Missionaries detained by police

[jkwilliams]

Just now, ALarson said:

I had a friend who was a missionary during the Hartman Rector, Jr.'s years serving as mission president in San Diego, Ca.  What a mess that was and I believe he was released when the leaders realized what was going on!  He was bringing bus loads of people from Mexico up over the border, giving them only one discussion, baptizing them in member's swimming pools and then busing them back over the border.  Rector boasted many times how his mission was the highest baptizing mission in the church....no wonder 

It was really strange how things changed in my mission. We averaged about 300-350 baptisms a month for the first half of my mission. My mp said he was more concerned about converting us missionaries than numbers. 

While I was working in the mission office, the mp went to a mission presidents conference in Peru, or maybe it was Ecuador, I don't remember. When he came back the talk of "highest baptizing mission" started, and the big number goals began a few months later. 

He ended up serving in the first quorum of seventy. I love him like family, but I disagreed with his approach. 

[webbles]

12 hours ago, JAHS said:

Elder Oaks once addressed this:

"In the summer of 2001, Sister Oaks and I were in Manaus, Brazil. I spoke to about 100 missionaries in that great city on the Amazon. As I stood to speak, I was prompted to put aside some notes I usually use on such occasions and substitute some thoughts on the importance of timing—some of the scriptures and principles I have been discussing here.
I reminded the missionaries that some of our most important plans cannot be brought to pass without the agency and actions of others. A missionary cannot baptize five persons this month without the agency and action of five other persons. A missionary can plan and work and do all within his or her power, but the desired result will depend upon the additional agency and action of others.
Consequently, a missionary’s goals ought to be based upon the missionary’s personal agency and action, not upon the agency or action of others. But this is not the time to elaborate on what I told the missionaries about goals." (Ensign October 2003)

 

I don't think this is actually addressing this issue.  That's my mission and I was there.  Unfortunately, I was more than several hours away so I only go to watch a recorded version of the meeting.  But even though Manaus had baptism goals (they were pretty high), it wasn't the end all be all.  Several zones that I served in did not reach the goal and weren't even close (one zone had only 2-3 baptisms in the course of several months; that is pretty unheard of for Manaus).  No one in those zones tried to pad the numbers.  I'm not discounting that there might have been some missionaries that would pad it but it wasn't systemic in the mission nor widespread enough for me to notice.

[ALarson]

25 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

It was really strange how things changed in my mission. We averaged about 300-350 baptisms a month for the first half of my mission. My mp said he was more concerned about converting us missionaries than numbers. 

While I was working in the mission office, the mp went to a mission presidents conference in Peru, or maybe it was Ecuador, I don't remember. When he came back the talk of "highest baptizing mission" started, and the big number goals began a few months later. 

He ended up serving in the first quorum of seventy. I love him like family, but I disagreed with his approach. 

Yeah, Hartman Rector was a seventy as well (even while serving as mission president, irrc).  

[JAHS]

26 minutes ago, webbles said:

I don't think this is actually addressing this issue.  That's my mission and I was there.  Unfortunately, I was more than several hours away so I only go to watch a recorded version of the meeting.  But even though Manaus had baptism goals (they were pretty high), it wasn't the end all be all.  Several zones that I served in did not reach the goal and weren't even close (one zone had only 2-3 baptisms in the course of several months; that is pretty unheard of for Manaus).  No one in those zones tried to pad the numbers.  I'm not discounting that there might have been some missionaries that would pad it but it wasn't systemic in the mission nor widespread enough for me to notice.

"A missionary cannot baptize five persons this month without the agency and action of five other persons. A missionary can plan and work and do all within his or her power, but the desired result will depend upon the additional agency and action of others."

Perhaps not in your mission, but I think it directly addresses the general problem in some missions of only thinking of reaching baptism numbers goals.

 

[SteveO]

4 hours ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

I don't understand what you mean by this. Can you please explain?

They copied names and the birthdates off gravestones when they filled out the baptismal certificate...It was getting into the territory of interference of work for the dead for obvious reasons.  

[webbles]

42 minutes ago, JAHS said:

"A missionary cannot baptize five persons this month without the agency and action of five other persons. A missionary can plan and work and do all within his or her power, but the desired result will depend upon the additional agency and action of others."

