I heard last week that since they re-opened the Jordan River Temple, temple attendance at the Draper Temple has plummeted. We have 10-12 people in our Ward that are Draper Temple workers. There were a few of them Sunday telling us they've been sent home or told not to come in at all as sessions have been poorly attended or closed all together.

Everyone at church was being 'strongly encouraged' to use their TR's.

Maybe someone from the Quorum of 12 will be paying us Sandy/Draper residents a visit to rake us over the coals for not using the temple more. Just like they did in Houston.

attend their temple, the area they live in, like they do wards? It might be coming!

LOL! When my formerly TBM brother visited me a few weeks ago he told me about his crisis of faith. During it he went to the Washington D.C. temple weekly for several months. This was back in 2014. He said about a quarter of the time he was the only one in the chapel and session. The other sessions he said there was one or two people. This is during the times when he wasn't working so they should have been prime times.

Elder Berry, what precipitated your brother's crisis of faith? Did you write about it before on the forum? By any chance is this brother the father of your returned missionary nephew whose emails you used to share?

I don't have anything written down. I just throw out tidbits of my life here and there.

My eldest brother is the father of the nephew with the horrible English skills, made fun of the locals in The American South where he served, and was effusive in his faith promoting emails.

I'm one of 5 sons. I'm the middle of them. My brother just older than me had a few things happen that coalesced into a crisis of faith.

He sent 2 kids to BYU where they both had mental breakdowns. One of them came out as gay and resigned from the church. Another thing was my brother was struggling to not look at porn occasionally and instead of helping him his leaders just kept piling on the callings. He didn't understand this "help." Lastly, his wife divorced him and he was incredulous that mine has stayed with me with my disbelief.

There is only so much a faithful member can take before their Mormon safety walls start to fall and they feel like their church is more of a prison than a support system.

The Mormon safety wall thing, I see all over around me in Utah County. You follow a very specific set of rules--build the safety wall according to exact specifications--in exchange, the cosmic power is supposed to keep the wolves at bay. But the wolves come in anyway, they slip right through the wall, and there they are face-to-face with you on the inside of the compound. It's very distressing--especially when you're told the mistake lies in how you constructed the wall. You believe that as long as you can, shoring up the wall. Finally, you're forced to conclude it's not how you built the wall, it's that the whole concept of a wall was faulty from the start.

This is a famous temple located outside the Morridor.

On a weekday just within the past couple of weeks, an endowment session had only 5 participants (witness couple plus three others). A later session there was only THREE, one person plus the witness couple.

However, a few days later on a Saturday morning, attendance was much better; 35 people participating. This place should be real busy next month.

Yeah, the Mormon Way is a crash and burn. Its very
much like GroundHogs Day. Over and over and over.

maybe they'd rather be out four wheeling? especially when it's so nice outside.

Here's the kick!

Church leaders complain that members aren't attending and respond by offering less days and sessions. Then endowed members choose not to go because the temple is closed when they are willing to attend. It's the classic self fulfilling prophecy.

Another tidbit.

In the 1980s, members of the seventy quorum would set quotas for temple goals. These numbers would be shared openly over the pulpit. All type of temple data was discussed.

A few years later after the seventies had been dissolved, ph leaders started harping about low temple attendance. My father, who didn't even hold a TR, asked about the numbers and suggested that each quorum set goals. The ph leader said "Brother Goop that's a sound recommendation. Unfortunately, the temple is no longer keeping track of that data. But we know that attendance is down."

Terrific logic.

Attendance? Meh!

The temples are only good for land grab, shady contracts, and tax exemption.

If they sit empty, who cares?

I have a sibling doing double shifts at the AF Temple..not due to over attendance but to the fact nobody willing to take those thankless useless mind numbing sh*t jobs.
I love it..

Wouldn't it be interesting if someone could access the attendance records for all the wards, temples, etc.

Only thing that would be of greater interest would be the financial records.

I think in some ways, the Mormon church is cheapening the temple experience by building so many of them. On the east coast, it used to be a special experience for Mormons to travel to the Washington, D.C. temple. Now there are a bunch of temples to choose from.

