The 99
By Rory on Jun 29, 2007
My mission president drove me nuts. He was dedicated to the work, he would push us incessantly, and he was goal oriented. Granted, I suspect just about every other mission president was also this way. Those are the traits you can expect. Those you can deal with. What drove me nuts was how much tolerance he displayed towards the missionaries.
Never mind the fact that I also benefited from the tolerance, that does not bother me. I’m talking about the egregious tolerance. The tolerance that resulted in not a single missionary being sent home my entire two years.
Trust me, we didn’t have a mission full of angels – we were 19 to 20-something young men and women, with a few rebellious couples thrown into the mix. But despite the missteps, despite the personality issues bordering on mental illness, despite the stupid things that young people – and let’s be honest here, we’re talking about 19 year old boys – do, nobody went home.
Not the companionship whose soft drinks turned hard and ended up in the street, fighting each other until the police arrived. Not the elder who fancied himself as Rambo and bragged that he was willing to throw down with anyone, anytime, and even tried to on occasion. Not the one who liked to enter any and every rodeo in the area so he could hone his bull-riding skills. Not one of them, or any other, was sent home.
It’s one thing to be tolerant, but this tolerance affected everyone else. It was a burden to the missionaries assigned as companions and the district leaders responsible for monitoring and intervening, and it was an embarrassment to the local membership.
I suspect that it was missionaries like these who motivated the “Raising the Bar” standards.
But near the end of my mission my attitude changed, and it changed in an instant. In a meeting with the mission president he let slip a story about his experience while training to be a mission president. Remember, this man was dedicated, he was motivated, he was very serious about this calling – he was an aerospace engineer, for crying out loud – and this guy was into the details.
At one point during the training one of the apostles told him that they expected him to deliver X number of converts during his service. Anything over and above that number was icing on the cake. He wrote the number down. It became his goal.
A short time later he realized what that number actually represented. It was the average number of missionaries that a mission president could expect to have in his mission over the course of his three-year calling. That number was me. It was us. Any converts we brought into the fold was bonus.
As he related this story my frustration turned into a realization, a realization that continues to come into ever sharper relief as I get older and see these missionaries get younger every year.
I’ve seen what happens when a young man is sent home early. I have seen the struggles to cope, the public shame. I look back on those elders that caused me, and others, so much frustration. Yes, they were frustrating, but they – we – were also in a place for growth, where we could be reached, where we could finish our commitment and return home with a head held high. Sending some home early would have been convenient, but it would also have raised the likelihood of losing them forever.
As I approach two decades since my service, and as I have children of my own, my respect and admiration for my mission president continues to grow. I regret my feelings of frustration, but I was too young to recognize the wisdom, the patience, and the foresight that he displayed.
We all want to matter. We want to be the focus. It isn’t easy to be inconvenienced, to have to tolerate the “other”, but sometimes our shepherd’s focus must be directed elsewhere. Sometimes we are simply part of the ninety-nine.
I really enjoyed your thoughtful comments.
I came to the website today hoping to get a little buzz of righteous indignation as I read the words of people who foolishly believe that they had outsmarted the church and outsmarted the bretheren. Instead, I feel genuinely uplifted.
My mission president wielded a fierce control over all of us. But rather than fear and dogmatic indoctrination, which would have been somewhat effective — he motivated us with trust and charity, which was stunningly effective. Any one of us would rather get sent home than to hear him say, “I am disappointed in you.” He never ever said that, but if he had, honestly, it would have felt like he was speaking for God. I have my own testimony of the truth, but just knowing that he knows makes me all that much stronger. I am sorry that not everyone has this same experience with their President.
With regard to discipline: different leaders seem to have such different viewpoints. Though not identical to the mission issue, some stake presidents are trigger happy excommunicators, and others require the outer darkness qualifications to apply. Rumor has it that as stake president Joseph B. Wirthlin never excommunicated anyone.
Anyway, thanks for your comments. My daily buzz of righteous indignation will have to come some other way. Tal Bachman? Where are you?
Comment # 1 by anon | Jun 29, 2007 | Reply
Thanks for that. You’ve prompted me to reminisce a bit about my mission. My mission president was a good person, dedicated to making the experience an enlightening one for the missionaries as well as the people in mission. He didn’t emphasize numbers much; he let P-Day be a reasonable thing (a movie once in a while was OK), and rules weren’t always black & white.
I wouldn’t really want to repeat my mission experience, nor would I necessarily go again if I had the chance to turn back time. But many of the positives I experienced were because the mission president treated us humanely rather than militantly.
Comment # 2 by Mike | Jun 29, 2007 | Reply
As someone who reads here — I study LDS history but am not a member — and I miss that inside track — what was so bad about your missions? Being 19(ish) and away form home? Knowing you were just a pain when you called at people’s door? The fear of failure?
