I attended the Saturday Night Session of Stake Conference last night. They had open question time with a 70.

Question. "Under the new 2 hour block it looks like I might be finished all my Church stuff by 11 am, what am I to do the rest of the day."

Answer: "As a father in the home you preside and its up to you to decide with your family how to complete the rest of the day and keep it holy." He then showed a short video and discuused what we can do
1. Study the scriptures
2. Family research and submitting family names for temple work
3. Minister to others
4. Read and talk about Preach My Gospel book
5. there were only 4

He did say that the parents will be held accountable if their children do not understand about making the Sabath day holy. He really stressed it that parents will be held accountable if their children go astray because they did not have proper Sabath day activites.

He talk to the singles and the widows and widowers like me and said re: keeping the Sabath Day holy, "we would figure it out." Excellent counsel right.

I sense that parents are going to feel a tremendous pressure not their kids are not spending a lot of time with other kids at Church on Sunday. I felt that and my kids are grown up and inactive. But I sensed it.

members are not allowed to do anything they want? I don't think this home study thing is going to take hold. My memory of growing up is I hated it when my parents had FHE I mean it was so boring, they had the FHE workbook also. How freaking depressing when you are a kid to have to not do anything but more indoctrination in your own house, when we just had 3 or more hours of indoctrination the day before.

Quality family time is doing things like taking a drive, going on a picnic going to the mall and getting food.

Where the most devout TBM in the family is constantly browbeating everyone else into gathering together to read out of approved/official lesson manuals, read the Book of Mormon, pray, watch videos of old conference talks, watch official church videos, etc.

It's going to be awkward. There will be fights. People will fall asleep.

Fun times.

If they're smart, they'll take road trips to fun places, scenic places and have some quality family time together and forget about trying to recreate a scaled down church program in their home.

Give the kids some money to go off and do something fun and mom and dad can have sex and then go off and have a nice diner somewhere.

Yes.

Our family scripture study and FHE went in cycles.

Scripture study generally got off to a roaring start, until those boring chapters (mostly boring, because almost nobody in the Mormon Church can provide context on Isiah) in 2nd Nephi. Maybe it would have been more interesting if we went about finding the KJV translation mistakes that Joseph Smith, Oliver Cowdery, Emma Smith, Sidney Rigdon and associates transcribed over into the Book of Mormon. I digress...

The effort would eventually fall apart...under its own weight as our friend flash Gordo would say. Then you are just left to feel guilty about not being perfect, and try again when the former sins return.

How effing miserable!

Gonna fail, oh yea. It's not going to give them the results they want.

When it fails, Jeff Holland can yell at the members. He's good at yelling.

Leaving Wrote:
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> When it fails, Jeff Holland can yell at the
> members. He's good at yelling.


Ha!Ha! He never yelled at us BYU students when he was president of BYU. Him and his wife were actually kind of jolly and fun.

I think poor Jeff hates being an apostle. He really looks miserable most the time. If brother Holland left the church I would be the first person to give him and great big hug.

Rubicon Wrote:
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> Leaving Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > When it fails, Jeff Holland can yell at the
> > members. He's good at yelling.
>
>
> Ha!Ha! He never yelled at us BYU students when he
> was president of BYU. Him and his wife were
> actually kind of jolly and fun.
>
> I think poor Jeff hates being an apostle. He
> really looks miserable most the time. If brother
> Holland left the church I would be the first
> person to give him and great big hug.


I agree with everything you said. He and his wife were delightful as Prez and 1st Lady of BYU. The student body loved them.

He does look like he HATES being a member of Q15

I liked Jeff when he was at BYU. He was always friendly to the students. He greeted me several times like he knew me, but he didn't. I think when he became an apostle he discovered that IT wasn't true, and has been bitter ever since.

What are they going to do with the extra time? Afternoon game and Sunday Night Football. Jeez.

pretty much completely signifies what it means to be a Morgbot.

The fact that an adult would ask such a question to some stranger in a suit, as though the stranger in a suit would know the answer better than the person asking the question is...a bit scary.

I guess people like that do belong in an organization that will tell them what to do and how to do it every minute of their lives. Otherwise, they'll just flop around like dying fish waiting for someone to throw them into another pond of detailed instructions and commands from authority figures.

Maybe it's better that they be in the LDS organization than in some worse organization seeking to build an army of mind controlled zombots.