Perhaps not in your mission, but I think it directly addresses the general problem in some missions of only thinking of reaching baptism numbers goals.

 

Then why would he say the above in my mission if he is only talking about a general problem that isn't happening in the specific mission he is talking to?

Also, just because baptisms depend on the agency of others doesn't mean you can't set baptism goals.  Otherwise, you also can't set investigator in church meeting goals, contact goals, discussion goals, etc.  You pretty much can't set any goal except for things like "number of pages read in the scriptures".  Having a baptism goal (or anything like that) means that you are striving your hardest to achieve that goal.  It doesn't matter if you make the goal or not because other people's agency is involved.  But if you tried your hardest, then you did your side and you achieved your goal.  I think that is what Elder Oaks is actually trying to say.

[bcuzbcuz]

6 hours ago, The Nehor said:

I had two good Mission Presidents who would come down on you for anything like this. The idiocy in my Mission came from the APs and Zone Leaders. I do know that three Mission Presidents back there was an insane push for numbers. We knew it and a lot of the local leaders did too. We had nicknames for the converts of that era on the ward lists. I am sure someone baptized in those three years is still active but I never met one. Most did not know they were members. On the whole they were as a Ward Mission Leader put it "a bunch of nutters".

Leaders who fail that badly will have a lot of explaining to do some day.

 

One would hope. 

The road downhill isn't an abrupt one. Our mission president (back in the 60's) had a rule about proselytizing hours per week. To reach those goals, corners had to be cut. A missionary and his companion had to make decisions about lying. Clothing had to be washed, cheques from home had to be taken to the bank to be cashed (which meant standing in line for long times), bike repairs, and any number of small time consuming activities had to be done....but would be written up as cold contact proselytizing hours. 

Theoretically, missionaries could be making contacts while washing their clothes or while standing in line, but in reality, it was much easier to merely write the hours as contact hours. In Scandinavia, people do not take kindly to talking to strangers. Now, 50 years later, that still holds true. 

I had a senior missionary companion who refused to lie on his weekly reports regarding these so called "cold contact hours". He reported only actual hours worked. Next conference the mission president tore a strip off him because we didn't have the standard 70 hours of knocking on doors. My companion and my honesty was not rewarded. In fact, the opposite was true.

But once one accepted that lying, even about the small things, was the norm, it became easier to let other things slide. A normal conversation with a non-member was changed, for the reports, to be a first lesson in preparation for baptism.

As far as I know, no one baptized people completely unprepared for the reality of membership. Retention was and is, however, a problem. 

[Rain]

1 hour ago, webbles said:

Then why would he say the above in my mission if he is only talking about a general problem that isn't happening in the specific mission he is talking to?

Also, just because baptisms depend on the agency of others doesn't mean you can't set baptism goals.  Otherwise, you also can't set investigator in church meeting goals, contact goals, discussion goals, etc.  You pretty much can't set any goal except for things like "number of pages read in the scriptures".  Having a baptism goal (or anything like that) means that you are striving your hardest to achieve that goal.  It doesn't matter if you make the goal or not because other people's agency is involved.  But if you tried your hardest, then you did your side and you achieved your goal.  I think that is what Elder Oaks is actually trying to say.

I'll have to read the whole talk,  but I don't think that is what he was trying to say.  

Possible missionary goals not based on others agency:

- Contact 3 members each week and ask about teaching opportunities

- Tract 32 hours this month

- Read all the missionary references in the topical guide.

- Golden question 1 person while doing laundry

- Ask Heavenly Father what my biggest strength/weakness in missionary work is and do ________ (something measurable) to grow stronger in it. 

- Ask at each lesson taught if they know more people who would like to learn.

- Arise 15 minutes earlier to work on language

- Look 50% of people I talk to in the eye when speaking to them 

- Prepare for the sacrament better by _____________.

- Find 10 things Ammon did that made him a better missionary. 

- Think only positive things about others for 24 hours. 

- Learn to sing a hymn with my companion that invites the Spirit in. 

