So we had just met our district goal of placing some 850 copies of the BoM within a two week period. That was about 12 copies a day for two weeks. It generated a lot of first discussions and increased our prospective convert baptisms too. That like every other gimmick was the ultimate goal for every smaller goal. Ultimately, we wanted permission to travel outside of our assigned area to play put-put (mini-golf). Sounds pathetic, but to mishies it was a big deal in the district that consisted of 4 sets of elders, one set of sisters and a senior couple.

We didn't fudge these numbers. We worked our asses off trying to make something great for an organization (it was 1993) that promised us great things for hard work and sacrificed. [Yeah, I was dumb to believe in their lies. And later, it really hurt and still does to know that I got duped!]

So we were told yes to mini-golf. Then my Zone Leader called up the District Leader at the last minute to cancel it. We were pissed off so we improvised. We went to the DL to watch the original Star Wars trilogy with a pizza party on the P-day.

Would you believe that the asshat ZL crashed our party and confiscated the rented Star Wars VHS tapes?

The DL and ZL got into a major tussle. I had to separate them. The apartment was in disarray. Pizza covered the floor and a crushed coffee table would cause the church to lose its security deposit. :D

At the next Zone Conference [June 1993] we were told to take inventory of our copies of the BoM. We were dutifully charged to go easy on our supplies because the mission wasn't going to get its next shipment until the end of August.

This made no sense to me. I kept a lot of questions to myself. How could they drop the ball on this? What are they doing with the millions that are specifically donated into the BoM fund? If this is the greatest organization on earth; why doesn't it take care of its misssionaries?

It took a lot of guts, but I stood up in conference and asked this aloud, "Should we go back to the people that we placed copies and ask for them back?"

A riot of laughter ensued from everyone except for the Mission President and myself. The laughter was so bad that several couldn't get up from the floor. A few nearly died from laughing so hard. It took the MP several minutes to regain control. I even made him smirk a little. I think he said "No elder. Just make sure the person is well deserving before y'all hand'em out because our supply is extremely limited."

I was going home in July so it didn't bother me too much whether there were copies to hand out or not.

And funny, too. (But you hear a lot of funny stories about the Mormon cult, being that it's all a joke to begin with!)

: )

Agreed, great story!

Maybe you should have started handing out IOUs for BOMs, a little slip of paper you printed up that promised a free BOM or $5 cash if they were out of BOMs, redeemable at the mission home after the date you went home...

That might have been fun :)

If it happened today it someone would have whipped out their cell phone and the video would have gone viral before the D&Z left the building. Definitely material for a Manic Mormon Moments compilation video for YouTube.

On my mission, the church paid to have a flashy dust cover put on all the new Italian Books of Mormon coming from the printer in Frankfurt, Germany. We got boxes and boxes of them, and the mission was so proud. But when we took them out, they all had a glaring error in the Italian right on the nice dust covers that destroyed any "credibility" (such as it is), and rendered them worthless. So we had to rip off and discard all the dust covers, making them all into the normal blue books that they always were.

We also had a lot of BoMs in Italy that said "orgin" instead of "origin." People were like, "You know... It's "origin," right? Is it full of mistakes like this?" Sadly, it was. Because the typesetters were all Germans.