I’ll go first:

Sisters

My bias is that I feel sisters will be harder working, more mature, and less likely to embaress me when interacting with my friends and neighbors. Also, I am more likely to enjoy having them over for dinner–Sisters often have interesting backstories, and many elders just don’t.

N/B that I admit this is my personal bias and totally full of generalizations.

Sisters, cause then my wife gets to go on splits. She likes that.

Sisters. My ward has them, and its so wonderful. When I was at my parents’ ward (which doesn’t have sister missionaries) over Christmas I taught Young Women’s and I realized how sad it was that the Young Women didn’t get to have sister missionaries to look up to.

I would like to have sisters in my ward because one thing I miss as a single woman is the ability to have the missionaries over for dinner. I would also like to go out on splits.

I find it interesting that the vote is overwhelmingly in favor of sisters at this point. When I was serving my mission, I noticed that whenever I was serving in a ward where there was also a set of elders serving, my companion and I were treated by the members like we weren’t real missionaries. (That was in the Deep South 5 years ago. Hopefully times are changing.)

I’m split, so I’m taking two votes.

I vote for elders, because they remind me of my son, who returned from a mission in July. I like imagining what he was like, serving as I see the elders serve; teaching, administering, speaking ( he was pretty sparing with the stories I crave!). I like watching young men figure out how to access the priesthood power that they were given. On the other hand, elders are just quirky teenagers with ties. Our combined ward/language branch had 6 missionaries, and last week, four were sent home early, including one in his first area. Sisters tend to be more mature, and less likely to do Stupid Things.

I prefer sisters because of their more focused enthusiasm; they serve because they really want to, not because all their older cousins and brothers did. They are not afraid of work, which can often lead to overmuch. We had sisters here 2 years ago. That one pair taught-and-had-baptized 47 people in 4 months! That’s 12 more than the rest of the entire stake that same time period. They loved the people, taught them, served them, then were replaced by elders. Today, I think less than half of the 47 attend Church. I also liked sisters here because they felt secure dropping by our home when they wanted me to print a baptism program, needed to make some calls off their cell time, wanted to try a new teaching idea, etc. I miss them!

arJ is dead on. Sisters are either the greatest or the worst. Our ward started having sisters about 2 years ago and we had a wonderful run for awhile and several baptisms as well. The last couple of companionships has bee pretty rough, though, and it shows in the work.

I, and most everybody in our ward, is now longing to have Elders back. I have selfish reasons. They are a little more fun to have for dinner (large meals) and being in the YM program, I could use a couple of Elders as some strong examples right now.

I should also say that I didn’t have the best experiences with Sisters on my mission so I will admit my judgement can become clouded.

i guess sisters because in our area they “do better?” i don’t really care either way. as a former stake missionary who spent 40 hours a week splitting with sisters, i’m far too aware that they can be just as silly as the elders. i think it’s apples and oranges, though.

it would be nice to have sisters in our area more often, though, just so i could tract with them and entertain somewhere other than the front porch. and i’d LOVE for my daughters to see sister missionaries. the oldest two are convinced that they don’t exist, as they’ve never seen one in real-life, ha.

deb, everywhere i’ve ever lived (from the east coast to the west coast to the pacific) has had the rule that the elders are not to be alone with a woman of any age.

I also find this vote very intriguing. Generally when the Sister Missionaries are mentioned in the bloggernacle, they are tauted as mental cases (as in comment #6).

Tom Rod–isn’t that what we are all trying to void? So sad.

Matt W–good point

bbell–do tell–why do you pick sisters?

Megan–another good point–Sisters can be great role models. I actually have a good friend who got involved in a rather unfortunate marriage because she did not realize she still could have served a mission (at 26, she was weighing her options)–she lived in wards that only had Elders and just didn’t know any Sister missionaries or RMs.

ARJ–you had a high percentage of sisters in your mission (in mine, sisters were less than 10%, which seems to be the case in the missions of my 5 siblings who have served over the decade and a half). Unfortunate, though, that they left such a negative impressions.

(who were the calls from? DLs? ZLs? I wonder if these were young leaders who just didn’t know how to handle female complaints? Like when an Elder was frustrated, sad, lonely, etc. they might have taken it out on their companion, played it off in P-Day basketball, punched a hole in the wall–all recognizable and mostly acceptable forms of expression to their young leadership; while frustrated, sad, lonely, etc. sisters might have instead called the DL/ZL in tears, thereby distressing DL/ZL who doesn’t know what to do with said sister, and calls the Mission office to complain?)

