Rumor: US Missionaries No Longer Tracting

[CardiacCoug]

I hardly ever went tracting on my mission. People were hardly ever home, but they were always on the street. We'd just walk around Vienna aimlessly talking to people. As we'd walk, one of us would stop someone and start a conversation. The other would walk down the street thirty or forty feet and start another conversation. We'd just leapfrog down the street talking to people. If we got sick of doing that, we'd hop on some kind of public transportation, sit in different places, and talk to whomever had the misfortune opportunity of sitting next to us. That system worked pretty well for us as far as finding contacts went.

That's what we did, too. Never knocked on a door uninvited the entire mission.

And I was in some places where we had "humanitarian service" visas instead of proselytizing visas. We did service during the day and only one appointment per day in the evening, either with members or investigators.

[PaloAltoCougar]

I hardly ever went tracting on my mission. People were hardly ever home, but they were always on the street. We'd just walk around Vienna aimlessly talking to people. As we'd walk, one of us would stop someone and start a conversation. The other would walk down the street thirty or forty feet and start another conversation. We'd just leapfrog down the street talking to people. If we got sick of doing that, we'd hop on some kind of public transportation, sit in different places, and talk to whomever had the misfortune opportunity of sitting next to us. That system worked pretty well for us as far as finding contacts went.

I spent around 3,000 hours knocking on doors in your mission (it was mine, too). It produced two baptisms. No doubt I could/should have found more productive things to do. That said, my happiest time was streetboarding in Stadtpark during summer evenings as a pops orchestra played Strauss waltzes a few yards away.

[grapevine]

People mistook us for Jehovahs witnesses and wished us Merry Christmas. Or bashed with us as Jehovahs witnesses. One lady asked if we were Mormons or Jehovahs Witnesses. My response the true church.

Tracting is not going away soon. In our mission third leading cause of people coming in. Many staying active too. Some places people don't flock to the church. Tracting is here to stay I think.

[byu71]

When I was in HS I went to France with my Uncle. Our Apt. ended up being above the missionaries. On diversion day they would go to a big park and play flag football. A lot of people would gather around to watch and some missionaries would mingle with the crowd. They said they got a lot more interest from that than knocking on doors.

I was in shape and the missionaries weren't. My uncle would throw it long and I would out run them to get it. Aw, those glory days.

[thesaint258]

I spent around 3,000 hours knocking on doors in your mission (it was mine, too). It produced two baptisms. No doubt I could/should have found more productive things to do. That said, my happiest time was streetboarding in Stadtpark during summer evenings as a pops orchestra played Strauss waltzes a few yards away.

I miss Vienna in the summer. Well, I don't miss the BO in the subway, but I miss everything else.

[Paperback Writer]

I support the ide of service/proselyting missions. Throw in some study abroad and that might be a winning formula.

I wonder how that will effect the number of missionaries. I personally knew some guys who didn't serve a mission because of the possibilty of having to spend countless ineffective and potentially humilating hours of tracting days on end.

The concept of serving/working, teaching, and learning rather than knocking on doors or acosting strangers may have more of an appeal. I always wondered why Elders and Sisters were expected to tract daily while older couples didn't have to.

[Maximus]

I support the ide of service/proselyting missions. Throw in some study abroad and that might be a winning formula.

I wonder how that will effect the number of missionaries. I personally knew some guys who didn't serve a mission because of the possibilty of having to spend countless ineffective and potentially humilating hours of tracting days on end.

The concept of serving/working, teaching, and learning rather than knocking on doors or acosting strangers may have more of an appeal. I always wondered why Elders and Sisters were expected to tract daily while older couples didn't have to.

Well if you base missionary work off of the missionary work that happened in the NT and the BofM, wouldnt our current missionary work match pretty closely?

[doctorcoug]

I knocked my last door seven months into my mission. Our mission president didn't let us knock doors. I think we had a progressive mission.

[RobinFinderson]

I support the ide of service/proselyting missions. Throw in some study abroad and that might be a winning formula.

I wonder how that will effect the number of missionaries. I personally knew some guys who didn't serve a mission because of the possibilty of having to spend countless ineffective and potentially humilating hours of tracting days on end.

