The Last of the Weekly Numbers

Today's strip wraps up the weekly numbers storyline. Maybe next week, this website will feature a missionary strip that isn't haplessly outdated. Hope springs eternal.

More Weekly Numbers

Per our discussion from last week's comic strip, here are outdated missionary materials 683 (landline) and 684 (weekly numbers reported to the district leader) featured in the Mission Daze comic strip.

Weekly Numbers

Who knows if missionaries even do this anymore. District leaders would call the missionaries in their district every Sunday evening to collect the number of investigators, discussions, contacts, etc. from the previous week. Those district leaders would then pass the numbers onto the zone leaders who would pass them on to the APs. I imagine all of this is now done online, making today's strip yet another of my 682 outdated missionary strips featured on this blog.*

*Remarkable that there are 682 outdated strips when I only drew 500 of them (some were so egregious, I had to count them twice).

Weekly Numbers

I'm not sure what the current practice is, but when I was a missionary, the weekly numbers we reported to our district leader (who then passed them on to the zone leader (who then passed them on to the assistants to the president (who then passed them on to the mission president (it's possible I've used too many parentheses in this sentence)))) were kind of a big deal.

With the recent changes to home and visiting teaching numbers, here's hoping that weekly missionary numbers have evolved over the twenty plus years since my mission too.

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?

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).