Posted on 06/09/2013 7:56:19 AM PDT by Colofornian
The Salt Lake Tribune reported yesterday that the LDS Church is expecting to hit a milestone of 85,000 missionaries in late 2013. This is half again as many missionaries as were serving before the Church made its landmark October 2012 announcement that the missionary age was being lowered, spurring thousands of young men and women to turn in their applications.
(Excerpt) Read more at janariess.religionnews.com ...
“Like Reid, there are LDS who choose wrong, who use bad judgment, “
Judgment? Your entire religion is based on a “burning of the bosom” to tell you how Indians are actually cursed Jews, and how if you’re good enough you might have the chance to become a polygamous god of your own planet.
Utah, this story does get told.
It is just not ever announced as the point story in the press. The privancy of the individuals involved is always attempted to be protected.
But, when something like this happens, the leadership and members in every knows something of it. Individual’s talk about it, including the person involved. Family members talk about it. Depending on the circumstances, the church leadership is completely appraised. In the councils of the leadership of thos ewards, they come together to try and help individuals who have such difficulties.
We have a good friend of one of our sons when that son went to France, this young man went to Mississippi. He lasted 10-11 months and came home with severe emotional issues. We are close to the family and they sought our help, including the young man involved. He knew us well, and we talked numerous times. As did many others in the ward.
He has gotten on with his life. Graduated in Computer Science and has taken a very good job with a School District down in the DFW area of Texas. I talk to him every 4-6 weeks and we will stop on our next trip down to MD Anderson and see him.
When you have 85,000 people involved in a program like this, where a strict schedule, discipline, and a lot of hard work is expected...then you are going to have some of these types of things take placve. It is part of our condition in mortality. Heck, we see it all the time in the US military, which service we all respect. It does not mean military service is bad, and it certainly does not mean necessarily that the individual has “done bad.”
So, having myself served, and now having had both of my sons serve, and having worked with these young men before, during, and after their service, I can tell you that the percentages are very small...but they are not taken lightly at all, and there is a huge effort to ensure that their is no “pallor” over the heads of those who have to come home for such reasons.
Now, it is a little more difficult when one of them gets out there and does really bad things...like fornication, or stealing, or something like that and then is sent home having either been dis-fellowshipped or excommunicated. As I am sure you are aware, that happens too every so often.
But when it does, we still try and work with them and try and help them get their life back in order, repent, and return to full fellowship in the church if they are willing...and their personal experience (other than them being home early) is not something that is trumpted about and used to beat them over the head with...at least not by the church itself. Their privacy is respected.
Anyhow...as you say...it is something that is difficult and that the Church and its leadership and members have to deal with.
Jeff, the story I suspect really is that certain of these kids should not go out in the first place. That severe social pressure is why I went and the absolute terror and shame of coming home early cannot be discounted.
When I got my call I had just been away at USU, had gone active in a fraternity and had a regular habit of Camel cigarettes. I had never attained anything close to being a true believer but went anyway because failing to do so would have caused such grief in my family that it was easier to go than not. To my wonderful surprise I went to Denmark and I worked very hard; had more conversions than anyone in the mission and ended up as the Branch President of Hjorring.
The first thing I did on my release was to buy a pack of Camel cigarettes, toured Europe for a month, went home and reported and remained a member in name only.
I am very proud of my heritage. Just never really believed the dogma.
As you know, they give interviews for the mission call and ask all sorts of questions. Unless the interviewer knows differently, or has some sort of inspiration to the contrary (and sometimes that does happens) then they believe what they are told and off they go.
Particularly up into the 1980s theere was a much greater tendancy to not delve into it, and quite a few went purely because of pressure from parents and/or others. I saw it myself in Germany.
I was a a convert myself of about four years at the time and was very hyped and charged about going, and remain pretty much so to this day. I had to work with several missionaries who were having difficultoies to find out how they really felt and what e might do to address their issue as I was called into some leadership positions on the mission.
My recommendation to the Mission President and others was almost always that if they were out there without a testimony, they had no business being there. In a few cases they were sent home...in others I was asked to continue working with them...which I did, but I also tried to shield them from situations where they would have to be anything less than completely honest when teching or talking to others about the Church. If they could not be...then I found other things for them to do.
