Cat fights, shouting matches, etc.?

Provo 5th Ward, around 1979, "Newlywed and Nearly-dead" ward. Old 5th Generation Mormon dude stands up to give his testimony and goes on to say how scared he was when his wife was pregnant with their first child...and proceeds to say (and I quote): "I was scared enough to turn a * white".. and all the while there were two black couples in the back of the chapel.

Ensuing shitstorm: "Excuse me??!!" from the back...and the old dude bowed his head and said "Shit" under his breath. Nobody knew what to do. Never saw those young black couples again.

True story. Everone went bleach white. We were the most worthy ward on God's green earth that day (if measured by whiteness).



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/11/2010 11:38PM by Susan I/S.

ExMormonRon Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Provo 5th Ward, around 1979, "Newlywed and
> Nearly-dead" ward.
>
> True story. Everone went bleach white. We were
> the most worthy ward on God's green earth that day
> (if measured by whiteness).

I think I went to that ward in the early 70's. Not positive though. When I was there the bishop was Christensen, a counselor was Bushman, some other names were Elkins, Paxman, King, Jackman...

Was that the ward? Newly Wed and Nearly Dead was right. There was only one other kid my age.

DNA: Do I know you? I grew up in the next ward to that. Same demographics. Did you attend Maeser elementary? I am 45.

And you were pretty delightsome too, I bet.

Ron! We almost crossed paths. I grew up in the Provo 1st ward (same building) and would have been about 15. :)

Oh! and my ex's family was in the that ward.

Missionary farewell. The missionary, a new convert of one year, had just begun speaking when a 5.7 earthquake hit. We were sitting in the row behind the Primary president, who totally panicked, screamed and grabbed her kids, and tried to escape down the aisle. Her husband stopped her and chastised her, but others were screaming and running. I watched the cinderblock walls sway back and forth and finally grabbed the kids and got under the bench while DH sat and watched the pandemonium. Once the shaking stopped the Bishop had the presence of mind to grab the mike and ask everyone to file outside row by row.

We finished the meeting outside although everyone was dying to go home to check on damage. While we were there we could hear the train passing a few blocks away. We later learned that a couple of blocks later it derailed and had a nasty stop.

Only serious damage was to the steeple. Our house was okay, only minor damage.

All the men were sitting there in opening priesthood meeting when out of the blue an older member of the ward marched in a yelled, "You're all a bunch of mother-(expletives)!" The Bishop was both shocked and yet trying to control his laughter at this sudden outburst. Trying to control his smile, he said, "Excuse me"? The man replied, "You heard me you son of a bitch!" making it even harder for the Bishop not to burst out laughing. The Bishop asked him to leave to which the man replied, "Ahh, go f*** yourselves!". He walked out of the church never to be seen there again. Rumor was his insulin levels were really low.

We were discussing the pre-mortal existance and the "great battle" between Jesus and Satan. A younger Elder from rural Utah proceeded to tell everyone that the "Negros" and "Chinese" were the offspring of those who were fence-sitters.

He also said that the reason Detroit was a dying ghetto was because in 1840 Joseph Smith was kicked out of the city by the mayor. In a parting gesture Joseph dusted his feet off at the city border and cursed it for eternity. As a result all of the blacks and gangs moved there and took over the city with poverty and crime.

Our little branch was a few members shorter the following week.

I wasn't there, but I've been told it many times.

My ex's parents argued endlessly--and it wasn't pretty. There was violence. His father had been a bishop for a long time, too. (He found his second wife while a bishop--long story--he was always looking for his plural wives.) His mother was bipolar. Very seldom came out of her bedroom. The whole community thought she was the problem and that he was a saint.

One day she decided to show up at F&T meeting. She walked in in the middle, walked up to the microphone and started talking about her husband and what an SOB he was. The bishop asked her several times to sit down. She refused. The bishop stood up and dismissed the congregation early.