Keri Brooks–I had the opposite experience mostly. I rarely served in an area/ward that also had Elders, but when I did, the members frequently “favored” us over the elders with their referals. It could have been that more of the referals were female, and I am sure the fact that I often had native companions helped, but I always felt appreciated as a sister. I served in a few areas that specifically told the MP they would not accept Elders, only sisters (had had bad experiences in the past).

John Mansfield–always looking on the bright side. Why don’t your Elders walk/ride bikes/use public transport?

deb–interesting split decision.

I just hope they work hard and do it in a way that wins the support of the members. I feel very uncomfortable when we have visitors at the institute and the missionaries are talking loudly in English while playing too many games of Fußball or ping pong, or when we’re in the train together and they’d rather tell about something cool they saw then talk to people around us.

ESO,

No, generally sisters were skipping DLs/LZsZLs entirely and calling the mission office directly or simply showing up, sometimes after several hours of bus ride.

I should add that I am not painting Sisters as mental cases, or at least not trying to. The very best missionaries are sister missionaries. I firmly believe this, and advocated giving them more leadership responsibilities while I was on my mission only to be stymied. There are very few so-so sisters. The worst Sisters give the worst Elders a run for their money. The difference usually being that the worst Elders go home after some spectacular episode while the worst Sisters are a slow motion 18 month disaster.

I’m not against Sisters serving at all, in fact I just put my mom on a plane to Australia two weeks ago. I just think you get some over-zealous bishops/members who can overstep their bounds in pressuring sisters to serve missions. I think GBH’s counsel on this several years back was appropriate.

The only sisters I knew that went home, asked to go home. And there were more than a few.

The ward where I lived most of my adult life has never had any sister missionaries. The ward where I have lived the past 11 years has had several sets, most of whom have been more effective and teaching and fellowshipping. I can think of 4 families active now that were taught by sisters, and only one who was brought in by Elders.

My husband attended the Hill Cumorah Pageant as at 25 where several sister missionaries bore their testimonies to him, which caused his bosom to burn within him-he thought he was having a heart attack. His friends hurried him off to the next visitors’ site. Before the pageant another SM chatted him up and bore her testimony. This one was wise enough to perceive and explain the shortness of breath to him. She him to fill out a referral card, even though he was quite reluctant, and he was taught and baptized in the Hingham, MA Ward that fall. So I really appreciate those unknown sisters. Also, our youngest daughter is serving a mission now. I vote “sisters”.

What? Who?

Nice to hear from Mrs. DKL! I’d love to hear the REAL story.

Tim J–maybe your mission was a hostile work environment. My own MP had very little regard for sisters and I am sure that the struggling Elders were given pep talks and the struggling Sisters would have been advised that they did not need to stay. My mission is the only workplace in which I have been sexually harassed by a colleague–by an Elder. I knew I was on my own in my mission–no one else was looking out for me or needed me to stay. That is not great support. Had it been a different kind of job (such as employment), I would have quit.

(Sorry my 34 is so disjointed; I’m trying to watch a replay of the Oscars since I missed them last night.) Anyway, to continue my thought — I’m seeing more and more sisters going to places like Eastern Europe and Asia and then places like Spanish-speaking CA or NJ. More and more Elders are going to English-speaking Idaho, Nevada, etc., it seems. I wonder if it’s because sisters are more effective in the growing areas of the Church, as opposed to Elders, who may work better in an established ward structure…

@14 the LDS birthrate has dropped by half since the 1970s, using the number of 8-year-old children of record as a proxy for the birthrate.

Er, sorry. Your situation was probably not much worse than being a 26 to 28 year old male…..

While on her mission, my little sister was involved in helping one of my old missionary companions, who had been excommunicated, return to full fellowship. We always found that to be pretty cool.

Having served a remote mission where there were only Elders, speaking with my wife and sister (European missions), and having been a ward mission leader/missionary in both the US and Asia, I don’t put much weight on the sister/elder dichotomy. It all boils down to two things, the degree to which a particular missionary’s service is selfless and the organizational culture of the particular mission.

That said, most of my lifetime Church attendance has been in areas where the Church was small and the Elder’s contributions to the priesthood headcount would be a difficult thing to trade away.

I don’t really care about missionaries’ ability to do missionary work as there is so little work to do anyway. My criteria for preference is (1) nice to have over for a meal and (2) quality of interaction in the ward. I find many sisters are as uptight as Zone Leaders, so I prefer run-of-the-mill elders.

I wonder what the breakdown has been that the companion system is no longer considered a sufficient safeguard for missionaries.

I prefer sisters. I don’t prefer sisters because I think they’re “better” than elders. My preference is for a completely selfish reason – if we have sisters in the ward, I don’t have to go on splits!

