I hated watching parents tell young kids what to say during fat and tested meetings. BRAINWASHING 101

Yeah, that bothered me too.

A couple years back, a decree was made that only people who required no assistance should be giving testimonies. Didn't really take, though.

How many investigators visit for the first time at TSCC on a Fast Sunday, watch mommies or daddies telling kids what to say, are then impressed with TSCC, and WANT to come back? Not very good odds - IMO.

It takes a Bishop with an ounce of sensitivity to "get the creepiness of it" in order to stop the decades-long practice.

I once sat with the full-time Elders in Church and one of them said his home ward Bishop forbade the practice. And, if you were to give a medical-log or travel-log or anything not related to a testimony, his Bishop would kick the member in the leg and tell them to sit down. Then, one Sunday I was needed on the stand during a Fast Meeting, and sure enough a little kid came up with her mommy. I glanced over at the Elder and at that point he started cracking up big time - he knew how much I detest the practice - and he knew darn well NOT to bring investigators to Fast Meetings.

jiminycricket Wrote:
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> if you were to give a medical-log or travel-log or anything > not related to a testimony, his Bishop would kick the member > in the leg and tell them to sit down.

This should be standardized practice.

Please tell me they don't really use the testimony gloves. Are they only for practice at home? I hope.

When I was a bishop I would get a letter I think annually talking about not having children bear testimonies if they needed assistance. I'd read it in SM, but it seldom took. And what are you going to do, kick the kid off the stand?

My deacons teacher gave us a bag of M&M's if we bore our testimonies.

One of my earliest "WTF" moments with Mormonism was when we went to my SIL's ward to see my nephew blessed over a decade ago - long before I was questioning the church. Her primary obviously were teaching about testimonies and had obviously encouraged all the Primary children to bear the testimonies in Sacrament meeting. Because for almost the entire meeting, there was a parade of one small child after another chanting "I know the church is true. I know Joseph Smith was a prophet. I love my family (or mom and dad). In Jesus name, Amen." Only a couple of the oldest kids added more. Nobody talked about Jesus or Heavenly Father. Any non-LDS person who saw that would have run from the building, terrified. Shoot, I wanted to run. It was one of the creepiest things I'd ever seen and I was very TBM at the time. But I still found it spooky and couldn't understand the people I could overhear talking about how cute it was. It was anything but cute.

Yes, that would creep out a non mormon for sure....no mention of Jesus and saying "I know" anything at age 3 or 4 is ridiculous.

Makes my skin crawl

I'll just put this here.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21spXsLcxes

I had a bishop that would stand up every single F&T meeting and tell people to not give travel logs, not send their kids up.

Almost every single time someone would get up right after him and give a travel log. It used to crack me up. Obviously nobody was listening to a word the bishop said.

the sad thing is it is always the same idiots getting up and crying and then the endless parade of kids spewing the rhetoric that was whispered into the ears of hapless victims

We attended my nephew's baby blessing some years ago in Las Vegas. My daughter was not quite four years old at the time. Part way through the torture session, some blathering idiot gets up to bear his testimonkey and starts blubbering (in a very dramatic voice) about his wife and daughter, repeating their names over and over.

It was really creepy.

I'm guessing this was a regular occurrence given the looks on some of the faces of the ward members seated around us. As this guy is coming down from the stand, my daughter goes in to a full blown impersonation of the guy. She was loud enough for everyone seated around us to hear. They were rolling on the floor laughing! Damn, she was good!

Best impromptu imitation testimonkey. Ever!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/07/2013 01:02AM by Bite Me.

When I remarried, my youngest stepdaughter (then only a toddler) had some very serious reactive attachment disorder issues - only nobody knew what this was back then. She was very clingy with anybody who paid attention to her (even adults she barely knew, which nobody but me seemed to find scary).

Every chance she got, she would get up and "bear her testimony," not because she gave a crap about the religion, but because for those few moments, she was the center of attention, which she craved, and she loved the way all the old ladies crowded around her after the meetings, telling her how much they had enjoyed her testimonies. She positively GLOWED at the attention.

A nevermo friend (psychologist) noticed how this child would approach a complete stranger, start chattering, holding their hand, and even crawling into their laps if they would permit it. The friend said we needed to get this kid into therapy. Her father couldn't see what the problem was - he thought the kid was just an extra-ordinarily friendly little girl.