Bishop Rood out in the community, his wife staying home. Of course she's dead, but he pretends she's still alive for everyone else. Same story taken to stupid conclusions on my part.

screaming at the pulpit for everyone to pray for him. I was about 13 at the time and had no idea what was going on until someone told me. It was a very disturbing spectacle and I don't know what the end result was. At the time I didn't want to know any more than what I had witnessed.

I can't recall anything interesting that I saw. Sorry! :o))

In more than one ward, the week after girls' camp presented a deluge of gossip and choosing-up-sides. The ex and I were staying with her parents and overheard much of the horror that had happened at their recent girls' camp - particularly to one girl who was new to the ward, and who was mildly obese.

As fate would have it, her family had been asked to speak that Sunday. The girl didn't show. The girl's mother got up, turned over her prepared remarks and lit in to everyone she could see. Her husband finally removed her, and gently held her for a minute. The Bishop got up and sent the ward into a hymn. Afterward, the father got up and gave an incredibly boring canned talk about something like fast offerings.

All the while, the mother's emotions ranged from fury to sorrow to near-coma on the stand behind him.

I've never witnessed anything like it before or since.

I've seen a few interesting things.

When I was living in SoCal an older lady who wasn't all there got up and bore a testimony while using multiple swear words. Most people just laughed.

After my parents got divorced a neighbor of ours actually started chewing out my younger brother (he was 15). I laid into her for it and told her to mind her own f*in business.

My dad got into a shouting match with the same woman. She was nuts. When my parents were building their house they were thinking of getting green shingles. She actually called my mom and asked her not to use green shingles because their house had green shingles and 2 houses with green shingles on the same road would look tacky. My parents decided against the green shingles, but while she was on vacation one of the other neighbors put up green shingles on their roof. She actually went to their house and measured it to make sure it was big enough to be in the neighborhood since there were some restrictions in place.

After that she became the green roof lady. She caused numerous problems within the ward... it was pretty entertaining.

Lawton, Oklahoma just outside of Ft. Sill, about 1983. During Fast and Testimony meeting a large black man dressed in African garb bore his testimony and left us with his testimony of the Prophet, not Smith, Mohamed. the other prophet.

I've got two stories but I'll only share one, the other one is way too personal.

When I was a teenager after sacrament meeting one Sunday. Myself and a friend were standing in the hall talking. When out of nowhere this woman came up and punched my friend in the stomach so hard he was toppled over. Then she screamed "I know what the f--k you did, and I'm telling the bishop"!

My friend didn't have a clue what she was talking about. Of course this woman has been diagnosed with severe mental illness. I'm just waiting for the rest of the church to be diagnosed with mental illness as well.

Dorm parents, parents, and it seemed like half the school descended on this girl who lived next door to me because she had agreed to marry this non-Mormon townie guy who was also hispanic. Intervention!

Shortly after that, I let another girl from next door sneak out of my bedroom window to meet her non-Mormon boyfriend. She got caught and sent home, or maybe her parents pulled her out. I was kicked out of my 1st-floor room and moved upstairs, with girls I suppose were thought to be willing to keep better tabs on me. They weren't and they didn't, but it was pretty humiliating for me. Would you believe this is the first time I've talked about it?

That summer, I got a letter from the girl who had climbed out my window, matter-of-factly saying her mom and dad still thought I was gay, as if I knew that. I had only met them once, very briefly, and was all, "What?!"

I've always wondered if my allegedly being gay had anything to do with Lisa not coming back after the bedroom-window incident.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/11/2010 06:41PM by munchybotaz.

I dont't know if this can be considered drama, but it is at least embarrassing. A few years ago, during sacrament meeting, the woman chosen to make the closing prayer started saying the usual, Dear Lord, thank you for... blah, blah. And then she said: We ask for your one and only church, the Holy Catholic Church.

No comments.

