What was your most dreaded calling or 'asked to do' situation in ChurchCo?


please, separately for menfolks & wymens

(I'm saving my guesses!!)

Home teaching, for a regular dreaded chore. This was back when I was a young teenager and was assigned to accompany an old widower, who drove a 1949 Willys and physically leaned into his 3 mph left and right turns. I think it's that memory that keeps this in the upper crust of the Holocene era of my mind.


...and then the two years I was an EQP in a regular ward (Lakeview Ward, on the east bank of Utah Lake, north of Central) mostly comprised of dairy farms, Fall, 1968 to Fall, 1970. It wasn't being the EQP that was hard, it was the two yearly Ward Budget drives. See, back in the day, the wards raised money for their expenses. I don't know what the expenses were, and for the most part, people just gave their contributions to the Bishop.

But the EQ inactives/jack-mormons required someone, I was told, to go knock on their doors in order to present them with this noble opportunity.

It was only a few households, but that first year, I felt a bit out of place, still a college student, very Brown, knocking on people's doors to tell them I was the EQP and the bishop, who was new himself, wanted them to know of the marvelous opportunity that had arisen wherein they could give money to the church they weren't attending.

I retain no real memory of any of the exchanges, just that I was very uncomfortable because I could imagine what was going through their minds.


Confessing my sexual sins to my bishop as a youth were a breeze. Not as much fun as committing them, but not at all uncomfortable. You know, guy talk...

If you had done better on the ward fundraising, you might have gotten into Amway on the ground floor and now be a wealthy man.

Missed opportunities!

at stake conference, the elders, (Lucky Guys all around) got called to be 'parking guides' (no, not sustained as such, no laying on of hands, etc)


task: motion & point vacant parking places, block off the full areas, because, as we know, Mormons parking at S.C. are too utterly UNABLE TO FIND EMPTY PARKING PLACES LEFT ON THEIR OWN....

Here in the PNW, this was often done in the rain, sometimes during overcast, dark days..

O, but how did these member find a place to park Without Parking Guides??? oh the HORROR!

- Regular church meetings OH NO!!!

- Shopping malls

- taking a visit with Johnny's or Sally's teacher at school

- Docs office

- SAVE US IF WE NEED TO GO TO VISIT SOMEONE AT THE HOSPITAL, THEY'RE GRUSOME !!

Gospel Essentials Teacher. One of the ward mission leaders had to sit in on my class to make sure I didn't make a mistake. He usually slept through the lesson which didn't do much for my self esteem.

I'm a very shy person and don't like speaking to groups of people. Teaching that class made me sick. After a year of torture I asked to be released - the first time I had ever asked to be released from a calling. After that I had no problem turning down callings. Soon I was out of the cult for good.

There were two "callings" that I really disliked, and that was Visiting Teaching and Young Women's.

I especially hated Young Women's Camp.

The leaders would do things like cut up fruit and make fruit salad, think up things to do at camp, and do the driving up Spanish Fork Canyon to some Church property on the worst, rutted dirt path ever, that was supposed to pass for a "road".
The leaders slept in one tent, and our feet were in each others faces, and some of them snored so loud that it was impossible to sleep.

Meetings every week to figure out how to keep the ungrateful brats busy and entertained for activity nights. During one such meeting, one of the leaders asked what could we do to thank the girls? We all looked at her like she dropped out of the sky from another planet. Someone then corrected her and said it was the girls who should be doing the thanking. Like that was ever going to happen.

I liked helping to make scenery for the road shows.

Visiting Teaching was a royal pain. At one time, my partner and I had 8 women we were responsible for; one of them kept us for 3 hours talking about nothing particularly important with my partner. I never did get one word in edgewise.

So glad I don't have to stress about that stuff anymore.

Ward Activities Committee Chairman

This was some new position in the church that was invented in the early '80's. I was the first person called to the position in my ward. The Bishop gave me some materials, a couple of assistants, and when I asked him what I was supposed to do he said, "Read the materials and figure it out."

What I gathered from the materials is that basically the Activities Committee worked together with the various ward auxiliaries when it came to planning and implementing various activities.

This was not the same interpretation the auxiliaries had. That became evident when the R.S. Prez called and gave me a date for a R.S. dinner. When I asked what I could do to help, she said, "Well, I gave you the date...you do the rest." Apparently the thought was that my committee and myself would handle scheduling, come up with a theme, plan a menu, arrange for the food, entertainment, etc. We got into it a little when I told her I didn't believe that was how it worked.

Soon after I got calls from the High Priests, Young Men, and Primary. All of them thinking that they could just dump everything in my lap and I was to produce some sort of event for them. Again I told them that wasn't how it worked.

So, they all went and bitched to the Bishop. When the Bishop took THEIR side, I suddenly became "a lot busier in my personal life" and told the Bishop that unfortunately I would have to opt out of the calling. My assistants all of a sudden got busier as well and opted out. I think someone else was called to the position, but I don't think they ever did anything.

I think you made Jesus cry.

I hope you're happy.

You cry a lot, Jesus.

Blessing the sacrament.

