So... my SIL is in a singles ward in Orem and another SIL is in a singles ward in Provo (East Bay area). Their normal meeting were cancelled this Sunday and they were summoned to a combined meeting. The announcement? The church is combining singles wards in the area. The singles wards will not be a part of the stakes that include regular family wards anymore, but be more like a student stake that only includes singles wards. I asked SIL what the purpose of this was and she told me that they did not even sugar coat it at all. They want all of these singles to meet other singles, marry and procreate! They specifically said it was to create a larger dating pool for these singles. She was disgusted!

There were a lot of tasteless jokes during the meeting and she said she just wanted to leave the entire time. One speaker told a story about how his mission president told him that if he was not married soon after his mission, he was wicked. Another speaker announced that there would be an opening social that night and that all the boys should bring pen and paper to get phone numbers and all the girls should bring papers with their phone numbers on them. She, of course, did not go to the social - she's not really interested in marriage right now. Anyone else heard any reports about this? I asked a lot of questions, but I was trying not to pry that much.

And if that doesn't work, I wonder how long until they start assigning spouses like in the old days...

I totally had a dream about this exact thing about a year and a half ago. I will never forget it! The church had decided that all females that weren't married by the age of 30 would be subject to an arranged marriage. In my dream, it was the day before my 30th birthday and I wasn't even dating anyone. I sat up all night worrying with my mom. When it was morning, I was summoned to the church to be paired up with my new husband. And when I got there, it was this old man from my home ward - he was like 90 years old, couldn't hear - so he spoke really loud, and had always been a little creepy! And it finally woke me up when he turned around and gave me this big huge grin!

YIKES!!!!!!

I still joke about that with my mom to this day. I know it's funny, but I was actually a little relieved when he died a year or so ago.

(I just wanted to acknowledge the impact of your story!)

Snow Wrote:
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> I was actually a little relieved when he died a year or so ago.

I'm so sorry, but that's hilarious! Poor old man!

It is obvious that the retention rates and growth rates are down. VERY down. It is also obvious that the push is now on dating/getting married/creating new revenue streams. The marriage age has risen, the age of parents at birth of first child is up, and the number of children is down. Ugh!! Lower future revenue.

Was it only last year that Oaks gave a talk about how to date? WTF????

saw the gap in little Morgbots and went into panick mode. I would have been highly offended and told them to get the heck outta my personal life.

Whenever they talked about their callings, it either involved excommunicating someone or arranging a date for a couple of sad sacks.

followed by a quickie consummation in RS room while somone watches the door. Good thing they have soft seats in there. =)

Can't start procreatin' too quickly, right?

My recently returned RM son is a bit more forthcoming with details on how things are run than my daughter.

Here's what I've learned:

1. They meet in the Seminary building of American Fork High School,

2. There are maybe 30 people that regularly attend.

3. The social prospects are thin at best.

4. The impression I get is they are kind of playing house. The kids play dress up and do visiting teaching and pass the sacrament just like the grown-ups! They know they aren't taken seriously as contributing members of the church overall, so they don't take the singles ward seriously either.

I wonder how aggregating a bunch of these pretend wards into a pretend stake is going to change anything, but maybe there is a bigger plan.

I recently drove up 9th east in Provo and just south of the Ybu campus there was a big construction project labeled as a singles ward center. Something like 50 ward were going to be "serviced" there, whatever that means.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/11/2011 12:41PM by Stunted.

Bad idea... Good idea... Bad idea... Good idea...

Segregate... Assimilate... Segregate... Assimilate...

Lump singles together to increase the size of the dating pool...

Send them back to the regular wards to let them see the joys of married life in action and thus motivate them to find mates too...

The fact is, the brethren don't have a clue what to do with single adults. In Mormonism you're either a child or a parent. There's nothing between.

Stray Mutt Wrote:
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> The fact is, the brethren don't have a clue what
> to do with single adults. In Mormonism you're
> either a child or a parent. There's nothing
> between.

Even the young married wards at UT campuses (YBU, UoU, USU) treat the young couples as children. When I was in one, they assigned local stock to lead and used the couples to fill in lower ranks. It was a singles ward on steroids, where procreation replaced dating as the main topic.

If a couple married more than a year didn't have kids, they were politely gazed at by the herd of young parents. I was a liberal then, being unfertile with my young tbm wife. I enjoyed the rebellion. My wife felt guilty.

There is no logical reason why a 'young marrieds' ward couldn't fill the rank of Bishop, counselors and etc. themselves.
But our young married ward had people from the town fill the ENTIRE Bishopric! And the entire Bishopric had to neglect their own families by leaving them to struggle alone at church every sunday without their help with the babies and kids.
Church is about time,,,, their time!

Wish I'd seen this back in the day.... we got stories of the old profits were called on missions at age 15, or made apostles or Bishops before they were 30, but we can't have it in this day and age! Not in this stake, why, it just isn't done!

