

I hope all is well with you Steuss. 

[Scott Lloyd]

8 hours ago, jkwilliams said:

No one shouted anyone down. Smac97 said what was described was "far from ordinary" and I and others replied that the practice of such "kiddie baptisms" was pretty common in our missions. 

You asked for a firsthand example, and I provided one. Rather than acknowledge I had given what you asked, you attacked my "hubris" for "complaining" about it now after not having gone over my mission president's head in reporting it back then. 

By all means, feel free to attack a naive 19 year old and the middle-aged man who looks back with regret, but it doesn't change what happened and apparently is still happening in some places. 

I still believe what you recount is far from ordinary.

And I don't remember asking you to provide an example. When you said it "happened a lot," what I did was to inquire whether you knew this (that it "happened a lot") from personal observation or from word-of-mouth hearsay.

If it was personal observation, I wanted to know what you specifically did about it (I think that's a fair question).

If it had been word-of-mouth, I would have wondered (and still do) about the reliability of such reports, given the fecility with which urban legends and myths can and have spread within a mission environment (another fair question).

 

Edited June 15, 2016 by Scott Lloyd

[jkwilliams]

Just now, Scott Lloyd said:

I still believe what you recount is far from ordinary.

I recognize that. I think you would feel differently if you had served in a mission without functioning branches and wards, where there were no ward or stake mission leaders, no PEC, no ward council, where you had to bribe the fire department to fill the baptismal font. You really should listen to that video of Ted Lyon, as it describes how and why this stuff happens. Apparently, things were much worse in Chile than they were in Bolivia. At least no one I knew did 2-hour baptisms or invented people who didn't exist.

[Scott Lloyd]

5 hours ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

This is certainly one factor, but there are others, including the readiness of a ward/branch to accept and nurture the 'elect'. For most of the time that I went without teaching anyone, I was assigned to a ward that was riven with 'progressive' apostasy: women were angry over lack of priesthood ordination, and the ward held joint priesthood/Relief Society meetings to appease those who were offended by the 'gender discrimination' and patriarchy inherent in separate meetings. Same-sex 'marriage' was still hiding back in the dark shadows of the gay rights agenda, but we had a fair few ward members who were vocal supporters of this agenda broadly.

I can't imagine that the Lord could feel comfortable putting a newly minted Saint into such an environment, and I have to admit that I breathed more than one sigh of relief when people refused to listen to me. If anyone had listened to us and wanted to attend church, I would have had no idea how to explain to her/him that, though we were teaching about the importance of latter-day prophets, s/he would be attending church with members who reviled the same.

I shudder to think of a new convert being exposed to that sort of environment.

[ERayR]

4 hours ago, jkwilliams said:

I don't think I've overreacted. I did what I thought I should have done as a missionary: I reported it to the zone leaders verbally and in writing to the mission president. What I don't understand is this bizarre attempt to make what I did as a missionary the subject of attack as a way to deflect the conversation from the reality of these kinds of practices. My wife and I had a nice conversation last night about this incident (she was in my district when it happened). She agrees with me that I did what I should have done and have nothing to feel bad about. I think maybe I could have done something more, but honestly, I don't know what that would be. I asked her if she had thought to "report" what happened to the mission president, and she said no, that her focus was "bienestar," but had she been the district leader, she would have done exactly what I did. So, IMO, the only overreaction is coming from those who weren't there and who assume that everything in our mission worked the same way it does in fully functioning church units.

I was only going by my perception of what you wrote.  I would probably have done the same but my reactions to my "regrets" would have been/are different at 74 than at middle age.  Revisit it when you get older.  Peace to you.

[jkwilliams]

2 minutes ago, ERayR said:

I was only going by my perception of what you wrote.  I would probably have done the same but my reactions to my "regrets" would have been/are different at 74 than at middle age.  Revisit it when you get older.  Peace to you.

Thanks. I was just surprised that my giving an example elicited the response it did. I am not worried about it, definitely not enough to revisit it again.

[Scott Lloyd]

5 hours ago, Rain said:

Oh,  I do think most of them are pretty mature - for their age and I've never doubted it comes from the Spirit. I was one of them and I hope my children to be one of them.  And I see it in my son's friend.  But now that I am older I see it as pretty amazing. 

