Being a Mormon missionary can be slow work. Over 16 months, Daniel Harlow, 19, has helped convert only three or four people. "Our purpose is to invite others to come to Christ," says the soft-spoken native of Leeds, England, whose mission has brought him to Kosovo. "We don't force anyone to try to do things. So it can be pretty frustrating when you're trying to help people and they're not helping themselves."
Harlow is among 83,000 full-time missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who serve in 405 missions around the world. The number of full-time missionaries has risen by some 40 percent since 2012, when the church lowered the minimum age for serving from 19 to 18 for men and from 21 to 19 for women. But conversions haven't kept pace: The church recorded just 3.4 baptisms per missionary in 2013, compared with 4.6 in 2012.
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