Not a big drama but we had a family in our ward that was 'homely' to say the least. They were on the way through the mormon alphabet with their kids.. I think they were up to H when we left. They did all the self preseving things at the house - storage, home grown food, compost toilets (of which they spread on their garden - the mishies would never eat there).
Their kids were always dirty when they came to church. If was as if the kids were allowed to have their hair combed ONLY when they knew how to comb it themselves.

She was also the music director and sat up front usually with one of her little ones. During more than one Sunday, she would sit up in front of everyone and pick at her kid's hair just like a monkey would do. She would do this the entire service - pulling things out of this kids hair.

I gotta tell you all, I never get sick of these stories! I grew up in the United Methodist Church and these kinds of things never happened. Ever!! No one - at least in my congregation - would ever dream of doing or saying anything like what you all have related over the years. Maybe it has something to do with most of us having styrofoam coffee cups grafted to our hands, I don't know. ;)

I never saw anything remotely resembling these stories in a mainstream Protestant church, either. Too weird!

Not much big drama, but lots of little weird things:

- A woman regularly got up to bear her testimony, but instead read details verbatim from her diary about sexual temptations she had faced that month. This went on for months. For all I know, it's still going on.

- A troubled man got up monthly to chronicle his struggles with mental health-- treatment, medication, suicide attempts. It was an obvious plea for help and very inappropriate. The last time I saw him, he announced that he was taking off on a trip to Yellowstone and would be gone indefinitely. Turns out he was shacking up with a lady in the neighborhood and didn't want people to know. It's a small world in West Valley, people knew. I hope he ditched the church for good and lived happily ever after with her.

- A man would get up every month and read off a list of women in the ward he was in love with (I was a frequent mention). He'd then publicly chastise those who spurned his advances. Then he'd cut out of the rest of the meeting, to smoke cigarettes by the back door while singing hymns (true story).

- One time a sister in Sunday School made a comment that wasn't in line with the church's position on the issue at hand. The teacher thanked her, and artfully moved on. He was actually a very nice guy, very sensitive, and meant no harm at all. It hurt the lady's feelings that her point wasn't sufficiently validated and she seemed visibly shaken. A man who was sitting near her (and didn't know her at all) took up on her behalf, verbally berating the stunned Sunday school teacher. The sister started to cry, because she was embarrassed at the trouble that had started, and left the room in tears followed by her girlfriends. The man, not realizing he was not helping matters, continued to berate the shocked teacher before storming out as well.

That same dude took a shine to me at a dance-- I avoided him as best I could, but he basically stalked me at church, work, and at home until one of my guy friends threatened him.

Singles wards-- weird times.

Back in 1963 the old dude who gave the closing prayer said his amen and then added "brothers and sisters, Lee Oswald has just been shot in Dallas and is dead."

I've posted this before but it never gets old.

Arlington Ward, mid-1980's. Guy drops dead in the middle of giving his testimony after the I believe in Jesus Christ and know this church is true.

Everybody freezes. The bishop et al jump up and start ye olde 'the power of christ compels you' bit and the suddenly widowed woman finally jumps up and was like oh just give it up.

The guy was of an age where such a thing could be expected (I was kid but still the guy was old) but they canceled the rest of church right then and there.

It was the freakiest thing (watching a guy drop dead) followed by the stupidest thing (watching the 'priesthood' try to compel his body back to life) followed by the most realistic thing (the widow saying give it up he's gone). So yeah. Big public drama.

When we moved into a ward in Alabama in the early 90s, we soon realized that there was a major feud between two sects of the family who were the long-time ward members from the beginning. A bunch of people from Utah and California were moving into the ward because of an aerospace project going up in the area. It was a big competition to get the new incoming members on one side or the other. We called the two camps the Hatfields and the McCoys.

Anyway, one day the two women who were the major players on each side, one the wife and one the ex-wife of the son of the founding members, got in a all-out, knock down drag out cat fight in the foyer. There was kicking, hair pulling, dresses up to the waist. It was so hillarious.

