The Modern Missionaries : Winning Converts Is the Primary Goal of Young Mormons, but Biggest Changes May Occur Within

Amid the purple hairdos, tattooed ankles and studded leather bras of Hollywood Boulevard, the two clean-cut men in pressed white shirts and ties politely invite passersby to chat about God.

A few heed the call, but most ignore, argue with or even try to proposition the pair. Others have pelted the young men with trash or soaked them with super squirt guns as they pedal their battered bicycles around Los Angeles.

Still, they persist: 12 hours a day, six days a week--without being allowed to call home, swim or play full-court basketball.

Ryan Tolman, 19, and Hyuk Hong, 23, are missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons).

“Hello, ma’am, can I offer you a free Book of Mormon?” Tolman asks over the wail of sirens and the blather of a nearby tour guide discussing Alfred Hitchcock.

The question meets with silence.

“Have a good day, ma’am.”

Tolman, Hong and 40,000 other missionaries worldwide are in the thick of their two-year odysseys of faith, frustration and wrinkle-free clothes that will change others’ lives as well as their own.

It is a strange mission in many ways, but it reflects a level of commitment and determination that most other groups can only fantasize about.

“You have to believe very strongly to do what they do,” says W. Barney Gogarty, who leads the 208 missionaries scattered around Los Angeles, Long Beach and neighboring cities.

Tolman and Hong work out of a small, church-rented shack a block from the Hollywood Freeway. An upended ice cream cone and a gooey blob of nacho cheese sit on the sidewalk out front.

Hong arrived from Kwangju, Korea, by way of Brigham Young University, where he studied computers and boned up on his English watching five hours of TV a day. Eight years ago, while reading a Book of Mormon given to him by missionaries in Korea, a warm, tingly sensation filled his torso and he converted to the faith, Hong says: “It was the Holy Ghost.”

The incident inspires his own missionary work: “I got so much; now I want to give back.”

Tolman hails from Twin Falls, Ida., where he spent 18 months after high school graduation pouring concrete, cutting Christmas trees and working in a nursery to raise the $350-a-month fee required of all missionaries. (Other Mormons start saving as young boys, but Tolman didn’t get around to it: “I knew I needed to, but I just never did.”)

On the road, they are yin and yang. Tolman, who wears Eternity for Men cologne, is an old hand after 10 months in the field, outgoing and in control. Hong, the rookie, struggles with his English and hangs back--except during an excursion to Koreatown, where he shines.

When Tolman learned he was coming to Los Angeles--he could have been assigned anywhere in the world--he thought, “Hey, Disneyland.”

Instead of Jiminy Cricket, he found cockroaches (“We have baptisms for them every night in the sink”); instead of evening fireworks, he hears gunshots.

“I got here and it’s like, ‘Whoa!’ “--the Missionary Training Center in Provo, Utah, he says, never said anything about this.

Graffiti, razor wire and trash blanket his Lexington Avenue neighborhood. Female mud wrestlers work just around the corner.

“This is where we grow up . . . the good things and the bad things,” Tolman says.

The missionary experience often is described as a rite of passage, an eye-opener to the rest of the world. Mormon officials inaugurated the voluntary missions soon after the church’s founding in the 1830s. Winning converts was the primary goal, but it has become evident that some of the biggest changes occur in the missionaries themselves.

Forced to rely exclusively on their partners, their God and their wits, they develop a faith and self-sufficiency that can serve a lifetime. Tolman and Hong say they’ve also learned patience, communication skills, budgeting, and greater family appreciation.

But the transformation occurs in fits and starts. At a weekly meeting of L. A. missionaries, it’s hard to decide whether the group looks like a collection of young Republicans or a bunch of antsy high school jocks forced at gunpoint to wear jackets and ties.

As they listen to lectures on spiritual topics, the men alternate between studious silence and teen-age nudges and whispers. Several chuckle over photos of themselves clowning around after a convert baptism--”letting out a little post-baptism stress,” one explains.

Last year, missionaries in the church’s L. A. region added 1,337 people to local membership rolls (the Southland is second only to greater Salt Lake City in Mormons--350,000 vs. 650,000--a figure that includes a sizable and growing bloc of Latinos).

The most explosive gains are abroad--in Africa and South America. Almost half of the church’s 8 million followers live outside North America. Many drop out, however, within five years: Sociologists report that about 40% of members are inactive.

But the increasingly sophisticated missionary program keeps new blood pouring in. At missionary boot camp--three weeks of training in Provo--new recruits get a crash course in LDS doctrines, gospel salesmanship and, if they stay an extra six weeks, a foreign language. (Among Los Angeles missionaries, 10 tongues are spoken, plus sign language).

Single men typically begin their missions between the ages of 19 and 28, at which time they also receive sacred church undergarments as a symbol of their maturing faith. Women don’t go out before age 21, but they have no upper age cutoff. They are fewer in number--about one-fifth of the missionary force--but rising steadily. A few older married couples also serve missions.

