Seeking to show Americans that he can understand their troubles, multimillionaire GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney has been harping on the supposedly hardscrabble 30 months he spent in France as a Mormon missionary. Romney said he lived in apartments that were so rundown that he was forced to defecate in a bucket and shower with a hose. “Most of the apartments I lived in had no refrigerators,” Romney said last week at a town hall New Hampshire. “I don’t actually recall any of them having a refrigerator.” Watch it, via Patch:
But according to fellow American missionaries who spoke with the U.K.’s Daily Telegraph, Romney not only had a refrigerator and toilet, but a lot more. The missionaries said Romney spent most of his time in France in a Paris mansion that some described as a “palace.” It featured a cook, a servant, stained glass windows and expensive art, and later became an embassy:
Although he spent time in other French cities, for most of 1968, Mr Romney lived in the Mission Home, a 19th century neoclassical building in the French capital’s chic 16th arrondissement. “It was a house built by and for rich people,” said Richard Anderson, the son of the mission president at the time of Mr Romney’s stay. “I would describe it as a palace”. [...]The building, on Rue de Lota, was bought by the Mormons in 1952, having been seized by the Nazis during the Second World War. The Church sold it again in the 1970s, and it was until recently the embassy of the United Arab Emirates. It is currently worth as much as $12 million (£7.7 million).
It’s entirely possibly that Romney lived in hovels in addition to the Mission Home, but it seems clear that Romney has been exaggerating the story of his lean years in France a bit.
1 comment:
To clarify, Christ's Church today is led by Him, and He has called apostles, these apostles call a couple to lead missionaries. Sometimes the Mission leaders have children, but either way, the "Mission Home" is almost always a larger place, where those investigating Christ's Church meet to discuss the gospel. I think the "Home" in Australia, where I served, also had stained glass. Some countries require that Mormon missionaries hire maids and they will not give Visas to Missionaries if they don't do this (it helps the economy). In my mission, in Australia, a man who had lost his job was hired to take care of the lawn at the "mission Home, and to do other duties (perhaps this would be called a "servant" by those spreading these rumors about Mitt.) Many missionaries are "called" to go live in the home temporarily, most do secretarial work two of these are called the 'assistants to the President" or AP's. I have never heard of anyone spending all of their mission in the "Home." They spend most of their missions living in places that often have no running water. (even in rich countries like France, and in Australia, in the eighties, I spent a good deal of time in a cold house with cardboard covering holes to outside, we had a kerosene heater and so one. Either way, the missionaries temporarily living in the home typically sleep in bunks and cook their own food and so on (even if the so called "servant" cooks for the couple leading the mission).
Post a Comment