https://www.abc4.com/news/local-news/reporting-church-financial-abuse-fast-offering-donations/?fbclid=IwAR1pxis1zL2oKSz2KKhzNk5NCggK5dvxOXXGi75Am_WQ6hfoQ9Y_r9QQJOI


"Lesley Butterfield filed for divorce nearly three years ago but recently learned in court that her husband has received nearly $18,000 in church assistance paid directly to his mortgage and car payments."

"Fast Offerings are a standard and regular form of assistance within the Church organization; the principle is explained on the church website: “Fast offerings are used for one purpose only: to bless the lives of those in need. Every dollar given to the bishop as a fast offering goes to assist the poor.”
Butterfield was able to provide documentation showing that while her husband was receiving this aid, he was earning $300,000 per year as a physician."

Why give to money to a struggling single mom when you can give it to a well earning physician?

to feel I was a bad person for doing so. I was told abusing the Lord's money was second only to murder. I cried for days. Then I told other women to go get help and they all got turned down, single mothers who were working and were barely making it.

And then to read this.

Sounds like the good ol' boys club.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/09/2020 06:24PM by cl2.

Dividends my boy! Dividends! Got to keep the people worthy of investing in and not care what happens to the real needy.

Fonzie says, correctomundo.

Father knows best.

From my interpretation, she was a TBM, so it wasn't like that her religious impiety was the reason he was favored over her.

I can see the doc making a case to his bishop, "Oh, woe is me, she's taking me to the frickin' cleaners on the spousal support and it's killing me, financially! Is there no help for a widow's son?!!!!"

10% of 300k is 30K. I guess they just gave him a little more than half back? 18K compared to 30k yearly? Was that their thought process?

Having been a ward clerk and a councilor in the bishopric I know a few things about fast offerings. All the fast offerings donated by ward members are used to help people within the ward boundaries. This includes members and non-members. The bishop decides how much and who gets fast offerings.

Ward finances are closely monitored by the presiding bishopric. Ward finances are also audited four times a year. The bishop’s decisions are monitored as well. He has to answer for his decisions. Believe me. Bishops are closely monitored in the church; especially regarding finances. You don’t remain a clerk or bishop very long if you don’t handle the finances the way Salt Lake wants you to.

I was so glad to get out of the bishopric. I spent nine years there. I dealt mostly with the finances. The other guys had to deal with the ward drama.

Rubicon Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The bishop decides how much and who
> gets fast offerings.
>
> Ward finances are closely monitored by the
> presiding bishopric. Ward finances are also
> audited four times a year. The bishop’s
> decisions are monitored as well. He has to answer
> for his decisions. Believe me. Bishops are
> closely monitored in the church; especially
> regarding finances. You don’t remain a clerk or
> bishop very long if you don’t handle the
> finances the way Salt Lake wants you to.
>


Ohh so that bishop is now in hot water? Or were the 18k approved by Salt Lake?

"Lesley Butterfield filed for divorce nearly three years ago"

So the 18k was audited and approved at least 4 times that year?


Hmm when I was in the nursery the primary leader said we should pass out a "snack bucket" for the parents to fill to save the primary budget and not spend money on nursery snacks like pretzels or goldfish. It is not the world but I spend about $10 out of my own money per month to provide nursery snacks. I knew some of the parents had a tight budget and I felt embarrassed to pass out the "snack bucket" for them to fill it I rather do it myself (pay for the snacks).

Jesus would help but he needs that money for his stock portfolio.

That bishop would have some explaining to do. Also he must have been bishop of a rich ward. We never had that much money in the fast offerings fund.

Sunbeamnotloggedin, that's exactly how Mormons think. They still made a profit off of the doctor.

I had to buy all the Cub Scout and Primary snacks. It's just assumed. I was also a trained, experienced organist, and could have made money playing for other churches.

This reminds me of that scam, in which computer hackers took a fraction of a penny each, every month, from the accounts of millions of people, over a long period of time. It was such a small amount for each individual, that no one noticed, but the scammers made millions.

