During your time as active members what was your favorite service project? A lot of my time as member was wasted at church sitting and listening to talks (3 hours every Sunday). Temple sitting and watching a movie trying to safe people on the other side. Those 2 RS projects were actually quite satisfying for me.


- Making quilts for a women's shelter
- Cleaning up after a hurricane

I cleaned up after a few natural disasters, even after I was mentally out of the church. Those seemed like "real" service efforts and were more communal than church-ish.

I didn't clean up after disasters. My little sister, of all people, went and helped after the Teton Dam disaster. I refused to work on the stake farm as I worked on my dad's farm, but they asked my dad to work there often and bring his tractors along. I did have to go get gas for him for his tractor while working on the stake farm. He and I had a huge argument when I refused to hoe beets for the stake farm. Of all families to ask to do that--our's. The only one in the stake who had a farm.

I babysat a lot as a kid for people going to the temple. I prepared many meals. I like to do things without being assigned. I hated the assigned service.

I guess every time I gave a lesson, went to camp as a leader, hauled a bunch of girls around as sports director--I guess I was serving. I sure loved working with the young girls. They made it more and more difficult to enjoy the job.

The only service projects we had were weeding people's yards (who were too lazy to do it themselves-no good excuses like medical conditions or whatever), and being assigned to clean the bathrooms and chapel. One time, there was a project that had a little bit of honor to it, and that a quilting project.

The best one that I attended involved church's pear farm. When most of the active members showed up, the harvesting was done in a couple of hours.

The worst ones involved moving someone that nobody had ever met. EQ hell jobs.

I was on the receiving end of a couple of service projects as a single mother. Despite his faults, and the spiritual abuse that goes hand in hand with that calling, my bishop was determined to help me. The first one involved redecorating me flat which was in a bit of a state; the second one was giving my daughter and I Christmas presents. The second one wasn’t necessary, my family spoilt us enough but they just had a poverty mindset where we were concerned.

This would actually have been great except that:
1) Half of the people assigned to help me redecorate didn’t want to do it. I ended up doing a third of it myself anyway.
2) At the end of year ward sacrament meeting said bishop declared the members were super Christ like for having redecorated and contributing so much to the gifts. Everyone knew it was me he was referring to. Worst sacrament meeting ever.

After the jerk of a YM pres left, a new guy to the ward was called. The church wasn't a fun time in my life and it showed. I hated the meetings and my home life was upside down as their was disharmony as a result of my Dad not participating. So this new YM prez decided that I was the pity of the priest quorum.

For an entire week, my family received uninvited "doorbell ditching." The teens would sneak up to my house, leave the so-called gift, then knock on my door and run."

We had no idea who was playing these pranks. Most of it was some menial food. Tangerines that were cracked open, burnt cookies and a defrosted fruit cake. All of it went straight to the trash. My Dad became annoyed. On the 4th night somebody threw a sack of walnuts. It hit our large plate glass window. My Dad had enough and grabbed his shotgun. He fired a shot into the air. It worked. We had no more visitors.

On Sunday, the YM adviser was being overly friendly. He asked about my week and I told the quorum about some punks pranking my house. The quorum laughed. Then I told him about my Dad being a good shot and the room became silent. Apparently, it was supposed to be a total of 12 days of gifts. I'm glad they knocked it off. One kid was hiding in my front bush when my Dad fired off a shot.

***What these pranksters didn't know was that my family experienced a host of threats, pranks and violence over a period of two years. Windows were smashed, tires were slashed. Our home was burglarized and we had cameras, TV and electronics, jewelry stolen. Eggs had been thrown and they were brazen about it wearing masks in the dark. It was reported to the sheriff and the advice was to arm ourselves for protection because emergency response was a good 12 minutes away.

***What they didn't know was that we had a crackpot lady that didn't like dogs. She was caught (and eventually locked up ) for trespassing and leaving plates of poisoned meat. She laced the meat with bleach and lye. My dog became very ill and nearly died. Other dogs weren't so lucky.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/23/2019 04:18AM by messygoop.

Yes the Morg doesn’t think at all, and they don’t realise what people who are outside mormon royalty (ie normal people) might have been through. I rarely answered my phone because I had previously been abused and harassed by an ex partner that way, yet everyone kept ringing about stuff to do with my calling, church projects etc, and treated me like a less active just because I wasn’t at their beck and call night and day. Never mind I worked full time and was a single parent. I later realised this actually WAS harassment.
I just thought of another one. I moved house with my daughter, and with the help of a couple of members. It was a very good thing, because it meant my daughter was getting her own room finally after sharing mine for 8 years. I had no money to buy flooring or carpets for this house, but the one good thing was the bathroom already had a ‘wet floor’ which I later realised is very expensive.
Well, the bathroom was in a state otherwise, and I tried replastering it myself. When my home teacher found out (genuinely a lovely man) he arranged with the bishop for another member to do it for me. Note, I NEVER asked for any help, the bishop manipulated me each time, saying if I didn’t accept help then I wasn’t spiritually humble. So...This guy showed up on a Saturday morning with my HT and it was clear he didn’t want to be there. He rushed the job so much, wet plaster was going everywhere, including all over this very expensive floor. Luckily my HT intervened and told him to cover it up and wipe it up because he was gonna ruin an expensive floor. Most of it wasn’t ruined thanks to him. I’ll also never forget how genuinely Christian that one HT was for all those years.
I was always grateful for service projects but the spirit in which they were done ruined it. They were often soooo negative or blatantly didn’t want to help but had to in order to be obedient. What made this ten times worse was the bishopric would boast about it in sacrament meeting, which was humiliating for those who had been helped.This was a red flag for me. There was no compassion or love from most people. It was very common.

My favorite service project was feeding the homeless. The project was through a non-LDS church that reached out to churches in the area to help them feed the homeless. The LDS student ward I attended fed the homeless once or twice a month at the non-LDS church. I really thought I was doing something worth while when I did that. Too bad the Mormon church wouldn't use their kitchen/church building to feed the homeless.

Another time the student ward I attended helped with Habitat for Humanity and painted a house for an elderly woman.

I don't remember very many service projects in my ward, except at Christmas time when we sang carols and delivered cookies to the elderly. We spent so much time in church meetings everyone was too burned out for service projects.

Most of the volunteering I've done in my life has not been through the Mormon church. I've had to look for opportunities in the community because the Mormon church is not really about service.