Obviously there will be some cultural differences and the goals should come with Heavenly Father's guidance, but often the only reason we make goals for other people is that we don't recognize that the goal really is for someone else or don't have the experience or thinking of how to make them for ourselves.  Hopefully, what I have above will help others figure out their own goals.  

Edited June 12, 2016 by Rain

[Rain]

2 hours ago, webbles said:

Then why would he say the above in my mission if he is only talking about a general problem that isn't happening in the specific mission he is talking to?

Also, just because baptisms depend on the agency of others doesn't mean you can't set baptism goals.  Otherwise, you also can't set investigator in church meeting goals, contact goals, discussion goals, etc.  You pretty much can't set any goal except for things like "number of pages read in the scriptures".  Having a baptism goal (or anything like that) means that you are striving your hardest to achieve that goal.  It doesn't matter if you make the goal or not because other people's agency is involved.  But if you tried your hardest, then you did your side and you achieved your goal.  I think that is what Elder Oaks is actually trying to say.

Ok.  I just listened to his talk.  The article comes from a BYU speech on timing. He was clear that what we should be working on most is putting the Lord first in our lives.  That we should be focusing on what we can do to have him first. That we should not be counting on the agency of others or even our own plans. What was quoted above was all he really said about making goals - I would have loved to hear more about that.  

It was good timing for me to hear this as a parent right now even though I keep wanting to say,  "I wish I had heard this earlier!" Lol

It makes so much sense to me now.  In the MTC and on my mission I heard a lot about obedience and how it will make a difference in our missionary work.  I really worked to be obedient and to stay close to the Lord. I don't regret that for a moment,  but my work/obedience didn't correlate with my baptismal goals.

I talked with my mission president about it and he wasn't concerned.  He basically told me that I won't see all the results at this point. I still believe that,  but I also think that it was widely misunderstood about the relationship between obedience and baptismal goals.  Oh,  I have no doubts that being obedient put me in a position to teach more people,  but I can't choose  for Jack to be baptized through my obedience.  I can only grow closer to the Lord so I am ready to teach if Jack becomes ready to learn. 

[The Nehor]

12 hours ago, SteveO said:

Just got back from date night with the wife, and I was thinking about this thread.  Sorry I'm going overboard with the posts, but I think its important

I have no doubt your mission was the opposite from jkwilliams and I.  But, missions can go off the rails...I hope I'm not derailing, but this may be of interest in the spirit of the thread:

Shortly before I got to the MTC (2005), there was an incident where the president had to call the mission homes of every missionary who had recently left for the field.  Reason was, they had formed a pretty harmless "exclusive club"  in the MTC for those who were able to swallow a penny...the president got in contact with each one of the members of the club and told them to repent, because what they were doing was the result of some pretty insidious influence.  The instructors made sure we knew what went down and that that kind of stuff wasn't tolerated.  I thought the whole thing was dumb--but harmless and not as big a deal as the instructors seemed to be making of it.

Well, when I got out into the field, Mexico City East, a number of missionaries just shy of a hundred got sent home.  They were copying names off gravestones for baptism.  I've heard of this occuring to varying degrees of severity in other missions since returning home, but that's not the interesting part.  They found out which missionaries were participating in the copying by having them lift their left pant leg at zone conference.  The missionaries participating had made an "exclusive club" and had themselves branded on their left ankles.  Pretty diabolical stuff, but I knew then why the president in the MTC had made such a big deal out of the penny incident.

Anyways, I'm not trying to drag the church in the mud, I've been a pretty ardent supporter of the church here.  And I hope the missionary work has vastly improved since the near decade I've returned home.  But based off personal experience, there are some things that go on that should alarm the membership of the church.  And honestly, stuff like what happened in the original post don't surprise me a bit.  

 

Things like this are common legends. I heard something very close to this story on my Mission in 1999 and in the MTC in 1998. The gravestone thing is bandied about but I doubt it happened as described. The branding on the left leg or foot is common to a number of stories. In my Mission it was about a secret society of seven apostate missionaries who had to sleep with a particular girl and break certain rules to join the secret club. It might have happened but I doubt it.

