Christmas cookies mailed<\/a> here to your loved ones!<\/p>\nUp until April 2013, these missionaries kept in touch with friends via handwritten letters. Today they have access to email on a church-operated server for a limited time once a week. The lifestyle is constructed to minimize worldly distractions, and focus missionaries on the task of preaching their gospel. Which is why it was a pretty big deal that Brandon Gonzales was on Facebook.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t know it at the time, but Gonzales, who grew up in West Valley, Utah, and now studies accounting in Salt Lake City, was serving in one of several largely secretive test missions, started by the church in 2010 to evaluate the risks and benefits of introducing social media to the mission field. While the church won\u2019t release any data about these test missions, there are at least 30 test missions worldwide, some which have run for two or three years\u2014since 2010\u2014and others are just starting. Some, like Gonzales\u2019s in Philadelphia, were particularly successful with Facebook. At a test mission in West Billings, Montana, each missionary kept a blog to serve as a public face for potential converts. A mission in Moscow distributed iPod Touches to the missionaries, complete with pre-downloaded dictionaries and Russian-language scripture.<\/p>\n
The new technology highlights what has always been a dual purpose of the mission: to gain converts and to confirm young Mormons in their faith. As a current missionary, L., explained to me, the general wisdom is that \u201cyou have to convert yourself before you can convert others.\u201d (Current missionaries asked to not be identified, as they were not speaking in their capacity as missionaries). By preaching every day for two years, missionaries also testify to themselves. For many, the isolation that came with disavowing social media was critical to their spiritual growth. This was an experience few teenagers in America could imagine\u2014two years without Facebook.<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
The Mormon Church has always been tech-savvy. America\u2019s first transcontinental telegraph line could not have been built without Mormon volunteers, motivated by the enthusiasm of Brigham Young for new communication technology. The television was invented by a Mormon. In the age of the Internet, the church re-adopted the term Mormon for their outreach websites\u2014despite it being an outsider label\u2014in recognition that people don\u2019t Google \u201cChurch of Jesus Christ and Latter-Day Saints.\u201d In 2011, they launched the \u201cI am a Mormon\u201d campaign, further leaning in to the power of the Internet. (The Church has not shied away from leveraging other secular developments: When the Book of Mormon musical swept Broadway, the church took out ads in the playbill, inviting theatergoers to read the real Book of Mormon. Missionaries stood outside theaters, asking people if now they wanted to meet a real Mormon missionary.)<\/p>\n
But the Internet allowance still shocked the missionaries. \u201cI mean, everything up until that point was about avoiding any contact with the outside world,\u201d said Brendan Elwood, who in 2010 became one of the first four missionaries at the Philadelphia test mission to use social media. He is now a strategy consultant at Adobe Offices in Orem, Utah. \u201cBut it was exciting. The mission president called four of us into his office and said, \u2018Our mission has been chosen as one of the pilot missions for this program. I\u2019d like you four to try it out before we get the wheels rolling.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Gonzales thought the whole thing was a joke. \u201cI was just kind of shocked,\u201d he said. \u201cI just didn\u2019t see it coming, and could see it being a prank very easily,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Despite the suits and ties, missionaries are still 19-year-old boys away from home, and pranks, like filling a friend\u2019s bathtub with Jell-O or faking a proposal from a girlfriend, are not uncommon. But this was no prank. Gonzales, six months into his service, was given the choice of making a new Facebook page or using his old one. He stuck to his original page, deleted some pictures, and put up a status saying his Facebook use was strictly for missionary business. When asked about further rules, Gonzales said the missionaries were told only to \u201cbe smart\u201d and that his companion had to always be able to see his screen.<\/p>\n
Missionaries serve in pairs that must remain together at all times. \u201cCompanions,\u201d as each member of a pair is known, can change every six weeks. Companions sleep in the same room, attend the same events, even accompany one another on walks around the block. They are same-gender and, like all missionaries, refer to one another as \u201cSister\u201d or \u201cElder,\u201d respectively. One of the oldest features of organized Mormon mission work, companionship protects against \u201cspiritual and physical danger,\u201d according to the mission handbook, and is the bedrock of missionary self-policing. The handbook specifically instructs against seeking alone time by waking up or going to bed without one\u2019s companion. Even missionaries allowed limited email access once a week must use their computer in the sight of their companion.<\/p>\n
