Foreign Mormons

I can understand people in Central America's poor countries joining the Mormon church. They get to shop at the free Mormon food stores. I'd tell people I believe their 19th century science fiction religion too, if it fed my kids. Mitt Romney spent his missionary years in France. Do people in France, Sweden, Norway ever convert to Mormonism? I just don't see it happening. Why on earth would anyone in these countries join a religion of American flimflammers?

• I don't know, why would anyone convert after hearing the spiel of a regular Christian missionary? These guys are good at getting the impoverished to buy their lines of bullshit. The specific religion doesn't necessarily matter.

• An aunt and uncle were missionaries in the Orient. My father referred to their converts as "Rice Christians," who signed-on to be fed.

• I once had a coworker who did his mission in Italy. I asked him how his message was received there. He said the natives would say something along the lines of "We have our own religion why should they bother with yours?" IIRC, he also said that some just saw Catholicism and Mormonism as a choice between two myths. His mission would have been in the mid '80s. Elizabeth Smart's new husband is a Scottish Mormon. Don't know if he's a convert or the child of converts.

• [quote]in the Orient

  http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cc/AsianRiffSheetMusic.png/300px-AsianRiffSheetMusic.png

• They don't like to admit it but the average Mormon missionary in Europe brings in ZERO converts.

• The mormons call their mexican converts, beaner christians. Jew converts are called bargain christians.

• I, too, find it difficult to believe that sensible Europeans would fall for that malarkey but I could be wrong. With the French, it's always a good idea to remember their great love and respect for Jerry Lewis. I'd be interested to know what the "conversion numbers" were in Mitt's years in France as well as what the European numbers are for Mormon missionaries in general.

• The Morman missionaries I met offered me deliverance into heaven on the spot, I thought that was proposition I couldn't refuse until they pulled a .38 on me.

• I could understand Scottish Mormon converts because Scots are violently insane, especially when it comes to religion. My grandparents were from northern Ireland and the Scots Protestants there were vicious killers, setting fire to houses and beating men to death. The Rev Ian Paisley and his followers carry on the tradition of religious violence and hatred.

  http://www.freepres.org/paisley.asp%3Fpaisley

• I knew a Mormon who spent two years cycling around a French wine region (Burgundy) trying to win converts. He didn't make a single conversion, but he did develop a taste for red wine. This was in the 1980s.