From what I saw on my mission and from growing up outside of Utah I agree with Jim. I think there is a strong tendency to overstate differences between Utah and elsewhere. Both in how the state is run and in how the Church is run.

With regards to your other comments, I didn’t intend to make it a point about “Utah Mormons.” However I do think the ostracizing and stigma tied to not going on a mission is amazingly higher here than in the mission field (where I grew up). In the mission field most of ones friends are generally non-Mormon while the reverse is true here. Here many women won’t go out with men who aren’t returned missionaries. In the mission field it rarely is that big a consideration. Some women might, but the small pool of perspective members of the opposite sex provides for a rather different social economy.

To your comments about gaining a testimony, I’ll defer to your much greater experience. I’m going on my own personal experiences. In general those who didn’t have a strong testimony left the church in the mission field, from what I saw. There simply wasn’t the social pressure of being a “social Mormon.” If anything there was the reverse. Whereas in Utah and Idaho it seems there are many social Mormons and a lot more family pressure to go on a mission – not to mention pressure from girlfriends. (Having had the unfortunate experience of serving with some of those types)

Normally I’m pretty vocal about Utah Mormon stereotypes. I think typically they are unfair. But I do think the “social Mormon” is rather ubiquitous here. When I was younger there was this idea of being wild while a teenager, repenting and going on a mission. That was completely alien in all places I’d been in the “field.” Of course Pres. Hinkley instituted several changes in the early 90′s to prevent that. So perhaps it isn’t a problem.

But as I said, my real point was about how we look at missions and missionaries. I think we spend an awful lot of time assuming the worst about missionaries and acting to protect them rather than treating them as people with a task to do. Perhaps this is less due to the culture in high concentration areas of the church and simply a ubiquitious problem within the church. I do think, however, that it is a problem. Especially when contrasted with how missionaries were treated and viewed prior to the 1960′s.

Perhaps more important, it has been driven home to me over and over and over again that many missionaries from centers of LDS population have been “coasting” most of their lives. Where there is no social pressure to serve a mission, or even to remain active — indeed, where all the social pressure is *against* activity, let alone missionary service — the majority of those who haven’t developed a firm personal conviction regarding the Church tend to wash out before they ever get to the missionary stage.

And although it is off topic, I continually find the differences in attitude between members from Utah and those from elsewhere to be profound. Perhaps that is a topic for another thread. I won’t even get into Frank McIntyre’s invitation to discuss how the state is run. Every time I return to Utah I am astonished, and usually not pleasantly.

For which I will be eternally grateful.

“Work smarter, not harder,” he taught us. If more of my missionary companions — both the agriculturally and the non-agriculturally trained — had adopted that motto, we might have accomplished a great deal more than we did. Motion is not the same as progress.

Thanks, dad.

Coming off a fairly tough job in the bush, the amount of work required in the MTC was fairly minimal in comparison. Never really having had much first hand discussion with former missionaries, I found it was a bit too easy to be idealistic. I think the missionaries form strong church centers were more prepared for the inevitable mission conundrums – what to do in the afternoon when no one is around, how do you handle a lazy (or over zealous) companion, how much should you take advantage of member support etc. I think missionaries who had lots of friends who had returned from the field were prepared with standard solutions to these problems. Often this meant they new the expected behavioural bar much better than I. Of course, like anything, this had its good and bad points.

He taught high school, but ran a landscaping business over the summer for the sole purpose of teaching his children how to work. I grew up working 10-14 (or occasionally longer) hour days during the summer.

This is a prelude to an interesting event on my mission.

At an all mission conference, the mission president asked us to indicate, by show of hands, how many grew up working on farms or ranches.

3 missionaries raised their hands (though one of them was one of the laziest missionaries in the mission). Then he asked how many of us had parents or grand parents who worked on farms/ranches.

95% of the missionaries there raised their hands.

The president looked out and said: “This is the problem with you missionaries today. Your parents and grandparents knew how to work. Only a handful of you have even a clue of how to work. The rest of you need to learn fast.”

We were pretty white I admit. But we were a cross section of that society. From Idaho I went to student wards–at BYU and then a graduate ward at the University of Washington. In retrospect, I realize these were again pretty narrow ethnic slices of society. But there was a certain diversity as far as income and professions went.

From there I went to a ward on the east bench of Salt Lake City. The ward must have encompassed two to three blocks. All of the houses pretty much exactly the same size. The men in a narrow slice of professions. The women at home, and far too many ironing the children’s play clothes for my comfort. The church there was a shock for me. Such a very narrow cultural and economic slice. Such homogeneity. In a way I hadn’t encountered the church before. I wasn’t comfortable. That ward was the first one that troubled me.