[The Nehor]

4 hours ago, omni said:

It's always been amazing to me that the Church allows converts to make covenants affecting their eternal salvation after just one or two weeks.  

It would be interesting to see if the requirements for baptism became stricter if a country began requiring a $2,500 fee for every convert baptism into a church.

The gospel tends to work fast and if you make and keep commitments before baptism it tends to work. Some just kind of shuffle through though and fall away quickly.

[jkwilliams]

2 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

Things like this are common legends. I heard something very close to this story on my Mission in 1999 and in the MTC in 1998. The gravestone thing is bandied about but I doubt it happened as described. The branding on the left leg or foot is common to a number of stories. In my Mission it was about a secret society of seven apostate missionaries who had to sleep with a particular girl and break certain rules to join the secret club. It might have happened but I doubt it.

Sounds pretty urban legendary to me, but you never know. 

[The Nehor]

4 hours ago, jkwilliams said:

It was really strange how things changed in my mission. We averaged about 300-350 baptisms a month for the first half of my mission. My mp said he was more concerned about converting us missionaries than numbers. 

While I was working in the mission office, the mp went to a mission presidents conference in Peru, or maybe it was Ecuador, I don't remember. When he came back the talk of "highest baptizing mission" started, and the big number goals began a few months later. 

He ended up serving in the first quorum of seventy. I love him like family, but I disagreed with his approach. 

Yeah, I get that kind of pressure. My Mission was the highest baptizing mission in the area when I was there except for a few months at the end when we were passed by the vile kilt-wearing bagpipe-playing weirdos up in Scotland. I give my Mission Presidents credit for insisting we follow the rules. One told us repeatedly that if you do not do the Lord's work his way it does not matter how successful you are. Basically if you convert through pressure, attraction, or solid salesmanship you might have numbers but you have failed.

He told us the story of a guy he knew who had a very 'successful' mission but afterwards left the Church to become a salesman and says something to the effect of: "I learned on my mission that if I could sell a religion that I do not really believe in then I could sell anything." He was financially successful.

[The Nehor]

2 hours ago, bcuzbcuz said:

One would hope. 

The road downhill isn't an abrupt one. Our mission president (back in the 60's) had a rule about proselytizing hours per week. To reach those goals, corners had to be cut. A missionary and his companion had to make decisions about lying. Clothing had to be washed, cheques from home had to be taken to the bank to be cashed (which meant standing in line for long times), bike repairs, and any number of small time consuming activities had to be done....but would be written up as cold contact proselytizing hours. 

Theoretically, missionaries could be making contacts while washing their clothes or while standing in line, but in reality, it was much easier to merely write the hours as contact hours. In Scandinavia, people do not take kindly to talking to strangers. Now, 50 years later, that still holds true. 

I had a senior missionary companion who refused to lie on his weekly reports regarding these so called "cold contact hours". He reported only actual hours worked. Next conference the mission president tore a strip off him because we didn't have the standard 70 hours of knocking on doors. My companion and my honesty was not rewarded. In fact, the opposite was true.

But once one accepted that lying, even about the small things, was the norm, it became easier to let other things slide. A normal conversation with a non-member was changed, for the reports, to be a first lesson in preparation for baptism.

As far as I know, no one baptized people completely unprepared for the reality of membership. Retention was and is, however, a problem. 

Haha, ah yes, numbers. To encourage us to teach families we could count every of age investigator present as a discussion for the week. If you were a bit short go out and talk to a group of teens about the gospel. I could meet my discussions requirement in an hour.  

I found those reports useless. I just filled out the number required (often in advance) and sent them in no matter what. It was easier that way. The whole thing was stupid. I figure it was only lying in the sense that telling a ghost story is telling an untrue story. Everyone knows it is fake so it is not really lying.

Maybe I was wrong. If so having to report my ward's numbers to the Stake Mission Council once a month in a rather dull meeting is my current penance.

[The Nehor]

14 minutes ago, Rain said:

Ok.  I just listened to his talk.  The article comes from a BYU speech on timing. He was clear that what we should be working on most is putting the Lord first in our lives.  That we should be focusing on what we can do to have him first. That we should not be counting on the agency of others or even our own plans. What was quoted above was all he really said about making goals - I would have loved to hear more about that.  

