White Missionary Name Tags?

I had some comments on the white missionary name tags, so Becky thought I should tell the story.

When we were in the Baltics, there was little Church material translated into anything but Russian. In Lithuanian, we didn't have any of the discussions, only a few hymns, no Joseph Smith pamphlet, nor any other pamphlet of any kind. Nothing. All of our material was either in Russian, which was still a slim selection, or English.

At first, Church was only two hours in Kaunas (where I served the majority of my time) because there were no members. All services were held in English for the first few months after my arrival in October 1993 and translators provided direct translations. Even the official translation of the name of the Church was still being debated.

Russian Name Tag

The only official missionary name tags we were given were in English and Russian. They didn't even teach Lithuanian in the MTC until near the end of 1994. The Folsoms, a senior couple in Kaunas who taught German at BYU, taught us Lithuanian after learning the basics themselves. Most of our "study" actually happened by trial and lots of error.

After arriving in Kaunas, we found that wearing the Russian tags were turning off some of the Lithuanians who had only recently gained their independence from Russia. So, we made our own tags by printing our names and the name of the Church and taping them over our black tags.

First Lithuanian Tag

In time, we were able to find fonts that better matched or original name tags, so we printed new ones that were more like the originals.

Final Lithuanian Tag

Then, finally, after serving almost my entire mission with white "samizdat" tags, we finally got official, Church-made, Lithuanian tags in black. They handed them out at our last Zone Conference. So, if you look at my Lithuanian tags today, they are practically as good as new. And all I have left of those old white tags are yellowing, faded paper taped across the front of the English and Russian tags.