Once in "priesthood executive committee" meeting in Maryland we were talking about inactives--you know, gossiping behind their backs like you do in PEC and Welfare meetings. Anyway, the ward mission leader said that a certain sister in the military whom he home taught told him she was coming back to church. According to him, she had contracted HPV or some other kind of sexually transmitted disease and she had started getting genital warts. This humiliated her and she thought how she would have been spared the genital warts if only she had been "where she was supposed to be." That was probably the worst, most regrettably invasive comment I've ever heard in a church meeting. Now the poor woman's problem just got magnified seven-fold, and who knows that the gossiping asses went and told their wives afterward. And you gotta blame the woman, too. While she no doubt told him in strictest confidence, the problem is that she did tell him.

That's awful. I could not begin to top that one! I did hear from a sister in my former ward that during modesty Sunday about a year ago that there was an investigator in RS that was sitting with her convert daughter. She was wearing a sun dress with spaghetti straps as they were discussing appropriate modesty in dress which was quite embarrassing. She said the investigator looked shocked, embarrassed, taken off guard, offended and appalled at what was being said. I missed that Sunday so I wasn't there.

There was a very poor family that joined the church in our ward.

Like a lot of wards, especially in the east - southeast, the ward boundaries were pretty much split by demographics. The first ward had most of the poorer and more rural folks, while the second ward (mine) had been laid out to take in some rather affluent subdivisions where the "financially blessed" lived (with a smattering of holler folks like us thrown in).

This new family also had a son who was severely handicaped, and took most of their meager resources - thus, their sunday clothes, while clean were not the standard uniform- the husband wore jeans with two faded plaid dress shirts that he alternated each sunday, the wife wore a pant suit, and the kids (boys) wore jeans and printed t-shirts.


This family was obviously very taken in by the gospel and the message the missionaries had given them. You could just see the hope in their faces, and in the testimony both the man and woman bore shortly after they were baptized - they even sat on the very front pew every week.

One sunday, during releif society meeting, the RS president (a member of the ward royalty, and unfortunately a cousin of mine), stood and, with the woman sitting in the front row of RS, told the ladies that they were going to be collecting clothes for this family so they would have APPROPRIATE (my wife said that word was emphasized) clothing to wear to church.

We never saw them again.

Okay, while I know that it is best in the long run that those folks never returned to church, it still makes me really sad for them to have been shamed like that. :(

Yep, they never came back... And to me, it was one of the saddest things I have ever experienced. Their childlike hope of something better, crushed by a pompous wealthy lady whose husband would soon be called as bishop. I felt horrible over it as did some, (including my wife), but most of the women commended the RS president on the kindness and concern she had shown for the spiritual welfare of this family.

BTW, They were never mentioned again in leadership meetings either, after they left and never came back - though one sub division dwelling high preist mentioned that, well, they seemed like they probably just wouldn't have fit in anyway.

Ya think???

And their tithing wouldn't be much, so...... who needs them. My church would have embraced this family.

regardless of their dress. Would Jesus humiliate people because they were poor and didn't dress well? I don't think so! Mormons are such a bunch of flaming hypocrites it makes me sick.

i went to church with people that had one faded cotton dress they wore sunday after sunday. one year a factory in town laid off a bunch of people and there were deacons wearing jeans that were too short to pass the sacrament cause they had no money to buy pants much less dress pants. like Jesus gives a shit what you wear to worship...

http://lds.org/scriptures/bofm/alma/32?lang=eng

(fictional New World prophet named "Alma" goin'-a-baptizin':)

1And it came to pass that they did go forth, and began to preach the word of God unto the people, entering into their synagogues, and into their houses; yea, and even they did preach the word in their streets.

2And it came to pass that after much labor among them, they began to have success among the poor class of people; for behold, they were cast out of the synagogues because of the coarseness of their apparel—

3Therefore they were not permitted to enter into their synagogues to worship God, being esteemed as filthiness; therefore they were poor; yea, they were esteemed by their brethren as dross; therefore they were poor as to things of the world; and also they were poor in heart.

...something something something...seed...
...something something something...faith..
...something something something....dark side....
...something something something....complete....



Can somebody tell me why the Jesus of the Bible would actually care about the costliness of their clothing? Seems he would me more interested in his message, not appearances, and I think the 19th century author of the Christian-Masonic fan-fiction known as the Book of Mormon was trying to convey that message. I'm positive there were people living in upstate frontier New York who fit into both categories: poor, burlap-wearing hillbillies and more educated, affluent families who looked down their noses at the poor. It's really ironic that your RS people thought that that teaching didn't apply to them.

Mormonism is all about appearances. If you don't conform to the Y-B-U (why be you when you can pretend to be someone else?) standard you'll be humiliated and made to feel inferior. You'll quickly see the caste system -- the 'ward royalty' as you put it -- where printed-tee-and-faded-jeans-wearing-low-income-low-tithe-bearing-people aren't good enough. Nice 'true church'. Wish I'd recognized these things years ago before wasting my life building and defending it.

You know, When that happened, I thought about the same passage from Alma... But, to these (the wealthy royalty) folks, that didn't matter.