Just curious
Comment # 3 by Catherine | Jul 1, 2007 | Reply
I have very mixed feelings about this idea. On one hand, I think the Lord expects us to watch over and care for each other, call each other to repentance, teach each other the Gospel, etc. We will be accountable to Him for every soul we damage as well as every soul we lift. However, this idea that we have to “save” others is very harmful, both in missionary work and in our lives, and I have a hard time treading the line. I’m sure there were ineffective (the code word for “bad” in my mission) missionaries in your mission, Rory, who were spared being “lost forever” by being allowed to continue their bad behavior, but I bet there were also some who were ruined by the bad examples of those same missionaries. An example: one of my friends had a companion who had a stack of pornographic magazines in his closet. They would stay in most days while the comp went in the bathroom with his stash, coming out only for p-day basketball and dinner appointments. When told, his mission president responded that my friend should be more diligent in getting his comp out the door. My friend had been out for about fhree months, and this was only his second companion. After six weeks of this, getting no relief from the mission president, the AP’s, or the other missionaries in the Zone, who just wanted to ignore the companion, my friend packed his suitcase and walked out of his apartment. Shortly thereafter, he asked to have his name removed from the Church records. That’s a pretty extreme example, and my friend had some other things going on that contributed to his disaffection, but his mission experience was the final straw. I know several others who did not leave the Church, but were traumatized by the bad actions of companions and other missionaries, not to mention the members and investigators who were affected variously by their bad examples. I’m sure everyone can relate to this. The same thing happens with regular members of the Church.
The thing that bothers me about your mission president, Rory, is that he was “expected to deliver a certain number of converts” - meaning that he was placed in a position of responsibility not just for their actions, but for their salvation. He was placed in a position where he felt that if he sent someone home, even for egregiously bad behavior, he would somehow be condemning that person to the telestial kingdom or whatever. I think we have a big problem in the Church with people feeling like failures if someone around them - companions, spouses, missionaries, children or whoever - does not behave the way they are supposed to or have been taught to. My children are still too young to rebel much, but I still feel the anxiety of “what if they do this or that”? I feel a twinge of guilt when I go to church on Sunday and see that the VT sister who promised she would be there isn’t. I think of my friends and siblings who made terrible decisions about their lives and wonder if I could have said some magic thing that would have made them not do those things. It’s taken me a very long time to realize that I can’t be Jesus for the people in my life, and I still struggle with that realization. I’ve tried to get that point across in various Sunday School and Relief Society lessons I’ve taught, but it’s lost in the stronger cultural message that we often get, often from priesthood and other Church authorities - like your mission president in his training - that we can and must get people to choose the right somehow, and if we don’t, we’ve both disappointed God and failed in our mission here on Earth.
Comment # 4 by Villate | Jul 2, 2007 | Reply
Anon and Mike - Thanks for the comments. I’m glad that I could put off anon’s righteous indignation for at least a few days
I’m sure we’ll deliver something for you soon.
Catherine, you pose a difficult question. I wouldn’t say my mission was “bad”, but rather complex. It can be intense and, at other times, boring. Unfamiliar places, unfamiliar people, rigorous schedule, and a number of other factors make for a strong growing experience. I share Mike’s sentiment in that I wouldn’t want to repeat my experience. But, that said, I am glad that I did it.
Vilate, I glossed over a bit in my post, and in fact my mission president did send an elder home in his third year and after I was gone. The circumstances were appropriate.
As for your comment that we cannot be Christ, you are correct. In this case, though, the communication from the apostle was received by the mission president in what I believe was the spirit in which it was offered: You are responsible for the welfare of the missionaries in your charge, do not let other factors get in the way of that (ie., numbers, ambition, pride). The mission president, in this sense, did a great job. He acted to help the missionaries, and he also understood that we were young and bound to make mistakes. I celebrate his patience, his tolerance, and his understanding.
You hit upon an element of responsibility that can be dangerous when you talk about the guilt associated with another’s behavior. I’m not sure how to communicate this effectively, but there is a difference between feeling responsible for the welfare of others and feeling responsible _for_ others. One allows for space and tolerance while patiently influencing the other, encouraging them to reach higher. The other places a burden on us that is unhealthy, one that pushes us to try to control them.