There are three main concerns voiced against Internet use: wasting time online, pornography access, and safety. On all of these fronts, Gonzales trusts that most missionaries will make wise decisions about their limits. This may mean choosing, as several missionaries in his mission did, to not go online. But such a decision is rare. Many feel that the Internet is no more a temptation than the world itself. When asked if being online ever exposed him to unholy content, Gonzales laughed. \u201cI live in Philadelphia. You can\u2019t delete what\u2019s on the street.\u201d<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
On June 23, 2013, Elder L. Tom Perry, 91, a member of the Twelve Apostles, the ruling council of the church, announced in a public web broadcast that all Mormon missionaries would begin phasing in social media and Internet use in the coming year. The reactions to Elder Perry\u2019s announcement were overwhelmingly positive, if startled. While the occasional article about a specific test mission had been published in Deseret News, a Mormon-operated newspaper, very few people were aware that social media was being tested and considered. \u201cThis change is huge,\u201d said Lon Nally, President of the Missionary Training Center (MTC) in Provo, Utah, as we went on a tour together of the building. \u201cTraditionally they\u2019re knocking on doors, and now with these hand-held devices the methods of work will change.\u201d That was seen as a good thing. True to its optimistic reputation, most Mormons I met with had only faith in the upcoming generation.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn every regard except for one they\u2019re better missionaries [than we were],\u201d said Erlend Peterson, a vice president at Brigham Young University who served his mission in New York the early \u201860s. Older Mormons are among the Internet\u2019s strongest supporters. According to Peterson, the one problem with today\u2019s missionaries is their need for immediate gratification. \u201cBecause they didn\u2019t come from agrarian societies,\u201d he said, \u201cthey don\u2019t have patience. We knew what it meant to sow in the spring and harvest in the fall.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sheldon Child, a former mission president, area president, and emeritus member of the First Quorum of the Seventy\u2014one of the top leadership positions in the Church\u2014agreed that missionaries today are \u201cbetter prepared to go into the mission field than 20 years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
Elder Gary and Sister Kay Batchelor, a senior missionary couple currently serving their third volunteer mission (including 19 months on the Guam island of Chuuk in Micronesia where they taught morning seminary in Chuukese), were one of the most traditional couples I spoke with. During our interview, Sister Batchelor stayed mostly silent, deferring to her husband. Elder Batchelor called me \u201cyoung lady,\u201d and wanted to discuss my future marriage prospects. At the close of our interview, he told me that he could see I was a believer at heart, and strongly recommended I pray for revelation, on my knees. As a mission president in Little Rock, Arkansas, he made his missionaries handwrite and mail him weekly letters through 2008, even though most missions had used email since at least 2005. He was unfamiliar with texting, and he was dismayed by how many missionaries today arrive in the field \u201caddicted to their cell phones.\u201d<\/p>\n
Naturally, I expected him to think the worst of Facebook. But he too was excited to reduce time knocking on strangers\u2019 doors. As a former mission president, he knows how discouraging it can be for missionaries to face constant rejection at doors. He wants the missionaries teaching, not walking streets, and if Facebook can do that, then for Elder Batchelor, \u201cit is a real bless\u201d\u2014that was his colloquial term. \u201cNobody opens their door anymore today,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
I saw very quickly how much missionaries hate knocking on unknown doors. Known as \u201ctracting,\u201d the door-knocking has long been the backbone of mission work since the start of the 20th century. Missionary handbooks from the 1940s devote an entire chapter to effective tracting methods. This method has fallen out of favor in recent decades, especially in Western countries, and in many missions has been abandoned for a referral-based approach. Much of the optimism around technology has focused on it as a replacement for tracting.<\/p>\n