I've  never heard of "kiddie baptisms". My first thought when reading the article was also "there is something more to this".  

I just know in my mission there had been some huge problems. My mission president was said to age 10 years in his first year there.  I saw a big change in my mission my first year there that came after that.  So I do think that something like this could happen especially if communication is a problem.  

And you know what?  They could be perfectly honest in their experiences,  but not have all of the knowledge they need to get a full picture.  So there may be something more to their stories as well. Not that I am trying to trap them. I just find it more effective to look on a person's heart.

In recounting our mission experiences -- and in endeavoring to extrapolate them universally -- I fear we are something like the six blind men of Indostan in the John Godfrey Saxe poem, who, when encountering an elephant, each described it very differently depending on which portion of the creature each man was feeling.

[jkwilliams]

4 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

In recounting our mission experiences -- and in endeavoring to extrapolate them universally -- I fear we are something like the six blind men of Indostan in the John Godfrey Saxe poem, who, when encountering an elephant, each described it very differently depending on which portion of the creature each man was feeling.

Probably. My point wasn't that this kind of rule bending is pervasive but that it is far more common than you seem to believe. In my view, even one incident is too many. 

Edited June 15, 2016 by jkwilliams

[Scott Lloyd]

21 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

Probably. My point wasn't that this kind of rule bending is pervasive but that it is far more common than you seem to believe. In my view, even one incident is too many. 

Though it's true that even one such incident is too many, the actual prevalence of such incidents -- or lack thereof -- is worthy of consideration.

[jkwilliams]

2 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

Though it's true that even one such incident is too many, the actual prevalence of such incidents -- or lack thereof -- is worthy of consideration.

Well, Ted Lyon seems to believe it was at least somewhat prevalent throughout Latin America. Given what I have seen and heard personally and from others, I think he is right. 

[consiglieri]

2 hours ago, Doctor Steuss said:

I think it's something that's innate in some of us.  I still regularly sugarcoat stuff when my parents ask.

It wasn't until I got back from my mission to Japan that I found out my mother had a radical hysterectomy due to a cancer diagnosis while I was gone.

 

She never brought it up because she didn't want to worry me.

[consiglieri]

19 minutes ago, Scott Lloyd said:

Though it's true that even one such incident is too many, the actual prevalence of such incidents -- or lack thereof -- is worthy of consideration.

It became public only when somebody called the cops.

Do you really think this is the first time these missionaries did this?

And do you really think they are the only missionaries in their mission who did this?

And do you really think this is the only mission in which this happens?

[jkwilliams]

1 minute ago, consiglieri said:

It became public only when somebody called the cops.

Do you really think this is the first time these missionaries did this?

And do you really think they are the only missionaries in their mission who did this?

And do you really think this is the only mission in which this happens?

if nothing else, it seems Scott is acknowledging that this incident is what I thought: missionaries engaging in what is colloquially known as "kiddie baptisms." That it has a name suggests it has happened more than once. 

[Kenngo1969]

7 hours ago, jkwilliams said:

I remember thinking that we should feel good about how hard we worked when no one was watching.

You should have, and you should.  

[chileanseabass]

I served in Chile about 13 years ago, while Elder Holland was serving as Area President.  The days of baptizing groups of kids were long past, but the job we were tasked with was "cleanup."  My first area was a branch, that was formerly two wards.  You could walk from one end of the area to the other in around 30 minutes.  We had over 400 people on the rolls (attendance was 60-80), the majority baptized in the 80's and 90's as kids.  That branch was part of a district that used to be 2 stakes.  Everything was condensed and placed under the watch of our Mission President by Elder Holland.  Apparently, within the two stakes there were 6 full tithe paying Mel. PH holders.  Do the math. That means plenty of bishops, their counselors, high counselors, etc., not paying their tithing.  

For us, our reactivation numbers were just as, if not more, important than baptisms.  We would seek out everyone on the rolls, try to clean it up the best we could, and use that as a method to find people to teach.  I really enjoyed my time, and never felt like we were just after numbers.  That was not the impetus put on us by our president.  But we heard plenty of stories from the folks we encountered, both less actives and ward members that had served during the "glory days" of numbers... baptizing groups of kids, baptizing kids multiple times using the names of dead people, etc.  I never saw anything close to that, but it existed previously.  

