Being a bit bogged down with family issues and the current political issues here, I could really do with some humour...
What are your funny experiences/memories in crazy sacrament meetings, or other mormon cult meetings/encounters? These are mine from typical sacrament meetings and they are also the only things that are memorable but I know there are stories out there that are funny rather than crazy /ridiculous with some dark humour thrown in. (Sometimes I have to remember these things as most of it was otherwise boring, stupid or horrible).

We had one lady who would tell the same story every month of how the lord jesus saved her family from all kinds of dangers before joining the church (note: just normal life stuff) and how this made LDS.inc true. This repeated itself almost every month for 11 years.

One older lady had a crush on a member of the bishopric, who was married with four kids (granted he was quite good looking but she was twice his age). She’d go on and on about him on the pulpit as though somehow her crush had something to do with a testimony. One day, on walking to the front of the chapel for said testimony, she somehow fell over and banged her head, making a huge thumping noise. She was ok but people somehow couldn’t help laughing; the bishop got up and rebuked the ward; I don’t think she was very popular. Apparently the bishop eventually spoke to her about the crush. Whatever contributed to her future silence, she never said another word about him.

One ysa friend once got up and rebuked another ysa for not joining in with events she went to as she was missing out on her personal spiritual experiences, which she then elaborated on.... not realising that said friend wasn’t going because she was so toxic, and this only emphasised the point publicly. Somehow this all made the church true. A long awkward silence followed. Same girl married a guy who was later in the bishopric, and she’d constantly bear her testimony that the church was true because her family was so awesome.

One couple once tried to get their young daughter, about 8 years old to bear her testimony, whispering what to say in her ear, of course. Instead of repeating the words, she just looked up at the ceiling and sighed very audibly into the microphone. The entire ward laughed. (This didn’t help the situation).

Oh, and the stake conference which was about jesus, but the stake presidency talked only about tithing and shared stories that were supposed to be testimonies. One story involved getting consecrated oil mixed up with eye drops; another was about being able to wear Levi jeans and attend a sporting event at school. That’s all I remember. Somehow this was all to do with jesus and his church.

I know mormondoom isn’t essentially funny, and these are just events which help me to see how ridiculous it is. Please share your stories...

EDIT: We once got a lecture at the beginning of church, the bishop said that donny osmond was visiting and we weren’t to harass him and ask for autographs. No one under the age of 30 was impressed. Sure enough, following week, I look behind me and there he was sitting behind me. He smiled shyly as though I was about to swoon over him as he sat with his wife. Whatever. The fact this was a highlight says a lot.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/31/2019 01:34PM by LJ12.

I've shared this story when my Dad first joined the church and went out with a brother to "learn" how to be an effective home teacher. Sometimes, he would re-tell this experience when members took the church or themselves too seriously.

Here's a HT story about a man who might have been baptized as boy, but grew up away from the church. It was Sunday, so my recently convert father was being mentored how to HT inactives. They found a man working up on his roof and drinking a cold one on a warm summer day. After getting a lukewarm welcome, this older brother started babbling about keeping the sabath day holy. The man kept hammering away; probably hoping the daft mormons would go away. The final words spoken were a threat only a mormon would hurl out of desperation, "You know that you're going to have nothing but trouble from a leaky roof. It will forever leak because the lord doesn't fix things on his day of rest!"

The man shouted back, "Don't you ever bother me or come onto my property again. I wouldn't give a damn if your god came down personally to tell me to get off my roof. Now you drive safely and stop telling folks how to spend their afternoons. Good Day!!!

On their way out, this older HT was so angry that he wasn't paying attention to the long driveway that lead to the county road. He veered left into the ditch and his old Studebaker crashed into a tree. The fender was badly mangled and the axle had damage too. They were stuck. My dad, being younger, went back to the guy's house to ask to call AAA for a tow. Dad knew how to talk to people and the guy was more pleasant to deal with (he probably delighted that the crabby codger had crashed after running his mouth off).

