I spent six weeks in the Provo Missonary Training Center in Provo Utah in 2002, before being sent home on a Medical release (depression) I had been a member of the Morg for fourteen months. The person I hated most there and in Mormonism in general was the person who taught "large group gospel meetings" for Spanish speaking missonaries. He was the guy that everyone thought looked like Bill Muray (If anyone remembers him). Anyway he was very smug, self rightous, was born and bred in Orem Utah, and seemed to really enjoy his job. I sent him an e-mail a while ago and politely told him that I have left the morg and that I did not enjoy my time in the MTC or his classes, and did not appreciate some of the things that he said. He did not respond. I would like to send him another message telling him that I think he is PATHETIC! (among other things. I want to do it but am having thoughts. ANyoen have an opinion? THX

I've fallen into that habit as well. Send a message to someone from your past, hoping for a response one way or the other, and when they don't reply, get upset and send something worse.

Don't do it. If they don't reply to the first message, it's probably best to just let it go. It'll only end up hurting yourself in the long run, trust me.

+1 - it's hard to let go of the idiots in our past, try your best though, because they are not worth the effort.

What Aaron Hines said.

Why not write the letter, but do it on real paper (not online) and burn it once you're finished?

The act of purging the feelings can help and buring the letter means no one finds it later and tries to use it to guilt you into something, or worse, mails it!

I second this.

I recently read "Opening Up," by the psychologist James Pennebaker. His career was mostly devoted to showing the physical and mental health benefits of writing deeply about things that upset or concern us. His recommendations were to write:

1. What objectively happened and what you felt? (Described as if you were a stranger watching the events.

2. Why you felt the way you did then and now.


Possibly, the emotional part of your brain is caught up in the disgust of how this guy violates your feelings about fairness and authority. Nothing wrong with that at all, but changing your focus is the more reasonable direction now that he is long gone and far removed from you.

This above exercise connects your emotions of disgust with the reasoning that the circumstances of your life are free from having to endure the direct influence of people like this that you don't jive with.

I kind of did this with my mission president. I sent him an email telling him that I've moved on. He reacted saying he was disturbed, and I replied that I felt he ought to know the diversity of opinions and paths that people take since he is in leadership positions. I realized that I wrote these emails for my benefit and not his, so I needed to be satisfied with whatever his response was.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/15/2012 08:57PM by Brian M.

Doing that was a big help to me in getting over my mission president's asshattery. The process of getting everything you feel onto paper is very helpful. It's actually harder than it sounds. The effort of writing it out releases all that anguish you've had inside of you all these years.

Do it. I couldn't believe how helpful it was for me to write that one letter that I didn't send.

Well I don't know what the STALKER laws in Utar are, but if you already told him once that you thought he was a pimple on humanity's ass then I think you should be done with it.

Besides, if I know sanctimonious Mormons (and I do), Mr. ...'scuse me, BROTHER Littlefield has already used your email in some Elders Quorum discussion about how apostates are all hateful and bitter and $#!t, and all his good little doo-bee bruthern have harrumphed their assent. Done.

Time to move on. Enjoy your good life and leave the Little-Minded Morg Nazi to tend his Little Flock in his LittleField in Little-Old-Utar-Valley.

He led you out of the Morg.

Dude, the truth is that he sees thousands of missionaries come through his door. He may claim that he feels for each and everyone of you, but truth is, he probably doesn't remember you. 2002 was a long time ago.

People suck. If you are lucky, you'll find a couple of people in your life who will always be there for you. My spouse is so much more trusting of people than I am that when done wrong it is a deep surprise. When it happens to me, I just say to myself, "figures."

"Never confuse what you need to say with what someone else needs to hear. They are not always one and the same".

You had your say in your email, and maybe he needed to hear it (or not). But, you can't control his reaction or his level of understanding. You put it out there and at this time it's probably time to be done with him, and move back to more important things-- like you and getting to a point where how some peter priesthood prick ten years ago in the MTC was an arrogant asshole no longer matters to you so much.