The concept of serving/working, teaching, and learning rather than knocking on doors or acosting strangers may have more of an appeal. I always wondered why Elders and Sisters were expected to tract daily while older couples didn't have to.

The church would do well to realize this big thing -- service missions are cool. Call it the peace corp initiative, and turn missionary service into needs-based service. Have missionaries go out and teach reading at LDS sponsored schools, have them operate homeless shelters, have them help administer clinics with visiting LDS physicians (who will be participating in the church's own version of Dr's without borders). Turn the church into a service church that does amazing things in the world by providing the members with incredible opportunities to make this world a better place.

Create opportunities for people to serve as many missions as they would like, as young singles, as married couples, as older couples and widows and widowers. Let single people form couples, and date within the context of the mission, and marry during the mission if they want to. People could serve missions whenever they had the time in their life. They could serve after high school, or during a summer break between semesters, or after a tough layoff, or any time one just needed a spiritual boost.

The MTC could be a place to learn a skill. BYU could offer nursing credit for missionaries who completed training for administering health services. People might go learn how to weld steel for cooking stoves that could be donated to poor villages. There would be the traditional language prep as well, and some missions might require completion of several training modules to serve. After all, members would have a lot of say in the choice of mission to serve.

I'm sure that I speak for most CUFfers who served when I say that the Mission, as it existed when I served, was an experience that created many wonderful happy memories, but I think the church would be really smart to reinvent itself in some way like this. The pool of people who are looking for an authoritarian church is shrinking smaller every day. The pool of people who are looking for an amazingly cool church that takes Christ's charge to love God by serving others, that pool is growing.

I think that the quirks of Mormon history would be pretty easy to overlook if the church stopped being so authoritarian and simply focused on service.

[Shaka]

Holy crap! I mostly agree with Finderson.

Missionaries of my vintage were taught in the MTC that tracting was one of the least effective ways to find people to teach. After a six months of beating my head against the wall with plenty of tracting I decided the MTC people were on to something. When I became a senior comp and tracted very little. It's interesting that I had a couple of comps who couldn't feel good about things unless they were tracting. I suppose someone had drilled it into their heads that the only way to please God was to work like a dog and suffer.

I found that teaching during the day was mostly useless as the men of the house were never home and many thought it was bad form to be over at someone's house when the man wasn't there. I ended up splitting the mornings and afternoons up by either street contacting or doing some type of service. Street contacting actually worked pretty well in South Africa. Mostly I'd do it in urban areas preferring the inner city. I found I could set up evening teaching appointments fairly regularly by street contacting.

The rest of the time I spent mostly doing service although I did my share of screwing around. I worked in hospitals, orphanages, schools, community centers, and even coached a high school basketball team. The best thing about doing service is it put us in a good light with the people involved. Once they had a good opinion of us many became curious as to what else we were doing and then we were able to make teaching appointments.

[Uncle Ted]

Oh, so this is what missionaries do with all their extra time given they are no longer tracting...

ElderDrugDealer.jpg

http://channel.nationalgeographic.co...s-of-an-elder/

[Donuthole]

Oh, so this is what missionaries do with all their extra time given they are no longer tracting...

[ATTACH]4539[/ATTACH]

http://channel.nationalgeographic.co...s-of-an-elder/

What makes you think that guy is a missionary?

[Blueintheface]

Did you watch it, Ted? They were referring to the priesthood 'Elder' and not the missionary Elder. The guy is in his 50's.

Also, I don't buy it (not heroin, I buy that all the time). He doesn't seem like the active Mormon type.

[Uncle Ted]

Did you watch it, Ted? They were referring to the priesthood 'Elder' and not the missionary Elder. The guy is in his 50's.

Also, I don't buy it (not heroin, I buy that all the time). He doesn't seem like the active Mormon type.

Oh, I missed the hat. That is an obvious clue that the dude is in his 50's.

So do you buy from a guy in a white shirt and tie carrying the goods around in a BOM?

[Blueintheface]

Oh, I missed the hat. That is an obvious clue that the dude is in his 50's.

So do you buy from a guy in a white shirt and tie carrying the goods around in a BOM?

Or maybe the bags under his eyes and his Blues Brothers attire. Just watch the snippet. It's not that long.