Missionary meals

[Prof]

We used to feed the missionaries once a month. Mom is a great cook and really enjoyed cooking a home cooked dinner for them. 

However, for the last year or two, a rule has been in force that you can't have the missionaries over for dinner unless you have an investigator or a less active member for them to teach. If you don't have an investigator, you can still provide a meal for them- you just have to take it to them.

Is this a church wide policy? Is this the policy where you are?

[rongo]

This is solely up to the mission president, and is currently in vogue in several stateside missions right now. I expect the pendulum to swing back from this (which is intended to "force the members to do their jobs" by guilt tripping them about the missionaries not having enough to eat) to "having as much contact with the missionaries as possible is a good thing." I've seen this pendulum swing back and forth a zillion times in the U.S. over the last 20 years. It does seem to spread through certain missions via "contagion" (i.e., like ideas for camp or activities spread via LDS social media). Certain stateside mission presidents seem to get the idea from other presidents and missions,and it spreads for a time --- but certainly not universally. The mission where we live has never had such a policy. In fact, we are feeding the sisters in about two hours (no investigators).

It's the type of policy that wouldn't really even be considered outside the U.S.,where investigators and Church members are in even shorter supply.

ETA: I've heard it said that missionaries don't really need the meals, anyway, but those who say this don't seem to know how much MSF stateside missionaries get compared to foreign. They have almost no meal money, really (or car miles, but that's a separate issue). The funding is designed to rely heavily on members providing a big meal a day, so when that is denied, they are left to being able to afford a lot of Ramen noodles --- when they can be found these days. 

Edited December 26, 2021 by rongo

[The Nehor]

2 minutes ago, rongo said:

This is solely up to the mission president, and is currently in vogue in several stateside missions right now. I expect the pendulum to swing back from this (which is intended to "force the members to do their jobs" by guilt tripping them about the missionaries not having enough to eat) to "having as much contact with the missionaries as possible is a good thing." I've seen this pendulum swing back and forth a zillion times in the U.S. over the last 20 years. It does seem to spread through certain missions via "contagion" (i.e., like ideas for camp or activities spread via LDS social media). Certain stateside mission presidents seem to get the idea from other presidents and missions,and it spreads for a time --- but certainly not universally. The mission where we live has never had such a policy. In fact, we are feeding the sisters in about two hours (no investigators).

It's the type of policy that wouldn't really even be considered outside the U.S.,where investigators and Church members are in even shorter supply.

I am grateful to my second Mission President who made it clear that the responsibility for guilt tripping members into doing their jobs was the responsibility of the stake mission (back when those were a thing).

[BRMC]

That's our policy.  It's a weird one, too.  The Missionaries can come over to teach a lesson, and can take a meal with them to go, but they can't come over to eat.

[Fether]

I served between 2014-16 and in some areas we had meals almost every day, sometimes twice a day. There was a major issue of missionaries spending 4 hours + a day with members having meals. Such events may have lead to a shift in how to approach meals with members.

I would also add that there was some level of guilting members to feed the missionaries, but that was done by local auxiliary leaders more than anything else.

[Freedom]

this is a difficult problem to navigate. We do not want missionaries going to members homes all the time rather than working, but we also want them to get to know the members. Unfortunately missionaries are young and impressionable, and some members have no common sense. I recall many times when certain members would have the missionaries over every day for meals, and the missionaries would spend more and more time at their homes. Members need to understand that they should visit for a quick meal, a short lesson, and then be on their way. they are there to teach so if you want them in our home, have friends over. 

[mrmarklin]

1 hour ago, Freedom said:

this is a difficult problem to navigate. We do not want missionaries going to members homes all the time rather than working, but we also want them to get to know the members. Unfortunately missionaries are young and impressionable, and some members have no common sense. I recall many times when certain members would have the missionaries over every day for meals, and the missionaries would spend more and more time at their homes. Members need to understand that they should visit for a quick meal, a short lesson, and then be on their way. they are there to teach so if you want them in our home, have friends over. 

The highest baptizing elders in my mission were the ones who spent the most time with members. I consider that time a good investment in gaining the trust of members. 

[JustAnAustralian]

That rule comes and goes here.

[bsjkki]

I don’t enjoy feeding the missionaries. Too many rules and too many challenges. We used to all the time but they have made it too difficult. 
 

*I hate sales techniques and when they start in with commitment techniques, I’m just done. 
 

 

[Freedom]

1 hour ago, mrmarklin said:

The highest baptizing elders in my mission were the ones who spent the most time with members. I consider that time a good investment in gaining the trust of members. 

I would agree, the problem is that few have the maturity to use this time effectively and what happens instead is that these missionaries are over watching netflix, playing card games or being engaged in other inappropriate activities. This is the challenge - how to we increase the sociality between local members and missionaries, and avoid the terrible issues that arise due to ignorant members who leak these young elders and sisters down a path they should not go. 

