What's with the two kids in white shirts and black nametags?

They're missionaries. I've gotten a lot of questions about missionaries - it is difficult to not be curious about such a lifestyle. Missionaries serve 18-24 months, sometimes are sent to live in a foreign country and learn a foreign language, and live by a stringent set of rules including not dating, dressing formally, and keeping a demanding schedule of study and work.

Some people find proselityzing missionaries annoying. That is understandable - they sometimes bear the same stigma as a door-to-door salesman, with the added negative of the fact that they are 'selling' religion, an unpopular product. From time to time one earns that reputation as well - if they are overly pushy or insensitive. We do, after all, send them out pretty young. But for the most part, our missionaries are what they claim to be: emissaries of Jesus Christ with a message. If you don't like it, don't talk to them.

These young men get up at 6:30 in the morning, study and pray for several hours, and then knock on doors and visit with people and extend invitations to them to improve their lives and their families. Their teachings range from explaining the nature of God to the Plan of Salvation and Jesus Christ's role, to principals of happiness, such as how to pray, how to get a long in a family, and how to shed unwanted habits such as smoking and drinking. They provide community service every week; where I live, they volunteer in a nursing home that is run by a local protestant church. In other places they teach English or literacy, or work at a food shelf. They pay for this experience themselves - through savings and contributions from family and friends.

Some people think we have no business proselityzing in Christian areas. I think a quick glance over what we believe about practicing Christianity (chaste living, sabbath day observance, and other forms of self-restraint) should make it clear that we believe we have something to offer above and beyond 'mainstream' Christianity. That is not meant as an offense to our Catholic and Protestant brothers and sisters, it is simply a fact of life. If we thought what we had was the same as what they offer, we'd just join them - it would be much easier. And if it makes you feel any better, we send Missionaries to Utah too, the geographic center of our own religion.

In addition to the benefit that these young men provide to their communities and the people they teach, the mission is a great benefit to them and the church in terms of the character it builds in the missionary himself. Missionary work produces the best fathers, husbands, and leaders possible. In a world where leaving home means experimenting with the evils that are out there to offer whether in the nightlife of a college campus or exposure to all that is in the working world, the only two programs I have seen make decent men out of boys are the military and the Mormon Mission. And the military comes complete with its own morally risky activities at times, so choices are even more limited.

I would not be half the man I am without my mission. I am proud to be associated with the boys in the white shirts and the nametags.