Before General Conference my wife was given an envelope decorated like a top secret CIA dossier. Her "mission" was to uncover all the important teachings from the General Authorities.

Then last Sunday she was given a card about next week's enrichment night. It's called "Becoming an Eight Cow Woman" and promises and "udderly good time!"

I just sort of laugh at how gimmicky they are. Is this in my ward only or a new trend in the Church?

I think it's tacky how the morg creates a lot of useless busy work. To make a point, ask any TBM what NEW truth was learned from the Oct 2016 GC. Then go backwards through the years and nobody will remember any of them. They are forgettable.

I hated this kind of stuff as a mormon. I think it is juvenile.

I also believe it's juvenile. But I believe they do it because there's nothing, literally nothing new to discuss in church. So they play their little games to try to drum up interest in their nothingness.

I think you could learn everything a member knows about Mormonism in a week or less. It's rubbish what they call education. Often one can see that they're just playing at being religious.

Oh soooo true. They're taking the "fake it until you (don't) make it" too much to heart.

This is typical mormon stuff. They revel in being in this perpetual childish state, for whatever reason...especially the women. A woman is never allowed to grow up, in LDS culture.

In general, they believe that this childishness shows how "humble" they are.

Nail... meet hammer. You hit it.

But I must make a confession. In my early, young mormon mother days, I did those things. I prided myself in my creativity. Now, just reading this post gives me the willies.

I am the first to admit that I didn't even start growing up until my mid 40s. A lot of mormon women make it through their whole lives in that perpetual childish state. Probably a little easier if they've lived in Utah most of their lives. And that's ok for them. If you surround yourself with those kinds of people, you never even notice. But throw yourself into a professional work environment in a place where there are no other mormons around and people will let you know in subtle and not-so-subtle ways that you need to grow the fuck up.

I find it insulting and degrading. How stupid and what a waste of time.

I did used to love "Johnny Lingo" and his eight cow wife though.
It's on you tube. The way they did it though was demeaning and corny too ( gag). "An udderly good time"?

It's like a bad advertising campaign.

I agree that it's juvenile, but it's typical Mormon stuff as they don't really want women especially to become fully adult. After all, an adult woman might realize there's more to life than being a brood mare and being treated like a second class citizen because of gender.

I don't know if this link to the RM movie still works. I am at work and cant' check. I got a good laugh out of this.

http://mormonflix.com/the-rm/

beginning at 27:45

Reminds me of the RS centerpieces in the R.M. movie by Halestorm lol

Ha ha ... they just did it again. They dropped off an invite for my daughter to go to YW camp kickoff.

It was formatted like an army draft notice and said she's been "drafted" to go to camp this year. I know it's supposed to be cute and all, but that's actually probably not the best imagery to associate with YW camp.

My daughter received an invitation for a Young Women s Garden Service project that asked the girls to bring gloves and their

"favorite ho".

I am not kidding!

Sometimes the grammar and spelling of the ward I lived in just got to me!You would think a church that makes a great noise about education would have invitations with correct spelling, but then we lived in rural Nevada; maybe no one noticed.

I wish Mormon Observer had a photo copy of the "favorite ho" invitation!

My non-Mormon friends thought I was making up this stuff--it was so degrading, childish. In the old days, when my mother was RS President, there were actually people who needed help, in the poor section of town, across the tracks. The RS had a budged, and fund-raisers, and I helped Mom take food and clothes to those people. Some ward members provided these people with jobs. The RS bazaars attracted the entire city, and the RS could use that money for anything they wanted--to refurbish the ward bathroom, to add to the Building Fund, and to give to the poor, etc.

When Primary was held during the same time-slot as RS, I made sure to have a calling in the Primary.

I felt horrible in RS, because (after they got rid of the cultural refinement and Great Books lessons) all the lessons were on two subjects:

1) Honoring the Priesthood

2) Temple marriage

I was a divorced working mother, and I was too busy to participate in all those useless craft projects. Women I know would rather cook a decent meal for their family, or weed their gardens, or read about something they're interested in. I liked to just sit on my patio and stare into space--I earned that down-time.

RS had "The Singing Mothers" and all their rehearsals. There was another group of women who loved writing Mormon lyrics to show tunes, and performing them at meetings, RS luncheons, the RS birthday party, etc. I had to play the piano for that--plus their fashion shows and the ward Road Shows--until I lost my mind.