[Hamba Tuhan]

8 hours ago, rongo said:

It's the type of policy that wouldn't really even be considered outside the U.S., where investigators and Church members are in even shorter supply.

This is a 'rule' that I personally have chosen to abide by. I never have the missionaries in my home to eat unless I have someone for them to teach. When I was ward mission leader, I had a standing appointment with the Elders on Monday evenings, and only once did I fail to have someone for them to teach. I also used to make the offer to ward members that I would help them make it happen too. As a member of the ward council, I always had a long list of people in the ward (less active, recent convert, prospective elder, part-member family) who would benefit from (a) being in the home of faithful members (b) with the missionaries.  It's just not that hard.

Our Elders were in my home two weeks ago to eat. I had one of my non-member friends come. After the meal, the missionaries shared a fantastic message with him and have been following up daily with both of us via group chat.

Simply feeding the missionaries and assuming that one is engaged in 'missionary work' is, in my opinion, the 21st-centry version of paying 'tithe of mint and anise and cummin'.

 

[mfbukowski]

1 hour ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

This is a 'rule' that I personally have chosen to abide by. I never have the missionaries in my home to eat unless I have someone for them to teach. When I was ward mission leader, I had a standing appointment with the Elders on Monday evenings, and only once did I fail to have someone for them to teach. I also used to make the offer to ward members that I would help them make it happen too. As a member of the ward council, I always had a long list of people in the ward (less active, recent convert, prospective elder, part-member family) who would benefit from (a) being in the home of faithful members (b) with the missionaries.  It's just not that hard.

Our Elders were in my home two weeks ago to eat. I had one of my non-member friends come. After the meal, the missionaries shared a fantastic message with him and have been following up daily with both of us via group chat.

Simply feeding the missionaries and assuming that one is engaged in 'missionary work' is, in my opinion, the 21st-centry version of paying 'tithe of mint and anise and cummin'.

 

Perhaps it is better outside the US, without generations of "wacky cult" propaganda against Mormons.

I used to think that Mormons worshipped "Saints" who were American Indians, and lived before Columbus arrived.

Care to hear more?  🙄😳

[rongo]

11 hours ago, Fether said:

I served between 2014-16 and in some areas we had meals almost every day, sometimes twice a day. There was a major issue of missionaries spending 4 hours + a day with members having meals. Such events may have lead to a shift in how to approach meals with members.

 

7 hours ago, Freedom said:

this is a difficult problem to navigate. We do not want missionaries going to members homes all the time rather than working, but we also want them to get to know the members. Unfortunately missionaries are young and impressionable, and some members have no common sense. 

 

3 hours ago, Freedom said:

I would agree, the problem is that few have the maturity to use this time effectively and what happens instead is that these missionaries are over watching netflix, playing card games or being engaged in other inappropriate activities. 

1) I would say that the extreme worst-case stories are rare (missionaries doing things they shouldn't at members' homes, missionaries spending extreme amounts of time at members' homes, etc.). I don't think a blanket policy based on the extreme cases is wise. It hampers member-missionary contact and experience, and it also hampers the missionaries' experience on the mission. 

1a) We keep getting mixed messages about missionaries. On the one hand, we are told that they are more mature than ever before, are trusted with more than ever before, etc. On the other hand, Church and local mission policies often infantilize and coddle missionaries in practice. If members encourage missionaries to do things they shouldn't do (which happened with all of us, at times, on our missions), are missionaries incapable or unlikely to "teach correct principles" and correct members --- or are they more likely to just go along with the members? Are they mature adults whom we can trust, or aren't they? 

I think what the mission president thinks is evident in his policies that micromanage missionaries.  

2) In my experience (2x as a ward mission leader, 2x as an EQP, 2x as a bishopric counselor, 2x as a bishop), the overwhelming majority of member families behave 100% appropriately with their meal appointments with missionaries. I think these policies needlessly punish both members and missionaries, and for the outlier, marginal exceptions, I think the missionaries should be trusted to "teach correct principles" and set the example to the wayward members. As mission presidents become aware of violations (through companions in weekly letters), then they should address these needs directly with their missionaries. 

Them's my sentiments, anyway.  

 

[rongo]

3 hours ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

This is a 'rule' that I personally have chosen to abide by. I never have the missionaries in my home to eat unless I have someone for them to teach. When I was ward mission leader, I had a standing appointment with the Elders on Monday evenings, and only once did I fail to have someone for them to teach. I also used to make the offer to ward members that I would help them make it happen too. As a member of the ward council, I always had a long list of people in the ward (less active, recent convert, prospective elder, part-member family) who would benefit from (a) being in the home of faithful members (b) with the missionaries.  It's just not that hard.

