Latest update November 10th, 2024 1:00 AM
Sep 06, 2009 Letters
Dear Editor,
I wish to respond to letter written by Mr. Shiv Maharaj, Phd, headed, “Support for expulsion of religious fanatics” found on page 3 of the Guyana Chronicle of Friday 04th September 2009.
Firstly, I would like to express my sympathy for Mr. Maharaj who obviously is writing about nothing he studied to get his Phd.
Perhaps if Mr. Maharaj fully or even partially, investigated the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, he would not seem as ignorant on the topic as he does.
It has always been a nuisance to me, witnessing people profess and expound on topics which they never studied or even took the time to research.
There are over 50 “Mormons” in Guyana. In fact, the number of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints here is now in the thousands.
There are branches of the church on the west coast, on the East Coast, in Linden, and as in every other country in the world (with the exception of a couple), the church is growing.
Most of the members here in Guyana, are Guyanese. Of the missionaries present here, most are from the USA, but some are from other countries including Trinidad, the other islands and the UK.
Guyanese “Mormons” also do missionary work abroad. They are usually school children and young adults still in university, who take time off from their studies to spread the Gospel in foreign lands.
They usually have no interest in staying in any of the several foreign countries each missionary will visit on his mission (and are in fact prohibited from forming ties, in any foreign country while on the mission).
Some of these missionaries take time off from studying such trades as medicine, as is the case of one Guyanese missionary who spent his two-year mission in Barbados and other islands in the Caribbean, to do the work of Jesus Christ who has no respect for nationality or colour or race or political sway.
It needs to be stated that the “Mormon” church present in Guyana is known as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS) and not as the Fundamental Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) which is a different church with its own practices which may include polygamy.
In sum, one must be in a position to write on a topic before one sets out to so do.
What irked me most about Mr. Maharaj’s letter is not the dismal things he had to say about the church, but his lack of knowledge of the church and insistence on writing on topics which he knows nothing about.
His careful placing of his Phd behind his name is of no use to the reader…what did he study? This sort of behaviour is rather radical and can cause more damage than is necessary.
John M. Fraser LL.B. (but more importantly, a member of the LDS Church of three years not including the year or so I spent fully investigating it before I joined it)
John Fraser
Nov 10, 2024
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