Alan Hurst, a Yale Law School graduate who served as a missionary in Berlin from 2002 to 2004, tracted from nine to noon every morning for parts of his mission. This was intended solely to \u201cput [missionaries] in the missionary mindset, even though it was a fruitless endeavor.\u201d He acknowledged the unintentional benefits of \u201cthe old ways\u201d\u2014building resilience\u2014but he said that it was ineffective proselytizing.<\/p>\n
Nathan Gunn, who served in Barcelona from 2003 to 2005, agreed. \u201cI don\u2019t think I tracted another day after I became a senior companion,\u201d he said, referring to the senior and junior roles assigned companionships, in which the senior companion determines the schedule. Parts of Africa or Latin America, he said, were receptive to tracting, as well as many immigrant communities in the United States. But \u201cit has to be done in the right place at the right time, and Spain to me was just not the right place.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was less pressure,\u201d Ben Carraway said of online communication. Carraway served in the Philadelphia test mission from 2011 to 2013. \u201cOnline it\u2019s online, instead of three people on my doorstep.\u201d When contacted online, people can respond on their own time. Carraway would go \u201cFacebook tracting,\u201d sending Facebook messages at random to people with an explanation of who he was and linking to a church video.<\/p>\n
In his web broadcast, Elder Perry acknowledged this shift. \u201cThe nature of missionary work must change if the Lord will accomplish His work,\u201d he said. \u201cPeople today are often less willing to let strangers into their homes. Their main points of contact with others is often via the Internet.\u201d This admission lit up Mormon blogs and newspapers, with Mormons rushing to share their enthusiasm that the days of tracting were coming to an end.<\/p>\n
The fact that the Church continued to develop test missions and decided to phase in Facebook, blogging, and iPads worldwide indicates the success of these tools. Within two years of introducing online chats to the Provo Missionary Training Center, missionaries chatting online had converted people in 42 states and 20 different countries. Two missionaries I met on a test mission in Utah got a woman in Texas baptized (baptism is the ritual that formally confirms one into the faith); a mission president in Moscow told me that two sister missionaries were able to baptize a woman by keeping in touch through Skype.<\/p>\n
Online dictionaries and digital maps especially can seem like a godsend for missionaries learning foreign languages. More than 57 languages are taught at the Missionary Training Centers, including Hmong, Icelandic, and Samoan. Training lasts two to 12 weeks, depending on the language. Given the complex topics and specialized vocabulary needed, every missionary schedule includes mandatory daily language study for foreign-language missions.<\/p>\n
Stephen Sorenson, who didn\u2019t even own a cell phone before becoming missionary president, was quickly won over to the blessings of technology. Mission president in Russia from 2010 to 2013, he will never forget the day a missionary showed him how to search Russian terms on an iPod. \u201cIt\u2019s like all of my life led up to that day,\u201d he said, \u201cand the rest of my life followed that day. I can\u2019t imagine doing work here now without this iPod capability.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know that it was a big permission thing,\u201d Ken Woolley said to me when I questioned his introduction of Skype and iPods to the field as a mission president in Russia. \u201cI thought it just made sense.\u201d Woolley is the CEO of Extra Space Storage, and one of the founders of the More Good Foundation, an organization dedicated to spreading knowledge and counteracting disinformation about Mormonism through the Internet. When he received the call to serve as mission president, he began creating a series of websites in Russian, and advertising on Russian social-media sites. Along with his wife Athelia they bought 25 iPod Touches for their 50 missionaries, and loaded them with regional maps, a Russian dictionary, the Mormon scriptures in both English and Russian, lectures from General Conference, and more than one thousand songs\u2014permissible music must \u201cinvite the spirit,\u201d which usually means Mormon Tabernacle Choir and anything over 100 years old.<\/p>\n