Perhaps TBMS who live south of SLC want to see the newly refurbished Jordan River temple. It's the shiny new toy. Or maybe there are just too many temples in that area right now.

summer Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I think in some ways, the Mormon church is
> cheapening the temple experience by building so
> many of them. On the east coast, it used to be a
> special experience for Mormons to travel to the
> Washington, D.C. temple. Now there are a bunch of
> temples to choose from.

Absolutely. The rest of that story is that the new Mc temples look like nothing more than stake centers. I think people miss the grandeur, if not the architectural classicism, of the older, grandiose temples.

It's like this ...


https://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_1024w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2011/06/24/Local/Images/KELLYCOL26%20A_1308947400.jpg?uuid=yLVf2J6gEeCMAJKPmHKN9g



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/24/2018 08:01AM by Dave the Atheist.

Yup. When there are only a few temples and the main one took 40 years to build and it a complicated and intricate granite building it has some meaning. When temples are all over and many of them look the same it becomes like a franchise. The church is cheapening the temple illusion.

having a temple down the street has lost its novelty. Time for an Alpine temple.

Want to attend your child's wedding? They catch up on at least 6
months worth of tithing.

You can have temples return a profit without having them filled
up. If you can get half-a-year's tithing out of one attendance,
that goes a long way toward making it cost-effective.

baura Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Want to attend your child's wedding? They catch
> up on at least 6
> months worth of tithing.
>
> You can have temples return a profit without
> having them filled
> up. If you can get half-a-year's tithing out of
> one attendance,
> that goes a long way toward making it
> cost-effective.


Without temple weddings the tithing flow would be way down.

Nearest temple to me is Timp, and a lady on the ward RS FB page was pleading with the sisters to go as she had just finished a session where she did 4 names with no one else in line. There were some likes but no comments. Looks like it's slow everywhere!

Heard the same about the London temple,poor attendance,Preston much the same especially during week days.

I think that as wards shrink and members are given multiple callings they don't have the time or energy to travel a few hundred miles for a sleep session.

Before I resigned I was a counsellor in RS,Primary Teacher,Visiting Teacher and Family History Consultant,the ward had a FH facility and I did Tuesdays 10am-3pm,Thursday 7pm-9-30pm load folk like that and watch them implode.

Young mormon couples in the US, if they really want a temple marriage, should all start getting a civil marriage first, and going to the temple to be sealed a year later. That way everyone can take part in the marriage ceremony, and no one has to pay the church any extortion money to attend the wedding ceremony.

If the church doesn't like it, maybe the couple never will bother to go back to the temple at all, ever. The idea is to give control of the marriage to the couple and to emphasize the new family, and to make the parent/adult-child bond be stronger than any bonds that any of them have with the church. The couple marries eachother. The cereminy is not about merrying both of them to the church.

Agreed. Let it happen as it does in Europe.

Maybe they're running out of dead people.

Guess they'll have to start in on the Neanderthal ancestry. /s

I wonder what (tribe) the Neandrathals come from??? How valiant were they in “The War in Heaven”???

I understand they just recycle the names.

The Nashville temple no longer allows name submissions as of last fall. If you want people to help you with your family names, you have to personally hand them out before or at the door to the temple.

They claim that they had so many names, that they were unable to get the work done and sent the cards in the filing cabinets back to the stakes so that they could be turned back over to the members.

I find that claim dubious...

One time, I went through for someone with only the name "Frances." No last name.

Does that mean that every Frances that ever lived is covered?

What if they really meant FrancIs instead of FrancEs?

Anyway, that's what prompted me to submit, "Mr. Peabody."

If people don't think dogs go to Heaven, Mr. Peabody'll show 'em!

Whoa!!! What kind of dog did Adam & Eve have?

What kind of dog does Jesus have?


ETA: I gotz ta know!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/25/2018 01:32AM by elderolddog.

I went through the temple in Mesa AZ one time with only the name 'Juan' and the date of 1792. I felt the same way. Did I just go through the temple for everyone named Juan? How many Juans were born in 1792?

The Draper temple is right next to the Draper Castle. I figured that a lot of members would attend that temple while dreaming about the castle.