So I was a pretty active observer of this website some years ago. I kept being cynical to my parents when we talk about faith and the church when I was observing this website. I stopped and deleted the account from my own decision and family relations was at a all time high which is good.So I deleted the account and never came back since until now.

So me and my parents was talking about the politics and the religion tension in my home country of Indonesia. One thing lead to another and then we ponder back to the good old times of in the late 90s and early 2000s. We were talking about Gus Dur, the "first" elected president of Indonesia, and how he was close and friendly to the Church. He allowed back foreign missionaries to serve in Indonesia after a long pause during the oppressive government of Soeharto. The grounds of for an Indonesian temple was first announced (yet to be built, I doubt this country would even have a temple, a mormon one too) in West Java.

Then I started to google about Gus Dur, since I only knew him from stories in the media and friends and not actual facts since I was born in 2000 (Gus Dur resigned from office in 2001). One google search led to another and then I began reading about LDS Charities in Indonesia and stumbled upon to this thread. I made a new account just to post this.

https://www.exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1081966

you can read my response was in the thread, but I still want to say that saying dishonest things like that is counterproductive and distracts people from the actual issue, particularly about corruption. Living in Indonesia, you hear corruption in government officials literally every day in 24 hour news cycle. Corruption has become some sort of a culture in this nation.

We always knew that there are people playing money in the church administration office, I'm talking about the Church office representative for Indonesia, basically the legal and admin organization of LDS in the nation, and not the Area presidency or similar like that most of them are pretty honest since they're not Indonesian :), for a long time. But since the old, 20+ years Coordinator, similar to what a CEO do in a company but this is in a foundation (yayasan in indonesian), pensioned, the truths spread out like wildfire in the Indonesian LDS community. There are speculations of collusion, embezzlement, and activities out of the ordinary and not according to church standards that is happening for at least the last 7-8 years. The pensioned former coordinator was replaced by his close "subordinate". And the job position of the replacement was also accelerated passing through his bosses. Some employees resigned because of this.

Collusion mostly occurred in funds regarding to charities like clean water projects, renovation projects, etc. They were done by marking up either the amount of objects or the the fees in the budget. So for example:
In the budget:
PVC pipe knees needed: 1000 pcs
Sink and other sanitation equipments: High quality and durable brands

In Reality:
PVC pipe knees needed: 200
Sink and other Sanitation equipments: Cheap low quality brands

--You see the pattern here--

There were some people in the office reported these financial anomalies but that never reached to the higher up since you need to report to the coordinator meanwhile the coordinator is the one that is corrupt. There are so many speculation that information is pretty unclear and gossip spread like lighting gunpowder. I'm not being cynical to the church, I hope that the church can resolve this issue since corruption is bad in any way. And also Corruption, Collusion, and Nepotism is not acceptable in Indonesia.

Thanks

I'm sorry you had to be witness to this corruption.

Sadly it isn't all that unusual here either. :(

My thoughts echo Amyjo’s. Whenever there is money, authority, and SECRECY, there’s going to be malfeasance. Very best wishes, please post as you see fit.

These are subjects that most of us are unaware of. They are complicated and there aren't really reliable checks and balances. A good start would be an official release of cash flow statements. Any corporation releases that info to shareholders and speculators.

I wonder about the church construction projects, here in Utah we have Big D construction and Jacobson Co. that have done many churches and temples it would be interesting to see what sort of salaries the project managers make in comparison to everyone else. And especially project managers called on missions to build far off temples.

When I worked briefly for the bretheren, building churches they only paid me minimum wage, and no reliable schedule (this was through temping). There were lots of what I thought might be undocumented workers, It sucked bad! lets just put it that way!

The church does not show much respect for Blue Collar workers.

You're right about that. It's all about money rather than humility.

In Utah the business owners would rather pay minimum wage without benefits to employees to make more profit for themselves. It's difficult to find work that isn't minimum wage unless you're related to someone in the loop and LDS.

Even minimum wage jobs are hard to come by there. Another reason why getting a good education is important in a specialized field, to finding gainful employment. Still not a guarantee of finding such.

In my hometown inside the Morridor, college grads take low paying, non-skilled jobs to be able to stay.

All this talk against Utah and making a living makes my head spin. We can get rich here in Utah. Its called "join the right MLM" :) Its my understanding that the Holy Ghost has confirmed to my spirit that the latest MLM pitch I've heard is going to be the big one that makes me super rich :) All I need to do is find 5 people who can each find 5 people who can each find 5 people who in turn can each find 5 people to loop into my down line and I'll be on the path to getting rich and the Holy Ghost's awesome revelation will come true. Yeah the last 39 MLM pitches didn't work out and all destroyed me financially and wore me out completely (along with the Church assignments like scrubbing the Lord's toilets). But I dare not blame the Holy Ghost for those mishaps so as soon as a Doubt entered my mind I quickly push it out just like I do when some Apostate tries to feed me some anti-Mormon idea. And besides thanks to the glorious Correlation program I'm well-taught that all these trials/tribulations are a blessing. However I'm gonna get super rich super fast with this latest MLM craze :) Well I won't be rich long because I'll end up consecrating it all because Heavenly Father needs more funds in his sacred LLCs of stock market investments.

Btw some people think that I write parody and that I'm not being serious at all. They think I'm just trying to make TBM's look like total idiots (who got sucked in by some dishonest programming by a dishonest Correlation program) with the facts, especially the people who claim to be apologists but in reality are super dishonest and only make the Church look super awful. For example, DCP and people who try to reconcile some non-doctrinal science ideas (like saying the earth is more than 6000 years old) with the beloved doctrines of our wondrous gospel. The only people who believe that what I write is parody are the people who aren't super convinced that the Church is the most super honest and transparent organization in world history. Of course it has to be super honest and transparent because that's the definition of being TRUE :) In a true Church its unthinkable to try to deceive anyone on anything by commission or especially omission. That's because people might have Doubts and thus start to question whether or not the Church has always been super honest about everything. Thus we got to just be super honest :)

extra points for the Monty Python-related username :-)