The friendly little girl got herself raped at 14, went totally out of control, and has been more or less drifting ever since. Promiscuity, alcohol and pot figure prominently into the picture too - and the church stuff has been history for a long time.

Instead of pushing the kids up to the mike, shouldn't we be a little more wary about 1) whether they even WANT to be up there, and 2) if they do seem to enjoy it, is it just because they like the attention? If it's the latter, what does that say about their home life?

In our case, this child was literally unable to amuse herself. You could not put her down with a coloring book and some crayons and ask her to color a picture for you (thinking to get a few minutes to work on supper.) She would take a single crayon, make some scribbles over the page, and then be right back wrapped around your feet again. You could not give her a task to do, like set the table (having first done one place setting as an example.) She would say, "I'm bored. I wanna help YOU." And be right back under your feet again.

I guess because of this experience, I was ALWAYS suspicious of little kids who seemed to LIKE getting up and doing the "I know dis toich is TWOO." business. If they were too small to even say it correctly, what was REALLY going on???

Amen to every word you said.

When oh when will the adults wake up and start asking questions?

<i>The friendly little girl got herself raped at 14, </i>

No one "gets themselves raped." They are raped by someone who victimizes them. :-(

yes

Agreed. Very poor choice of wording on my part.

She later told me herself she had "led him on." She believed it was her fault. I told her that no matter what she had done, this guy was an adult and what he did was illegal.

But her life started spiraling out of control after that happened, and more than a decade later, she's a long way from getting it together. . .and resists attempts to help. She still tends to attach herself to unsavory people, and it is so hard to see.

Anonna-Now Wrote:
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>
> The friendly little girl got herself raped at 14,


EXCUSE ME? someone RAPED HER. no one gets themselves raped.

We used to not stand up. (Age difference alert)
In my time there was a mike on a long cord and you stood up and a deacon ran over and passed you the mike

Anyway. We learned that if 5 minutes went by and no one stood up the bishop would get up and say looks like we are done. The we'd get to go home early and eat!

I remember that from when I first joined at age 12. That was before it turned into a sobfest competition.

In the family ward I attended as a college student in the midwest, almost each and every fast and testimony meeting one young adult would give his testimony. However, this young adult had a severe form of retardation, and he could not utter any intelligible words. He would speak for a long time just using different syllables and gibberish speech....and he was actually allowed to stand up there for as long as he wanted. What's really funny is that he could REALLY imitate the intonation, cadence, and strange eye contact of the general conference speakers!!

I always had to hold back my laughter (my apologies if that sounds insensitive), meanwhile everyone else was literally GLUED to his every utterance.

They said that he was speaking "through the spirit," and since he had a disability, he was more righteous in the pre-existence...thus being spared temptation on earth.

To this day I wonder if that guy is still going up there...

I've been in theater for years. don't have grandchildren yet but when I do they are going to learn to say "joseph smith was a too bit huckster and con man. I know this twoo . cheese&rice. ramen. then we are going to drop in on unsuspecting wards while on vacation to bear our testaphony. my grandchildren will get $10 from granma for every performance.

siobhan Wrote:
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> I've been in theater for years. don't have
> grandchildren yet but when I do they are going to
> learn to say "joseph smith was a too bit huckster
> and con man. I know this twoo . cheese&rice.
> ramen. then we are going to drop in on
> unsuspecting wards while on vacation to bear our
> testaphony. my grandchildren will get $10 from
> granma for every performance.


I'm in for $10 more.

Put me down for 10. I want video

The best part is that as these kids who were brainwashed into saying the same routine testimony every FaT meeting still do it as adults!

The only difference is they tell everyone where they've been in the last month first, then cry, then talk about loving their spouse, then cry some more, and then they revert back to their childhood training to end the whole thing with "Brothers and Sisters I do know this church is true and that TSM is a true prophet and the BoM is true in the name of cheese and rice, ramen."

So they never get over their programming. They just learn to add on to it.

Then you get the actors in the crowd that improv well. Or the couple that gets up together to announce that their reproductive organs are working.

BARF



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/09/2013 09:29AM by mrremlap.