American Consulate, Hermosillo April 28, 1987 Editor Newsweek New York City Sir: Robert Rivard, whom you say "lived and worked in Central America", doesn't display much knowledge of either contemporary or past Salvadoran events if he is to be judged by what he has to say about Mormon missionaries in the area ("In Search of Change", p. 40, Newsweek , April 27, 1987). Rivard talks about a Mormon missionary addressing "the few peasants who remained in the town . . . in English (emphasis added) under a hot dry-season sun . . . (about) God vs. Communism (and his) importance back home." The President of the Mormon Mission in Salvador is a Salvador-born Latter-day Saint who is a close personal friend of mine. While he speaks fluent English in addition to his native Spanish, he would never resort to speaking English to his fellow countrymen. More than eighty per cent of his missionaries in Salvador are native-born Latin Americans, most from adjoining Central American countries, most of the rest from Mexico or South America. And the few non-Latin North Americans among the missionary contingent are fluent in Spanish and would never be insensitive (or stupid) enough to speak English to a group of natives. This is something reserved for Gringo tourists and Gringo newsmen. Nor is it credible that any Mormon missionary, even the few North American youths serving missions in Salvador (or any other country to which they were assigned) would be crude enough, or foolish enough, to brag about "their importance back home" (how important could a nineteen year old undergraduate be in any event?) Communism, pro or con is not part of the missionary teaching program. And without a great deal more circumstantial evidence I have a hard time believing that any Latter-day Saint missionary in Salvador or elsewhere would be wasting his time either preaching politics or speaking to an uninterested group of local women under the scorching sun when instructions are to preach only the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ in its fullness, and only to the interested in their own homes by prior appointment. The Mormon Church wouldn't be the fastest growing church in the world -- above all in Latin America, if its missionaries spent their time as bootlessly as Rivard reports. And I think I know what I'm talking about. I know Central America, too. Probably better than Rivard. Before my retirement after twenty-eight years in the Foreign Service I served as Charge d'Affaires ad interim at the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala and have enough experience with biased media reporters to wonder about Rivard's entire article. Apart from my work at the Embassy, I was also Counselor in the Guatemalan LDS Church Stake (diocese) Presidency. And I am currently Counselor to the local Mormon Bishop here in Hermosillo, Mexico. So I know something of Church affairs and practices. And what Rivard says about North American LDS missionary braggarts in the midday sun bears so little resemblance to what I know of Mormon missionaries that I have reason to doubt other elements of his story. I've sometimes though the U.S. press automatically rejects anything said to them by American embassy personnel, accepting as ultimate truth whatever contrary they can dig up from whatever alternative source. Reporters are is a business at least as competitive as any other and just as prone to corner cutting as any other profession. I have seen reporters slant facts and alter circumstances to pep up a story in an otherwise boring week just to make their byline. I, for one, wasn't at all surprised at the Washington Post /Janet Cook brouhaha a few years ago. I'm not trying to bash freedom of the press. Indeed, I agree with fellow Mormon Jack Anderson that the only truly effective means of disciplining the press is the freedom of competing reporters to catch out the mistakes of their colleagues. I just wish there were a bit more of this peer-discipline. There seems to be an auto-immunity of reporters to criticism, just as there is of doctors and lawyers to peer sanction. In the meantime, I believe it is the duty of those who know the facts to write letters to the editor such as this to set the record straight when one reads such downright inaccurate reporting as that of Robert Rivard when he takes to task the Church I know best just to add "color" to his story that things aren't going just as well as he'd like in Salvador. Mormons have enough real problems like Mark Hoffman and Sonia Johnson without the press faking it up just for the fun of it. Sincerely,