It was good timing for me to hear this as a parent right now even though I keep wanting to say,  "I wish I had heard this earlier!" Lol

It makes so much sense to me now.  In the MTC and on my mission I heard a lot about obedience and how it will make a difference in our missionary work.  I really worked to be obedient and to stay close to the Lord. I don't regret that for a moment,  but my work/obedience didn't correlate with my baptismal goals.

I talked with my mission president about it and he wasn't concerned.  He basically told me that I won't see all the results at this point. I still believe that,  but I also think that it was widely misunderstood about the relationship between obedience and baptismal goals.  Oh,  I have no doubts that being obedient put me in a position to teach more people,  but I can't choose  for Jack to be baptized through my obedience.  I can only grow closer to the Lord so I am ready to teach if Jack becomes ready to learn. 

This is accurate. You can read in scripture about fantastically unsuccessful missionaries and church leaders to whom no fault is imputed. They did what they had to do. I remember Isaiah being taken in vision or whatever to heaven and being told to go and preach and told almost no one would ever listen. Our D&C 4 is a little more optimistic.

I found on my Mission that the closer I grew to the Lord and the more I sought to serve him that I could better ignore the bleating of his less then perfect servants bleating about success rates. I have forgiven them since. I know I definitely need their forgiveness for things I did on my Mission. For all the good I did I do regret throwing a punch at my Zone Leader.

[The Nehor]

9 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

Sounds pretty urban legendary to me, but you never know. 

I am 99% sure it was.

[jkwilliams]

3 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

I am 99% sure it was.

We had a few mission legends that turned out to be true. So, yeah, probably apocryphal, but you never know. 

[SteveO]

2 hours ago, The Nehor said:

Things like this are common legends. I heard something very close to this story on my Mission in 1999 and in the MTC in 1998. The gravestone thing is bandied about but I doubt it happened as described. The branding on the left leg or foot is common to a number of stories. In my Mission it was about a secret society of seven apostate missionaries who had to sleep with a particular girl and break certain rules to join the secret club. It might have happened but I doubt it.

I suppose that the penny thing could've been an urban legend, like I said, it was related to us by our instructors.  But I told you the mission I was in sent nearly 100 missionaries home...not sure what part of that was word of mouth.

 

Edited to add: I got in touch with a former companion on FB concerning the incident...he did confirm that nearly 100 missionaries were sent home for "dishonesty regarding baptisms" but couldn't confirm the gravestones or branding stuff.  So from what you've said, it looks like other things were added from mission rumors.  I didn't want this turning into a "yes it did, no it didn't" type thing, and I'm glad I followed up so I didn't contribute to rumors.

Edited June 12, 2016 by SteveO

[Calm]

3 hours ago, webbles said:

Then why would he say the above in my mission if he is only talking about a general problem that isn't happening in the specific mission he is talking to?

Perhaps he was inspired to speak in order to prevent missionaries who were being tempted to start those kinds of practices from actually engaging in them.

[JAHS]

4 hours ago, webbles said:

Then why would he say the above in my mission if he is only talking about a general problem that isn't happening in the specific mission he is talking to?

I don't know, you tell me. It was your mission.

4 hours ago, webbles said:

Also, just because baptisms depend on the agency of others doesn't mean you can't set baptism goals.  Otherwise, you also can't set investigator in church meeting goals, contact goals, discussion goals, etc.  You pretty much can't set any goal except for things like "number of pages read in the scriptures".  Having a baptism goal (or anything like that) means that you are striving your hardest to achieve that goal.  It doesn't matter if you make the goal or not because other people's agency is involved.  But if you tried your hardest, then you did your side and you achieved your goal.  I think that is what Elder Oaks is actually trying to say.

In my opinion I just think it's better to set goals for your own spiritual development and to work as hard as you can to try and just make contact with people, either directly or through church members and teach them. Eventually the baptisms will come and they will be the kind that will endure. I think setting a goal for a certain number of baptisms is setting yourself up for a feeling of failure when they don't happen.

