http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/home/51121821-76/brazil-missionaries-lds-visa.html.cspHundreds of Mormon missionaries assigned to serve in Brazil increasingly find themselves preaching not in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo or Fortaleza, but instead in Philadelphia, Pocatello, Idaho, or even Provo. (...)
The reason? Visa snags. And who can Mormon missionaries and their parents blame for the delays? The U.S. State Department and its counterpart in Brazil.
This is no small headache for the LDS Church. Brazil boasts more than a million members, the world’s third-largest Mormon population, after the United States and Mexico. It has 27 missions, more than any country outside the U.S. About 10 percent of the faith’s 52,000 missionaries are called to Brazil. Any disruption in the flow of full-time missionaries could slow the number of converts and hamper the stability of LDS congregations there.
Waiting for weeks or months for visas takes an emotional toll on individual missionaries. (more at link)
And, once again, I see fit to retell a personal story:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2119025#2119602 -- that happened in 2003 or so.
Let me tell you of when a pair of Mormon "missionaries" came to MY door.
They started with the standard stuff about how wonderful this religion is and what a difference it made in their lives, blah, blah... standard proselytizing stuff. Then went on to talk about the "Indians = Jews" thing, which I thought amusing, but shrugged it off. Just some different mythology.
Then they went on to explain the "Mark of Cain" thing. Yep. Black people are that way because God's curse on Cain was making him black.
That bit was supposed to have been excised from Mormon canon -- but, if they suspect a favorable reception to it, they WILL use it.
The LDS can kiss my fat pasty-white liberal atheist butt.
(The thing is, I am very Nordic-looking for Brazilian standards. Quite white, blue-eyed, tall, fat, with a foreign accent. I've lost count of people who approached me hoping for friendly validation of their racism, certainly based on my looks.)