No they can't, because missions are not about mission work. Missions are about breaking the kids away from their friends and families for a couple years, so the cult has them to themselves for indoctrination reasons.
It's also why the missionaries get moved around every few months, can't leave their areas without permission and have restricted communication with people they meet in the mission field. Can't have them having any other social support network, other than the cult.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/11/2014 08:33PM by forbiddencokedrinker.
I absolutely agree with this view of the primary purpose for sending young people as far away as possible. It is a diabolically ingenious system! Everyone--family, younger youth, older members--is co-opted into delivering elders, and increasingly, the sisters to the big lds machine so they can be remade into the proper widgets. As widgets, they are interchangeable, no individuality required or allowed. As a result, any worthy male and any worthy female will have a successful, productive marriage. It's really pretty scary!
bordergirl Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > As a result, any worthy male and any > worthy female will have a successful, productive > marriage.
Successful, productive marriage = lots of kids trained to be faithful Mormons.
It is very similar to military training. Taking people from their homes and sending them to far away and unfamiliar places so that they can't dessert or abandon the post and they are forced to rely on the institution or those similarly brainwashed. Islands in the south Pacific work the best.
Stray Mutt Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I'm still trying to find out when the church > switched from sending married men on missions to > sending out young single men.
Too many married elders came home to polyandrous wives?
That started right away to get the strong, good looking boys with lots of thick hair for the girls to run their fingers through out of the way long enough for the young ladies to give up hope waiting and submit to the badgering of the smelly old fart that has been pestering her with empty promises, insincere flattery and very real personal threats in order to get her to agree to be a plural "wife."
The LDS church teaches that Jesus sent out his disciples "two by two" and that is the pattern they are following.
But I agree with you...why does it have to be for ALL Missionaries to go away?
The premise is to send the missionaries out to the world to convert people, but the real conversion takes place in the person that is isolated. This way they cling to the ideals, rather than the relationships.
All the Mormon relationships I have ever had were never out of real bonding, emotional or devotional.
I'm still talking send them off initially to the MTC to do all the regular prelim crap and brainwashing but then send them back home with a local companion and make their day 9am - 7pm and they still have to report to their local DL's and ZL's as any missionary would but then they get a normal life for the evening part of their day with their family etc.
No more learning languages...let the missionaries in their own countries stay and do that.
What harm could come by loosening the ties that bind and LDS Inc would still be getting their same overall convert numbers i bet...if not more.
Not that i want to give the Morg any ideas but i'd bet they'd even see more of a swell in their Missionary ranks.
With the plan of letting them stay home and serve in a local area, some places would have no door-knocking, brain-washed young men (or women) trying to sell their religion.
The pool from which recruits are successfully drawn is getting smaller and smaller, one day it will be solely SLC or Utah - nowehere else.
If they were home, they wouldnT be reliant on the church to go to the doctor, thus they wouldn"t be reliant, which appears to be the real purpose of the current missionary programs. Any converts are unlikely to last, and are just gravy.