At this point, where you no longer need to maintain any type of relationship with him at all, it's time to focus on you. Don't give him any more of your mental real estate. You've got better things to think about.

angsty...


"Never confuse what you need to say with what someone else needs to hear. They are not always one and the same".

Well stated (or quoted). Good food for thought.

I just Googled "Shane Littlefield MTC" to see if I could re-connect with the guy. That brought me here...fun site! I was a teacher at the MTC during that time (Spanish) and I found him to be a good man who cared deeply about doing the right thing by God as he saw it. You are all entitled to your opinions of course, and I am not here to change how you feel about the church. However dragging a man's name through the mud without any real allegation of wrongdoing is well...wrong. Besides that, regardless of your beliefs now I think most on here would agree that if you don't forgive the guy and move on it will only hurt you. Just let whatever it is go... It's going to feel great when you do.

You are obviously still in the Morge. Bet you are related too. You dumb schumk.

No, I agree. There is angry name-calling, but he did not give an anecdote that explains his hate for Littlefield. He's self-righteous? Well, HOW is he self-righteous? Get the idea? I don't know Littlefield, and i definitely don't care about him, but it's not morally right for people who do NOT know him to make decisions about his character so quickly without having a good reason.

Tombs1, all i want to say is, let it go. you'll only harm your mental stability by becoming so concerned about the past. Look into the future instead!

confused by the hate Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> However dragging a
> man's name through the mud without any real
> allegation of wrongdoing is well...wrong.

You mean the way Joseph Smith and friends dragged the names of
Oliver Cowdery, Martin Harris, David Whitmer, Sarah Pratt,
Martha Brotherton, Nancy Rigdon, etc. through the mud?

baura wins the "Microphone Drop" award for the day. BOO-YAH!!

I say you write him the follow-up letter. Then another if he
doesn't answer that one.

Then move to the city he lives in and hang around his house.
Accost him with questions when he comes out and goes in.

Or . . . you could just let it go and chalk it up to the fact
that he was an extension of the Mormon Church. If you're going
to go after anyone, go after the big supplier, not local
user/pusher.

or switching, if you're on already on one. This is the exact kind of thinking and behavior that led me to discover my mood disorder years ago, that Prozac fixed. Things would just spin around in my head and I couldn't get past them until I wrote that letter or had that confrontation or whatever.

It's irrational to be this bothered by someone from 10 years ago, to whom you already wrote once before, who it sounds like did so little to you and had probably forgotten about you. He was probably shocked by your letter, and rightfully so. He was just doing his job, stupid job that it is, and was not obligated to reply. Writing him a second time could be considered harassment.

Brain chemistry is powerful stuff; go see a psychiatrist--not a therapist or counselor, but a medical psychiatrist--and get it fixed.

I know it sounds harsh, but someone said all this to me once--including that I was being irrational--and I was all outraged and it was a terrible injustice and everything, but they were right. I was being irrational. I went trudging off to the psychiatrist and spilled my tragic tale, only to have the doctor say it sounded like I had some legitimate issues (which I did, but not so much the thing I was hung up on--and BTW that was a current thing, not a 10-year-old thing). Then he asked me a few questions about my family, pronounced me genetically predisposed to a non-specific mood disorder, and wrote me a prescription. Fixed me right up, in about 2 weeks. It was life changing and one the best things I ever did.

I'm not saying take Prozac or anything else, necessarily, but do get your mood situation evaluated. It's not normal to be this mad at some guy from the MTC. :)



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 06/16/2013 07:53AM by munchybotaz.

Maybe you could leave a flaming bag of dog poo on his porch?

In all seriousness,let it go. Surely in the past decade you have met far more irritating and destructive people than this one brief dimwit.

