Just watched a short video of Holland giving a message about meeting the youth in the temple and having a great time.

My experience(s) of youth temple trips consisted of being perfectly reverent during 2 hour car trips, sitting in silence or singing church hymns, being told to stay quiet inside the temple and being judged that our group had been too rowdy during dead baptisms and therefore were undeserving to stop afterwards for meals and treats.

No, it was never great.

It's the first part of the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Me_F2FH7QKM

Putting lipstick on a pig.

I never remember the Temple being a great time. It was a duty, and that was all. My goal was to get in and out as fast as I could. I had it down to 1.75 Hours most the time when I attended the River Jordan Temple.

I do remember being part of an open house. I was the elevator operator for those who could not walk the stairs.

I remember joking with some people with their daughter confined to a wheel chair from out of state. It was not loud or obnoxious. But as the elevator opened up, there was a 1,000 year old lady standing there who dressed us down for our disrespectful behavior. Well that sure was not a missionary moment I can tell you that.

I never went as a youth to get dead dunked. I heard the stories and concluded I had better ways to spend my days.

Fortunately in my youth I did have moments of wisdom.

In retrospect, I'd love to tell people like that old woman to go f*ck herself. She might of had fatal apoplexy on the spot. I would have chuckled.

Maybe a great time for he,
Never a great time for me.

Like many of you, I went for youth proxy baptisms (dead dunking) back when they made you wear weird jumpsuits and change in an open locker room, and than change back out of these dripping things and wet underwear sticking to your body, with adults watching the whole time.

Being told what to do and where to go. And seeing the girls go into the font and have "elders" obviously ogling the young ladies as they came out dripping wet. It was a gross and strange event. I seriously think it was a preamble to get you ready and numb for the very strange death oaths that were to come in the following years.

And on top of that, we had to travel HOURS on a bus or a caravan of station wagons. Definitely not worth the trip.

I wasn't close to a House of Handshakes in my younger, so I never did DeadDunkings;

p.s.: Did the females wear bras underneath their jumpsuits?


It's a wonder ChurchCo didn't charge ppl for attending, Right?

I don't know...I didn't look ;-).
Actually I don't remember. It was a LONG time ago. But I imagine so, as the boys had to wear tighty whities.

As a ym, we were told to bring an extra pair/change of underwear. We were supposed to wear white jockeys. I think some ym went free while wearing the church polyester jumpsuit.

As smart as church leaders were, no reminder question about bringing a change of underwear was asked until we were an hour down the road. That's when one boy would say "Oh I forgot. But I like wearing wet underwear." Yes, he was unmercifully teased for saying that.

I think I only attended one youth temple trip where we were combined in a van. Otherwise, we were always segregated as ym/yw by vehicle. The ym travelled in a Griswald station wagon, complete with spilled cheerios, funky smells and sometimes dirty diapers shoved under the seats. Brother Blowhard provided the LDS hymn singing. Sometimes the only air circulating was from the rear window down because the AC didn't work.

The yw in my ward went in a custom van with swivel captain seats, fresh smelling carpets and curtains. It was a sweet ride and I'm not a van person by any means.

One girl in the ward was fairly amiable. She was on the rebellious side. She once told me that she deliberately wore black underwear/bra (I am assuming that the YW were encouraged to wear "light" colors underwear). She still ended up in a white jumpsuit- I think it might of been her strategy to avoid being dunked. So I think she went natural while wearing the jumpsuit.

It was common in the 1980s to have up to a dozen church wards/units waiting for access to the dead dunking font. A lot of yw (of other wards) appeared to be embarrassed upon exiting the font. Body lines were visible from wet jumpsuits. And the towels being held by the temple matron (female worker) was on the opposite side of the stairs.

I was more concerned about vomit that was swirling around in the temple cesspool. Someone always puked in the font.

And some peed in it too.

Do they not wear the jumpsuits anymore?

Holland is right. It was soooooo much fun. Really! I swear. Trust me on this. What a blast. Didn't seem weird and uncomfortable at all. Would I lie?


It comes off to me as Holland trying to plant false memories as he shows off what a fun guy he is.

Holland is a Fungi ?

Cordyceps. You can tell by TBMs crawling to the highest point in tje temple before their heads sprout fruiting bodies.

By their fruits shall ye know them.

Shinehah Wrote:
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> Holland is a Fungi ?

U beat me to that!!!

It always was a terrible experience

dogbloggernli Wrote:
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> It always was a terrible experience

along with most other activities without viable choices - alternatives...

I didn't realize the part about the see through "outfit" but I was quite shocked about the old ladies standing there taking our "outfit" from us and making his strip naked before giving us a towel. I was a very WHAT is the word? Modest. There I got it.

After all, I was a mormon wasn't I? That blew my mind. I made my sister tell me about the washing and annointing as I had heard about it from girls at work. I was ready to leave the church if she didn't tell me.

I so loved the temple. I forced myself to go with a lot of guilt ridden discussions with my "husband" who said he needed me to do certain things so he could resist temptation. I went 4 times, maybe 5. Last one doing sealings to a weirdo. They pulled me aside on my way to an endowment session. Didn't take my husband to do sealings with me. I thought that was sick. The last time I went was then. I HATED the temple and thought it was ridiculous.

What I find crazy is all the women and girls I knew growing up or worked with who were sleeping around all are still temple married and have a bunch of kids. One girl I worked with. She was 38 at the time and she married an older guy. Their marriage lasted. He just died last September. I just found out. All this bull about their church attendance and jobs, etc., etc., and their temple weddings of their grandkids (his, she never had kids). What the????

I just recalled an unpleasant memory of post dead dunking. The stench of highly chlorinated temple font water. It was overwhelming, yet most boys chose to slip out of the poly jumpsuits in the privacy of restroom stalls. Some did not shower and their hair reeked of chlorine.

I did that once but soon realized that I needed a shower. So we (young boys)were naked showering at the tree. Soap was dispensed from a spicket. One shower tree wasn't working.

So here comes Blowhard and Drip (two ym leaders) butt naked to join the shower. One boy was told to leave. Just wasn't a great memory of the leaders looking at our junk and we young men looking at their junk.

I understand why I had blocked this for a long time.

I enjoyed some of it not endowments but mostly the trip down i got to know a lot of church members on the trips.

Within a tiny segment of humanity, frequent temple session attendance creates a certain frisson of admiration. I don't know the exact fraction, but it's something like 250,000/8,400,000,000, which my phone tells me is 0.0000297619% if the world goes to the temple.

I will entertain reasoned arguments regarding how many mormons actually go to the temple, not counting their temple marriage session...

I would love to know how many Mormons actually attend the temple regularly. The Church has detailed statistics on that, and hell will freeze over before they release those stats.

Attending temple is the most significant element of living the Mormon Bubble, methinks.