One pretzel at a time....

The cult didn't make that 100 billion dollar money grab by being generous.

It does add up. The Mormon church does not provide snacks for the children. And how many times do the youth leaders fork over their own money for food or supplies, due to painfully thin church budgets?

Public school teachers do the same. Teachers of young children often provide snacks for them out of their own pockets. And we also provide school supplies, educational materials, and other necessities out of our own pockets. I estimate that over the course of my career the total has come to somewhere between 15-20K. That is money that I desperately needed to provide for myself -- vacations not taken, major appliances, carpet, and furniture not bought, a struggling HVAC system not replaced. It was theft.

You do it because there is no alternative. If you have a coloring activity, and the child doesn't have crayons, you have a crying child. If a child doesn't have a pencil box, then everything spills out of their desk. No pencils, no work (the amount that I spent on pencils and markers alone was insane.) No food, more sobbing. Tissues, paper towels, hand sanitizer -- almost none of that was provided. Tell the child that you are out of tissues (that you have bought, at one large box per week,) and to go to the bathroom and get some toilet paper to wipe their nose, and you have an enraged parent, because somehow that it beneath their dignity. And your principal would look at you cross-eyed because you are not "managing your class." I am so glad that I am out of the classroom. It was running me $800 or more per year. I am doing a specialty now that requires only minimal spending.

People who work with children do have compassion, but all too often administrators (church or school) take advantage of them. The money adds up, people! Don't think that it doesn't. A little here, a little there, and you are doing without things that you need for yourself or your own family.

Hi Summer, now teachers can set up amazon wish list. Since learning from you about how much teachers spend out of pocket I made sure to order things from their class room wish list. I have also heard that the room moms spend a lot of their own money for the winter party's and end of the year party's. I hate to admit it I was oblivious and thought that when they ask for $5 donations that it was enough. I did the bare minimum as a parent if they would send out an e-mail they needed more tissues I would buy them and send them with my children to school but if they did not ask I would not ask. Now due to reading your post I ask the teachers if they are things that they need for the classroom. Thanks to all the teachers I appreciate your hard work!

At Walmart last night buying treats for my wife's students. On the one hand it is money I didn't give to LDS.org. On the other hand it does show me that we have the ability to do what we want to help kids and aren't in some correlation nightmare where teachers can't spend their own money, adjust their instruction for student needs, and have everything controlled.

Each time I'm made aware of how bad public education is I wonder what these people know about it. Often it is nothing, not even the needs of the kids to make more egalitarian classroom situation when it comes to supplies.

We put a premium on making American dreams live and breath but discount where those dreams were built.

At least where I live, the situation for classroom teachers has gotten really bad. It started in 2003 with the NCLB law, but it has amped up over the years and especially over the past three years or so.

It's like no amount of labor that the classroom teachers produce will please administrators. It's always more, more, more -- more tests, more papers to grade, more forms to fill out, more small groups to pull. What cannot be increased are the hours in the day. You work nights, weekends, and "vacation" time. Then there is the tremendous financial layout. And no one is ever happy with you.

The pay continues to be modest. I am finally feeling some breathing room in my budget after a Master's degree, nearly a quarter century of teaching, and in my early 60s.

I know of two first year teachers in the two schools that I've worked at this year that have already walked out. There were two more that were dismissed, and at least two beyond that who are really struggling with student behavior, and may not make it for the long haul.

On Friday as I walked out of school, it dawned on me that I am a happy teacher for the first time in 18 years (I got a new certification for a specialty area, and I am now out of the classroom.) My hours are now sane, my workload reasonable, and my expenditures few. I feel respected and valued by administrators, students, and parents. No students swear at me, hit me, or throw things at me. Isn't this the way it should be?

It's been a long road. We are starting to see a shortage of classroom teachers, something that I've been predicting for a while now. Classroom teaching *must* be made into a better job for the sake of our students.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/11/2020 12:12PM by summer.

Summer, I would never want you to divulge more personal information than you're comfortable in sharing, but I'm curious as to your present job description. Are you in special education now?