I was taking time away from my children, and from my career, for something pointless and stupid.

I remember back in the 70's there was a homemaking project that involved glass or plastic grapes and fake greenery as a centerpiece. It went like wildfire throughout the whole USA wards I guess. Years later, I was talking to someone (non-mormon) and she asked me if grapes had some special significance in our worship as mormons. I told her no and asked her why she thought that. She told me that she had quite a few LDS friends and most of them had that cluster of grapes on their tables! LOL

This is the type of stuff bored people think of

It was a pain when RS President into mlm crafting bs - she made some Shitty stuff each week mainly to promote her stuff.

I always "loved" the gimmicky RS my forever and all time favorite will forever be the RS president who wanted us sister missionaries to hand out her "cute" tampon angels to inactive members with the Christmas party invitations. Nope I refused to do that. Maybe the angels are still in the apartment hidden in the cupboard.

I found an invite attached to my door (as usual) with a rubber band for the monthly evening R.S. Whatever they call it now. It said something like "Come out to R.S. to learn how special you are..." and some other such idiocy. I've resigned, but they stil invite me, of course.

Just for kicks, I decided to come up with a more direct and age-appropriate invitation to those same events you listed:


*****Your post:
"Before General Conference my wife was given an envelope decorated like a top secret CIA dossier. Her "mission" was to uncover all the important teachings from the General Authorities."

My version: "Let's rehash the same things we've heard since childhood from the GA's. And then we'll pretend these things or novel,inspiring and deep."


Their version: "Then last Sunday she was given a card about next week's enrichment night. It's called "Becoming an Eight Cow Woman" and promises and "udderly good time!"


My version: "Even though we all know we can't ever measure up, maybe we can have a laugh about that by comparing ourselves to a homely woman in a story who was so emotionally degraded by her family and tribe that she felt unlovable and worthless. She found her self worth only by being picked by a wealthy, well-respected, good-looking man, and then by upgrading her grooming and dress. That ship has sailed for most of us, as we are already married, but we can still boost our self worth by looking good and meeting the expectations of others."

maybe you have hit the reason why Utah has the highest per capita number of plastic surgeons in the US.

Sorry--I'm new at this.

Thank you, Imaworkinonit. For your incisive review of Johnny Lingo!! You've spared us from having to see it.

Mormons love little "inside jokes." It keeps them separate from others.

Hey! Martha was my new name way back in 1972.

I'm more than happy to let you carry the torch though.

Martha's Unite!

Rel Soc was a very different kind of organization when I first attended in the early 60's at BYU married student housing.
We actually studied stuff! Literature "Out of the Best Books" was a big course.
It was a program that included taking minutes (I was the secretary/treasure) and collecting dues (about $2 a year as I recall.)
We also learned skills like quilting which we donated.
We were all young women.
I recall one funny thing that happened. We had a project that said: bring an old used sheet. We had a good laugh as we didn't have any "old" sheets! :-) Not yet, anyhow!

Here are some more ideas.

https://www.google.com/search?q=Relief+Society+you+are+the+light+of+the+world+candle&espv=2&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiZi93i0KTTAhXF7iYKHRNYChIQ7AkIRw&biw=1707&bih=827#imgrc=_ZHOAfuQ8BI5EM:

"Her 'mission' was to uncover all the important teachings from the General Authorities."

That truly sounds like an impossible mission.

Teaching #1: The thinking has been done for you.

Women are allowed to wear 1 earring per ear. There is really nothing to uncover. There are so many important things going on in the world and our prophet chooses to focus on jewelry lol.

My brother,back in the days before home computers and photoshop, worked in a print shop in Sandy. Aside from wedding invitations, their biggest business day was Tuesday when Mormon women would bring in their visual aids and cutesy projects to be printed up for pick up by Friday. That print shop made a killing off of that crap.

RS is not a place of learning. It's a place to dumb down, compete, judge, compete, dumb down, and on and on and on.

If you try to make it anything besides that, you'll be blacklisted and ran out.

If they can't use you, they have no use for you. It's a horrible thing to subject someone to. Even when I was TBM I refused to go to RS.