I've told this story before of a Fast & Testimony meeting that actually happened in North Ogden Utah.
A twenty something single women got up in the meeting and tearfully confessed to breaking the law of chastity. She then began naming names of her partners, including several married men who were sitting with their spouses in the congregation. That meeting quickly devolved into pandemonium.

Were u there when this happened?

I was there visiting. Still don't know if the claims being made were true or if the woman was just making trouble. I do know that in a couple of cases that's what the men were saying.

When I was about twelve years old I was very serious and also very devout. My dad was the local undertaker and we lived in an apartment above the mortuary, which meant that I often helped my father doing little jobs around the mortuary.

One fast Sunday I got up and bore my testimony. I was being very serious, talking about the meaning of life and such. Then I noticed that quite a few people in the audience were stifling giggles. It was spreading. So I quickly said inthenameofjesuschristamen.

When I sat down, I asked a friend sitting next to me why people were giggling. He said, with a giggle of his own, "You said in your testimony that you had lived your entire life close to death."

A speaker one week was using a sailing ship as a metaphor for the gospel: Christ is the main mast, faith is the sails, obedience is the rigging, etc.

At the end while he was bearing his testimony, he was reiterating these points and said: “I’d like to publicly thank my wife for tightening my nuts”.

After a very pregnant pause, all the adults dissolved in giggles.

Many years ago I was in a ward in Southern Utah when the bishop asked me to speak in sacrament meeting the next week. I tried every which way I could, but he was adamant so I relented and said I would, but I warned him that I wasn't much of a speaker and don't expect more than three minutes from me.

This same bishop had also asked another man in the ward to speak who felt the same as me and he also said he wouldn't go over 5 minutes if even that. The bishop thought that we were just messing with him.

The bishop got up and went through his announcements, then the sacrament, and finally the youth speakers. Wen,,, spoke first and took nearly 4 minutes. It was now my turn and the bishoprick looked worried. I took a whole 3 minutes and ended in the usual way. The bishop got up and didn't have 30 minutes worth of filler so he announced that sacrament meeting would be ending early this Sunday.

For a few minutes Wen,,, and I were hero's. Never had sacrament meeting ended early like this. Everyone was happy, it was amazing. Wen,,, and I joked about it often over the years. But, that was a long time ago.

> She’d go on and on...
> One day...she somehow
> fell making a huge...
> noise ... people some-
> how couldn't help
> laughing; the ... got
> up and rebuked ... I
> don’t think she was
> very popular. Apparently
> the ... spoke to her...
> she never another word.


Heard it!

These are brilliant :-) Thank you.

My best friend, (who is mormon but inactive due to her non mormon husband) said one of her most memorable experiences was taking me to the temple for the first time. It was a hot day and we got stuck in traffic. I took off my shoes, pushed back the chair and put my feet on the dashboard. We got honked at quite a lot but I ignored it. She thought, now here is a girl that does not care. She is still laughing about it nearly twenty years later so I’m glad I contributed that. It was hardly rebellious, but I guess in mormon terms, maybe, especially as I was on the way to receive my endowment.

In testimony meeting, I remember some woman crying, telling a story about how she watered a potted plant she had sitting on top of an electric appliance (I think it was a TV). It leaked and shorted out the appliance. Her husband had told her not to put the plant there. She should have listened to him. Sob, sob.

Another lady had to get up in testimony to brag about how she made the best pie. She had something to brag about every month. Then she would thank God for her talents to try and make it relevant.

Testimony meeting was the place the weird people had a platform to let their crazy flag fly.

Youngest sister is the wild party girl -- still likes to attend, annoying "The Righteous" for sport by pantomiming and exaggerating their hypocrisy. She really really likes that "Mormon" is actually about "More Men" -- that's how she knows it's all true.

Yeah, sacrament meeting was the most interesting of all the boring Mormon meetings.

