1. In my experience in Portugal, we were often called CIA (whether they believed it or not). At least some missionaries claimed to have shouted “KGB” in return.

2. April 8, 1939 sixteen armed policemen stormed the mission home in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the day before a scheduled mission-wide semi-annual conference (missionaries had been arriving from around the mission for several days). The mission had held a large meeting the previous evening, and withdrawn large amounts of cash from a trust account the previous day, in order to cover expenses for all the missionaries for the next several weeks.

The Argentine police had observed large numbers of often blond, northern-European looking foreigners and had received a tip claiming that the missionaries were the core of a cell set up to print and distribute Nazi literature in Argentina. The situation may have been exacerbated by the Church’s early success among German-speaking immigrants. The police soon realized their mistake and asked the mission president to absolve them from responsibility for making a warrantless search!

The mission president, Frederick S. Williams, later discovered that the mission home and buildings used for LDS services needed to be registered with the police, which would have avoided the problem.

The complete story can be found in Williams’ book From Acorn to Oak Tree (self published, 1987, ISBN 0-944329-00-4, now out-of-print)

The bus drivers and elders dressed alike – male / short sleeve white shirts and a tie. People were curious why we were walking and not riding/driving a bus. And other bus drivers gave us free rides.

Another post-mission case of mistaken identity. There was a young man in our ward named Esteban–he went by Steve–who lived in a rough neighborhood with a half-million other Mexicans, Puerto Ricans and other Hispanics. One evening I went down to pick him up for some activity–one white, middle-aged non-Hispanic in the whole place. Steve wasn’t waiting outside, and I didn’t remember exactly what building, what apartment was his. So I asked some people walking by if they knew where Steve was.

Finally I found where he was–it turned out he wasn’t planning to come to the activity anyway. But as I walked outside, one of the guys I’d spoken to said: “Hey, did he have?” I said “Huh?” Again: “Did he have?”

Then it dawned on me that he thought Steve was my dealer and I was down there buying drugs.

My companion and I had been sitting in someone’s house for about half an hour one time and he had been going on and on about how much he admired our church’s pacifist stance during the war and I kept wondering what exactly he was talking about until I realized he thought we belonged to a different church. Once I explained the mistake, I think he ushered us out fairly quickly.

I had another mistaken identity experience recently, but in a role of visiting teacher rather than sister missionary. I was in the one and only “tough” neighborhood in our community to visit a ward member I didn’t know. As I tried to figure out where to park and where this ward member lived, I asked a child standing on the street. A woman came running out of the house and grabbed the children and hurried them into the house and closed the doors and blinds. I looked around confusedly, trying to figure out what had just happened. It finally dawned on me that I must have been mistaken for a social worker (child protective services or something like that). That never happened while I was a missionary; must be the difference of age.

Was that somewhere in Kyushu? Or Shikoku? When I was in Kochi 33 years ago, we used to see Russian sailors from time to time. I remember trying to explain to one what we were doing–but got nowhere.

Shortly after I arrived in Japan, a JW teenager needed a blood transfusion to live. His parents refused, and he was broadcast on national TV begging them to change their minds. They wouldn’t relent, and he died – again, making national news.

We were instructed to go to the hospital immediately, donate blood and wear the Red Cross pin conspicuously on our suits. It was a wonderful conversation starter.