Thesis (M.S.)--Brigham Young University. Dept. of Sociology. / Electronic thesis. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 85-88). Also available in print ed.

This dissertation is comprised of three articles that discuss the linguistic choices made by six Mormon missionaries who had been assigned to work with the Spanish speaking population of southern Arizona. Data was collected through interviews, reflective journals, and participate observations. The first article chronicles the missionaries' feelings about a temporary language use rule that required them to speak Spanish from 9:00 am to 9:00 pm for one week. The missionaries experienced elevated confidence as they increased their Spanish use, but also found it to be tiring. The rule provided sufficient motivation for them to significantly alter their linguistic behavior, but once the week was over they reverted back to mostly speaking English. The second article examines how their behavior changed during that week. The missionaries explained their temporary goal to the Spanish-English bilinguals they worked with who were happy to also alter their language use and accommodate the missionaries' Spanish speaking objective. However, other language learning missionaries outside of the group of six were less accommodating and often continued speaking to the missionaries in the study in English even when spoken to in Spanish. The third article discusses the factors that influence which language missionaries choose to use. They often felt uneasy in initial encounters when speaking to someone who might be a native Spanish speaker. Many of their linguistic choices were made based on phenotype, but they preferred to speak to a new person in whichever language they overheard them speaking. The missionaries also felt that native Spanish speakers rejected their invitations to speak Spanish simply because they were white. While race played a large role in language choice, both the missionaries and their interlocutors were invested in conversing in the language that made the other most comfortable. This paper shows that Spanish language learning missionaries in the United States are eager to improve their linguistic abilities, but often require external motivation and community support to use the target language.

The problem of this study was to determine the relative levels of physical fitness of male L.D.S. Missionaires who were commencing and those just concluding their missionary service. The study was conducted with 50 randomly chosen subjects in each group.The following conclusions were drawn based on the findings of the study:1. Returning missionaries were found to have experienced a significant decrease at the .01 level in the following areas: leg and back strength, total strength score, strength quotient, total seconds ran, total endurance score and over-all fitness score.2. Returning missionaries increased in gripping strength at the .01 level of significance.3. There was no significant difference at the .01 level between the two groups in the areas of body weight or arm strength.4. Ninty percent of the returning missionaries were found to be below McCloy's National Strength Norms at .01 level of significance.5. Eighty-six percent of the returning missionaries were classified as being in poor over-all condition as opposed to 26 percent prior to their departing for the mission field.

The purpose of this study is twofold: (1) to determine if there is a difference between the returned missionaries' academic achievement before and after their missionary experience; and (2) to determine if there is a difference between returned missionaries and non-missionaries in scholastic aptitude, academic achievement, and vocational interest.

The majority of male Ricks College students, while serving as missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, spend two years living in geographically unfamiliar environments. This thesis compares the geographic literacy of those Ricks College males who have served LDS Church missions with those who have not. A test of geographic literacy was administered to 306 male Ricks College students. Returned missionaries demonstrated significantly higher knowledge of general cultural and physical geography than pre-missionanes. In contrast, returned missionaries demonstrated no greater ability to identify global places such as countries and cities. As expected, the returned missionaries possessed a superior knowledge of the regions in which they served.

This dissertation studies a small American religious group that survived unscathed during the Third Reich. Some fifteen thousand members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormons, lived under National Socialism. Unlike persecuted Jews and Jehovah's Witnesses, and other small American-based sects that suffered severe restrictions, the Mormons worshiped freely under Hitler's regime. They survived by stressing congruence between church doctrine and Nazi dogma. Mormons emphasized their interest in genealogical research and sports, sent their husbands into the Wehrmacht and their sons into the Hitler Youth, and prayed for a Nazi victory in wartime. Mormon leaders purged all Jewish references from hymnals, lesson plans and liturgical practices, and shunned their few Jewish converts. They resurrected a doctrinal edict that required deference to civil authority, which the Mormons had not always obeyed. Some Mormons imagined fanciful connections with Nazism, to the point that a few believed Hitler admired their church, copied its welfare program, and organized the Nazi party along Mormon lines. This dissertation builds upon Christine Elizabeth King's theory of a common Weltanschauung between Mormons and Nazis, and Steven Carter's description of the Mormons' "accommodation" with National Socialism. Instead of a passive approach, however, the Mormons pursued aggressive and shameless "ingratiation" with the Nazi state. This work also examines memory. Mormons later tried to forget their pandering to the Nazis, especially when large numbers of Germans immigrated to Utah in the post-war period. When the story of a martyred Mormon resister, Helmuth Hubener, emerged in the 1970s, church officials interfered with the research of scholars at Brigham Young University. They feared that Hubener's example would incite Mormon youth to rebel against dictators abroad, hurt the church's relations with communist East Germany, and would offend recent German Mormon immigrants in Utah. A few Mormons shunned and harassed Hubener's surviving coconspirators. In recent years, Hubener?excommunicated for rebellion against the Nazis but later restored to full church membership?has been rehabilitated as a recognized hero of Mormonism. A new collective memory has been forged, one of wartime courage and suffering, while the inconvenient past is being conveniently discarded.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin, 1950. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Bibliography: 367-374.

Thesis (M.A.)--Brigham Young University. Dept. of Religious Education, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (p.140-148).

Performance tests are an effective way of assessing examinees' ability to perform specific job-related tasks. This thesis details the development and validation of a performance test designed to measure LDS missionaries' ability to perform missionary tasks in a foreign language, the Missionary Language Performance Test (MLPT).The development of the test involved identifying a set of relevant missionary tasks, specifying the criteria to be evaluated, designing test items, devising a procedure for sampling tasks and for administering and rating the test, and training raters to administer the test. Three separate studies were conducted to validate the test: (a) both the MLPTand the ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview were administered to a set of missionaries to determine the degree of correlation between the two tests; (b) the MLPT was administered to a group of MTC teachers, a group of missionaries in their last week of training, and a group in their first week of training, and the scores of the three groups were compared; and (c) the MLPT was administered twice to a group of missionaries, each time by a different pair of raters, to assess test-retest reliability and to validate the procedure used for sampling tasks. The results of these studies provided evidence that the test is a valid and reliable instrument for assessing missionaries' second language speaking skills.

In 1939, when Germany mobilized its military against neighboring Poland, LDS missionaries were notified to evacuate their missions. In August 1940, the full-time missionaries in the South African and Pacific missions were also evacuated because of the spread of hostilities in Europe. Later the missionaries were released from the missions in South America. By 1943 the only missionaries serving outside of North America were in Hawaii.All of the more than eight hundred missionaries were transported at Church expense to America, where they were either reassigned to missions within the United States or released to return to their homes. All this was accomplished without serious illness or accident. This thesis recounts their activities, experiences, and problems. Special research emphasis has been given to personal interviews and contemporary journal accounts.