In 2009, Woolley approached his area presidency about the new technology; the area presidency called in to the Missionary Department in Salt Lake City, which never responded. At that point, his area president\u2014Elder Greg Schwitzer\u2014gave him the green light. This wasn\u2019t indefinite permission however, and so Woolley, a numbers guy with a background in the sciences, set out to test the effectiveness of his ideas. He divided his four zones in two, giving half the iPods and leaving half without. The results were incredible.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe baptismal rate was almost double,\u201d he said of the missionary efforts using the iPods. While the iPods didn\u2019t help missionaries find new people, they were very useful in bringing to baptism people who had already expressed interest. Woolley believes this is because the iPod material made missionaries more effective teachers. They had professional videos illustrating their lessons, and language support. \u201cYou\u2019re not substituting the technology for face to face conversations,\u201d he said. \u201cYou\u2019re using technology as an adjunct, to better make a point.\u201d Woolley felt that the technology, instead of distracting missionaries, inspired them. \u201cIt gave them more enthusiasm,\u201d he said, \u201cbecause it had more success and they were having more fun.\u201d<\/p>\n
Woolley, despite his radical embrace of technology in spreading the gospel, is no media enthusiast. Like many Mormons I spoke with, Woolley felt strongly about the role of the Internet in spreading pornography, which he described as \u201ccybersin\u201d and incredibly destructive to healthy relationships. He was also sensitive to hard rock music or music with vulgar lyrics, which he believed to be spiritually harmful, and felt that many young men waste tremendous time on video games, becoming addicted instead of getting on with their lives. But ultimately, none of these concerns seemed to him substantial enough to ban technology from the mission field, especially when it proved so effective at reaching converts.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have nostalgia about the letters, but I don\u2019t have any concerns about the Internet,\u201d he said. \u201cI am very much an optimist, and believe when we give people tools that can be positive, they will use them in a positive way.\u201d<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
If anything, it is the younger generation that is more concerned about Facebook and Internet access. \u201cI think my jaw dropped for about 10 minutes after the announcement was made,\u201d said Elder Drew Brown, 19, at the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah, where he was in language training before heading to serve in Taiwan. Brown worried that he was \u201cgoing to spend more time inside a room rather than face to face\u201d teaching people, like his father\u2019s mission.<\/p>\n
For many missionaries the difficult lifestyle comes drenched in virtue. Most come to the field with hopes of\u2014in addition to preaching the gospel\u2014improving their discipline, concentration, and obedience. Basically, traits the Internet is said to destroy.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf someone wakes up in the middle of the night, and goes into the kitchen and wants to have a go at it, there is certainly nothing stopping them \u2026 you don\u2019t have to sneak out, you can stay right there in the comfort of your home,\u201d said Stephen Sorenson about his early concerns that the iPods would make pornography more easily available.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it is going to be harder for the missionaries,\u201d said B.W., a current missionary. \u201cI mean, if I had Internet access I\u2019d be on eBay looking for ammo deals,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Younger Mormons, particularly from test missions, are cautious. \u201cPart of me was a little worried,\u201d said Ben Caraway, \u201cbecause I feel like a brand new missionary shouldn\u2019t be able to use Facebook until he has been out for a little bit. If you are a brand new missionary, home is always on your mind, and it is easy to be tempted to look at home and see what people are doing and what friends are doing,\u201d making it a particularly vulnerable time for Facebook.<\/p>\n
\u201cNetflix kills you,\u201d B.W. said when asked how he felt about the addictive nature of technology, adding that visiting families in their homes as a missionary has made him rethink the role of technology in everyday life. \u201cThe kids are all watching a movie, playing with Grandma\u2019s iPhone. I don\u2019t want to let technology get in the way of my being a parent.\u201d<\/p>\n
As he spoke, his two companions nodded vigorously. \u201cYou see kids in member\u2019s homes \u2026 turn off the TV and they didn\u2019t know what to do,\u201d one said. \u201cI would play video games for hours, and I lived across the street from a park!\u201d the companion continued, saying he feels more present on his mission than at home. For him, staring at screens \u201cKind of dims you from the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
But not all Mormons agree on the central purpose of a mission. Different Mormons have different emphases.<\/p>\n