Hated it.

As one of only three active priests I had to not only do it for sacrament meeting but sunday school as well.

I figure I performed that ritual 300 times.

That's every week for three years!!!

So you never got to sit with someone with whom you might have enjoyed pew time!

I'd be tempted to say VT, but I refused to do that for the last several years of our time in the church. Most people accepted the call and didn't perform it, but I was never comfortable lying. So, with a smile, I told the leadership that I refused to be part of a police state.

So I guess my least favorite calling was as a missionary. I'd bet the church learned to view that as one of their least favorite callings too.

Gladys Lot in hosiery!

The mind boggles! (let's compare our list of words...)

Any time, you expert in hosery!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/10/2021 11:44PM by Lot's Wife.

This was part of my journey through the Mormon Experience:

I accepted the call to round up volunteers to work at the church farm. The calling mostly consisted of standing up in meetings with a clipboard "Brothers and sisters, here's your opportunity for real service! You can help feed the widows and orphans of the church! It's fruit harvest time at the church farm. This Tuesday morning at 6AM we need 15 people and I will pass around a signup sheet"

A member of the bishopric would then bare tearful testimony of the importance of this duty. BUT, inevitably he would also remind everyone that those fruit trees are full of angry hornets and wasps.

Then one old high priest or another would remind everyone that old Brother Thumnbut from the 4th Ward was never right again after he fell off the ladder at the church farm.

Later that same day I would be reproved betimes with sharpness by the stake farm coordinator because only the bishop and I had signed up to pick fruit.

Incidentally, the church sold that farm a couple of years later because the property became so valuable for development. Guess those widows and orphans go to the community food bank now.

My two worst home teaching experiences:

- I was assigned to a couple whom I never got to see, because before we got to having an appointment with them, the husband decided to kill his wife and himself.

- I was assigned to a young woman suffering from schizophrenia. Her roommates had to help her get through the nights when her voices tormented her. We'd give her priesthood blessings to zero avail.


In both cases, lay ministers of any kind should not have been assigned to handle what mental health professionals are trained and paid to do.

Better frankly to phase home and visiting teaching out completely than to slap a new name on it and pretend to offer services they aren't capable of providing.

Tyson

Didn't take callings but my TBM wife wrangled me into being a chaperone at a youth dance. Our "territory" was the parking lot which we would circle every 10 minutes. I asked my wife what was considered a transgression? and what do we do about it? Of course nothing happened but it was weird

I was only active as a missionary and for a few years after I returned. During that period, they paired us up and had us go to homes of the members that didn't want any contact from the church.

I did that once and then told the church leaders I was done bothering people that didn't want to be bothered.

High Priests Group Leader(in a military ward in Maryland) was the worst. I had to be "responsible," and had to attend any of dozens of meetings. When they needed people to attend the temple, I had to call and call, and force people to attend, and, of course, I had to commit to being there as well. (This was also during a period of our stake president setting up special sessions at 2 and 3am, saying that it would boost our resolve and even or morale to do a session in the wee hours.

I was woken up in all the small hours of the night to go give a special blessing to people in the nearby projects, where even the military had told us not to go. I had to do splits with the missionaries. Most members of the group absolutely refused to go on splits (no one would blame them), so I had to make sure I always filled in. Have any of you ever spent a few hours alone with the missionaries? Torture. Anyway, I was never able to be the back-slider that I intended to be.

I think you win the prize for the worst calling ever.

The second time I was a home teacher 40 years ago was extremely uncomfortable. My senior partner was a clueless moron, totally oblivious to the fact none of the families or individuals actually wanted us in their homes. Hated every minute of it.

We lived overseas in a military ward in the 70s when they announced the change from going to church twice (or three times, depending on your genitalia) every Sunday to the 3-hr block. In RS they were talking about the new nursery program and one officer’s wife said “that would be a great position for lower enlisteds.” Guess what we were called to a few days later? The church callings pretty much went by rank. I only remember one time when a member of the bishopric wasn’t an officer and he was a Senior NCO. The women’s leadership positions went to their wives. But I really didn’t mind the nursery once I got past why we were called to it. Neither did my then-hubby. In the early days of it there was no lesson we had to give them. And they really stocked up the playroom and we all got snacks on Fast Sunday. And we didn’t have to deal with the snoody higher-ranking people and their spouses in RS and EQ.

My worst calling was RS Pres in a BYU married student ward. Too many clueless newly married people wanting help with things they should have been able to take care of themselves.

I was assigned to take an older widowed lady to a single adults dance. The ward was bending over backwards to give her everything she wanted, or so it seemed.



https://www.exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1940337,1940337#msg-1940337

another elder's quorum member and I were tasked with going to a members apartment to remove their invalid mother's old bed. there were feces splashed around on it, but no one seemed to mind except the two gagging helpers. old food was encrusted into the carpet under and around the table, also gag inducing. very memorable assignment!

The worst was splits with the missionaries. This was right after I returned home and because I went on a foreign mission, they hooked me up with the spanish speaking missionaries. Nevermind I went to South Korea.