[Ninong]

Originally Posted by SPasse

Despite your comments about Mitt Romney and his Paris mission “obligation”, the missionaries are one of the key elements to their growth as a religion. There are very “clean cut” young men dressed in spotless white dress shirts, ties, and spit polished shoes. They knock on your door and offer to help you with your yard, clean you house etc. When I say clean cut, I mean that they look like GQ models (circa 1950’s) which provides a very stark contrast to the “gang banger” culture that quite frankly scares the pants off many people. People are thinking, “If they can turn out youth like that, they must be doing something right.”

They are trying to expand down here in East Texas as well, and we have seen a lot of them in our neighborhood lately.

I have seen a lot of Mormon missionaries in San Francisco, especially in the Mission District. They always traveled in pairs and were dressed exactly as you described. I doubt that they even spoke Spanish. You couldn't help but notice them. They were all "exceedingly fair and delightsome."

I wonder if they talk about 9/11 very much? That would be September 11, 1857.

Mitt has described how frustrating it was for him four decades ago knocking on doors in France. He admits that converts were exceedingly rare. At least there was decent French bread and he got to brush up on his French.

I think they may get additional “combat pay”, for being a Mormon missionary down here in the “buckle” of the Southern Baptist Bible belt.

I'm very familiar with your part of Texas. Extremely familiar! In 1958, we had a ballot measure in Grayson County about whether to allow beer and wine to be served in restaurants. Grayson County was completely dry then. You had to drive down to Dallas to buy beer or other alcohol at "package stores." The Baptist pastors were against this ballot measure. A few local 7/11 convenience store owners managed to get the proposal amended to include the sale of beer and wine from convenience stores (probably all stores, I can't remember right now). The local Baptist preachers didn't fight this amendment because they assumed it would make the proposition that much more odious to the voters and easier to defeat.

The evening before the vote, there was a Baptist-sponsored parade through downtown that included a flatbed truck float. The bed of the truck was covered with straw and bales of hay and there were about a dozen children, ages 5-10, dressed in white sheets splattered with ketchup. The children all had little golden halos attached to their heads. These were the innocents who would be slaughtered by drunk drivers if the ballot measure passed.

The ballot measure passed with about 58% of the vote. At that time, the county was majority Southern Baptist. It probably still is for all I know. Two local businessmen (owners of 7/11 convenience stores) were thrown out of their Baptist congregations from the pulpit that Sunday morning by their pastor because he was furious that they had supported the ballot measure.

During the 1960 presidential campaign, all of the Baptist preachers were telling their congregations that if John F. Kennedy were elected, the Catholics would take over the country and the Pope would dictate American foreign and domestic policy. Catholicism would become the official religion. My Baptist friends were convinced that all Catholic churches had a stash of guns and ammunition in their basements. I told them that where I grew up, there were no basements.