Mine was the L family. No joke, that was their real name. They were also my neighbors in the Moridor where I was a teenager in the 1960’s. I was the junior companion.

Brother L, who always looked like he had spent the day at hard labor, would regale us with strange discussions about the gospel. When President Kennedy announced that we were going to the moon by the end of the decade, Bro. L assured us that would never happen. He quoted none other than Joseph Fielding Smith, the leading church authority on the gospel. Since I was intending on becoming an engineer to help with that effort, his finger wagging proclamation stuck with me to this day.

He also had some interesting ideas about how to raise his boys (they were a few years older than me). If they didn’t have anything to do on a given day, he would make them go into the back yard and dig a hole and then when half the day was gone, fill it back in. I wonder how many times that happened before they decided they had something to do that day. Plus, you’d think the true gospel would teach that it would be better to work to accomplish something rather than work for work itself.
Your experiences?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/08/2015 04:35PM by Susan I/S.

Never seriously tried to do HT; saw it as a loser program for losers. But Boyd Packer may have known that family.

From BKP's address at the October 2011 GC:

"I did not then have a firm testimony that the gospel was true, but I knew that my seminary teachers, Abel S. Rand John P. L, knew it was true. I had heard them testify, and I believed them."

Possibly someone in your HT family helped make BKP the benign, tolerant and beloved apostle he is today. Also, that his teachers were named "R" and "L" is very appropriate and funny.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/08/2015 04:37PM by Susan I/S.

It generates ugly gossip and intrusiveness. My mother was always frantic when the home visitors showed up because she knew they were eager to find material for back room gossip sessions.

Reputations could be destroyed. Lies were spread. Small imperfections were magnified. People lost or gained callings. Families were pegged and church status was set up based on the flimsy or sometimes distorted "evidence."

I've heard this also happens with J.W.s who go to strangers' doors, but it's worse with Mormons because they often know everyone involved and might have reasons to undermine them.

Picture a younger Anubis on the verge of leaving his faith and kicking the morg dust from his heels.

HT and wife come by for visit one Sunday with zero notice. Anubis's wife scrambles to clean up after 4 young mini-mormons and one big dumb husband.

To start with said HT decides he is proud that he is now a newly minited super 33rd Mason. Anubis's ear perk up in a possible confirmation moment (one of many to come). 33rd Mason goes on to descibe all the great benefits to being a 33rd and all the pomp with it. Anubis decided to strike while the iron was hot and ask about all the simalairties to the LDS temple. 33rd confirms that they are indeed simlar but different and Big Joe got it right. Anubis asks more detailed questions including if smith got it right why so many changes to Morg temple session.....and how many changes to 33rd Mason version.

HT gets pissed and leaves wife sitting wondering what just happened.

Ahhh one of the best HT moments......

My home teachers were weird enough!

Because I was a single divorced mother, and was squeaky-clean, honest, and moral, it seemed that they became even more determined to find something wrong with me. They would always drop in unannounced, but, being a VT myself, I knew we were always instructed to call first. I think they wanted to catch me in some kind of sin. They always went into the kitchen to use my phone, but I could see them looking around. I thought they were inspecting for cleanliness, but later discovered they were looking for a coffee-maker or wine rack. They often used my bathrooms, one time both at once, so they could use my master bathroom at the same time. My house was always clean. Were they looking for drugs? contraceptives? Just because I was divorced, didn't mean I was a rebel. My children's friends were always welcome to come and go. My family would visit often, from out of state.

My next door neighbor is the nosiest of all. One night, he saw a man with a suitcase come up my front steps, and leave his car parked in my driveway overnight, and my neighbor was in his front yard at dawn (this neighbor never sleeps), when I said goodbye to the man. I knew he saw us, but I didn't want to have to explain my life to anyone. Several weeks later, the neighbor broke down and asked me who the man was. I wondered how many other people he had talked to about this, in those weeks. I told him it was my brother, who would come down to SLC from our cabin, the night before, in order to wake up early to catch an early charter flight back home. My neighbor seemed disappointed.

One of the HT's kept questioning, and re-questioning me about my morals. It was annoying, but I had nothing to hide. He said he couldn't believe that I could endure so many years without sex. I answered that it was easy--there weren't any available single Mormon men who tempted me in the least. I was snotty about it. Later, he became my bishop, and he hit on me. I said, I hope God is watching this. You are a scumbag, and I'm going to tell [my GA relative] about this! I did, and my GA relative, and the church, and the ward, all did NOTHING. They didn't believe me, over the bishop, or, now I know the cult better--they just didn't care.

It felt like an invasive surprise inspection.

I think it's awful that Mormons have to let strangers and gossips into their own home! Privacy is privacy, and it doesn't mean you're hiding something.

This thread follows that idea of "let's intrude on these families and see how weird we can judge them to be." I won't buy into it. No one is weirder then people who like to judge.

I will never understand how Mormons think that kind of snooping and judging is acceptable. What assholes.

We used to visit a family that kept chickens in the house.
We aren't talking rural Utah here; this was very urban Yorkshire, England.
The family didn't believe in nappys either (diapers), so you were always wary of any child squatting in your vicinity!
I ended up with quads like Arnie from appearing to sit down, while my bum cheeks hovered about an inch above the crusty sofa.

Happy memories!!

We moved into our ward with a large boa constrictor we kept in the living room. We didn't get home teachers....maybe because we let it sleep on the ceiling fan during the winter where it was warm......

I also visited a Mormon family that allowed chickens in their house. When I went to visit the family wanted us to sit on their couch but there was fresh wet chicken shlt on it. They had a pig and lots of other animals living with them. This was in one of the top 10 largest cities in the nation.

This happened in 1989. Family #1 had an inactive dad who drank and smoked..wife went to RS and described her attendance almost apologetically...& a young son looked sooooo bored. Family #2 was a cousin of my oh so TBM companion who was a serial alchoholic and was always pissed when we visited. Family #3 was the oldest son of the first couple, who on our last visit was in the process of watching his marriage fall apart (wife was actually moving out that night)...while my idiot companion tried to deliver a lesson...totally oblivious to the obvious train wreck happening in the room. That was the last time I went home teaching.

Ron Burr



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/08/2015 01:04PM by Lethbridge Reprobate.

A few:

This was when I was a kid. We hometaught two mormon families, who lived across the street from one another. One family was expecting a baby. When the baby was born, he had flaming red hair, just like the mormon man across the street. None of the folks in the babies family had flaming red hair. Turns out the new mom had taken "being a good neighbor" to a new level with the mormon man across the street.

We home taught a couple who were not getting along. We asked them one time in the visit, "hey how is the Johnson family doing? (fake smiling)." The husband said, "Okay, except my wife is a bitch." She then took a book and threw it at him, nailing him in the face as he tried to dodge, at which point he took an object and threw it at her. We had to break up an escalting marital spat at that point.