The Furniture of The Book of Mormon

[_bcuzbcuz]

Thanks for typing that up, bcuzbcuz. I appreciate it. I must say, you're a very fast reader!

I would imagine that your second wife is Swedish, too?

It wasn’t a difficult read because so much of the book reminded me of my experiences. The similarities of the attitudes from the MP on down was chillingly familiar. Success was defined by numbers, and like a competition in making up stuff, the numbers ballooned into fantasy. Numbers of doors knocked, numbers of discussions taught, numbers of BMs placed, which all collapsed around numbers of actual conversions/baptisms; in a country that simply isn’t interested in an American religion.

Religion is never discussed in our home now, except in ridicule. My wife and I speak only Swedish together although she is as much a Swede as I am. I can’t speak her native tongue and she can’t speak mine. But we both have Swedish passports, so yes, she is Swedish. Thank you for asking.

Are there any stats kept as to how many RMs leave the church? Not just for Sweden, but worldwide? When I was a TBM I believed that my mission would be the best two (2 ½) years of my life. BS. It doesn’t even make the top ten.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

bcuzbcuz,

Does Swedish still feel like a non-native language with you? Do you ever struggle with it or are you totally immersed to the point of not even thinking about it anymore when you read, write, and speak it?

- Doc

[_SuperDell]

In our mission, you had to report goals and results (in numbers) on a grid drawn on a chalkboard in front of zone meeting every week. So, if you had bad numbers (and we, like the OP, had "suggested" minimums), the entire zone would know it, and you were guaranteed a dressing-down from the ZLs the second you put the chalk down.

One month I was with a companion who was going home at the end of the month, so I couldn't get him out of the house to do missionary work. It was frustrating, but then I got sick with worms, amoebas, and strep throat, so I was pretty much bedridden for almost 2 weeks. My comp was fine with that, so on our way to zone meeting every week, he'd say, "Hmmmm. Let's see. What sounds like a good number of mini-charlas (door approaches)?" He would just make up the numbers. I was appalled, so I would write the real numbers down on my weekly letter to the president. I gathered that a lot of missionaries made up numbers like that.

When I was district leader, I worked really hard (as I did the whole mission with the exception of that month with the burned-out companion). One elder in our district was determined to outdo our numbers each week. So, if we worked 85 hours, he'd report 96 the next week. If we gave 60 door approaches, he'd report 70 the next week. One week, we stayed in because my companion had paratyphoid, so we reported low numbers but two baptisms. We didn't mention why we had the low numbers, but I commented that it was amazing we had two baptisms without doing much mission work. The next week, the elder reported zeros for all his reportable numbers and 3 baptisms. He'd outdone us again!

I wrote on my blog about the numbers game in our mission. Still makes me shake my head in dismay.

Too bad you didn't put down 160 hours worked in a week and see if the idiot put down 175 Old Testament 200. Only 168 hours total in a week.

Maybe something outrageous like this would have had more effect on reality?

[_bcuzbcuz]

bcuzbcuz,

Does Swedish still feel like a non-native language with you? Do you ever struggle with it or are you totally immersed to the point of not even thinking about it anymore when you read, write, and speak it?

- Doc

After I finished my mission I kept in touch with people there (most primarily the woman I would eventually marry) and wrote those letters only in Swedish. I returned to Sweden 2 years after my mission and worked at jobs that required proficiency in Swedish. My kids grew up in Sweden and we only spoke Swedish with them. Later on we had ”English only” days but that was never more than once a week. We paid the price for that when we moved to Canada. My kids English was terrible. Some of them still struggle with English spelling.

The question about ”non-native” feel to the language is interesting. Swedes take an inordinate pride in being able to identify accents, especially people who speak with a regional dialect. I teach secondary school (high school) in Swedish but some people can still hear my slight accent, especially with the rolled ”r”s. My own children tease me about my pronunciation of the number 14, which I always change to 13 whenever it comes up in a conversation. Therefore, 7 plus 7 is 13. 7 times 2? you guessed it.

I do remember, however, the exact moment I felt I gained total fluency
in Swedish. I woke up one moring having had a dream wherein my non-Swedish speaking mother had talked to me in the dream, in Swedish. I was jubilant.

Did you go on a foreign language mission?

[_Maksutov]

Can anyone expand on the referenced "Northern rebellion"?

[_bcuzbcuz]

Can anyone expand on the referenced "Northern rebellion"?

I wish I could fill in the details and I was there. The Norrland Rebellion happened during my mission time and was based around the extreme saleman pressure techniques forced on swedish missionaries. The MP required that each missionary pair sell 10 Book of Mormon’s every week. The books were shipped from the mission office every week, COD. The package was addressed to the missionaries and retrievable from the local post office upon payment for the product plus shipping ch arges. Each book cost 1 American dollar (5 Swedish crowns), 10 $ per package. I don’t remember the shipping charges. Each shipmemt of books represented 1/10th of our monthly living allowance, money I had saved before my mission.

As far as I know, no missionaries refused the shipment. The letters that made the MP weekly letter contained only stories of amazing sales and requests by these super salemen for even greater numbers of shipments. My companion and I couldn’t sell a single book. They just piled up in our apartment.

I would love to have more details about the Norrland Rebellion, because it represents that actions by a group of missionaries who dared to say no to the MP. I can only imagine the s*** storm these elders must have brought down on themselves for daring to call the MP’s program for what it really was, an unashamed exploitation of young men. We were devoted to the cause of proselyting but it was turned into a sales push like selling used cars to unsuspecting victims. Rumours were that a good number of missionaries were sent home with dishonourable discharges . . . for not selling books.