Immature Elders

Sometimes in our rush to lionize the missionaries, we forget that they are only 19 and 20-year-old boys. Realizing that makes their accomplishments all the more remarkable.

Boy, the above paragraph came off as incredibly sappy, didn't it?

Another Cartooning Cliche

Several months ago we had a caption contest on this blog where I asked you to provide suitable captions to one of the most cliche cartoons in all of cartoondom--the deserted island. I had so much fun reading your submissions, that I decided to do another one. Today's cartooning cliche in need of your captions is the guy sitting on the psychiatrist's couch.
Please share your best captions, otherwise, I'll never feel the need to draw the guy crawling through the desert gag.

More Weekly Numbers

Not that anyone cares, but Elder Cochrane was the name of my trainer in the mission field. Obviously, I have some deep rooted issues with being so dependent on the guy--how else would you explain my making him a greenie in today's strip?

72 Hour Kit

Much like you need to periodically go through your 72 hour kit and rotate out food, water, and clothing; remember to do the same with your game console. (You'd hate for your child to be embarrassed in an emergency to have to play on a Super Nintendo, or something equally ancient, while all his friends are playing Xbox 360.)

Weekly Numbers

I think most missionaries* would agree that the tracking of weekly numbers is a necessary evil of missionary work. While missionaries hate to assign cold, hard numbers to the work they do with the individuals they come in contact with, without the accountability that weekly numbers provide, it would be very easy for discourage missionaries to slack off on their ministry.

Yeah, weekly numbers aren't fun, and they're especially not fun when you're dealing with a wise guy.

*Of course, the only type of missionary that likes weekly numbers are those who are aspiring to a bigger calling (like Elder Blank, for example).

Tall Tales

So it just occurs to me that this would be a funnier gag if, instead of clean-cut missionaries, I drew some salty sailors in a dingy bar telling this story. Dang!

News and Notes

Here's some news since my last post:

• My awesome little brother and president of the Mormon Cartoonist Fan Club has fixed the Facebook fan club to allow for posts from this website to show up there. To do so, though, he had to create a new type of Facebook fan club which means that if you had previously joined the fan club, you'll have to rejoin it now. You can do it here.
  
• As a reminder to any single girls out there, this is what my brother Joel looks like!
  
• Remember a month ago, when I linked to another Mormon Cartoonist's blog and bemoaned the fact that he wasn't updating his blog regularly? Well, since then he's began posting new stuff nearly daily. You can check out his blog here as well as from a permanent link off to the right of this blog.

Social Media

You know what would be great? If some funny Mormon had a Twitter account where he or she tweeted in the voice of famous Book of Mormon characters. Right now I'm too lazy to see if anyone has already done this, but if any of you are aware of something, let me know.

With a gag like today's, the obvious thing would be to announce my entrance into the word of tweeting and invite you all to follow me there, but that's not happening. Instead I'll remind you of the Mormon Cartoonist Fan Club page on Facebook.

(Incidentally, I was hoping to upgrade the fan club page to automatically link every post from this blog, but after several frustrating hours on Facebook, I gave up (curse you Mark Zuckerberg). If any of you think you might know how to do that, could you please drop me an email and we'll talk? Thanks.)

Still Waiting...

Today's strip is a continuation of last week's strip. These poor missionaries have been waiting at this door so long that a new year came and went.