This happened in West Virginia, but from what I have learned over the years, I know that we certainly don't have a lock on pompous, holier than thou "Saints"...

BTW, the RS president's husband was president of a large land company (dealing mainly in coal reserves), but he also owned a plot of land which he was "inspired" to sell to the church for the new first ward building. It was directly in front of a low cost apartment complex, along the street that wended it's way to the city dump, and beside a liquor selling 7-11.

I love inspired revelations like that...

A similar incident is what finally made me stop going to church when I was just 11 years old. One sunday I was surprised to see a young man, who I knew from school but had never seen at church, enter my sunday school class. His family were not church-going people, nor did they have a lot of money, therefore he did not own dressy clothes. So he came to church dressed in his best pair of jeans. He looked very nervous, but sat in the chair closest to the door and waited for the class to begin. Some of the other children began giggling and whispering behind their hands as they looked in his direction. There were two girls in particular who were really making a scene as they tried to share one chair because the only other empty chair was next to this boy. The teacher asked if one of the girls would sit by him and they both refused, making sure to mention it was due to the way he was dressed. The teacher then asked the other children to scoot over so the girl could sit next to her friend and they refused as well, as they all continued to giggle.

I can't describe the look of pain on this boy's face. I couldn't take it anymore – I don't know how he stayed seated. I silently got up from my chair on the other side of the room and walked over to sit next to him. My abandoned chair was quickly scooped up by one of the other girls. The teacher said nothing about their behavior, just went on with the lesson. I was fuming and the young man was clearly mortified.

As far as I know the boy never returned to church. Neither did I. I had already seen a lot of hypocrisy in what was supposed to be Christ's church – from children and adults. After this incident I had had enough and told my parents that I refused to return.

When I was a little girl my family lived on the Wasatch Front. We had one Asian member in our ward; a Vietnamese girl who was married to a young man from a local family. I didn't know them well, but they had a couple of small children, and I always felt bad for her...her English was pretty good, but people weren't patient enough to get used to her accent, and so very few people seemed to go out of their way to talk to her, and she often looked very lonely.

When I was ten or so, her husband committed suicide, using a gun, and based on what I heard, his wife was the one who found him.

A couple of weeks after that--the first time she attended church again--the bishop had planned a meeting specifically to try to bring comfort to her, and for some reason had asked a member who had served in the Vietnam war to speak. Perhaps it was because he thought this man had a better understanding of Vietnamese culture?

Whatever the case, this old man decided to use as part of his talk letters from a brother of his who had also served in that war...unedited. I heard words in that sacrament meeting used to describe another race that I hadn't even known existed, and no one stopped him...everyone was just staring at the pulpit.

The poor woman tried to stand up and fainted in the middle of the service. I have no idea what happened to her or her children. I wish I did.

That's so awful!! I hope she left the church that day and never looked back. Poor woman. That is truly deplorable.

Hi Cludgie!!! That is wild. Especially since she felt she were speaking in confidence. It reminds me of the 4mos. in which I was investigating and I was assured that what we spoke about @ my home didn't get shared it didn't go any further. But then, while in church more than once when it'd be asked, "what's your name" I'd state first name and then with a question my last name would get stated. That told me I'd been discussed. Two different wives. The zl in another city even asked about me, go figure.....

Just after nine one one I went to Sac meeting a little late and the person speaking was our former stake pres. now assigned as a high councilman. He was preaching about the islam religion and how we should go over there and bomb the hell out of the whole region. There was no innocent people in islam and we were going to pay the price for letting them live. I've never heard hate preached before and this really tore me up. I had always respected this man before but this one thing changed my respect to dislike and distrust forever. I just got up and walked out.

The current Aaronic Priesthood manuals are terribly out of date. I was visiting another ward as stake YM president and in priest quorum, the instructor read the Kimball quote against inter-racial marriages. (Don't marry outside your race.)

I looked around the room and of the 8 boys, 6 were from inter-racial marriages. WTF?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/09/2011 10:08PM by mcarp.

The wife and the teenagers were baptized one Saturday. On Sunday they were confirmed. The BP then got up and stated that Brother X would be baptized at some point once he stops drinking beer. We never saw the family again.

The BP's second counselor was drinking beer (I was his wife's VT) and wasn't given a full TR but was given a limited recommend so he could help with baptisms for the dead (actually baptized youth in proxy for dead people) by the bishop mentioned above. The previous BP would not grant him a TR.

We were once visiting a ward in Arizona on vacation -- and of course it was F&T meeting. An older guy gets up and begins to tell a classic "answer to prayer" story. Turns out that this guy was one of of the military guys responsible for maintenance of the Enola Gay the day that it dropped the atomic bomb on Japan. There apparently were some maintenance problems that threatened to ground the plane, and this guy describes tearfully deciding to invoke his priesthood and pray to god for help.

You can guess what happens next: the guy goes on to tearfully describe how after his prayer the problem miraculously disappears and he testifies mightily of the power of prayer and expresses gratitude to god for his intervention . . . . completely oblivious to the fact that the plane flew off and vaporized hundreds of thousands of god's beloved children, the vast majority of them completely innocent.

