Mormon myths mostly harmless but unnecessary

When I was on my mission, my companion received a letter one night from his mom with news that should have rocked the Mormon world.

If it hadn't been a total myth.

She said that a young man in her stake had received his mission call recently and when he opened the envelope, he found a single sheet of paper containing a phone number. He dialed the number and anxiously waited as friends and family looked on.

Finally the voice of an operator came on the line and said, \"Please hold for President Hinckley.\"

Next, the astonished young man heard the prophet's voice.

\"Elder,\" he said. \"We're opening mainland China for missionary work, and you're going to be one of the first missionaries to begin proselyting. Are you up for the task?\"

Now, needless to say, I was more than a little skeptical of this story when he first read it to me. Wouldn't we have heard from the member of our local ward if China had really been opened to missionaries? Wouldn't the church have made some sort of an announcement?

But my companion took it all on faith. After all, his mom had heard it from someone in her stake! Can sources get more reliable than that?

News spread fast through the mission. District meetings and P-day lunches were dominated by talk of the new mainland China mission. Elders wondered aloud whether the Mandarin-speaking missionaries in our mission would be reassigned.

\"They probably need all the help they can get,\" the excited elders would say. \"After all, there can't be very many missionaries in the world who speak Chinese!\"

Without regular Internet access, none of us had a way to verify the claim in the letter, and so many of us turned to the members in our wards and branches. And while none of them had heard of such an announcement, many of them figured that if the missionaries knew about it, it must be true.

\"It just goes to show what kind of miracles the Lord can accomplish,\" the members would say, beaming.

Well, eventually the elders who had written enthusiastic letters home requesting more information received word that the rumors were false.

In the end, I don't think much harm was done. No testimonies were too badly shaken, and besides enduring a few minutes of disappointment, the work went on.

I guess I shouldn't have been surprised when a couple days ago my co-workers and I were swapping some of our favorite Mormon myths and that exact same story surfaced. Apparently, my mission was not the only one that had fallen prey to this particular rumor.

A new Web site pitching itself as a Mormon myth-buster recently launched, causing me once again to wonder about why we Latter-day Saints take so much joy in spreading unsubstantiated stories about ourselves.

The site, HolyFetch.com, is run by Casey Cummings,