I've been away from church people for so long I forgot how they are always on the lookout for ways to advance LDS, Inc. marketing.

While I was visiting my mother yesterday her only church friend left in her life came to visit. We were talking about Mom's grandchildren and the friend asked me where each of them lives. They are all inactive and non-believing, and she knows it. Luckily I didn't have their addresses in my less than fabulous memory bank and told her I didn't know their addresses. Then she asked AGAIN! I said, "I don't know their addresses!" Then, DUH!!, it dawned on me that she wanted to get their current addresses for the ward directory. When she asked for my sister's address I was more on my guard and gave her a vague reference. Apparently my sis lives outside the ward boundaries so she lost interest immediately.

Boy, you can never let down your guard with these people. Mom's grandkids would have killed me if I released their contact information to LDS,Inc. My sis is on Facebook and Mom's friend could have just asked her on social media.

My niece (Mom's granddaughter) has a daughter (great granddaughter) who will be baptism age in three more years so they probably want to get that kid's name on the membership roles.

Can they put a child on the roles if they don't know her birth date, and she was never even been blessed? Just wondering.

You're right to keep addresses private. Mormons mistreat and harass anyone was ever attended a meeting or was baptized.

I think a ward clerk can (add or) include a child whose birthday is unknown. SLC used to run a monthly discrepancy report that would point out data entered into the church's local computer did not match the granddaddy church's database. The local data was always "considered" to be wrong until the missing data was filled in by the ward clerk.

If the ward clerk failed to correct or add the missing data, then a "FIX THIS NOW" report would be mailed to the bishop. He would then have to verify that the data was indeed corrected by the clerk and the signed report was to be mailed back to "Bob", who was in charge of church records at the time.

With so many members leaving the church and others resigning, I would imagine that church membership records have backed off a bit.

I believe (and it makes some sense) that the mormons don't mind tracking people down even if it's only to get them to resign. Apparently, some bishops are quite prepared to help an inactive member of the ward to resign because it helps the ward's stats.

I'd suggest a better method would be to hand out cards to family members with this information. The family member could pass it on to the inactive person. It could include a website for the one resigning to contact that would not involve being shammed, harassed, nor proselytized one last time. Why do they have to be so invasive by sending church reps?

I'm very much of the opinion that many mormons in positions of authority like to exercise vigorously that authority.

So in my mind, the bishop who sent out his ward clerk to talk to me, and to make the offer, "Well, we don't have a no-contact list, but I do have a letter you can sign that will resign you from the church and that will stop you from being bothered..." had in the back of his mind making himself look like some kind of avenging angel, getting slackers like me off the rolls.

I turned the offer down. I told the ward clerk that I liked living with the knowledge that I wouldn't be dead-dunked.

My dad had a similar experience with another religion. The minister came to visit my dad one day. Dad was impressed that the minister came to our home to ask about him and find out why he had not been to church for so long until the minister announced that since Dad had not donated any money nor attended any services for a year he was going to drop him from the membership roles. I think it was a blackmail attempt to shame Dad into at least donating money or at best get back in the saddle and do all the many things he previously did for his church, and it was a lot. My dad would have loved the opportunity to say he missed his family going to church with him because they had all joined Mormonism. If he had felt loved, listened to, and cared for I think he would have gone back and given money as well. As it turned out, Dad sent that minister packing. Dad joined another church that listened to his complaints about Mormonism and Dad actually tithed to show us Mormons he was serious! That minster thought my dad was heaven sent. With due respect, Dad was actually agonistic but believed in supporting his community through local churches.

You and my dad would have liked each other Elderolddog! :)

Sorry!! I'm POOPED not Pooed. I'm going to go take a nap!