When I was on my mission, a bishopric member in the ward we served in told us, “Now, sisters, it’s great that you’re teaching women and children, but can you please focus on finding some future priesthood leaders?”
I’ve heard this is a common experience of other returned sister missionaries.
– Morgan
My mission newsletter included an honorable mention each month of which companionship had baptized the most “future priesthood leaders.” I just found an old mission newsletter. The section was called “Future Leaders ” and mentioned every companionship who had baptized three or more men the previous month. This was in Southern Chile in the late 90’s. I could go on for days about the misogyny I dealt with on my mission, although a large part of that was the culture of the area, not necessarily the Church.
– Anonymous
I was counseled repeatedly by different district leaders on how to run my area, and they often tried to tell me they knew my investigators better than I did (investigators they’d never met). They questioned the personal revelation I had received for my area/investigators and offered suggestions for how to “improve” my revelation for my area. We weren’t getting the answer they thought was the right one, so they questioned our abilities to receive revelation.
– Chloe M.
I was told on my mission that I didn’t have a ‘baptism count’ since I hadn’t actually baptized anyone in the water personally. The 49 people I converted didn’t count because I didn’t have the priesthood.
Amy H.
Pro Tip: Recognize that each soul is of great worth in the sight of God, regardless of gender. Do not place men’s value above women’s.
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“If any man have ears to hear, let him hear.” (Mark 4:23)
7 Responses
This sounds all too familiar. In my mission, we were not allowed to do anything other than knock doors or teach in the evening hours, because that was when the men were at home, and male converts were the most valuable. I accepted it as a missionary, but now I realize that this was just one more thing that contributed to my eventual faith crisis as a woman.
Hear Hear! The war cry on my mission was “Men in ties”. Where the man goes, the family goes.
This is so telling that when the rubber meets the road, many mission leaders (and doubtless GAs as well) are more concerned with adding men to the church than women. I guess it shouldn’t be surprising, but it’s so disappointing.
I always felt sorry for sister missionaries because they would do all the work with investigators and not get to perform the baptisms. It’s a good thing I never went on a mission because this would not have set well with me.
I was “senior sister” in our mission, which meant I was in charge of the sisters. The mission president told me one month to tell the sisters to slow waaaay down on baptizing women and children until we could get more men baptized. We had branches with only 3 priesthood holders, for example. The men would get overwhelmed and go inactive. We just couldn’t staff the male callings.
It set off a huge crisis of faith and self-worth for me. My investigator pool at the time was single mothers with daughters. I prayed my heart out and had one of the most amazing and reassuring spiritual experiences of my life about the equality of women and men. After that, I didn’t pass on the MP’s direction to any of the other sisters. I don’t know how they handled the shortage of priesthood leaders, but they never renewed the direction to slow down baptizing women and children until we could get the priesthood numbers up.
I also served in a mission where we were taught to baptize “fathers and families” as much as we possibly good, not-so-subtly implying that “mothers and children” were less valuable. The number of times the other sisters and I were told “flirt to convert” made me think they weren’t actually joking when they said it. “Flirt to convert” was a very common phrase from the elders up until a sister missionary was caught alone in a church classroom, in a compromised position, with a recent male convert. I didn’t hear “flirt to convert” much after she was sent home for that incident.
I joined the church and it would be years before I was asked to give a talk even though I had a very powerful conversion story and am actually a great speaker and eager to share my spiritual journey. Years later, my husband joins the church and a couple of weeks later he is asked to speak at stake conference.