{"id":927,"date":"2004-06-16T12:24:31","date_gmt":"2004-06-16T18:24:31","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=927"},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-30T06:00:00","slug":"utah-idaho-arizona-missionaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2004\/06\/utah-idaho-arizona-missionaries\/","title":{"rendered":"Utah-Idaho-Arizona missionaries"},"content":{"rendered":"

Clark says<\/a> “we treat missions as a way of converting Utah and Idaho Mormons who’ve been in the church their whole life but never had to gain a testimony.” I was converted in the mission field and lived most of my life prior to getting my job at BYU in the mission field. Since then, I’ve several times lived in the mission field for extended periods. In other words, I think I have a reasonably good understanding of both life in the mission field and life in Utah\/Idaho, and I would add northern Arizona. I also spent three years as a branch president at the MTC and worked with hundreds of missionaries, and in graduate school I served as ward mission leader for some time as well as in the stake mission presidency. Though there are lots of stereotypes about “Utah Mormons,” based on my experience I don’t think they have much basis in fact. In particular, I don’t think this supposed difference in the level of testimony of some entering missionaries does.
\n
\nOf course there are differences between the experiences one will have where there is a high concentration of LDS, such as in Utah, Idaho, and parts of Arizona, and the experiences one will have elsewhere. For example, that concentration makes it easier for some who would be inactive some place else to continue to be active, but I suspect that the percentage of core, believing and contributing members is about the same in most places where the Church is relatively well-established, whether in the mission field or not. A number of missionaries, though not by any means even a large minority, came into the MTC struggling with whether they had a testimony or knowing that they didn’t. But I didn’t notice a higher percentage of those missionaries coming into the field from Utah, Idaho, and Arizona. I did notice that young people who had to work on the farm or who had been athletes were more likely to know what it meant to work and that they did so well, and I noticed that urban, bright missionaries often found it difficult to make the adjustment because they’d never before had to work. (Many of the brightest were quite shocked that learning Korean required them actually to study; they couldn’t get by on being bright, as they had in school.) I noticed that women were generally more prepared than men (the age difference makes a huge difference), but there were more exceptions to that than I had expected. I think missionaries who were themselves converts or who came from convert families were usually more prepared, but I’m not sure about that. In any case, what I didn’t see was a significant difference between those coming from predominately LDS parts of the country and those who did not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clark says “we treat missions as a way of converting Utah and Idaho Mormons who’ve been in the church their whole life but never had to gain a testimony.” I was converted in the mission field and lived most of my life prior to getting my job at BYU in the mission field. Since then, I’ve several times lived in the mission field for extended periods. In other words, I think I have a reasonably good understanding of both life in the mission field and life in Utah\/Idaho, and I would add northern Arizona. I also spent three years as a branch president at the MTC and worked with hundreds of missionaries, and in graduate school I served as ward mission leader for some time as well as in the stake mission presidency. Though there are lots of stereotypes about “Utah Mormons,” based on my experience I don’t think they have much basis in fact. In particular, I don’t think this supposed difference in the level of testimony of some entering missionaries does.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-missionary"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=927"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/927\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}