That’s the first I ever heard of people not truly believing what they were testifying to. Members/missionaries in my ward told me that if you don’t have a testimony, you can get one by bearing one. But that would mean you would be lying on the Sabbath, in sacrament meeting, influencing others who wouldn’t know you were lying. Another example of extreme cognitive dissonance in the Mormon church. I know for a fact that the fake testimonies influenced investigators, new converts, missionaries and other members. If you were having problems in the church, you’d look around at all the people with ‘strong testimonies’ and wonder what in the heck was wrong with you because you didn’t know what they knew or feel what they felt. New members have no way of knowing that people are lying, as that is just not required or done in non-Mormon churches, regarding bearing false witness on command. Nightingale, board post, ‘Fake It Till You Make It’
You got some people that just thrive wherever you put them; and then you got some that just do alright, and some you have to just push along. And then you got some people that just don’t really perform in anything – they’re culls. Well, you don’t want these people in charge of the Young Men or the Young Women, or the Relief Society or the Elder’s Quorum. So what do you do with them? You have to put them somewhere, so ‘the culls’ end up getting called as stake missionaries. It happened everytime. There was nowhere else to put them. But they didn’t really do anything there either, so we just eliminated the whole program. Tal Bachman, board post, ‘True Exmo Would-Be Rockstar Stories: A General Authority Gleefully Humiliates Sincere Mormons in Front of All Their Friends, Or ... A Big Regret Date’
... we get an email from our missionary son in North Carolina. He informs us that his personal budget for food and essentials is being cut by the church ... His budget of $145 is being cut to $130 permanently. A Musing Grace, board post, ‘Missionary Budget Cuts ... Paper or Food?’
Gun pulled on me while tracting door to door
Chased down the street by a mad man with a knife
Lost 50 pounds because of a parasite
Given the wrong medicine for the parasite by the Mission President’s wife
Ran alongside a fast moving train and jumped inside as per trainer’s example and instructions
Ate semi-raw meat as per trainer’s instructions
Walked through a violence-ridden public housing unit as part of companionship splits with audible gunshots in the background
Man shot dead below our apartment
Promising investigator shot dead inside his home
Hurried away from approaching mob burning tires and looting. Stuck, board post 8th December 2009, ‘What Were Your Most Dangerous Missionary Experiences? Here Are Some of Mine’
Meet the Mormons: young missionaries whose job is to convert us to their particular brand of Christianity. Meet the Mormons, Channel 4 2014
There is also much they like to keep secret and people find odd: Mormons perform baptisms for dead people, and wear special underwear. ibid.
In Britain there are about 200,000 Mormons. ibid.
£29 a week to cover food and haircuts. ibid.
A sexually-repressed classic Utahn who despised proselyting with every fiber of his being. He knew I was not on board for enjoying our missions, so he slept all day and went out to do who knows what at night. He was extremely depressed our whole time together, and my determination to be a good missionary added to it. When I told my mission president that I had caught him smoking and listening to heavy metal music, my mission president chose to believe my companion’s facade instead, which was death to my reputation in the mission office. kimball, board post February 2013, ‘Missionary Companions’
He prescribed the anti-psychotic Thorazine because I was attracted to guys. Six months later I was on a Mormon mission. Elder, Youtube 2015
Pescara, Italy 1974: He was very brooding and he was a communist. ibid.
He leaned over and kissed me. ibid.
When the transfer came, My God the drama! ibid.
He said, ‘Stay, live here with me.’ ibid.
My brother-in-law just returned from a Mormon mission in Singapore, Indonesia, and some other countries. The reason they have several countries is because the countries in question do not allow clergy visas (like they had for Japan, and other foreign countries). The reason for this is because local laws do not allow missionaries to proselytize.
Now, the church leaders give each missionary a cover story to get into the country ‘I am visiting friends’.
Each missionary is then responsible to get through customs. If a missionary is caught, they are deported from the country, and banned from entering for at least one year.
I asked how he was able to justify lying like this, and he said that it wasn’t lying, as he actually did have friends in the country. Lothar, board post, ‘Passport and Immigration Fraud and the Missionary Fund’
While on a mission in Argentina during the 1980s I saw poverty for the first time in my life ...
We were told that the Mormon church feared conversions among the very poor because the converts would tax the LDS financial ability to feed them. (However, I was unaware of any church care of the poor while in Argentina.)
During a mission conference, a group of missionaries asked our mission president why the LDS church wasn’t doing more to alleviate the needs of the poor within the country. He responded that teaching people the gospel of Jesus Christ was the answer for helping the poor out from underneath their oppressive burdens. In other words, the church was spending NO money to help the poor in Argentina. The LDS church provided no schools, no food, no health care, no anything for the poor – the poor being seen as too much a burden to carry.
Several months later, I was at a district conference or stake conference when a General Authority came to visit. He stated that the Argentine nation (which was suffering the effects of hyper-inflation) would only blessed economically when the Argentine Mormons paid a full tithing and generous fast offering! Odell Campbell, board post 1st January 2009, ‘Mormon Worldwide Charity’
Nothing is more persuasive than genuine love and caring. We will not really be successful as missionaries nor as ministers of the Gospel in general until we learn to truly love people and love the Work of the Lord. And, when we truly love, we are vulnerable, vulnerable to rejection and having our feelings hurt – they go together. It takes courage and dedication to something higher than self to be willing to chance hurt feelings or embarrassment so that someone else may be blessed. There will be no dialogue more persuasive to someone than a genuine, loving, caring pleading with them to allow you to teach them more of the Gospel. Missionary President’s leaflet ‘How Badly Do You Want to Teach a Second Discussion?’