PROVO -- There's nothing noticeably unusual about Elders Mark Tonih and Markus Kollmeyer.
They look and act very much like typical LDS Church missionaries -- short-cropped hair, white shirts and ties, pleasant dispositions, scriptures in hand and a couple of dinner appointments scheduled in their day planners.But the area where they serve -- Brigham Young University -- is anything but typical.
"It is weird," Kollmeyer says. "Everybody's a member of the church here."
Well, almost everybody. LDS Church-owned BYU may have the highest concentration of members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints of any LDS proselyting area in the world. Of the 28,000 students who attend BYU, about 98 percent are LDS.
Talk about preaching to the choir.
Approximately 600 students are not members of the LDS Church. "It's a surprise for some people to see missionaries on campus because they think everyone's a member," Tonih says.
Tonih and Kollmeyer are two of six full-time missionaries assigned to BYU, which means there is roughly one missionary for every 100 non-LDS students. The problem is finding this small collection of non-Mormons. Imagine trying to scare up LDS students at Notre Dame.
It seems like a mission impossible, but it is not. Thanks to help from students and faculty members, BYU missionaries don't have to rely on the needle-in-the-haystack approach to locating people to teach. "We keep very busy," Tonih says.
They also are very successful.
Tonih and Kollmeyer cover nine (of 20) BYU stakes as well as one family ward in Provo. They work with ward and stake mission leaders and receive a steady stream of referrals. There is no shortage of work. When they're not teaching discussions to nonmembers, they occupy their time in a member-missionary program designed to produce referrals. At any given time, a companionship has a pool of about 15 to teach and baptizes anywhere from two to five people a month. About 75 to 80 non-LDS students at BYU join the LDS Church every year.
The BYU campus is part of the church's Utah Provo Mission, represented by 200 single missionaries and 38 couples. It is one of the highest baptizing missions in the church, says mission President Hugh S. Gregson. "There are only 100,000 nonmembers in our mission," he says. "We have to turn over every rock."
The mission boundaries extend south from Utah County to the north rim of the Grand Canyon. The mission also takes in a few counties in Colorado. Within the area, there are 175 stakes, the most of any mission in the church.
While there are a few missionaries in the Provo mission that have been students at BYU, that fact does not preclude them from serving at BYU. "We don't look at that," Gregson says. "If they attended BYU, so what? We tell our missionaries, 'If you see friends, you just walk away from there.' We have no problem with missionaries serving on campus."
Gregson relates a story about one sister missionary who happened to live two doors down from her brother at Wymount Terrace, the married student housing facility where the missionaries reside. "They talked only once," Gregson says. "When she came out of her apartment one day, he said, 'You're late.' That was it."
There was a time, years ago, when missionaries in the Utah Provo Mission wore white nametags with yellow lettering, instead of the universal black nametags with white lettering, to distinguish them from missionaries at the Missionary Training Center, which is located on campus. That is not the case anymore, but, occasionally, there are mix-ups.
"The 'MTC police' have stopped a few BYU missionaries, asking them to go back to the MTC," Tonih says with a laugh. "That's why we carry a card saying we're from the Utah Provo Mission."
In addition to BYU, missionaries from the Provo mission are stationed at Utah Valley State College in Orem, Southern Utah University in Cedar City, the College of Eastern Utah in Price, Snow College in Ephraim and Dixie College in St. George.
The Provo mission has a distinct international flavor, with missionaries hailing from 16 foreign countries. "Parents here send their kids to foreign countries," Gregson says. "And the kids of LDS parents (who live in foreign countries) are sent back here to Utah."
Tonih is from Slovenia, and Kollmeyer is from Germany. Tonih speaks English as well as Slovenian, Croatian and Serbian. At BYU, students represent 40 foreign countries, and every once in a while, they teach discussions in languages other than English.
Because of the large number of LDS Church members in Utah, the spotlight shines brightly on these missionaries. "We run a pretty tight ship. The missionaries here are in a fishbowl," Gregson says. "Missionaries who are sent here are a cut above. They're obedient. They have to be."
"It's a good thing, it's a bad thing," Kollmeyer says of serving under the BYU microscope. "People want missionaries to be the most perfect people in the church. The nametag makes a big difference."
Being surrounded by thousands of people their own age at BYU has its ups and downs for missionaries. "Sometimes it does make me trunky," Kollmeyer says. "Students have dates, have fun. I think sometimes about what I want to do after my mission. The students' priorities are marriage and study rather than missionary work. I can understand that. I will probably be the same when I go home."
"We get to work with a lot of young people, which is great. We can relate to them a lot because they are our same age," Tonih says. "Many have served missions, and they know how missionary work works. We get a lot of referrals. People take the discussions mostly because of the example of roommates and friends and professors using gospel principles in their classes. Everyone is really nice to us. It's really neat serving on campus."
Because of the vast network of church members, it is "easier for new members to become integrated into the church after they are baptized," says Tonih, a convert himself whose parents joined the church since he has been in the mission field.
Serving at BYU has other benefits. Unlike most missionaries around the world, those serving at BYU don't have to knock on doors looking for investigators. Nor do they have to find creative ways to introduce themselves to strangers.
"Everyone knows who we are, so it's very easy to bring up the church," Tonih says. "There's no beating around the bush."