They have two small buildings outside the entrance to the Cardston Temple. They used to have pictures, and all sorts of stuff for visitors. For the last year or so they have been closed and I was down in the area last week and peaked inside through the windows. Dead. I guess they could not find any missionary couples to be there or else they are in the temple working with the dead instead of the living outside.No lights which I guess means no light and knowledge coming forth from these buildings.

It seems that the Church is crumbling apart slowly. The missionary force is a disaster. I used to take missionaries out to lunch once a month but they are so young and immature I just can't do it. We have two 18 years in the ward I visit and they look like fish out of water. They need to be getting a trade or an education. I think that being a missionary today will have long term negative effects in thier lives. It was announced in the ward recently that its been 3 years since they had a convert baptism.

Last Sunday all the talks were about sin and how we need to be more humble. That was real inspiring. Not. And all they are doing now is giving a rehash of conference talks in Sacrament meetings.

Anyone have any idea where the direction of this great Church is heading? In the 50's when I was a kid it was exciting to watch the growth, etc. Now it is like being in a coma.

It's been going downhill [on a collision course with itself] every since FREE was removed from 'free-agency'. No autonomy means no personality. NO SPIRIT. No spirit means NO FREEDOM. No thanks!

Temples are (little more than) temptations. Members are burning out like an old fire and there is no water [truth] to put it out.

Each LDS moment is filled with a recording: LOVE is not wanted here and INDIVIDUALITY is NOT PERMITTED! Only repetition (of rehashed lies).

You know, where the kids suddenly were moved into a 1950's tv series? Everything was "pasty" and various shades of gray, there were no colors. Individuality was abhorred.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120789/?ref_=nv_sr_1

Maybe the writer / director had been a mormon?

I was able to visit the Cardston visitors center as a kid. Our family went on a camping trip through Cardston when our station wagon Rambler broke down. :)

For several days we waited it out in the campgrounds (in town,) and I was able to visit there. Met a nice LDS family who had me to their home for Sunday breakfast.

It was one of the more normal LDS homes I had ever been to. I thought, gee, this is what being a BIC TBM is all about. My family was anything but that kind of normal.

Our station wagon was repaired, we were back on the road trip. First, Calgary. Then back toward America. The border crossing guards weren't going to let me back into the US at first. They thought my parents were smuggling an Indian child across the border with them. I was wearing braids, an Indian headband an antique dealer had given me in Lethbridge as a souvenir. Apparently between my long, dark braids, my headband, and sitting cross-legged in the back of the family station wagon made them believe I was being kidnapped.

When we were leaving Lethbridge I was facing the back window with the same headband and braids, when a real Indian crossed the road, and waved "How" to me. He thought I was one of them too.

Maybe I was an Indian in a previous life? Pocahontas is one of my direct ancestors hee hee. But she is from the Pamunkey tribe. Not a Canadian. :D

Fun reading Amyjo

To think I almost was held back at the border.

My parents didn't bring our birth certificates lol.

Years later when I was crossing from the Canadian border into the US with my own children, we were questioned at the border post 9/11 because my children and me look quite different by complexion.

Post 9/11 the border guards became over zealous. For a moment I thought they were going to detain me for smuggling them back across the border.

We didn't need birth certificates then but since then that became a requirement. And then that turned into having to have a passport or enhanced drivers license.

I can only imagine, Amyjo

Car breaking down in Cardston actually turned a road trip into quite an adventure!

Us kids used our air mattresses to go tubing down the creek in the campsite. (Was it any wonder they quickly deflated thereafter because of the bumpy rocks we slid over?) :D

It turned out to be a very fun trip for us children. Not so sure about mom and dad. They found time to visit the Cardston temple while we waited for them in the campgrounds & visitors center.

Calgary was an okay trip; too big and overwhelming to me as a 12-year old.

Lethbridge was the prettiest out of the three because of its pretty rock gardens. I don't know if they are still there, but it was a standout feature back then.

That garden was owned and maintained by the Sick's Lethbridge Brewery. A full time horticulture staff worked on it. After the brewery closed, the city took over the garden and it's never been close to it's former glory. And yes Lethbridge is a very nice well groomed (for the most part) city. Calgary can be rather intimidating. It had 350K citizens when I was in university there in 1970. It's 1.2 million now.

Ditto.
----

On a very short train ride, in a 'old west' wooden passenger car (with big wide open windows), there were only two of us on the train, three counting her papoose. (This was in So. Arizona.)

Myself (18 yrs.old, and on my way to see relatives), and a squaw, with her baby wrapped solidly by cloth strips, on her back-board.

She was wearing a dark-velvet very full long-skirted outfit (with under-slips). (Indians were allowed to travel free there, in exchange for allowing the train to cross their property.

I was sitting across the isle from her, and when she noticed my looking at her with interest, she was kind enough to take her papoose off it's board, and show the baby to me, and how the cow-hide straps across it kept the baby safe on the board. (The straps were criss-crossed across the baby and it's blanket, which was hand-woven in an interesting design.)

Of course, very memorable in all.

It's moments like that that turn an otherwise uneventful trip into a moment immortalized in time.

Read a post somewhere about Logan being a depressed unhappy paradise...IMO the same could be said of Cardston...pretty spot but full of people just grinding out another day...can only imagine the drudgery of temple work as a senior...paying and laying your ales every dam day...doing secret club handshakes...dunking dead folk who can't even register complaint...and laundry...kill me now...just grinding it out...poor buggers...rambler huh Amy joe...used to be the rambler was the lords one true car...your lucky you weren't whisked away by a 57 year old with an itch for the old days

Native American Indian women and girls are at very high risk of being abused and molested. Many times that goes unreported.

Their cries have not been heard in the corridors of power (usually male dominated.)

"According to a study from the National Institute of Justice, some 84 percent of American Indian and Alaska Native women have experienced violence in their lifetime, and more than half have endured this violence at the hands of an intimate partner. More than two-thirds of the women, or 66 percent, say they have been the victims of psychological aggression by a partner.

Comparatively, roughly 35 percent of women and 28 percent of men in the general population of the U.S. have experienced rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime.

In addition, more than half of all Native women who have experienced abuse say they have also endured sexual assault, and another 48 percent have been stalked.

The majority of these cases of abuse—nearly 97 percent—have been committed by non-Native individuals."

https://www.domesticshelters.org/domestic-violence-articles-information/domestic-violence-rampant-among-native-americans#.WnPAka6nGpo



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/01/2018 08:41PM by Amyjo.

Maybe all the snowbirds who normally do temple work are in Arizona. I bet it's frickin freezing there in Cardston.

Amen brother chipace.

Freezing our knickers off in upstate NY right next to Ontario today. It's sub-zero with wind chill.

I don't know what it's like these days, but a generation or so ago the saints in Cardston viewed the church as their private club. They had no interest in bringing in converts.