Item Detail
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Summer Baptisms
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2/13/2017
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Provo, UT
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Male
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Salt Lake City, UT
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Boston, MA
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23
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Self
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White
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LDS
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I served my mission a little over a year ago. I heard the story a little over two years ago.
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This is a story that I have told many times, though it comes from an acquaintance from my mission whose contact information I have lost. After I recorded a story that my friend Nick had told me a story he remembered from the mission, I remembered this story and decided to turn the tape recorder back on to keep the stories going, and told him the following story.
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: One of the duties of LDS missionary companionships (made up of two missionaries) is to encourage uninvolved members (referred to as inactive) to return to church. Sumo consejo is Spanish for "High council," which is a relatively high position in the LDS church. Though not professionals, one would assume that high council members would be committed Latter-day Saints and not easily become inactive. Latter-day Saint missionaries have the duty to invite individuals to come unto Christ, usually by coming to church and participating in ordinances like baptism, which is done by complete immersion in a font of water. While the goal is helping individuals come to Christ and growing the church, an intermediate statistic is the number of baptisms, and many missionaries and mission presidents confuse having many baptisms for completing their mission successfully. A mission president oversees the missionaries and is thought to set a good\rexample for them. In addition to setting an example of obedience, an LDS mission president's tactics for how to make the church grow would likely be adopted by his missionaries. A mission president serves for three years, and is then replaced by another mission president. Sometimes, these new mission presidents discover that the old mission president or his missionaries were engaged in sub-optimal practices, whether they be disobedience to the rules or an excessive focus on baptisms. Baptisms are a sacred ordinance that should be proceeded by weeks of lessons and multiple Sunday meetings with the local congregation, which is known as a ward. Often, baptism was taught by showing a picture of someone about to be immersed in water. Before being baptized, a person must sign a yellow and white form that indicates that they give their permission to the church to keep their data. The confirmation is similarly sacred, and is done after the baptism by giving a specific prayer with the\rhands of the confirmer being placed on the head of the confirmed. It is not to be done in public. A "golden" investigator or family is one who seems likely or especially ready to join the church or accept LDS doctrines. Once a person is baptized, whether or not they understood the ordinance, it is accepted as valid. Thus, once baptized, they cannot be rebaptized, and any missionary that brought them to church would not be able to report additional baptisms.
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Baptisms, Missionary, Disobedience, Inactive, Mission President
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Item:\rHow Collected: After recording my friend Nick's story, I started a new recording and told my story, then transcribed it. A few ums and ers and vocal stutters have been edited out to improve unclear sections, but most have been untouched.\rText: Uh, so, me and my companion were visiting this uh… this inactive member he's like he had been like a member of the sumo consejo and uh, had like gone completely inactive and uh… and uh he had been somebody, who apparently, this is the story his whole life, he's this amazing member who is totally active but then this amazing member who is totally inactive, so he, he told us this story when we were visiting him. When he was on his mission, when he got there they had just gotten rid of the old mission president, and I don't remember where it was, it was like in Chihuahua, like somewhere in… It was the highest baptizing mission in the world or… but, when he got there and they had just replaced the old mission president with a new one, and they found out that what the old mission president had been doing was he had just been getting… it was the middle of summer and they had just had this big truck with a font in the back and they had just been missionaries right out\ron the street saying "Get baptized, get saved, get a free dip cool dip in the water. And you know, just sign the form, and we'll get you up, baptize you, give you the form, take it to the ward and send you home." And I guess they did confirmations right there too. Just out in the middle of the street. And they said it was the worst because they would find this super golden family be like "This is the baptism," and show them the picture and the family be like "Look, we've done something like that! Yeah, no!" They even got us to sign this the paper, that was like white and yellow. And they were like, well where is it? Yeah, no, they baptized us in the street a couple, like a year and half ago! And so he said a lot of it was doing time with these amazing families who were already members. And they tried to reactivate them. But yeah that's pretty much the story.
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Benjamin
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Dearden
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Male
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23
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ENG 391
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Eric Eliason