Comments on: Missions, Numbers, and Lying

By: Allen

Allen — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 02:02:50 +0000

I never lied about my mission stats, but I did lie about the food I ate for 18 months where I traveled the US repairing computers. I would be gone for weeks at a time, and phone calls home couldn’t be put on my expense report. So, I ate cheap hamburgers and charged the company the max I was allowed so I could afford to call my wife once in a while.

By: Viewing Numbers Differently - Page 2 - LDS Mormon Forums

Viewing Numbers Differently - Page 2 - LDS Mormon Forums — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 14:26:40 +0000

[...] interesting Mormon Blog article today about inflating missionary numbers to satisfy Zone Leaders: Zelophehad’s Daughters | Missions, Numbers, and Lying __________________ Jesus said, "The first in importance is, love the Lord God.’ And here [...]

By: Jo

Jo — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 17:43:13 +0000

Re: #69 Joe,
“RE: Women paying tithing in own name.
That tells me that if it is a problem in a ward, it’s due to the bishop, not the church itself.”
The church allows it to be done as they have little oversight. What I discovered, later, was that they were just trying to make my DH look good on paper and encourage him to be more active and seek his temple endowments. How they “encouraged” him to do so was unethical. I was denied my temple recommend renewal based on “tithing” and when I pointed out that I had paid my tithing, but it was being represented under my husband’s name, they shifted their direction to their real objective. They then required that I wait until my husband wishes to attend the temple and then I can attend with him. My DH is a brilliant and engaging man, who was highly insulted by their tactic of using me to strong arm him into more participation.
Women should always be given recognition for paying their own tithing and their temple recommends should always be determined on their own individual factors, not linked to someone else’s behavior. The GA that I contacted refused to provide clarification of any process or procedure regarding tithing or temple recommendations and referred me back to the Stake President, to clarify the rule. It was the Stake President and the Bishop who had decided to:
1. Credit my tithing under my DH’s name.
2. Require that my DH schedule and attend any meetings with stake president, if I requested one.
3. Require that my DH seek his endowments, before allowing me to renew my temple recommend.
4. Require that when that happens, we attend the temple, together.
Leaving the stake president’s office, my DH looked at me and asked, “Why would you want to be in a church that treats you like a second class citizen?”
I thought it was an error, but it is not and stake presidents have little oversight of their decisions, because women are considered second class citizens in the LDS church. My bishop clarified that point to me when he stated, “This is not the legal system, this is not the academic system, this is religion.” His point was, “We can do whatever we want.” This Bishop also justified breaking confidentiality of the situation to members in the ward as “I can tell anyone that I think needs to know.”
As a certified school psychologist and school counselor in the state of Washington, I offered to provide instruction on what confidentiality is for our priesthood.
Let us bring to light our leaders actions and what we, as a church are doing. We need to ask for a system of individual rights for all members, a best practices process and an oversight process when leaders oppress individuals in a church to meet their own ego needs. Our public education system has done this effectively, so our religious sytem can easily accomplish this, if they wish. I have a dream that someday the LDS church will be able to treat all God’s children as equal souls, with equal love and justice for all.

By: GM Choro

GM Choro — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 20:11:46 +0000

I found this link by accident, but I’m sure glad that I did. I also was a missionary back in the early 80’s, served in the Japan Tokyo North mission, just after the Tokyo South Mission “fiasco”. My son also served in Tokyo (South) a couple of years ago, and said they are still paying the price for all the “rushed baptisms” (kindest way to put it). Chasing stats for stats sake is detrimental; no other way to put it.

I had two Mission Presidents while I served, the first was a wonderful man from New Zealand (only 29 when he was called!), and NEVER pressured us for stats; only concerned that we were happy and content in the work! My second MP couldn’t have been more opposite (though in fairness, I’m told by some of my younger jr comps that he “softened up” quite a bit by the end of his 3 years). He was a lawyer from S. CA, and was use to “being in charge” (I’ll let you interpretat that). That was when the “numbers game” really heated up. I NEVER falsified my numbers, and paid the price via advancement stopped (though it’s not about advancement anyway, and thankfully I came to realize that), and some conflicts with ZL’s & the MP himself. Funny, in that country (those who served there know what I’m talking about) where you were lucky to have even a few baptisms your whole mission, I was resonsible for baptising over half a dozen in my 18 months (yes, I was a “shorty” during that time of experimentation before the Lord let us learn and set it straight!), and had the lowest hours worked (as HONESTLY reported) of any companionship. It’s not about numbers, but people; I never lost sight of that, and I believe my success in the mission reflected it (not in NUMBERS of baptisms, but in lives changed for the better!).

However, I do believe that the Lord knows “whom He has called”, and blesses those of us with honest hearts. I know my first MP is now an Area Authority 70, and I never hear about my second MP at all; even no reunions ever “advertised” if you can believe that! Also, those of us in our mission that always reported true numbers are the ones that have served as Bishops, Stake Presidents, and Mission Presidents; those that I remember were the biggest offenders are largely inactive today (most went inactive shortly after their missions!). The Lord does indeed know “whom He has chosen”; we all individually just need to remember whom we represent, and live our lives accordingly regardless of how we appear to other men.