I liked it when new people in the ward would get up and introduce themselves. One woman was the ex-wife of a politician, who had had a scandalous affair with a hooker on his yacht in LA, that was all over the media. Her testimony was that she would like to like to serve as chorister, or in some musical capacity, and that, also she was "single and available" and owned her own house, and would make someone a "very nice wife" wink-wink. This woman did say that she was grateful to move into her beautiful house in our ward, and that she felt The Lord had guided her here, and that she "felt she was destined to be the chorister"! The more she talked, the more brazen she became. Sure enough, she was put in as chorister (with no musical talent, whatsoever) and married the neighborhood's wealthiest man (a pig). I ran into her at the bank, and she told me they had just gotten off the plane from her honeymoon, and she made her new husband stop at the bank on the way home, to put her name on all of his accounts. He soon divorced her, and she married a top seller in a vitamin MLM, and ended up losing her house because of his business scams.

Another single woman in our ward was living with her mother, with her two boys, and she introduced herself, and had her son sing a hymn, which was off key, and very slow and tedious, and had everyone squirming, and when he was finished, she whispered in his ear, "second verse." Someone groaned! The little boy ended up singing all three verses. Then she said, "Oh, my younger son wants to sing, too", and he also sang all three verses. Everyone wanted to scream! These two women are examples of how Mormon singles often pimp themselves in testimony meeting.

We get a lot of thinly-disguised sales pitches for MLM's and home-based business, such as interior decorating, Christmas decorating, selling lingerie, Mary Kay cosmetics, Melaluka, etc. Parents would promote their kids for lawn care, snow plowing, even babysitting.

I do love it when testimony bearers try to segue their sales pitches and brag sessions into thanking Heavenly Father, to "make it relevant", as Dagny says.

Our favorite was "The Hamster Story." I wish I had this word-for word, and told by the crazy mom, because that's what made it funny. The mom into great detail about how their family hamster went missing, and how she was afraid it had drowned in the toilet, or had run out into the street and gotten "mashed" by a car etc. We were trying so hard not to laugh. After three days of hysterical searching, they were afraid the hamster had died of starvation by then, and they knelt in prayer, led by the priesthood-bearing father, praying that they could at least find the body and have "closure." The father then went into the basement, and there was the hamster, alive and well! The testimony bearer was crying, so we felt safe to wipe away our tears of laughter. I know, it's just another version of the "lost-keys testimony."

And then there were the travelogues, which were entertaining. I especially enjoyed the Mormons' interpretation of their experiences in foreign places. One woman got separated from her husband in a train station in Italy, in the daytime, for almost 15 minutes! Alone, and unable to speak the language, she thought she was going to get mugged, raped, or murdered. She was "surrounded by strangers--ITALIANS!" I snickered out loud at that! So, she prayed very hard, and she "called upon her husband's power of the priesthood", and miraculously, her husband found her.

Our bishop had to announce from the pulpit that there were to be no more travelogs. How disappointing! But, it was funny to have people make an effort to disguise their travelogs, after that. "We had a spiritual experience, when we were in Paris...." The announcement didn't stop the testimonies about "airplane conversions," though. I think it was the GA's who started that fad.

I do miss the crazy Mormon characters.

Those "we went here and we saw this..." were the best. I liked hearing that they broke down just out of Nauvoo and couldn't find a (cheap skate mechanic) to fix their rented rv. It was better than hearing members lash out against the "M' whore. A sister would regularly say, "I'm not going to mention her name, but this slut is a terrible influence on our youth. I am not going to buy her nude book."

We had one high priest that would get up and remind us (over and over) that he didn't need no prophet to tell him that the BoM was true. He would then bellow that he would share 5 reasons that he was SURE of the truthfulness. Then he would forget what he got up to say so then he would talk about his fine vegetables that he was growing in his garden. Sometimes he would whip out a zucchini from his suit coat to show off his gardening skills.

That'll get him arrested in some counties.

I've also told my stories before. The one guy who liked to bear his testimony first every month would have an argument with the bishop on the way to the pulpit every Sunday. Bishop would hold up 2 fingers, the guy would hold up 10, etc., until they agreed on a time--and if they didn't, the guy couldn't bear his testimony. He is the one who came over to borrow toilet paper from my roommate and I so he wouldn't break the sabbath.

