This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

This is me on my Mormon mission in South America. The scowl is the result of six hours of nonstop door knocking, during which we were threatened, insulted, dismissed and ignored.

I'm further annoyed because my companion is taking my picture immediately after a street prostitute propositioned us.

"Psst, Mormones. Quieren ir al cielo? Cinco mil."

Since the possibility of contracting syphilis for a mere 5,000 pesos ($3.60 American) was the best offer we'd had all day, I told my companion that beating doors was a big fat waste of time.

Elder Turbot was a harmless bliss-ninny. He bore his testimony and blamed our lack of success on The Adversary. The devil was angry about us spreading the gospel. Success would come if we were obedient and didn't allow the devil to demoralize us.

I countered with a witness that our lack of imagination wasn't Satan's fault and that it was our responsibility to find a more effective (and entertaining) way of pissing him off.

Him: "I'm senior and we'll do things Heavenly Father's and my way."

Me: "Wait, are you saying that God is just as boring as you?

Knocking on doors was all there was to being a Mormon missionary then. Thousands upon thousands of doors. Millions probably.

Then I was transferred to a faraway place, where I was the senior companion. And there was no one there, including Satan, who could tell me that I couldn't study the scriptures while listening to The Moody Blues or that I wasn't supposed to take a dog door to door.

Although I never felt guilty about hating to knock on doors, it is gratifying to know that I wasn't just being disobedient. I was just ahead of my time.

Today, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has so many missionaries that knocking on doors is no longer considered effective in some places. Instead, LDS missionaries are encouraged to devote considerable time to doing community service work.

It's been 40 years since I returned from South America. I'm glad I went on a mission, but it wasn't something anyone would ever get me to do again. I might reconsider if it were more of a service mission.

Turn the clock back to when I was 20 years old and seeking an alternative to a life of crime. Wearing a tie and knocking on doors didn't sound all that encouraging, but I was desperate.

Conversely, I would have jumped at the chance to spend two years feeding the homeless, taking care of orphans, painting over graffiti or neutering stray animals.

Yeah, I know, the scriptures don't mention neutering cats, but any sort of unpaid community improvement has to be on God's list of good stuff to do.

My mission would have been far more instructive (not to mention enjoyable) if I had been assigned companions like Sonny, and all we did was pick up roadkill.

Spreading the gospel is OK over the long term. But dragging a dead hippopotamus out of the road pays off immediately.

Everyone is happy about that. Even better would be the complete absence of pointless doctrinal arguments about what God truthfully wants done with dead hippos.

Service missions make complete sense. You get to serve God and your fellow people, you're actually making the world a better place and you get to learn stuff you haven't already heard a million times.

I know what you're thinking. "If service missions are so great, why aren't you on one now?"

Yeah? How do you know that I'm not?

Robert Kirby can be reached at rkirby@sltrib.com or facebook.com/stillnotpatbagley.