Sheldon Child was adamant that bringing others to the Gospel must be the principal goal of one serving a mission. \u201cThe main reason they go on mission is to invite people to come to Christ,\u201d said Child, who oversaw missionaries both as an area president and as a mission president himself in the 1990s in New York City. \u201cThe self-transformation is a byproduct. If you had a missionary who went on mission to become a better person or be a better speaker he would be a less effective missionary,\u201d he said. From this perspective, the only hesitations one would have about technology would be whether it would result in fewer converts.<\/p>\n
For many missionaries and their families, however, the personal process of the missionary is equally important. It is a classic coming of age experience, and one that ideally cements traits of discipline and obedience. When Ken Woolley was being trained as a mission president, the message was \u201cbeat into\u201d him that \u201cyour primary success as a mission president would be manifest by the lives of your missionaries five, 10, 15, 20 years after the fact \u2026 the conversion of people was the outgrowth, not the primary objective,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
In 1974 President Spencer Kimball called on every young man in the Church to serve a mission. As it became more common for Mormon men of all sorts to serve missions, mission rules became stricter. Mormons who served in the \u201960s describe it as more adventurous, and certainly less structured. Overseas missionaries never called home, and could go months without hearing from their mission president. Up through the 1970s, missionaries generally were allowed to see movies, read books, write letters on days other than their designated day of the week, and use technology as dictated by their own common sense, including phone calls. They also had a full day off once a week, as opposed to the weekly 11am to 6pm time currently allowed missionaries to do laundry, write letters, go grocery shopping, or get their hair cut. Calling home twice a year became standard only in the late \u201870s. Today\u2019s missionaries also email their mission president once a week.<\/p>\n
Erlend Peterson, like many Mormons I interviewed from this generation, owes his faith to his mission. When he began, he woke up every morning at 5:30am. He didn\u2019t need to be up until 6:00am (for missionaries today it is 6:30am), but Peterson wanted that extra half hour to study the Book of Mormon.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t want my companion to know that I didn\u2019t have a testimony,\u201d he said over lunch at Brigham Young University, and reading scripture was his attempt to gain faith. A Mormon\u2019s testimony is his or her conviction that the Book of Mormon is true, that Joseph Smith is God\u2019s true prophet, and that the head of the LDS Church is a living prophet. For Peterson, his mission enabled him to gain a firm testimony.<\/p>\n
As the Church continued to grow and expand, it was announced that while the call to serve a mission would still be universal, the opportunity to do so would be even more conditional. In an oft-quoted 2002 address titled \u201cThe Greatest Generation of Missionaries,\u201d Elder Russell Ballard said, \u201cThe day of the \u2018repent and go\u2019 missionary is over.\u201d He did not want missionaries who, like Peterson, were still gaining a testimony. \u201cWe live in perilous times,\u201d Elder Ballard said, calling on all men to commit to a standard of worthiness. \u201cThis isn\u2019t a time for spiritual weaklings. We cannot send you on a mission to be reactivated, reformed, or to receive a testimony. We just don\u2019t have time for that.\u201d<\/p>\n
This sentiment was reiterated by President Gordon Hinckley, in an address known as \u201cRaising the Bar.\u201d President Hinckley said, \u201cThe time has come when we must raise the standards of those who are called \u2026 as ambassadors of the Lord Jesus Christ. \u2026 We simply cannot permit those who have not qualified themselves as to worthiness to go into the world to speak the glad tidings of the gospel.\u201d After this address, the number of missionaries per year dropped from 60,850 in 2000 to 51,067 in 2004, a drop the church also attributes to changing demographics.<\/p>\n
By all accounts, and despite general societal despair of the current youth, today\u2019s missionaries are likely the most well vetted, and most committed, cadre that the church has ever sent forth. While younger\u2014the church lowered the age minimum for service in October 2012 to 18 for men and 19 for women\u2014they are certainly the most thoroughly trained. \u201cI don\u2019t know what the MTC was doing,\u201d Sorenson said of his 2013 missionaries in particular, \u201cbut this last year the kids were just tremendously sharp. Language, maturity, good judgment, willingness to work hard and be focused on missionary work and not other things.\u201d They are focused, and coming to the field at a time of tremendous change.<\/p>\n