Better? Like having an abuser who beats them so that some worse abuser won’t beat them? Some people do need structure. But the church isn’t actually a religion. It’s a blood sucking parasite on an otherwise healthy substructure. It doesn’t deserve to be reformed. It deserves to die.

It appears that it's not entirely a healthy substructure.

There seems to be a sizable portion of the membership that essentially begs to be dominated, ruled over and instructed in ever minor and major detail of their lives.

I've seen the type. I've even seen leaders at various levels frustrated by that type. There are leaders who, however misguided, still don't want to boss these types around all the time, but end up having give instructions because these born followers will literally beg them for instructions for everything. When they have reached adulthood and they're still begging for some leader to give them structure and daily instructions, they're going to seek out some all-controlling organization or another. If not in Mormonism, they'll find it somewhere else and, typically, the more controlling and demanding, the more likely it is that they'll sign up and sign away their lives.

Ideally, it would be better to get them into an institution where they can learn how to think for themselves. But we don't live in an ideal world. The LDS Church isn't the only bad organization out there and, to be fair, it's far from being the worst. So, half jokingly, I say that it's better to keep them busy cleaning toilets at the LDS chapel than to see them be absorbed into an organization that, for example, requires actual head chopping, interrupted only by prayer breaks to pray to a black cube while banging their heads on the ground.

Fair enough, but what happens when those types are the only ones left? Everyone else is slowly being driven out. I like your theory that they’re doing this on purpose. The church is becoming the “B ark” from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. When are they going to send it off into space?

I wouldn't be surprised if they get transferred into some government program or corporate program as an ultra-cheap labor pool. Some of them will probably be issued day-glo green vests and whistles to assist the system with policing operations targeting more independent-minded members of society.

While in the Morg, I could see that many of these Morgbots were the type that was always wishing they could have whistles and citation pads.

"Hah! You were looking at a coffee advert in that worldy magazine! This will be reported!"

I had a roommate like that at YBU. He actually reported my other roommate to the bishop because he thought my other roommate had spent a little too much time kissing his girlfriend out by the entrance to our apartment. I had seen the same event and it was "G" rated kissing. Disney movie kissing.

But they don’t start out that way. The church home grows them. It stunts emotional growth on purpose to foster dependency. Or rather codependency, as the church is just as addicted to the process. They might as well be cooking meth in the basement of the church office building.

By substructure, I mean religious concepts that have been hashed out and vetted over millennia. That’s different from the contradictory mishmash cooked up by an opportunistic con man.

In some markets in Asia, you can find knock-offs that use logos that mimic famous, high-end brand names.

The products are lower quality, but superficially similar.

You'll see sportswear with the "Haed" logo (fashioned to look almost identical to the "Head" brand logo.

Or "Praha" handbags mimicking the "Prada" brand.

They're obviously piggybacking off the brand-recognition value that was developed by the companies that own the real brands.

The Mormon church is like that in the realm of religion.

You pay for a Louis Vuitton and get a sweatshop special.

the knock-off is actually the same product from the same sweatshop that makes the "official" products.

I think they've cracked down a lot in recent years. But it used to be the case that when they had surplus materials in the sweatshop, they would do a few extra product runs and slip them out the back door to a "friend" who would sell them in an open-air market for about $20 equivalent. Essentially the same product as the official handbag that would sell for $2,000 in an upscale department store in the U.S. The ridiculous part is that the sweatshop bosses were still making a profit at $20.

Well, it’s still Mao’s China. 50 year plans don’t even register in the mind of American business, which is all about next quarter.

I can only imagine what goes on the minds of the Q15. They obviously don’t even have a plan beyond Nelson’s warm fuzzies.

babyloncansuckit Wrote:
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> You pay for a Louis Vuitton and get a sweatshop
> special.

The Mormon church puts it's members to work in the sweatshop.

It's these "tell me what to do with my free time" types who make the church abuses possible. At some point, we on the outside need to recognize that adult Mormons share responsibility for their own predicament. It's convenient to blast away at guys like Nelson, et al. (And they deserve the blasting.) But at the end of the day, they only have power because the members want them to have power. They want a "prophet" and a church bureaucracy telling them what to do all the time.

They are not pure victims of an oppressive organization. As all of us here can attest, you can get away from it, if you choose to do so--unlike some religions/organizations where you seriously risk being killed or maimed for trying to leave..

Wally Prince Wrote:
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> It's these "tell me what to do with my free time"
> types who make the church abuses possible.

Indeed.
Might as well change the question to what is actually meant:

"Please do my thinking for me!"