Comment # 5 by Rory | Jul 2, 2007 | Reply
Catherine -
As I get older and further from my mission, I realize more and more how very strange the whole concept and experience of LDS missionary service is. I had a very positive mission experience overall, mainly I think because I was a little older than average (24) and had finished college, lived on my own for several years, and had already had a bit of experience out in the world. If I could go back in time, I would do it again in a second, but it is very weird. To expand a some on what Rory said, it’s fair to say that missionaries live in a sort of limbo. They and/or their families and congregations give a certain amount of money toward their living expenses during their time in the mission field, but with the exception of a small amount put into an account each month for food and other personal necessities (the amount I received in upstate New York in 1994 was about $200), all other expenses are taken care of through the mission office. They live with a companion whom they did not choose (in most cases) in a one-room apartment or studio, often in a bad part of town, and are not supposed to be out of eyeshot of each other except maybe to take a shower or go to the bathroom. I can tell you from experience that even when you get along well with your companion, that required proximity can be very stressful. In public, people alternately mock or despise them and beg them for spiritual help. They hear the most intimate details of people’s lives, often including experiences such as abuse, violence, or other heartache that neither they nor anyone close to them has had any reason to even think about, much less deal with. They are beloved and seen as an annoyance and treated as saviors and abominations. People may yell at them, curse them, tell them all sorts of ridiculous things about their beliefs, or just be rude. Many of them are abruptly confronted by ethnic, racial, cultural and language differences that they have never had to deal with. At church, they are not “regular” members, and even though they attend Sunday meetings and sometimes other meetings like Institute or Church activities, they are separate. Socially, they deny themselves things associated with “the world” (like popular music, movies, TV, and newspapers, though there is some leeway in this depending on the mission president) and the normal things that young adults do, like working at a job, dating, spending time with friends, etc. They are often considered freaks by people their own age who see them at work. In the space of a few hours, they can have a tremendous spiritual experience with someone they may or may not ever see again, hear about the tragedy of someone’s worst life situation, and be spit on and called devils. There’s usually a pretty tight bond between missionaries in a district or zone (the geographical sections of a mission), but if there are interpersonal problems or if one missionary has to go home unexpectedly for some reason, it can tear the group apart. And all that doesn’t even begin to compare with the feelings associated with teaching people the Gospel and hoping and praying that they will accept it and make the changes in their lives that they need to in order to become closer to Jesus, not to mention trying to work out your own feelings about the Gospel and its part in your life. If you want a fairly realistic representation of some of the good and bad things that can happen on a mission, you should check out Richard Dutcher’s “God’s Army.” He exercises a bit of creative license with some of the plot points, but I was surprised when I first saw it how closely the portrayal hewed to some of the things I saw and experienced as a missionary.
Comment # 6 by Villate | Jul 2, 2007 | Reply
Thanks for the great post, Rory! I’m enjoying the discussion very much.
I’m posting links to four past Sunstone articles in response to Catherine’s query about mission life. They are part of a cluster of articles we ran in our May 2003 issue about the “stigma” that exists in Mormon culture for missionaries who return early. Within the various discussions, one can find out quite a bit about mission life, especially its stresses. As a group, these articles lean towards trying to broaden and deepen the understanding of Latter-day Saints concerning missionaries with social phobias or emotional issues who legitimately should not serve, and who should be sent home with honor rather than suspicion.
In some ways, then, these articles might be seen as complicating Rory’s mission president’s focus on keeping missionaries in the field at almost any cost. But I don’t think that’s really the case as phobias, bi-polar disorders, and other stress-amplified issues have only begun to be understood and forefronted in Church discussions in the past six or seven years, and Rory served WAY before that, old man that he is. The Church’s initiatives to “raise the bar” in terms of more careful pre-screening of potential missionaries is fed, in part, by this better understanding. And I do think there is beginning to be a shift in general understanding that proselytizing missions may not be right for every young man or woman of mission age. I very much want to Rory’s president’s commitment to the young people in his charge versus any and all other goals, and I’m hopeful that this sense of priorities is being better communicated and heard at all levels of Church leadership and membership.
The four Sunstone articles are:
Resolving Problems for Missionaries Who Return Early, by Levi Peterson
Matters of the Heart: Reaching Out to One of the Few Remaining Mormon Minorities, by Thom Duncan
New Hope for Early Released “Fishers of Men,” by Louis Moench
“If Ye Have Desires to Serve God . . .” by Richard Ferre
Thanks to all who are posting in this thread. Great insights all.
Best,
Dan Wotherspoon
Editor, Sunstone
Comment # 7 by Dan | Jul 2, 2007 | Reply
Thanks Villate and Rory,
I have seen “God’s Army” and enjoyed it — my question arose initially in Spain a number of years ago — I was there as a student (enjoying Spain) and while waiting for the local bus one day a group of missionaries were describing their horrible expereinces so far — they had been mugged (at least twice), missed home, fought with people, had stones thrown at them and that seemed like a good day!
I wanted to know why they didn’t just go home and they replied not a option — I understand the complexities of that statement much more now! —
It does seen to toughen people up! And is the basis I have no doubt for good stories some nights!