It is undeniable that Facebook and iPads and multimedia will change the mission field; it has never been easier to sift out the hostile or ignore the uninterested (though, in other ways, it has become easier to attract the hostile). Missionaries using social media as outreach will face a lot less rejection in their daily work and connect more readily with those interested in hearing their message. They will hear more anti-Mormon messages as well, and have greater access to alternative Mormon histories. They will spend more time staring at screens. Their missions will probably lose some of the adventure of their fathers, walking miles down a dark road on nothing more than a feeling that a house down there was waiting for them. Future missionaries might only visit homes they\u2019ve already called, texted, and confirmed a meeting time with. But for the romanticism lost, a much more effective system is gained. They may yet be the first generation to reinvent the foundational experience of Mormon proselytizing.<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
There is a recurring joke that every returned missionary refers to his mission as \u201cthe happiest years of his life.\u201d I heard this first-hand before I learned it was a clich\u00e9. The first time, I had asked one of my missionaries who was a few months away from the end of his service, if he was looking forward to returning home. He looked down.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m so happy,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is the happiest I\u2019ve ever been.\u201d<\/p>\n
The life of a Mormon missionary is hard. These kids pay out of pocket to serve, are allowed almost no entertainment, and no break from their work. And yet, technology advances or not, most lit up when discussing their mission. This was certainly not the case for everyone, and many Mormons have serious grievances about the conditions under which they served. But for Mormons today with faith intact, coming home is hard. The advice, often, is to get busy immediately upon returning home. Many Mormons begin school or work mere weeks after coming back from a two-year mission, a turnover rate that surprised me.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose first six months were the most difficult of my life,\u201d said Bob Farthingham about coming home from his mission. Farthingham served in England from 1965 to 1967, and as a mission president in Colorado from 2008 to 2011. By the time he said this, I wasn\u2019t surprised. It was the sentiment I heard from countless missionaries, regardless of decade.<\/p>\n
There are a number of reasons given. Some Mormons attribute it to a spiritual change in status, that missionaries have a special closeness to the Holy Ghost that leaves when they return. In speaking with missionaries, however, it seems there is something inherently powerful about knowing what to do with every moment of your day, and the confidence that comes from sincere conviction that you are doing important work. Most missionaries are motivated by altruism, believing they are in the field to help other people find the happiness they have found as Mormons. After two years of pushing yourself in the fight, it can be hard to feel you are abandoning the field for more trivial matters.<\/p>\n
For recently returned missionaries, Facebook provides a slight antidote to the pain of losing one\u2019s missionary status. Most missionaries today keep in touch with their investigators\u2014individuals considering conversion\u2014through Facebook. \u201cIt makes returning less difficult, because you are still doing missionary work,\u201d Elwood said. Though like many emerging adults constructing a Facebook identity, some returned missionaries worried about their investigators seeing them living non-missionary lifestyles, such as going to concerts.<\/p>\n
When I began interviewing Mormon missionaries, I assumed the technology innovations would be eroding their productivity, exposing them to temptation and doubt. Instead, I found surprisingly similar stories of struggles and rule-breaking and temptations told across the decades, technology notwithstanding, from men who served in the \u201870s and boys still in the field. I didn\u2019t find my last tribe of Western kids who had tasted life before laptops, who could tell me what I wanted to hear, which was that they were happier without their devices, and that they had deeper friendships because they hand-wrote letters to one another; that superficial communication and splintered attention spans are modern problems, easily attributable to technology.<\/p>\n
Instead of fear, I found incredible optimism and excitement about technology in mission work, albeit alongside caution. Instead of second-hand nostalgia for the past, I found some rare faith in the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Article: Facebook Of Mormon by Shira Telushkin in The Atlantic. The Text: The woman that he was trying to reach almost never picked up her phone, and she lived more than 50 miles away. Plus, he had to watch his gas mileage. So Brandon Gonzales, a then-20-year-old missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[259],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n
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