Ugh.

That last sentence sounds like you said, "Maybe it's better that they be in the LDS organization than in the LDS organization"
:P

My fault. I meant to emphasize the "worse" part. Bad as it is, there are organizations that are worse than the LDS organization. Generally, the Morgbots are not particularly violent. You don't want them to be transferred to some head-chopping organization.

Mormonism confounds and confuses even the mormons.

Why does the church jabs to tell you how to spend the rest of the say.

Use your free agency to decide what is best for your family.

The saddest thing is that someone is so used to not having free agency that they have to ask the church what they are supposed to do wu th their free timd

To create demand for your service, you have to convince people they can't do it themselves. Or make them forget personal responsibility, which many will gladly give up, as it takes less effort.

Reality is many parents don't necessarily like doing things with their kids. That is why we have the public school system. I've often heard statements of relief from parents at the end of summer vacation that they can finally send their kids back.

Despite having a HS diploma, many parents can't teach their kids basic math or reading. Much of it is the indoctrination that only schools can teach their kids. Schools are now telling parents they can't even feed their kids breakfast, so kids eat at school. Frying and egg and making a piece of toast or oatmeal is just too hard.

Same with church. Members have been trained to believe church is to teach their kids and make them good. Now we're surprised when they don't know what to do?

Which reality are you referring to? If you mean Mormon reality then yes. Children having children. If your love is conditional, how can you give it to a child? How can that be honorable? Thank God I was raised by a convert before the church ruined her.

But I think it doesn’t translate to the world at large. Families are getting smaller and parents are far more invested. They don’t have a lame religion to use as a crutch. Love isn’t optional.

Heaven forbid should families have real conversations!!!!!
Not. Mormons are to read together and discuss together or watch a movie--but not talk with each other about it. Say a canned prayer and eat a sugary snack, then go do their homework. Don't ask questions, don't talk, don't think.

Probably I studied my way out of the cult, because my father was a professor! Every time we talked, I learned something! My parents also taught me about natural science. My parents rejected the FHE idea, and the manual. They didn't want the church interfering in our family closeness, and our interesting conversations. We kids agreed 100%, even when we were Mormons.

I'm afraid that the new Mormon whatever-it's-called is trying to invade people's homes and private lives, more than ever.



Question. "Under the new 2 hour block it looks like I might be finished all my Church stuff by 11 am, what am I to do the rest of the day."

Do you really think that was a genuine question, and not a set-up?
What normal member would ask that question? "Question and answer session", my eye! Oh, they didn't say: "OPEN questions," did they.

Real question v. Set up question...?

Either way, I just happen to have a short video...

I thought it was a set up question but I was at back of culture hall and this guy was near front of chapel. But why would they use a set up question?

now there was an older guy from my word who asked a question. I did not fully understand it and he got shot down in flames.

Questions could only be asked about the new stuff. Nothing doctrinal. So only about 5 questions were asked.

It’s nothing a little steel-filled epoxy and bailing wire won’t fix.

I agree with SECular priest that it seem rather "inspired" that the seventy just happened to have a video ready in response to a member's "spontaneous" question. One might almost come to the conclusion that the question was planted except that we all know The Brethren would never do such a thing, cough cough.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/29/2018 11:46AM by scmd1.

Were there any real questions from the congregation allowed, you know, like about things LDS, Inc has in their online essays?

"Under the new 2 hour block it looks like I might be finished all my Church stuff by 11 am"

Yeah, this is a set-up question. Completely fabricated by the 70.

Post-block meetings aren't going away. If Random Anon Member is finished by 11 under the 2-hr block, he would have been finished by noon with the full 3-hr block. He'd still have "all day" anyway. More BS from a GA.

Ha! The ward clerks won't get to go home after church. I can tell you that. Someone still needs to process the tithing and run to the bank. Someone has to print and sign checks. I had Sundays that were as long as a regular workday and cutting an hour off of church isn't going to change much for the clerks.

So much for a "day of rest."

True enough. But if Random Anon Member had "finished all [his] Church stuff by 11 am" (per the 70) then he wasn't a clerk. He had no post-block work to do, so he would have been all done by noon before the change.

People are going to make a half-heated attempt. Just like they do with every other 'commandment'. Read scriptures and have couples prayer and family prayer, and have family home evening, and make sure mom doesn't work outside the home and make sure you are acting as a missionary to every non-member you know, and all young men go on a mission, and, and, and...

it just means an hour less of church and an hour less of electricity usage, but they have to put frosting on it... lots and lots of frosting.