Soon after, they split the ward, even though the ward was barely a good functioning ward with all the move-ins and it was pretty much a given that the aerospace project was going to fall through and most of those people would be leaving. But the ward split was not a clean geographical split. The lines were drawn obviously to split up the people who needed to be split up. That lasted about 2 years before both wards basically died out and some of the feuding people also moved. Then they recombined the wards again.

Not dramatic, but funny. The inactive, chain smoking grandfather of a friend showed up to hear his grand daughter speak and forgot where he was. He lit up on the front steps. Poor grand daughter was mortified.

A divorced, gay man got up in F&T meeting and gave a fantastic testimony, filled with references to a men's group that he belonged to that provided spiritual support through all the mens common 'challenges'. After beating around the bush, he announced that the group in question was for 'gay dads', and that he was 'gay' and proud of it. He finished the testimony in standard fashion, and bishop was absolutely shell-shocked. He was too shocked to even do any damage control from the pulpit, but later had all of us Aaronic Priesthood advisors give a lesson on morality and 'why being gay is bad'. I suppose the group in question was Affirmation of something similar. This was 1997 or 98.

Picture this, it's the mid 1950's, my dad (God love him!) was a United States Marine Corps Drill Instructor, new convert of about a couple of years & a survivor of the Chosin Reservoir Campaign in North Korea, 1950-51, sitting next to Mom in a Sunday School class. The lesson was on the modern temples, the blessings that come with it, the protection which the endowed are afforded by the garments, etc.

One tearful sister raised her hand & stated,"If temple garments really protect the endowed, I don't understand why my son died in Korea."

My practical-minded D.I. Dad who was a lot like Gunnery Sergeant Hartman in the movie Full-Metal Jacket (Dad never used the "f" word, but did use all other cuss words!), raised his hand & offered, "I'd like to answer that," & the Sunday School teacher gave him the floor.

"Well, you see sister, I can tell you what happened. A bullet went right through him. It'll do that, garments or not!"

You could hear the entire SS class attendees breath in one long gasp together except the sister whose son had been KIA. To that sister's everlasting credit, she accepted Dad's simple explanation, basically because he didn't give some lame-ass excuse like, "God called your son home," or "It was his time to go." Rather, he explained it in a matter-of-fact way that temple garments are not bullet-proof. She didn't want platitudes; she wanted the truth.

Everybody else in the SS class thought my Dad's explanation was callous, not that he gave a damn what they thought, mind you! It was talked about at church for years.

My ward had the usual bunch of crazies, including one eternal investigator who used to give her testimony of how she would only be baptized in the river Jordan and how she believed that those who weren't baptized there were going to hell.

There were numerous weird and crazy people and incidents but the biggest drama that I remember was a young female convert who after a lesson on chastity attempted to hang herself in the ladies toilet.

The lesson followed the usual guilt laden pattern of how you should remain morally clean, and if you sinned you could never been forgiven, but the teacher also included the 'fact' that rape etc was also your fault.

We found out after that she had been abused by a family member, and that the bishop was 'counselling' her, along the lines of the lesson!

Her mother turned up the week after and verbally abused the bish in the foyer, ending up with an almighty slap around the face.

This was soooo totally awesome. The two samoan factions in the ward apparently decided that immediately following the closing prayer was a good time to kick some @ss. (All that unnecesarry behaving for 1 1/2 hours I guess was just too much. I totally understand.)

The two Samoan women started duking it out in the back of the chaple and gradually moved the entertainment to the foyer. My dad was bishop at the time and unwisely tried to break it up. Nobody breaks up a Samoan cat fight, I don't care how tough you think you are.

Yep, saw a guy get up during F&T meeting and proclaim his love for his wife who left him because he was an alcoholic, and then listed off all of the things he did to end his marriage. Very sad actually. But I did find out where all the good bars in the area were ;-)

It was during my mission. I don't remember what you call a couple missionary, but it was the sister. She got up to bear her testimony, and she ripped on the ward for not helping out and driving away investigators and things like that. She was really angry, beating on the pulpit, etc. It was scary.