Comment # 8 by Catherine | Jul 2, 2007 | Reply
Catherine -
Before they leave for their missions, missionaries receive a special blessing called a setting apart. My experience with this blessing, and the impression I still have of it 13 years later, is that it gave me a sort of emotional and spiritual shield from a lot of the difficulties and stresses that I encountered on my mission. Some people refer to it as a mantle. I still got upset sometimes at the ridiculous things that happened and that people said, but I think things rolled off me considerably easier than they otherwise might have. I went home to my singles ward Bishop’s house (my family lived in another state and I had left from my singles ward) and waited for several hours in his kitchen, visiting with friends and talking to my family members on the phone and telling them about the crazy and happy things that had happened and sharing stories with other returned missionaries. A lot of those stories started out, “Oh I totally know what you mean! In MY mission…” When my Stake President came over at 7:30 that evening and officially released me from my calling as a missionary, I took off my nametag and literally felt that mantle depart. It was at that point that I started to really process what had been happening to me for the last 18 months and what I had been doing. Other returned missionaries have told me that they had similar experiences. I’ve since gone out to teaching appointments and even door-to-door with sister missionaries in the various wards that I’ve lived in, and I noticed that things that I handled with ease and even laughed about really bothered me when I didn’t have that shield. It’s given me a healthy respect for Jehovah’s Witnesses, who deal with those stresses for their whole lives, albeit in a less concentrated timespan.
Comment # 9 by Villate | Jul 2, 2007 | Reply
Rory -
In regard to the last two paragraphs of your most recent post, I agree with you. I imagine you are right about your mission president seeing through the commandment to deliver souls to what was probably meant, though I wonder at what cost that delivery came. You would know better, since you were there, and I can only guess. You are definitely right that the emphasis should be on caring for people rather than numbers, and it seems from your description like your mission president caught that. I think the Church leadership has been trying for some time to get that across, but their simultaneous insistence on counting and percentagizing and their apparent refusal to “clear out the deadwood” make it hard to see, especially when there is no explanation forthcoming. That’s my beef with the idea - that it is expressed in such a cause-and-effect way, many times with little clarification. Interpretation of “delivering X number of converts” is thus left to local units and individuals, and the results are inconsistent at best.
As for the last paragraph - yes, there is a difference between responsibility for others’ welfare and responsibility for them. I like how you put that. The problem is, it takes a lot of maturity and experience to understand the difference, and a lot of people never do because the messages they hear make them think that they are responsible for others. A lot of guilt and heartache result on all sides, and it seems that somehow the leadership of the Church should be talking more about this than making one-off statements about agency buried in paragraphs of lecturing on responsibility. I guess this is a sensitive topic for me because I have only recently come to a beginning of understanding this difference, and I still wrestle with the pride, guilt, and recognition of my failings that it brings. At the same time, it’s freeing to realize that I DON’T have to save others, I just have to try to help them in whatever way I can and hope that the Holy Ghost will help me know when and what to say and when to shut up and back off.
Comment # 10 by Villate | Jul 2, 2007 | Reply
I’ve greatly enjoyed some of the comments here, and it has caused me to reflect upon my own mission experiences as well. I served in Venezuela from 1994-96, at a time when our mission was baptizing 75-100 members per month, in contrast to some of the other South American missions that were baptizing more than 2000 members per month. Elder Ayala, then of the 2nd Quorum of the Seventy, came to a mission conference and called us to repentance, telling is that it was our lack of faith that was responsible for our lack of baptisms, and that Elder Scott had refused to come to Venezuela until the missionaries there had repented. An elder I had trained was very shaken up by this and wrote home about it, which prompted a call to Elder Scott’s office, which in turn promtped a call from Elder Scott to my mission president, assuring him that the reasons for his not visiting were because of a busy schedule (and, I believe, the poor health of his wife at the time), and that he and the Brethren loved us all, and knew that it simply wasn’t a time of harvest in Venezuela at the time. I learned some valuable lessons in how the Church is true, though not all the members always are from that experience.
I took great comfort in Elder Scott’s words, as I often pondered why baptisms were not more forthcoming. I focused my own efforts on helping others to find the truth if they wanted to, that is to say, pointing them in the right direction, and being available to answer questions when needed. I didn’t baptize hundreds while in the mission field, but there are now bishops and relief society presidents and sealed families in whose conversions I was privileged to take part.
I agree that the most potential converts in any mission are the missionaries themselves. Increasing our knowledge of the scriptures and helping to convert others was wonderful, but the real lessons that came involved the joy of service, the importance of placing the needs of others first, and learning to forgive and uplift others. Those are lessons that I believe come primarily from doing the work, rather than reading about it, and I will be forever grateful for it.
Comment # 11 by Steve | Aug 7, 2007 | Reply