Just like goes on in the military for people who get in and then you find out they cannot do the job. You find work for them that does not threaten the safety or cohesion of the group.
Beginnning in the mid 80s however, there was, and has continued to this day, to be a much more dedicated effort to delve into the individual missionairy’s testimony and motivations through the process, including the interviews. In far, far more cases, since that time, the effort has been to not send anyone who is not absolutely convicted in what they are doing.
Still, the old tradtions and pressures are not easy to overcome and particularly in some placs in Utah, there are still too manby who go for the wrong reasons. Some of them (as was the case earlier) get out there and find themselves, but others never do...and you cannot really have the expectations that they will. Those incidents are not good for anyone...either the person there, the people they meet, or the church overall.
As I say, in any large group like this, there is going to be unavoidably some of this...but I can say that the Church has tried to address it.
I wish all of them would come by my house!
Good for them and best of luck!
They rang my doorbell five years ago...I told them I believe that Joseph Smith found the golden plates about twenty minutes after he found the ‘golden mushrooms’...haven’t seen them since.
Returning missionaries are departing the church in droves. Sending younger, even less mature into the fire will just increase that trend. Unfortunately the pressures exerted on them by families/church will cause many to break in many ways.
Salt Lake Tribune: “The number of suicides in Utah has almost doubled over seven years. In 2005, there were 350 suicides in Utah; preliminary state Department of Health data shows 540 suicides in 2012.”
Yes, they are; but there's a "dual effect" that goes on...a high % discover some things about Mormonism -- and about themselves -- and slowly jumpstart their eventual exodus out...But there's also a % who are "steeled" by the experience...and, long-term-wise, wind up being both higher givers to the cult as well as a key pool for future leadership fodder.
(And, hey, somebody's gotta clean the Mormon facilities' toilets for free!)
In Utah, NON mormons "should not be allowed to hold office, be judges, have businesses, or in other words, be allowed to function in a free country"....
All-Mormon Supreme Court Spells Theocracy to Disgruntled Utahans
Wonder where he learned all this from.
UPDATE: A source points out that Flake’s YouTube comments are also
littered with offensive language. A preliminary review of the hundreds of
comments shows he repeatedly called other users “nigger” and “faggot,” called
Mexicans the “scum of the Earth,” and on several occasions bragged that his
father is a member of Congress.
br /
Spreading a false Gospel is never good news... it lands people in hell, when they could accept the real Gospel of Grace from the real Christ and end up in heaven.
“The mission is, and always has been about bringing people to Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of mankind and the Son of the Eternal God, our Father. In addition, the experience is an unbelievably good thing for those youth so involved in terms of teaching them to be away from home, to be able to be disciplined, to be engaged in a very worthwhile activity and to prepare them for life. “
Actually, this has nothing to do with the Biblical Jesus Christ, Redeemer. These cultic missions are about the mormonic Jesus, who is a created spirit being - like everyone else in mormonworld - who later became one of the 4 mormonic Earth Gods.
Spreading falsehood and trapping people in a cult is never “worthwhile activity”.
“Never mind that Reagan had a lot of Mormons working for him.”
He was a politician. He needed to be elected. Mormons are trained to obey. That doesn’t validate that mormonism is anything but a cult.
True Christianity preaches the cross of Christ.
Mormonism is, at best, a gnostic belief system that uses the name “jesus christ” as a form of trademark violation.
Theologically, it is a polytheistic form of mystical humanism that denies the Eternal Nature of God, and the Truth that He is an Uncreated Being.
Realistically, it is virtually synonymous with a belief system like Scientology with a few spiritual terms overlaid on top like a thin veneer.
If you realize that, then you’ll understand why so few people are ready to accept it.
“Spreading a false Gospel is never good news... it lands people in hell,”
If you call loving the Lord Jesus Christ, my Savior, with all my heart, soul and mind, a “false Gospel” then I am guilty as charged.
Fortunately, you are not my Judge.
Is your Jesus Christ the Biblical One, neither created, nor made, but eternally God...
OR the mormonic created spirit being who later became one of the 4 Mormonic Earth Gods?
"Fortunately, you are not my Judge."
I suspect you would prefer me as a judge, once you understand God's judgement.
God has this to say about every false Gospel, including the mormonic cultic gospel...
"But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God's curse!"
Galatians 1:8
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