Our Elders were in my home two weeks ago to eat. I had one of my non-member friends come. After the meal, the missionaries shared a fantastic message with him and have been following up daily with both of us via group chat.

Simply feeding the missionaries and assuming that one is engaged in 'missionary work' is, in my opinion, the 21st-centry version of paying 'tithe of mint and anise and cummin'.

Good for you, Hamba!

Now, imagine that the mission president(s) over all of Indonesia were to impose your personal rule over the whole area. 

[Hamba Tuhan]

1 hour ago, rongo said:

Now, imagine that the mission president(s) over all of Indonesia were to impose your personal rule over the whole area. 

There is only a single mission president in Indonesia, but I don't live there.

What is it you are asking me to imagine, exactly? I spent several hours today with our missionaries. I certainly know what they would prefer! They're definitely hungry ... for meaningful opportunities to teach.

Edited December 27, 2021 by Hamba Tuhan

[Hamba Tuhan]

4 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

Perhaps it is better outside the US, without generations of "wacky cult" propaganda against Mormons.

You don't have any less-actives, recent converts, prospective elders, part-member families, or others in your ward who would benefit from (a) being in your faith-filled home (b) with the full-time missionaries to share a message with them?

[Navidad]

I would love to comment on the missionary situation where I live but that would be inappropriate and probably irrelevant to most of you. I will simply say that from my non-member perspective the turnover among the missionaries is a huge problem. They come and go quite often and seem to be "transferred" regularly. They have significant transportation problems. My wife and I often have taken them from our village (where they no longer visit) to their residence in one of the still existing colonies.

What I will do is describe my mission fifty-three years ago in the savannas of western Africa on the border between Nigeria and Dahomey (now Benin). I hope it is of interest to some of you. I lived on a compound with a family of full-time missionaries. They had lived there for fifteen years. The man was a trained linguist preparing an orthography for the Boko or Busa (same language - different names depending on which side of the border you were) language. The wife was a nurse providing health services to the community - the only such services within miles. I was a college junior, a Biblical studies major which was a requirement for placement where I served. None of the locals spoke French (Dahomey) or English (Nigeria).

I think the LDS would term my mission as a "service" mission. I spent most of my time digging wells, planting cotton or yams, playing soccer with the youth, running mimeograph machines (oh the smell!), hunting, and helping butchering meat for us to eat. Every once in a while when supplies came in, I was sent to the mission hospital about 80 miles away to to help unload and store medical and other supplies. I was taught to help with basic sanitary needs of the leper population at the hospital. I learned to sing the little choruses the missionaries had written in the Boko language and play them on my guitar. That was my participation in the Sunday services.

After some months, I helped with basic literacy (non-religious) work with the folks to teach them to read the few things that the missionary had translated into Boko as he had created the written language. I had most of my meals with the family. I traveled deeper into the bush with the missionary to help with projects and tasks. I became close friends with a Nigerian Fulani Muslim young man who had been beaten at the border. The nurse treated him for a month or so. He was a BBC Hausa language newscaster who had a degree from a British university. He, in many ways changed my life to this day. He opened my life to a cultural diversity that I had never known in my little Pennsylvania Dutch Mennonite-centered town where I grew up. We became fast friends. He was killed a few years later when hit by a cement barge on the Niger (Quorra) River. I still keep in contact with his relatives who today are high level Fulani Muslim leaders in the Sokoto area of Nigeria. When I flew home I was so tanned and skinny, my then girlfriend - now wife of 51 years, hardly knew me when I got off the plane. She was waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs as I deplaned. To this day, the most beautiful site I have ever seen!

So, that was my mission in a nutshell. I now proudly have a complete Boko Bible on my desk. It was a gift a few years ago from the missionary who is now 93 years old and still sharp as a tack!  I have a little chorus book I mimeographed all those years ago. I can still smell the smell! I still sing the songs to myself as I sit here. I don't know how many lives I impacted, but that mission certainly changed mine.

A few years ago at a Ward Christmas party a returned missionary from Colonia Juarez sat across from me at the meal. He didn't know us. He introduced himself to us as having served his mission in Salt Lake City! He asked me where I had served my mission. I simply told him I had done so in western Africa in the bush. He was very interested. The bishop, who was sitting next to me never commented to him that I was not a member and had served a mission with a non-denominational Evangelical mission. I suppose he found out soon enough (he is now a graduate student somewhere in Utah). For that one evening we had a bond. We were both returned missionaries having served the Lord in different ways in different places. I enjoyed our conversation. I hope he did too.

Edited December 27, 2021 by Navidad

[ksfisher]

18 hours ago, rongo said:

This is solely up to the mission president, and is currently in vogue in several stateside missions right now

The missionaries in our ward say this has come from the area, not the mission.

