Men on a Mission

O, Missionaries. Funny looking guys in white shirts and cheesy ties sent around the world on bicycles to preach the word of Mormon to the uneducated and the unwilling. I was blessed with dealing with these pairs of unnaturally joyful individuals nearly every weekend morning for as long as I can remember. When I was a tot they simply asked if my mommy or daddy were home and left me enjoy the bliss of Saturday morning cartoons.

Yeah they're everywhere

Once I got a bit older they began to try and “tell me the word of God” before my dad would come to the door telling them that we weren’t interested or my mom would come out with guns blazing telling them to, “get the hell out of here for the last time!” Before long I was aware of what being Mormon entailed and was actually able to have a conversation with them. Blind faith in their religion replaced reason and no matter how severely I cornered them, they continued preaching “the truth of Jesus in Zion” and the debate never went anywhere and ended up wasting both our times. Best saturday EVER

This is the most common scenario that each and every missionary of the LDS church encounters in their time an elder for the Church of Ladder-Day Saints. Two years of door to door preaching, without pay, without relationships, and without most any kind of outside contact or influence. From East L.A. to Amsterdam you can find them getting doors shut in their face and pamphlets thrown back a them as they try to ‘teach’ the unwilling. All the while not converting a single person on there entire mission.

When conversions into the church do occur it is almost always in either rural or third world areas where no set form of education exists, or for individuals who are plagued with poverty and addiction. The latter accept the church because not only are they accepted with open arms but also given a free plane ticket to Salt Lake City, Utah where they are effectively bribed into the church. I agree that this is a great gift that the church offers people who are suffering elsewhere in the world, but only allowing those who convert to the Mormon Church to receive these benefits? Something simply doesn’t sit right with me about that. In the end all that you can hope for when the boys in white come knocking is that they won’t notice you as you scurry away from view, and if you value your weekend time as much as I do than scurry you will.