It was sorta awkward, meeting a Moonie. In part this was because he approached me, and didn't obviously look like a Moonie, whatever that's supposed to mean. (The only image I'm familiar with is of Rev. Moon officiating at a mass wedding.)
This meant that, until he asked the fateful question, I was sure that he was going to wind up doing one of three things:
- Asking me what time it was and/or how to get to the Student Center;
- Asking how my court case is going (bad news on that, by the way, but I won't post it here); or
- Inviting me back to his place for an afternoon of hot sweaty gay sex.
"Are you happy with your life?"Missionaries really need to find a way to segué into that question more gracefully. Posing it honestly puts people into a position that's much more awkward than being unsure if they're being invited somewhere for hot sweaty gay sex.
So I said "More or less," and the rest of the exchange went rather smoothly. It was actually rather amusing, to be honest. If I'd tried a bit harder to keep the topic off what he was selling, and on the tangents that came up, it could've possibly become a dry comedy skit with some work.
(In particular, he asked me if I played music. It was a week ago - this being backdated so as to correspond with when it actually happened - but I'm still feeling sorta bad that I didn't turn that around and do with Randall MTS series amps what Bugmaster did with tomatos about 2/3 of the way down the thread.)
Since I didn't do that, however, I did (unknowingly) the next best thing: I asked him for a URL. And eventually he gave me one: http://www.worldcarp.org/. At which point the conversation fizzled out and we went our separate ways.
That day on Slacktivist, in a fit of synchronicity, Hapax posted this:
Actually, from what I've heard, the point of LDS (and JW) missions isn't so much to convert other people, as to strengthen Mormons in their faith.Synchronicity is a wonderful thing.
Look at the model. You take a small group of idealistic young people at the age when they start seriously questioning the institutions of their youth. You remove them from their families, friends, any place familiar, any support structure or distractions that isn't supplied by that institution. You send them out to strangers to repeat over and over with every bit of sincerity they can muster how that institution is the best, the most, the only important thing in the world. At that point, the strangers will either a) agree with them (unlikely, but will reinforce the message) b) reject them, usually with hostility (more likely, but will reinforce an 'us against them' worldview) or c) ignore them (which will send them back into the arms of the institution as the only source of attention positive or negative). Missions like these are an incredibly effective mechanism for binding people to the church for life.