Another guy would also get up every fast Sunday. One time he gave a testimony about it being appropriate that we fasted once a month as women had periods once a month. Yep, he said that. The bishop's wife and the first counselor's wife always sat at the back during F&T meeting, but sat up front other weeks. Anyway, one leaned over to the other and said, "The secret's out."

Another time, this second guy had already given his testimony and went back up and said he had forgotten a few things.

It was very seldom we ever had anyone give a normal testimony.

We also had the one in our home ward who bore her testimony every F&T meeting. She did eventually kind of lose her mind. I don't even know if she is still around. I used to see her walking around the town I grew up in--or pushing her bike. One of my friends was a bishop in her ward years later and she did the same thing then, but she also did things like expect the bishop to be at the hospital when she had surgery, but her husband didn't need to be. The bishop didn't go.

I am laughing with tears at these stories.
And in that frame of mind I’ve remembered another one. Not long after my brother and I joined the church, the missionaries next “prize” were these slightly elderly identical twin ladies. They were rather odd, said strange things sometimes and still lived together even though they were sixty plus; however they seemed very devout, coming to every church meeting and event there was before and after their baptisms. At this time I was still the golden convert, and trusted to have the missionaries round for dinner (that didn’t last of course). Anyway during these ‘golden’ couple of years I always heard the whole truth from the missionaries, if they were cool enough. The guy who found and converted them confessed all to me, and said they were completely whack; he had a great sense of humour and found it so funny, like “everyone thinks I’ve done an awesome thing, but actually, oh no, what have I done”. The missionaries started telling me bits and pieces, of small things that indicated they were not all ‘there’ and then started creasing up in laughter. I wondered what it was that had them in hysterics...
Anyway, I got it out of them, that they’d more recently been there for dinner, and one of the elders found a huge vibrator belonging to one of the twins. It was just lying around the house like it wasn’t a big deal. Except it was (big). They couldn’t stop laughing, even thought they were also rather disturbed.
Those two ladies remained devout members for as long as I can remember. They just never said very much.

I wonder if they knew what the vibrator was for!

Since RJ posted about Nauvoo this is on my mind.

I too visited Nauvoo but this was some time ago. I went around and did the tours of the old buildings as a non-believer.

When I entered the post office (not a current operating post office, a tour site, this is important) there was no one there. There were no tour guides. I still don't know why.

So anyway I waited. I waited longer. Nobody came. I was about to leave then thought to myself..."What do they put in the mailboxes?"

The mailboxes are not secured in any way. It's really more like a bookshelf with hundreds of little cubbies in it. So I read the mail.

The mail was composed mostly of missionary signatures and their dates of service with their signatures signed, "Elder or Sister So-and-so 2005". The paper was meant to look old timy and authentic but it clearly wasn't when held. Nothing was in an envelope. Most were only folded. Some were sealed with wax but I left them alone and sealed.

Anyway, I left a letter from myself to myself and put it on the bottom left shelf. I signed it on the outside of the paper in the same fashion as all the other letters, "To The Man in Black from The Man in Black". Then I left.

I went back a few days later. There were tour guide missiories there this time, two young sisters, who were giving a tour. In the tour, one guide specifically said that all the letters in the mailbox behind her were real letters from real people who lived in Nauvoo. This may technically be true as missiories for the tours do live there but was meant to mislead people on the tour that all the letters were from the time of Nauvoo.

After the tour was over the main guide Sister asked if there were any questions. I asked, "Are any of the letters there for me? She laughed and said, "No of course not."

I said, "Are you sure? I'm The Man in Black and that's my mailbox bottom left...See it's to me...right there..."

She goes and looks at the letter. Picks it up. Reads it. Looks confused. Looks at me then just says, "Thats not funny!"

Narrator: It was funny.

This story is true but I did leave out some details and changed one fact. As far as I know, the letter is still there.

Lol. Brilliant.