Thanks for letter me share; this issue has “haunted” me for over 25 years now, and this was the first time I was able to share and “exercise” those deamons!

By: BR

BR — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 19:15:43 +0000

I served the first portion of my mission in the United States, and the second portion in South America.

I discovered that my first trainer in the US falsified some numbers (street contacts). However, I never falsified numbers the remainder of my mission. Nore was I aware of other missionaries falsifying reports.

We were taught that numbers only matter insofar as they represent people, so although numbers were reported, the ZLs and APs would talk to us about the people behind our numbers by name. They obviously would take notes, because they would remember people from week to week. I think this helped control the desire to falsify numbers. I never had a leader yell or scold me for numbers. The focus was on things within your control, rather than decisions other people made.

I wonder if my good experience was the exception, based on all the posts…

By: Joe

Joe — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 19:43:51 +0000

RE: Women paying tithing in own name

I was finance clerk the last several years I still attended and we had at least two couples where the wives paid tithing separate from their husbands (for tax purposes.) It wasn’t a problem. That tells me that if it is a problem in a ward, it’s due to the bishop, not the church itself.

By: Joe

Joe — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 19:38:41 +0000

I’m not sure many posters here realize that before the mid-1980s, most missions had absurd reports you had to fill out weekly. The worse I saw were the missionaries where I grew up–they had to account for every 15 minute block of every day (including P-Days) and had to satisfy dozens of numbers else they would get reprimanded. I later heard of even worse reporting systems (I vaguely recall that the most notorious was in France in around 1980/81.)

My mission president (Caracas Venzuela, 1981/82) had minimal reporting–number of baptisms, number of discussions, number of investigators. Oddly enough, the APs and ZLs were the ones who tried to add more data points, but the mission president rejected their suggestions. I soon discovered that nobody cared anyway and stopped turning the dumb things in.

The second mission president came in just when 18-month missions started and introduced the form the church HQ finally created to clear up this mess. I never filled out a single one of those forms.

As for fake baptisms; I don’t know of a single instance in my mission of a totally fake baptism, but it was chock full of sham baptisms. To celebrate my first mission president leaving, we hit 300 baptisms a month for several months. The month after he left, we did 50 (due to the 18-month fiasco and Visa problems, we were losing missionaries at a massive rate, but the drop in baptisms vastly exceeded the drop in missionaries.) In one case, I was so upset about a family my ZL companion pushed for baptism, that I refused to go. Sure enough, the Mom and one or two kids showed up the next Sunday and never again.

The biggest trick was baptizing 16 and 17 year olds. We had one town with hundreds of these, done mainly by one missionary.

Looking back at my mission, the one thing I marvel about is how we managed to burn time. I was in burned over districts where there really was nothing to do. In one case we resorted to scheduling every other visit all the way across town. Earlier, in that same town, my [senior] companion decided we would hitchhike to “save money” and find people–wink wink.

By: CS Eric

CS Eric — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 16:36:17 +0000

I didn’t lie about my numbers, and got called on it a few times. I am normally very shy, and it was a struggle nearly every day for me to get out the door in the morning. Once I finally got out of the house, though, I worked hard. Among the numbers we reported were hours out of the house, and hours tracting, teaching, etc.

My DLs told me once that I was one of the lowest in the mission for out-of-the-house hours, but one of the highest in the mission for hours worked. They wondered how I could do that. Looking back, part of it could be that I didn’t have much imagination to find other things to do. I was too cheap to shop, and too guilt-driven to just waste time otherwise once I got started.

By: Jo

Jo — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 04:57:30 +0000

Re:# 34 Ian
In my situation, I paid $250 per month with @25 in fast offering. It was my check, under my name only account and I initially thought it was just a mistake by the stake. They put it under “head of household:, so it showed up as my husband’s tithing. He doesn’t remember ever contributing tithing as he has some political causes to support and a university so he can gain access to our season football seats. Each year, tithing came in his name only. I asked that they put my tithing under my name and was told by the bishop, That’s not the way we do it here.”
Tithing was a minor issue compared to what followed.
We are not attending and have been requested by visiting teachers to take our name off the church rosters or move. These are people that come to our house after I stated why I do not attend the local stake.
We haven’t yet followed up, but know that asking for no contact is more difficult than it sounds as they push for members to excommunicate themselves. Once one starts extricating themselves from this type of harassment, it feels like a weight off of one’s shoulders. We will try again, in a time and place that is more evolved spiritually and will treat us as equal souls. I believe that we will see this progress and spiritual growth in the church in our lifetime, only if we continually ask for it. Thank you for raising our awareness.

By: jay S

jay S — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 21:56:51 +0000

“I have been impressed more and more lately by our pioneer ancestors, who just wanted to practice the religion that Christ intended and established.”

Traci – they were just as human as the rest of us. And as prone to weakness, vanity, pride and all the other things that affect us today.