No, not special ed. Those teachers are grossly overworked as well. Let's just say that it's a field that is topical (and growing) at the present time. ;)

I heard a second-hand report that at a recent district principals' meeting, the principals were complaining mightily that their teachers were leaving the classroom for my "easier" specialty. When I heard this, I had to laugh. Yes, my field is easier, but teachers leave the classroom for complex reasons. I thought, maybe administrators shouldn't have turned classroom teaching into such an awful job.

I am now consulting with four classroom teachers who want to make the same switch. I didn't approach them -- they came to me. The word is out, and they will all likely be hired in the specialty area if they complete the requirements for the field.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/11/2020 02:46PM by summer.

summer Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I heard a second-hand report that at a recent district principals' meeting, the principals were complaining mightily that their teachers were leaving the classroom for my "easier" specialty. When I heard this, I had to laugh. Yes, my field is easier, but teachers leave the classroom for complex reasons. I thought, maybe administrators shouldn't have turned classroom teaching into such an awful job.


That's rather hypocritical of them. Principals, too, started out as teachers.

>>That's rather hypocritical of them. Principals, too, started out as teachers.

The trouble is, they don't spend long enough in the classroom. Most do the minimum three years, and then go into admin. If I based decisions off of my first three years of teaching, I would know precious little. The job of a classroom teacher has gotten outlandish in its demands. And they don't have a clue.

Administration is a stepping stone and not a landing place for many. They are looking at district office jobs.

District office administration is still administration. The superintendents and assistant superintendents are paid more than are principals, but the miscellaneous directors and others who fill up the district office are usually on the same pay scale as are principals.

We may have a few old-timers who only taught a few years, but we now require five years of teaching as an absolute minimum.

That's definitely a good move.

Thank you subeam! Yes, the younger teachers are using Amazon wish lists and also Donors Choose. I'm not spending nearly as much now so my needs are fewer. There is one learning activity that I would like for my students, so I might give DC a whirl.

I don't think the problem is *quite* as bad in the suburbs, but it's true that even suburban teachers spend a lot out of pocket. For urban teachers, it's a nightmare. The difficult thing is getting parents to understand that what they send in at the beginning of the year will only last so long. My classroom students needed two pencils each per week and a new whiteboard marker at least every month (and that's assuming that they put the cap on correctly and didn't press down on it for dear life.) They also went through notebooks and folders at a regular clip.

I probably would have resented it less if I hadn't seen many of the very same students with the latest cell phone or fancy sneakers.

My room mom also spent a lot of her own money. She gave the well behaved kids treats nearly every day, and she provided the classroom parties out of her own pocket.

My wife taught in Utah prior to her law school graduation. She found it difficult to get parents to contribute anything. It was most frustrating when the requested item was a leftover container from some common household product that anyone should have been able to procure with sufficient notice. It would have been a real hassle for my wife to gather thirty-two of the items - whatever they were - but it should have been no big deal for each set of parents to come up with one of such an item. Even if it was a product their family didn't have or use, with a month's notice and sufficient hype, one would have thought that all but a few children would have brought them. I don't remember all of the items she requested, but I remember that she needed one two-liter soda bottle for each child for some project, and she needed a cylindrical container for each child so that the children could make drums.

With the two-liter soda bottles, in my wife's first year of teaching, by the day before the project was to be started, just under half of her thirty-two kindergartners had brought them. We don't drink much soda, and what we do doesn't come in two-liter bottles because it goes flat too quickly for my wife's tastes, but my wife went door-to-door in our apartment complex to solicit another dozen bottles or so. If my recollection is correct, my wife had to buy four two-liter bottles of soda. She poured the contents down the drain because neither of us wanted to drink it. In retrospect, I feel embarrassed for my part in this drama, because we were quite poor at the time, and I gave my wife a bit of he!! for having spent over five dollars on two-liter soda bottles. (After the first year, my mom, sisters, and and sisters-in-law collected the items my wife needed for her classroom.)