Of course, can you imagine going to your hot young Bishop and telling him you and your husband hadn't consummated your marriage yet and wanted advice?????

...it takes the wisdom of age to properly counsel all those young people.

Yeah, right.

But it does take a lifetime of being in the rut, er, I mean working in the system to properly guide the uninitiated.

I think they are doing the student wards a favor by not making them completely run their own ward.

Being bishop is way too much to ask of people who are just starting out. Besides, they are already too poor, overworked and under too much pressure to be putting out kids...

This is the Lords plan.
They just have to stop running their fingers [cue Scrooge McDuck] through the tithing long enough to hear the word of the Lord.

If the problem is not making babies, they should just let them F#%k!

THIS

in my opinion. Singles want to meet other singles so put them together. No one is forcing them to attend. I bet most like the idea.

The bigger problem with singles is in low LDS areas where there are not enough singles for a singles ward, let alone a singles stake.

I always said that finding someone decent to date has got to be really difficult. But when you narrow the field down so significantly to TBMs, you cut out just about any chance for finding someone special.

I was foored by all the leftovers that were there. Mind you I had a cute girlfriend that I had left cause my parents wanted me to find a mormon girl. After just one Sunday there, I called up my girlfriend and made plans for a proposal a month later.

My bet is that it has to do with the numbers of 18-30's that are dropping away.

They're thinking if they get them married quicker, it won't happen, but they have no idea that all they're doing is forcing it. Either the adults in question will be disgusted, or, like me and my spouse, try to "do the right thing" and then discover that there's absolutely no support network for if something goes wrong with that plan.

I was in a married ward once where the teacher in Relief Society asked a question: "Why do we encourage our children to marry so young?" While I was still wondering "Do we?" someone answered "So our kids won't go out in the world and be tempted by the things of the world and fall away from the gospel." I was shocked both by the comment and by the universal nodding of heads in agreement. Even though I was TBM at the time, I thought "what kind of crappy religion doesn't fortify it's members against the evils of the world, to the point where you have to marry your kids off as babies instead to protect them." Crazy. And yes, this was in Utah.

Did the same thing in Boise Idaho (including Meridian and Eagle) last November.

Retention is currently abysmal. The brethren keep flipping back and forth because nothing seems to work.

Heard they "raised the bar" too... or should I say age that your can stalk each other now blissfully .. to age 38

correct me but I think before it was 32 and you had to go to your home ward.

...worthy sisters who dumped their "porn-addicted" husbands, thus skewing the average age a little higher.

Trade digits with... pens and paper?

Erm.


Isn't there an app for that?

Brainwashed BICs are that most reliable source of tithing. Less BICs = less revenue.

Usually in economically slim times the age of marriage increases, and Mormons are following the trend. This is at odds with their delusion they are the Lord's trendsetters of righteousness.

My daughter goes to BYU. She says that the freshmen women, at least, are in no hurry to get serious with anyone and aren't really into "dating" in the conventional sense of the word. Times are achangin' maybe?

Almost hard to believe. I hope the RM that told the 'wicked' stroy was reprimanded. The pen and paper thing is crazy. We never had singles wards in my area. We didn't have that many regular wards for that matter.

A small group of us rebellious singles used to refer to ourselves as the 'rejects'. Non-Mission serving, single, and happy.

Oh my god. That sounds like what they do in zoos when they want animals to start breeding. Jesus, that's disgusting.

Remember about 5 months ago there was a thread about the youth leaving the Church in vast numbers. I posted that it was because the ward boundaries are so ridgidly enforced and that all Youth Conventions, Roadshows and Multi-Stake Dances were discontinued.

**WELL** I think they got the message. With so narrow a ward gene pool, they finally got the message of allowing ward and stake singles to MINGLE..

RESULT
If you ""MINGLE SINGLES"" you will get good tithe paying families who will have lot of future missionaries who will be married in the Temple and multiply and replenish the Bank Accounts

JB

Would love to hear a report from that Sunday night Meat Market Mixer...

This is the way it USE TO BE:

A guy is on a mission, away from women for two years, then is told to get married in six months and, with hormones raging, he goes crazy when he comes home.

A girl is panicked into getting engaged by her Senior year at BYU -- and when the two meet it's like adding nitro to glycerine.

Everything comes too soon!

Early marriage, young children, all trapped in the morg system before they can figure life out, or each other. By then they are righteous-role-playing to their little kids and the cement is harding fast before their thirties.

And the church had them locked-in, for life!

BUT NOW THE WORLD HAS CHANGED...THE BRETHERN WANT THAT OLD WORLD BACK...BUT TODAY'S YOUNG ADULTS HAVE SEEN WHAT THAT OLD WORLD DID TO THEIR PARENTS -- AND WANT NONE OF IT!