To cover living expenses, every missionary sends a monthly $350 check to church headquarters in Salt Lake City (missionaries from poorer nations often find U.S. sponsors), which is then redistributed as needed to each mission.

Behavior on the missionary trail is guided by a pair of unusual texts: the Book of Mormon and an obscure, slim volume known as “the White Bible.”

The former states that Jesus visited the Americas in AD 34, where he encountered a great civilization built by people who sailed from Jerusalem centuries earlier. Later, a series of wars destroyed the civilization except for one survivor, who traveled from Central America to Upstate New York and buried all records of what happened.

In the early 1800s, LDS founder Joseph Smith recovered and translated the records--which were reportedly written on gold plates.

Although the White Bible claims more humble beginnings, it is still influential. Published in Salt Lake City, it is the official rule book for traveling Mormon evangelists.

The White Bible forbids missionaries from watching television, reading newspapers or listening to music (other than church-approved cassette tapes). The idea is to avoid all distractions. Even phone calls home are outlawed, at least for Los Angeles missionaries (some other areas allow contact on Christmas and Mother’s Day).

Dating or even standing within arm’s length of the opposite sex is also banned. The controls are so intense that missionaries returning to civilian life are regarded as social cripples: Women at church-owned BYU sometimes refer to them as “returning missionary geeks.”

Other rules include no full-court basketball (missionaries are considered more prone to injuries playing anything beyond half-court) and no swimming.

“The evil forces of the world travel on the waters,” explains Don Voss, a church member who occasionally drives local missionaries to evening appointments.

Tolman chimes in, “Satan could drown us.”

But church spokesman Keith Atkinson says the association of evil and water is outdated: The modern thinking is that missionaries should avoid beaches and pools because of the “party atmosphere” and scantily clad bodies.

To help enforce such rules, the church assigns missionaries to new partners and cities (within the L. A. area) every several months.

Scheduling also makes it tough to stray from the straight and narrow.

Virtually every waking--and sleeping--moment of missionary life is carefully plotted by church officials. Up by 6:30 a.m., down by 10:30 p.m. and a set program of praying, studying, teaching and door-knocking in between.

“We try to stay as busy as we can all day long,” Tolman says.

No kidding.

The territory that he and Hong cover reaches north from Beverly Boulevard into Griffith Park, and west from Interstate 5 to Fairfax Avenue. As they biked around Hollywood on a recent 84-degree Tuesday, the duo consistently reached their destinations before a reporter and photographer traveling in a car--despite the missionaries having fasted from food and water since the previous evening.

The only break--and it’s not much--is Mondays. That’s the day set aside for laundry, grocery shopping, letter writing and--if time allows--maybe a game of basketball or a visit to a local tourist attraction. By evening, however, the missionaries are back on the road, spreading their gospel.

They’re supposed to meet weekly quotas for Books of Mormon distributed and potential converts or inactive church members being counseled. But it’s all voluntary, Gogarty says: “We don’t fire anybody” for falling short.

They might not get fired, but missionaries do face other threats.

“They get spit on and they get cussed at and they get bottles thrown at them. . . . People open car doors (in their path) and they go flying over. . . . Every one of them’s got a war story before they go home--probably two or three stories,” Gogarty says.

Some have unexpected endings.

When two L.A. missionaries saw a truck driving off with their bicycles (still locked to a street sign ripped from the sidewalk), they dropped to their knees in prayer. The bikes bounced back into the road, Gogarty says.

Two other missionaries were recently held up in Huntington Park, but the robbers decided the pair had nothing worth taking. The Mormons urged the departing assailants to “have a nice day.”

Steps are taken, however, to reduce their vulnerability to crime. In certain areas, they travel by bus instead of bicycle (which also gives them a captive audience to proselytize) and don’t go out after dark.

During the April riots, missionaries were ordered to stay indoors for several days, and some were eventually shipped to the suburbs so they could keep working until the violence subsided.

In addition to physical dangers, missionaries face The Pit.

That’s shorthand for the depression and burnout that can strike from encountering repeated hostility and rejection. The latter doesn’t just come from non-believers.

“Dear John” letters are a major bane of missionary life. BYU’s mission center devotes an entire wall to I’ve-met-someone-else missives from home.

“It is very hard to keep a girlfriend,” says Hong, who tells of one missionary who was dumped within a week of leaving home.

To escape The Pit, most missionaries redouble their efforts. “In those times when you get discouraged, the only thing you can do is work harder,” Tolman says. “That’s how I get uplifted. When you work harder, more (positive results) come to you.”

Still the odds are long; missionaries knock on about 1,000 doors for every one convert found. They fare better with people referred to them by church members, but the overall result is “a lot of time and energy with no success,” spokesman Atkinson says.

When victory comes, then, it is sweet indeed: “It’s like scoring the last, winning point in a football game,” Tolman says. “I can’t explain it . . . (but) it’s the only reason I’m out here: the joy you see. It changes people’s lives.”

Or as the slogan above his bed says: “I never said it would be easy. I only said it would be worth it.”