[rongo]

20 minutes ago, ksfisher said:

The missionaries in our ward say this has come from the area, not the mission.

That's very possible. That shines an interesting light on how certain Seventies vary by temperament and tendency towards micromanagement while others don't.

It could also be particular area seventies and their own coordinating councils. That makes me feel better than area presidencies 

[Kenngo1969]

9 hours ago, Navidad said:

... A few years ago at a Ward Christmas party a returned missionary from Colonia Juarez sat across from me at the meal. He didn't know us. He introduced himself to us as having served his mission in Salt Lake City! He asked me where I had served my mission. I simply told him I had done so in western Africa in the bush. He was very interested. The bishop, who was sitting next to me never commented to him that I was not a member and had served a mission with a non-denominational Evangelical mission. I suppose he found out soon enough (he is now a graduate student somewhere in Utah). For that one evening we had a bond. We were both returned missionaries having served the Lord in different ways in different places. I enjoyed our conversation. I hope he did too.

Certainly, I  would relish the opportunity to converse with you at length!   

[bluebell]

21 hours ago, bsjkki said:

I don’t enjoy feeding the missionaries. Too many rules and too many challenges. We used to all the time but they have made it too difficult. 
 

*I hate sales techniques and when they start in with commitment techniques, I’m just done. 
 

 

I'm with you.  

I always did it but it was always a chore that I did not like.  I'm not a hostess in any way shape or means.  I detest having people over (and likewise do not enjoy being invited to eat at other people's homes that much either) and stress about it for days before their appointment, and then that whole day getting ready for it.  

Plus, I'm from a small family and really struggle to feed more than 4-6 people at a time.  My recipes are not that big and neither is my table.

The whole event was always a stressful mess for me.

BUT, I served a mission and was fed, my son is getting ready to serve, and I will feed the missionaries if they need it.  But I am not sad that our mission does not feed them right now.

[bluebell]

13 hours ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

You don't have any less-actives, recent converts, prospective elders, part-member families, or others in your ward who would benefit from (a) being in your faith-filled home (b) with the full-time missionaries to share a message with them?

There are very few in my ward that would 1) agree to come and 2) not consider it an ambush to invite them over for dinner and have the missionaries there.  But, I think it's a great way to get people with the missionaries if you can find some who will come and not be offended.

[Hamba Tuhan]

2 minutes ago, bluebell said:

There are very few in my ward that would 1) agree to come and 2) not consider it an ambush to invite them over for dinner and have the missionaries there. But, I think it's a great way to get people with the missionaries if you can find some who will come and not be offended.

So if you were to contact someone in your ward and say, 'Hey, we're having the missionaries round for tea next Thursday. I'm going to cook a big batch of my world-famous goulash, and the missionaries are going to share a brief Christmas message with us afterwards. I thought you might enjoying joining us for all of that', that person would be offended???

[bluebell]

25 minutes ago, Hamba Tuhan said:

So if you were to contact someone in your ward and say, 'Hey, we're having the missionaries round for tea next Thursday. I'm going to cook a big batch of my world-famous goulash, and the missionaries are going to share a brief Christmas message with us afterwards. I thought you might enjoying joining us for all of that', that person would be offended???

Not offended, just annoyed.  Most probably wouldn't if they knew beforehand, especially if the person who was doing the inviting was already friends with them.  But some would resent the attempt.

Maybe it's a saturation thing.  My entire ward (600+ members) lives in a 10 block area that you could probably walk across in less than 20 minutes.  All the non-members and less active members are surrounded by members and they tend to get a lot of people inviting them to church things.  Most have as much contact with the church as they want, and many don't want any (and are wary when a member approaches).  Some are very friendly though and are happy to be included, especially if food is involved.  They don't typically want to have anything spiritual directed their way though.

That doesn't mean that it would hurt anything to invite and hope for the best though.  I really do think that it's a good approach.  Just one that doesn't produce the same results in every area.

[Freedom]

17 hours ago, rongo said:

 

 

1) I would say that the extreme worst-case stories are rare (missionaries doing things they shouldn't at members' homes, missionaries spending extreme amounts of time at members' homes, etc.). I don't think a blanket policy based on the extreme cases is wise. It hampers member-missionary contact and experience, and it also hampers the missionaries' experience on the mission. 

 

 

the problem is that these have not been extreme worst-case stories. too many families were inviting missionaries over on a regular bases and for the wrong reasons. Missionaries were spending too much time visiting with members who became friends, and not out doing work. I think a compromise is for missionaries to visit a family once. They are in an arear for just 6 to 12 weeks so in that time they would be able to have two or three meals/week. Members can have them come to dinners when less actives or non-members are visiting. 

 

Virtually all laws in a society are there because a few are too irresponsible to be considerate. This is one more example of this.