I spent last week with my brother from Utah. He has been in bishoprics and high councils. I found out on the trip that he is mentally completely out and no longer wears his garments. He has no faith or belief in the restoration. He still attends for social reasons and he hadn't told our parents. He is going to have to tell them soon because they are expecting him to be in the temple in August when our niece gets married. He was my only sibling that was still a believing Mormon, and I never expected him to lose his testimony. Not surprisingly, the loss of his belief came from what he found on the internet.

The current bishop in the ward I grew up in was called to be a counselor in the stake presidency, but there is no one to replace him. My mom sent me an E-mail just this morning that included this:
"We still don't have a new Bishop, poor Bishop __________ is doing his Stake calling as well as still serving as our Bishop. There just aren't enough people in our ward. Hopefully, we will get someone soon. I am praying hard for several new families to move here into our ward. We sure need some help."

When I was a youth in that ward our primary sacrament meeting programs had enough kids to make three rows of kids stretching from wall to wall. There wasn't enough room on the stand so a row of kids stood in front of the pulpit. A couple of years ago I attended with my parents when I was visiting and it just happened to be the primary program. There were 13 kids.

The ward is in the San Diego mission.

This is so sad, I too will be braying for new families to move in. Here is a video of me braying my hardest and mostist sincerelyist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gROO7xSTxfY

I have seen one particularly desperate case where the ward had to have a senior missionary couple assigned to the ward so that he could become the bishop. But that was a while ago. I'm just saying that things can obviously become that desperate.

Yeah, go San Diego! :)

C2NR Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
A couple of years ago I attended with my parents when I was
> visiting and it just happened to be the primary
> program. There were 13 kids.

However, things like that can happen as wards age, kids turn into adults and move away, leaving just the parents.

Or it can be because of a change in the housing market. My elderly parents ended up in a ward of "newlyweds and nearly deads" because the trend was for families to move out of the neighborhoods with older, smaller houses and get bigger, newer homes out in the new neighborhood on the edge of town.

But not having enough high priests to call a bishop seems to say they're resisting demoting the ward to branch status.

olderelder Wrote:

> However, things like that can happen as wards age,
> kids turn into adults and move away, leaving just
> the parents.
>
> Or it can be because of a change in the housing
> market. My elderly parents ended up in a ward of
> "newlyweds and nearly deads" because the trend was
> for families to move out of the neighborhoods with
> older, smaller houses and get bigger, newer homes
> out in the new neighborhood on the edge of town.

These are indeed factors. The ward is much closer to Arizona and Nevada than the ocean, and the taxes are high in California, so there is often little incentive to stay if you don't have to. The people who make money tend to leave California so they pay fewer taxes, and the people on welfare stay because California has good welfare benefits.

However, of the ~10 kids in my freshman seminary class this is how it breaks down: One female is still very strong. One male is off and on. (He converted to Judaism for a while and is too eccentric to be a priesthood leader.) One attends occasionally, but this person drinks and has never been to the temple. The rest of us are completely inactive or ex-Mormon. Several of this group left before the internet, so that wasn’t a factor. Only two of us served missions, me and a Native American. He died in a car accident a few years after his mission when he was drunk at the wheel.

Considering the many strong LDS adults in my parents’ generation, my generation was mostly a failure. Now that I am exmo there is not a single male near my age from the ward that could be a priesthood leader. In order to find someone who is priesthood leadership material you would have to go forward four years or back five years.

Serves them right. Decades of dumb church lessons, unbelievable rigidness about the most trivial matters; and correlation has driven away good people. "Put the shoulder to the wheel" got old for members with 3-4 callings. Easier to quit!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/19/2018 03:00PM by messygoop.

I could have continued to put up with with the dumb, boring, and rigid stuff if the church had actually turned out to be true--after all, it was GOD asking me to be tolerant of this stuff. But the evidence against the church is overwhelming. I remember when SWK was enthusiastic over service to the Lamanites, to bring these people of Israel back into the fold. I was young and felt excited about all of this Lamanite stuff. I even married a Lamanite! But then I learned about the DNA, archaeological, and Linguistic evidences pointing out that Native Americans and Polynesians were not Israelites. Not even partly so. With such a big blunder, how could we call these men prophets?

San Diego is never going to get another surge of Mormons. California is bleeding Mormons. They move to Utah or Arizona.

donbagley Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> San Diego is never going to get another surge of
> Mormons. California is bleeding Mormons. They move
> to Utah or Arizona.

We don't want 'em in Arizona!

until you sell your house/property to one of the Cali 'newly rich', that is...

The Treacherous Latter Disease...is being cured by Google
and Bing and all the survivors of it.

Pls refer to my post in "LDS predicts..."