While I have had some great spiritual experiences on splits (or exchanges as they’re called in some areas), most of the time they’re a chore (kinda like home teaching).

skl, I thought you told me that you never commented around here…

You know, I haven’t seen or heard of splits in a long long time.

One could do an entire post on the subject of splits, particularly their coming and going (and what they are called).

Yes, splits still exist (we do them weekly in our ward), and we still call them “splits”. But they have appeared and disappeared at various times, and there have been attempts to change the name to something more, I guess, dignified, such as “member exchanges”.

The on-going concern with splits has been to avoid situations where a randomly volunteering member ends up in an early discussion being held with a (non-LDS) investigator and goes off on a tangent (“You see, blood atonement was only taught for a limited period in the late 1800s, mostly as a consequence of the Mormon Reformation….”). In our own mission (Colorado Colorado Springs), the current mandate is that if an investigator is being taught, both full-time missionaries have to be there. We’re doing splits because the full-time missionaries and ward missionaries are working together to help all the families in the ward to have their own family mission plan. ..bruce..

John Mansfield–OK–now I see what you were talking about. I always thought the concern was not about missionary behavior, but about appearances–what would the neighbors think of two young men visit Mrs. C when her husband isn’t there, etc.

That said, I know that, at least in my mission, missionaries are no longer allowed to hold kids or teach primary, etc to avoid accusations against them of child abuse. I would have thought a companionship would have pretty much done the job of ensuring there would not be child abuse, but apparently not.

John Mansfield.

I want to address the issue of the sisters “hassling” the mission office.

Seriously I do not see this as a big issue. I saw it as well on my mission. Usually the sisters were upset with each other. I was ZL for 16 months and saw this more then once. The worst fighting occurred usually between the elderly sisters and their 22 year old comps. This is simply a minor annoyance. All you do is transfer them to a different comp.

The “trouble elders” were having sex with local member girls, crashing cars, clubbing, etc. Much worse problems to deal with.

ESO, I might be mistaken but I think the “no holding/touching kids” rule is now in the white bible (a term that I haven’t heard in years, so I don’t know if they still call it that in mission lingo). When I was a missionary, there were a few member homes with rowdy kids where I would have welcomed such a rule. “I’m sorry, you can’t pull my hair or choke me with my tie, it’s against the rules.”

I hadn’t heard it, but it sounds like an urban legend to me – mostly because that was my biggest fear after I put in my papers. I was sure I was going to be rejected.

If it did happen, I seriously doubt the sister would be told in a letter that looked like a call. It would come from the stake president.

“I was just talking to my brother who mentioned that in his ward a young lady put in her mission papers and received back a reply that said something to the effect that her service at this time was not needed.”

That sounds like it may have been an “honorably excused” type of thing. Such as if her physical or mental health was not well enough to meet mission rigors.

There are some go/no-go decisions where the bishop and Stake pres don’t have enough medical or psych knowledge on their own to determine if someone should go or not. And the missionary candidate’s local non-member doctor may not know enough about mission conditions to make the go/no-go decision. In those cases, the church’s medical consultants may make a “no go” decision after reviewing the medical history, current medications, etc.

Removing such decision-making to the faceless consultants at the missionary department, and wording it “your service is not needed at this time” or “you are hereby honorably excuse” saves the Bishop and Stake Pres the hassle of angry parents accusing them of denying their child the opportunity of missionary service.

It’s also better for the excused missionary candidate to be able to answer the question “Why didn’t you serve a mission” with an honest “I was honorably excused” than being forced to say “The bishop wouldn’t let me” or “my mental state is too fragile to bear up under the rigors of a full-time mission” or “the church doesn’t want any more basket cases going on missions.”

I had a companion who I now think would have been honorably excused under today’s standards.

And I probably would have been, or should have been, declined/excused myself.

I can completely corroborate Bookslinger’s report. While serving as a Bishop, I had one young man who went through that. Both the Stake President and I knew he couldn’t handle the physical/mental pressures of a mission. But his parents felt strongly that he should submit his papers. I told them what my recommendation would be. So did the SP. So did the doctor who performed the pre-mission medical evaluation. He submitted anyway. He got the “your service is not needed at this time” response. It happens a lot more since the Church “raised the bar”.

This is an area where the prospective missionary and their family is not likely to want to talk about it. Even with a ‘honorably excused’ response. They almost certainly are not going to want to go into detail about what medical/psychological issues got in the way.

Well I am totally gratified to declare that SISTERS WIN! More people, for a variety of reasons, would rather have only sisters serve in their ward than have only elders. Yeah!