[jkwilliams]

1 minute ago, chileanseabass said:

I served in Chile about 13 years ago, while Elder Holland was serving as Area President.  The days of baptizing groups of kids were long past, but the job we were tasked with was "cleanup."  My first area was a branch, that was formerly two wards.  You could walk from one end of the area to the other in around 30 minutes.  We had over 400 people on the rolls (attendance was 60-80), the majority baptized in the 80's and 90's as kids.  That branch was part of a district that used to be 2 stakes.  Everything was condensed and placed under the watch of our Mission President by Elder Holland.  Apparently, within the two stakes there were 6 full tithe paying Mel. PH holders.  Do the math. That means plenty of bishops, their counselors, high counselors, etc., not paying their tithing.  

For us, our reactivation numbers were just as, if not more, important than baptisms.  We would seek out everyone on the rolls, try to clean it up the best we could, and use that as a method to find people to teach.  I really enjoyed my time, and never felt like we were just after numbers.  That was not the impetus put on us by our president.  But we heard plenty of stories from the folks we encountered, both less actives and ward members that had served during the "glory days" of numbers... baptizing groups of kids, baptizing kids multiple times using the names of dead people, etc.  I never saw anything close to that, but it existed previously.  

I was pleased that Elder Holland presided over those changes. What you did was infinitely more important for the long-term growth of the church than what came before. 

[Bernard Gui]

The ward or branch clerk receives membership records shortly after new baptisms. If he and the branch president/bishop have any integrity at all, they would sniff out and expose any shenanigans pulled off by unscrupulous missionaries. 

[jkwilliams]

3 minutes ago, Bernard Gui said:

The ward or branch clerk receives membership records shortly after new baptisms. If he and the branch president/bishop have any integrity at all, they would sniff out and expose any shenanigans pulled off by unscrupulous missionaries. 

I don't think it had anything to do with integrity on the part of leaders. I suspect many of these leaders had never known anything different than these "shenanigans." Most branch and ward leaders were very recent converts with little training. 

I am beginning to realize how impossible it is for people used to "normal" church procedures to understand these grossly understaffed and undertrained church units. 

[Scott Lloyd]

1 hour ago, consiglieri said:

It became public only when somebody called the cops.

Do you really think this is the first time these missionaries did this?

And do you really think they are the only missionaries in their mission who did this?

And do you really think this is the only mission in which this happens?

I never made any of those claims.

But you've beaten that straw man to a pulp. Congratulations.

[Jeanne]

18 hours ago, Calm said:

I dump all papers after 10 years unless it could come back to bite me save for blessings and medical info.  There is no way I would have even taken this home from the mission as it would have no longer been my stewardship.

Oh..I have got to do this...just throw things away.  I have a small attic full of files from 15 years ago..everytime I move, I convince myself that I am surely going to need this stuff.  Haven't looked at it for years.  I just have this awful feeling that the minute I throw something away..it will become valuable!

[Scott Lloyd]

1 hour ago, jkwilliams said:

if nothing else, it seems Scott is acknowledging that this incident is what I thought: missionaries engaging in what is colloquially known as "kiddie baptisms." That it has a name suggests it has happened more than once. 

I told you what it meant  when I was a ward mission leader back in the early '90s. Missionaries have long been tasked with legitimately teaching baptismal candidates who are over age 9, whether they choose to on their own initiative or not.

That someone might take a term that meant one thing and apply it to something else does not speak to prevalence.

Edited June 15, 2016 by Scott Lloyd

[Scott Lloyd]

13 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

I don't think it had anything to do with integrity on the part of leaders. I suspect many of these leaders had never known anything different than these "shenanigans." Most branch and ward leaders were very recent converts with little training. 

I am beginning to realize how impossible it is for people used to "normal" church procedures to understand these grossly understaffed and undertrained church units. 

The fact that you use the word normal suggests that what you are describing is, by definition, well, abnormal.