For the drum project, it should have been really easy. Each child needed a cylindrical container. It could be a recycled oatmeal box, formula container, shortening can, coffee can (more about that one later), ice cream carton - basically any rounded container with a flat top and bottom that was large enough for the child to strike the surface. Three of my dad's old Metamucil containers were used. The containers didn't really even have to be round. One kid used a large Hershey's Cocoa powder container, which reportedly worked fine.

One snooty Molly (this was in Utah County; my wife, with her Cuban coloring, stood out like a sore thumb, and some of the snobbier mothers were less than thrilled with the idea of their children being in her class) actually said to my wife that the children should not need to bring in their own containers; she (my wife) should just bring her own empty coffee cans. The lady made some sort of slur about Cubans and their excessive love of coffee. For the record, Jillian has consumed the better part of one cup of coffee in her entire life. It gave her such a severe case of vomiting and diarrhea than she never cared to drink it again. At that point I was in just my second year of medical school, which is before the really crazy medical school hours begin. I didn't discover coffee until Year 3. At that point, despite Jillian's nevermo status and my jackmo status, there had never been as much as a single can of coffee in our apartment, at least in the time we lived there.

Collecting two dollars per child for the class party was even worse. Several mothers told my wife their children were exempt from contributing to class parties because their children were eligible for free lunches through the federal lunch program. The very neediest families, my wife said, were usually the very first to contribute. The ones who gave my wife the most resistance in terms of either funding class parties or providing items for projects were typically stay=at-home moms whose husbands were students at either BYU or UVU.they were mostly living on student loans, and they probably didn't have tons of cash to spare. Had I been in their situation -actually I WAS in their situation - I wouldn't have produced the two to six children most of them had until I was finished with school. I certainly wouldn't have expected my children's teachers to come up with the supplies they needed or to fund their share of class parties.
My wife said that had the children been older, she might have considered allowing only those who brought their two-liter bottles, cylindrical containers, or whatever was needed, to do the projects, and possibly would have considered not allowing the deadbeats to partake of party food, but that's not something most teachers would do to really young students. They would never understand, and it certainly wasn't their fault.

We understood that most of my wife's students had multiple siblings in school and that all of the teachers were making some demands. That's one reason my wife always made requests for any items she needed well in advance, and why she announced the requested fees for class parties at Back-to-School night and in a written communication sent home the first week of school - so that, if necessary, they could plan their budget to accommodate the two dollars per child.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/11/2020 04:28PM by scmd1.

Sounds familiar. I always tried to keep my September supply list modest -- a few composition books and folders, pencils, markers, erasers, crayons, and a pencil box. Also paper towels, soap (my school did not supply soap in bathrooms!) and a box of tissues. Even then, some parents did not provide a thing -- because they knew in a pinch, I would. *sigh*

So I googled "Lesley Butterfield lds" and this came up.

http://mormontraumamama.com/author/lbutterfield/

I am not sure if she is the same Lesley but this article is a very good read in my opinion.

I’d bet the cost of a fill up that this is the correct Lesley.

I read the article and was I found it remarkable that she would continues to participate in Mormonism. She can clearly see what’s wrong with mormonism as an institution.

I would not be surprised if in the 15 months since the article she’s quit.

Will they pull a court of love on Lesley for speaking evil of the lords anointed for fast offering abuse?

I could not help myself and send the article to my TBM mom. Her response was "99% of bishops will do the right thing with the fast offering money. If there there is that bad 1% it is still a very low %. Probably the physician and the bishops were friends and decided to help each other out".

A true testimony can never be shaken. No rainy day fund too big no fast offering abuse no marrying a 14 year old. Nobody is perfect we all make mistakes.

his sister, who was the R.S. president in a very wealthy gated community in St. George, had a woman whose husband was a neurosurgeon who left her for a younger woman. She had a huge house and drove a Mercedes and they were paying her bills and giving her food.

my cousin is homeschooling 7 children. When her husband the only income got laid off the church would only allow them to get some food from the bishops storehouse in exchange for cleaning weekly the church building.