Missionary work, including LDS, has a phenomenally low success rate. I don’t recall it, but from memory a missionary might convert 1-2 people per year based on cold calls. I suspect that missionary work is done, not so much to get converts, as to reinforce the group identity of the missionaries.
It has long been my strong suspicion that the point of missionary work is not in the conversions, but in the consistency pressure on the missionary—that for the rest of his life, he will on some level think “I ran around telling people this was true for two years—surely that wasn’t for nothing.”
It has long been my strong suspicion that the point of missionary work is not in the conversions, but in the consistency pressure on the missionary—that for the rest of his life, he will on some level think “I ran around telling people this was true for two years—surely that wasn’t for nothing.”