We just looked each other completely stunned.

He helped us defeat those evil Japanese.



(oops - forgot the sarcasm warning)

Sounds like the guy was in need of a faith-promoting story and built one to his own purpose that was better God helping find his car keys. I've never read anything about mechanical problems with the Enola Gay--if there were, they would have used the first backup plane, which was named Top Secret, IIRC.

Though I had not been to church for many years, I decided to attend when my good friend invited me to his new baby's blessing. He is not a terribly faithful member, but to make his wife happy he had done what he had to do in the months leading up to the blessing to be considered worthy to stand in the circle and bless his own child.

After two or three baby blessings, the regular fast and testi-baloney meeting started. My friend's wife was one of the first to stand and give her testimony, in which she mentioned how grateful she was that her husband had been able to become worthy to bless their child. Not to be outdone, the mother of one of the other babies who had been blessed that day stood up to say how grateful she was that HER husband is ALWAYS worthy to perform these ordinances for their family.

I believe I heard this rumor! It's infamous in Maryland circles.

You wouldn't happen to be from the Baltimore Area, would you?

..but I worked there for six years, and often go back for bizness. Going back again in September. This happened in (I believe) the Odenton or Ft. Meade ward. Hard to say now because I was most always in the same building and never moved from the house I was in, but our ward changed names like three times, and once we moved to the Glen Burnie building for several months. While "serving" there I began getting a clearer picture of why and how much I disliked the LDS church. It would still be more than a decade before I resigned. Just seeing some of the people I knew there makes me want to punch them in the head. When I ran across one of them during a trip there, he refused to talk to me because he had heard I left the church. Do you live in the Baltimore area? I'm so sorry.

During prop 8, a sister in the ward got up and stated that she was against the prop until shown Satan had ahold of her. Of course she was saying to all the NO folks,if you are against it, Satan is controlling you. I stood and walked out.

Most inappropriate comment heard would be a Fasting Testimony Meeting, where a young man got up to bear his testimony, crying, and stating that he was not worthy to date the beautiful young women of the Church because he masturbates.

O_o

The man across the street had his son & daughter-in-law living with them. One day in Gossip Doctrine class he let everybody know, oh so lovingly, that his daughter-in-law was bipolar. She wasn't even in class that day so the details were handled behind her back in front of everyone. I don't even remember why he brought that up -- probably to emphasize how the Gospel helps smooth all those problems out or something. I just thought it was inappropriate to share someone else's mental illnesses with other people. (We) People who have stress/emotional/mental disorders don't f'ing appreciate everybody in the community to know how crazy and inadequate we are and we don't like that inferiority to be used as tool to manipulate us. I remember checking the box in my mind labeled "don't tell people in your ward of your personal struggles or you'll end up the topic of gossip and people will once again have a reason to look down upon you".

1. DH was in a priesthood meeting where the bishop talked about the evils of pornography and how many men in our ward struggled with it. The bishop said in order to help these men, he'd spent some time on porn websites - you know, just to have a better idea of how to serve his flock. Then he began discussing the content of the websites so others in the ward would be more informed about "the problem". DH lost all respect for that bishop (not Bishop Jackwagon) that day...not because the bishop looked at porn but because he was disingenuous about his reasons for doing so and because he SHARED it is such detail in a church meeting.

2. One Christmas, a stake high councilman gave part of his talk berating people for their vanity and fine apparel. This was the Sunday before Christmas and all the little girls were dressed up in their beautiful Christmas dresses, listening to this evil old man talking about how wicked they were instead of feeling happy they looked pretty at Christmastime

3. A friend of mine had an affair and was disfellowshiped - she had a temple marriage. I'm not sure why she wasn't excommunicated but I don't listen to gossip enough. She told me herself about the affair. Anyway, the Fast Sunday after she was restored to a member in full standing, she got up and bore her testimony about how grateful she was to be a full member again and a bunch of other things that made her poor, long-suffering husband, who stood by her throughout her repentance process, absolutely humiliated. Like she was at the pulpit bragging about her affair and how she'd put everything right again and rubbing the affair in her husband's face in front of everyone. I know he was squirming because we sat across the aisle from him that Sunday and he looked like someone was kicking him - red-faced and eyes cast down and literally squirming. So sad.

These all break my heart. I'm just speechless (which doesn't happen very often). Maybe Hillbilly's story hit me the hardest - not sure why. I just grieve in instances like that... :(

agreed :(

By the RS Pres to the RS Sunday meeting -

'If you are depressed, all you need to do is repent!'

A couple of my friends in the room suffered from serious mental health probs - bipolar - and were outraged. And what about the women in the room struggling with depression and now hearing from their leader that they had brought it on themselves because of their own sinfulness?

So compassionate. Not to mention ignorant.

At 19, my bishop thought it would be a good idea to tell the entire ward from the pulpit that I suffered from clinical depression, so that's why I came back home from my mission.

Why he thought it was a good idea to share extremely personal and medical information with the entire ward I'll never know, but after that every single person in the ward treated me completely differently. Needless to say I quit that ward.