[Guest]

22 hours ago, jkwilliams said:

https://www.elheraldodechihuahua.com.mx/noroeste/8555-detienen-a-misioneros-por-desnudar-a-ninos-para-bautizarlos

According to the article, they told 3 kids they would give them candy, soda, and chips if they got baptized, apparently without the parents' permission. When asked to change into baptismal clothes, the kids got scared and told their father, who called the police.

The headline is pretty sensationalistic, emphasizing that the kids were told to take off their clothes, but it seems these missionaries may have been breaking mission rules to get their numbers. This was a big problem in my mission because making your weekly and monthly goals often trumped everything else. 

At the end of my Army tour of eight years, I was 27 and not too much older than Elders. I went on splits 2 times weekly and they lived a few doors down and I would take them where they needed every P-day, mostly I was big into basketball and so were they. On Aprril Fools day in 1984, I had 2 weeks left in the Army. So they asked me to knock on the sister missionaries door and tell them I was in trouble and needed a phone. After trying to talk them out of it at least 5 times, they told me it would be cool, and that as soon as they pulled by the curtains on the sliding glass door, they would jump out and say, "April Fools". Well one of the two sisters had just come from Albany, GA where two Elders had got broken into and held at gunpoint. The Elder's talked thiefs not to kill them by telling them they were Preachers. It worked, so they broke in on someone else and murdered a couple. So the sisters called the police, the policed arrived and locked up the two Elders, telling them that they would think they would get enough trouble knocking on doors all day. The Elders were arrested and put in separate cells because the detectives truly hated Mormons. The next day the judge got upset and told the detectives that there was real crime in the City and to never do something like that again. 

True story in every way...Needless to say the Mission President was not as understanding as the judge.! 

[webbles]

2 hours ago, JAHS said:

I don't know, you tell me. It was your mission.

In my opinion I just think it's better to set goals for your own spiritual development and to work as hard as you can to try and just make contact with people, either directly or through church members and teach them. Eventually the baptisms will come and they will be the kind that will endure. I think setting a goal for a certain number of baptisms is setting yourself up for a feeling of failure when they don't happen.

I went and pulled out my mission journal to track down my thoughts of the time.  I wrote "He told us to not plan everything because we can't.  Just decide who we will be and trust in the Lord."  That brought back some more memories of what his talk was about.  He had talked about how he and his first wife planned out their life together.  They planned for him to retire one day from the Utah Supreme Court, to go on a couple mission, retire and be happy together.  Then, he was called as an apostle, she died, he remarried, etc.  So, his original plans were pretty much useless at this point.

So you can make goals/plans that involve other people.  But if you don't achieve the goal or follow the plan, that's ok as long as you are following Christ.

[JAHS]

13 minutes ago, webbles said:

I went and pulled out my mission journal to track down my thoughts of the time.  I wrote "He told us to not plan everything because we can't.  Just decide who we will be and trust in the Lord."  That brought back some more memories of what his talk was about.  He had talked about how he and his first wife planned out their life together.  They planned for him to retire one day from the Utah Supreme Court, to go on a couple mission, retire and be happy together.  Then, he was called as an apostle, she died, he remarried, etc.  So, his original plans were pretty much useless at this point.

So you can make goals/plans that involve other people.  But if you don't achieve the goal or follow the plan, that's ok as long as you are following Christ.

Sounds good to me. Making some goals (reading scriptures, attending church, praying, etc) that get people or yourself moving towards a certain end result, like baptism, can be helpful; but in my opinion you can't put a number on the number of successful end results; that is simply asking for too much. People may be inclined to start doing things they shouldn't to get that end result. 

[jkwilliams]

3 minutes ago, JAHS said:

Sounds good to me. Making some goals (reading scriptures, attending church, praying, etc) that get people or yourself moving towards a certain end result, like baptism, can be helpful; but in my opinion you can't put a number on the number of successful end results; that is simply asking for too much. People may be inclined to start doing things they shouldn't to get that end result. 

That was my point, but I'm just negative. 

[omni]

5 hours ago, The Nehor said:

The gospel tends to work fast and if you make and keep commitments before baptism it tends to work. Some just kind of shuffle through though and fall away quickly.

Given the retention rate of converts, I wonder what your definition of "tends to work" is?