How to Succeed in a Mormon Mission Without Really Trying - Part I

Below is an excerpt from the novel I’m shopping, The 10% Mission, based on my experience as a missionary in Peru in the 1980s:

At the pinnacle of despair, the two elders came face-to-face with their doppelgängers. There in front of them stood two young Americans in white shirts and ties, a distorted reflection of their own grief turned upside down, and worse, a punch to the stomach as their gummy, salivating smiles mocked them mercilessly. One of them was tall and lanky with short, thick brown hair that bristled stiffly to one side, coalescing with his slanted smirk and arched eyebrow, and who carried with him a noxious, clammy air of unhinged confidence that reminded Ethan of someone he just couldn’t put his finger on. The other young man was shorter, with blonde, wispy receding hair, and wore rimless glasses that struggled constantly for their perch, and he was standing knock-kneed on stubby, listless legs, passive and more pursuant than the other young man. At first glance, they both appeared to be Mormon missionaries, but neither bore the signature name plaque clasped to their chest pocket like a normal missionary.

Ethan realized who they were and pointed at them accusingly. “Cia, Cia, Cia!” But then he realized who they really were once he noticed they were carrying the Green Dragon. Jehovah Witnesses! “Can’t come up with your own uniform? Gotta copy us Mormons, cuz you don’t have creativity,” Ethan said, boldly initiating the conversation.

“Think y’all invented the white shirt and tie, do ya?” Ethan’s doppelgänger said with smug J-Dub self-adulation and a southwestern twang.

“You’re from Texas!” Ethan said, denouncing him.

“Greatest state in the union.” He glanced at Ethan’s nameplate. “You’re from Barranca.”

Ethan tightened his fists and flexed. “You rewrote the bible and painted it green.”

“You rewrote the Bible and called it the Book of Mormon.”

“You don’t celebrate birthdays or Christmas.”

“You celebrate something stupid called Pioneer Day and wear tacky CTR rings.”

Ethan was suddenly and embarrassingly stumped. “Wait. What does CTR stand for again?”

Ethan’s doppelgänger sized up Ethan again in mounting suspicion. “Choose The Right. Are you even Mormon? Or… are you Cia?”

“You’re Cia,” Ethan retorted in a flimsy triumph. “And if you cut Alaska in half, both halves would still be larger than Texas. Your glorious state is just a big heap of worthless dirt, that’s all it is.”

Now, Ethan’s doppelgänger tightened his fists and flexed, then shook his green bible at Ethan threateningly like a weapon, but his companion jumped between them. “Now, now, we’re all missionaries here. We want the same thing—for a different God, but we should be benevolent. Nobody’s gonna talk to any of us if we’re fighting in the streets.”

“He’s got a point,” Jockisch said. “You go your way, we’ll go ours.”

But Ethan’s doppelgänger couldn’t resist. “All you guys do is come to a foreign land like this and pressure poor Catholics, who are already happy and content, to convert to your tyrannical cult and then gloat because you saved someone from such happiness and contentment.”

“You do the same thing,” Ethan pointed out judiciously.

“We give them truth and prosperity without restrictions.”

Ethan laughed uproariously and slapped his thigh with contemptuous fervor. “You don’t believe in blood transfusions!”

“You can’t drink coffee!” his doppelgänger countered.

“You can’t watch football on TV!”

“You can’t go to R-rated movies!”

An old man drinking Russian tea, perched in a creaking wooden chair on the sidewalk just outside a small bodega, began cackling and crooning so emphatically, that the missionaries all stopped and glared at him with drizzled indignance and confusion. “You’re no better than the Jesuits. None of you,” he told them.

“At least we don’t rape people in the process,” Ethan’s doppelgänger said before Ethan could spit out the same sentence.

The man cackled again, the deep creases in his face all converging into a twisted knot, his tongue rattling like a saber, spraying spittle onto his barrel-chested body. “You do something much worse.”

“What’s worse than rape?” Ethan exclaimed.

The old man pulled a handkerchief from his coat pocket and wiped his soggy lips. “You rob us of our freewill.”

Ethan and his doppelgänger stood rigid and appalled as they processed the devastating accusation, while neither could muster a word of rebuttal for a few seconds of trembling displeasure. “How dare you?” Ethan finally said.

“How dare you?” Ethan’s doppelgänger said.

The old man took a sip of tea. “You all think you’re so different. First, the Jesuits, now you. Can’t you just leave us alone? You live your lives, we’ll live ours.”

Suddenly, the group of missionaries experienced an authentic moment of self-reflection. Each considered the somber comments of the old man drinking Russian tea outside a small bodega. Ethan looked at his doppelgänger with solemn eyes and said in a muted voice, “We’re going to convert more people than you slobs.”

Ethan’s doppelgänger handed him a yellow flyer. “You should come. You might learn something.” He and Jockisch’s doppelgänger passed by them now and strolled down the street, one of them whistling a happy tune.

Ethan examined the flyer, which read, Salvation comes through God’s undeserved kindness and blah blah blah. Please come to the Kingdom Hall tonight at 7:00 pm to learn more. Ethan crumpled it up and threw it on a pile of garbage just off the street. “Why are they so smug? They’re more cult than we are.”

“At least they have a strategy,” Elder Jockisch said.

“I’m not handing out flyers, if that’s what you’re suggesting,” Ethan said. “Nobody would show up. I don’t think they like Mormons in San Martin de Porres.”

The Kingdom Hall was just down the street from the Mormon chapel, so Ethan and Jockisch decided to head up that way around 6:30 pm to see if anyone showed up. To their great surprise, they found people wandering the streets everywhere, clutching yellow flyers. People seemed confused, and Ethan remembered there was no address on the flyer.

A middle-aged woman approached them and presented the flyer. “Can you tell me where your Kingdom Hall is located?”

Ethan was about to point her in the right direction, begrudgingly, but stopped abruptly as he realized the opportunity this presented. “Why, yes, I can, ma’am. The Kingdom Hall is right up this street,” and he pointed to the Mormon chapel. She thanked him and headed in that direction. “We’ll be along shortly,” he shouted after her, then turned to Jockisch. “We don’t have to send out flyers—because they already did.”

Ethan and Jockisch both swarmed anyone with a yellow flyer and diverted them up the street to the Mormon church. They continued this effort until 6:55 pm, then darted up the street to the church building and found a lobby full of people. They then led them into the church’s chapel and taught them all the first lesson. Then they took all their names and addresses and set appointments to meet individually. They racked up another ten baptisms for the month. This inspired all the missionaries in the zone, and soon they were all handing out Jehovah's Witness flyers they made on their own, with the Mormon church address included. It didn’t take long to convert a great many prospective Jehovah's Witnesses, and before they knew it, they were all Mormon. The zone baptized a hundred people that month.