They can cram four wards in a building on a Sunday. It means being able to get by with less meeting houses. So yup. It's about saving $$$$$$.

I haven’t been on this board for a while because of moving and health issues; I just started again last week, so I don’t remember hearing how they were going to do this . Are they going to make each block shorter or are they cutting out Relief Society and Priesthood?

One hour of Sac, then a ten minute transition-time to Sunday school, on the first and third Sundays. On second and fourth Sundays, you'll be transitioning to priesthood and relief society. I think they also do a primary thing, having to do with saving the children. "Think of the Children!"

On fifth Sundays, the bishop is in charge of what you transition to. But of course they are likely to give the bishops precise instructions on what to do. There are two such Sundays in 2019, March and June...



When I hold these concepts in my hands, I can feel the holiness and smell the righteousness.

Bishops have no real authority in the church anymore. Everything runs from the top using the stake presidency as the enforcers. The bishop used to be the man at the ward level. Not anymore. Being Bishop really is a grunt job. You get stuck with all the problems and have no authority and best of all you get to deal with all the teenagers. It's a shit job.

Only Mormons need to be told what to do with free time.

I'm surprised no one made the suggestion to spend extra time in cleaning the building.

Ha! Get real. I remember when I was the ward executive secretary the bishopric couldn't wait until the last meeting was over so they could run home and take a nap or watch sports on TV. The bishop hated suits and ties and he wasted no time getting into some comfortable shorts or sweats and flipping on ESPN. I know. I used to watch it with him after church sometimes.

The only people I ever saw pull out a lesson manual and have a family home evening lesson were the real fanatics. Maybe .001% of a ward does this.

<<<<He did say that the parents will be held accountable if their children do not understand about making the Sabath day holy. He really stressed it that parents will be held accountable if their children go astray because they did not have proper Sabath day activites.>>>>


That sounds so much like a threat. Blame the faithful for those who reject the faith. Ouch!!!

If my parents had made me stay "in the role" of Sabbath all Sunday long without allowing me to get into my play clothes and enjoy the rest of the day having fun my way I think I would have dumped religion WAY sooner.

Shift responsibility for dwindling numbers to parents. Forget that we're selling a sham product and your Gen Z kids are figuring it out faster than Alexa can say You've Got Mail, it is your fault and your responsibility. Even the BOM says it.

The fact that a grown ass adult felt that he needed to ask a stranger what he and his family are allowed to do with a whole extra 60 minutes that used to be filled in by church is sad. That should be the real story here - that a fucking oversized man-child is the most pathetic thing I've read/heard in a while.

Here is a list of things that can be done instead of any of the stupid shit the 70 told him:

1.) Read. Anything. Book of Mormon if you really want, or Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, a newspaper, anything. Expand your mind and enjoy yourself while you do it.
2.) Take a nap. Your week will probably be hard, just like the last one was. Catch up on a bit of sleep.
3.) Play with/talk to your kids. Now that you have 60 fewer minutes of bullshit church classes to worry about, create memories with your family.
4.) Watch a movie. Ever seen the Pirates of the Caribbean? Castaway? I've heard good things.
5.) Cook something. Make something that you and your family can enjoy together. Don't know how to cook? Fucking learn - you are an hour richer.
6.) Write someone you don't see often a nice letter or e-mail.
7.) Go for a walk. Most Mormons I know are pudgy and unhealthy. Go outside and have a nice day. Get some fresh air and exercise.
8.) Watch YouTube tutorials on how to do adult things like paying bills, maintaining your car, voting, signing up for services, etc. Since the original question suggests that the person asking is absolutely helpless, this would be a good time to learn new things.

There. I've doubled the 70's "inspired" list and I'm not even on the church's bankroll. My list also doesn't blow. Jesus wept.

Asking the very question shows that some mormons can't even think for themselves of how to spend their Sunday time.

Then the leader guilts them into thinking that failure to keep their kids interested in the church will come back on their heads as a sin. An old concept to passively threaten parents to keep kids in line or they will suffer by not being in the celestial kingdom with sky daddy.

SEcular Priest Wrote:
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> He talk to the singles and the widows and widowers
> like me and said re: keeping the Sabath Day holy,
> "we would figure it out." Excellent counsel
> right.

Demonstrating once again the church has no real place for those outside their narrow father-mother-children model.