Thinking back over the past ten years of my life I have made alot of friends and enemies (some even the same people). Don't send anymore emails,no text messages and definately don't stalk him on Facebook. Let it go and simply write him off as a dimwit that crossed paths with you,trust me,you will meet many more inside and outside of the church.

I actually believe that as far as rules for RfM go either spoken or unspoken it violates the forums policies to lambaste a private citizen for any reason. You'll notice that even people here who have been abused by a church leader still respect the rules by calling him "bishop jackwagon" or other replacements. The private citizen the OP has a grudge against could actually send a litigious screamer of a note to the forum. Also don't forget that the individual in question 10 years ago was likely a young person in their 20's and beguiled by the church and its culture. Outing a private citizen on this forum is actually bad for this forum and why it exists.

Yaqoob is right.

We must remember that Littlefield is every one of us back when we were Mormon, smug in our certainty that we are helping people by shoehorning them into a cult--no matter what manipulations or carrot/sticking or outright lies we told.

I did it and regret it to this very day. I wince when I think of it. WE ALL TAUGHT MORMON CLASSES.

Littlefield is no bigger asshat than the rest of us before we woke up. He is a victim of brainwashing, the victim or a cult too. This is the reason he bothers you so much and you keep wanting to interact with him to make sure he knows that he didn't influence you positively. He reminds you of yourself- a self that you no longer feels exists and want to push away the idea that you were ever like that.

The fact that this post was resurrected by someone searching for Littlefield means that we must keep in mind Yaqoob's post that we are an anonymous board who is not out to shame anybody.

We are here to help people who are curious about why people leave Mormonism. Many people come here who love the church and can't imagine why people would leave. They have not had the experiences we have.

They have not been molested or had the church advise a spouse to leave them. They have not been shunned, ignored when sick, or asked to carry three callings plus clean the building all while raising three children under age five. They have not been refused help or discarded as a person of value when they could not pay tithing. They have never been prevented from going to the temple to see their children married because they were not paid up.

They have never researched at www.wivesofjosephsmith.org and read the words of the women that Joseph Smith married. They have literally never heard anything about Mormon history that wasn't authored by the church.

They haven't had some of these experiences--yet.

Still they come here out of curiosity and they are welcome. If you are a person wondering why we make fun of missionaries or take jabs at the church, just start researching Joseph Smith and polyandry. You'll find out that your beloved founder married women as young as fourteen and that he also "married" women who were already married!!!!! While their husbands were on missions WHERE HE SENT THEM! I know! Sounds like David from the Old Testament, doesn't it?

Cheers

Anagrammy

This post is more than a year old, people. It was resurrected by a semi-apologist (see the response upstream.)

My view is that you are going to have a certain number of asshats in your life (bosses, coworkers, or whomever.) Wave good-bye to them the minute you can and leave them in the dust.

Well, I would have said the same thing if I'd seen this a year ago.

I hate when this happens. Some old thread from several years back(that was half-assed to begin with) gets drug back by someone googling some lame topic. I found myself actually responding to a comment I had made on a thread several years prior (the NSA at Camp Williams thread) that never seems to go away...

Absolutely go after him. People on this forum continue to want to play nice, and turn the whole thing into a hug and kiss, mamby pamby, love affair, growth moment.

I would not show up on his door for legal reasons.

If you have an address, send the letter certified mail. It will be the best experience you can have for under 6 dollars.

You will get a signed card back verifying he has received your letter. Whether he opens and reads it does not matter, because if he does not he is well aware of the damage he has caused.

Do it.

And for what it is worth. I would guess that poster 'confused by the hate' is Shane Littlefield. :)

Most likely.
Sacrament getting a little too boring Shane?

I served as a missionary for The LDS
CHURCH on the México CITY east mission when he presided
It.
He is One of The best Human
Beings i have knew in My Life.
Always caring for The wellbeing
Of others and for The wellbeing of The missionnaries that served under his directions.
I saw him as a second father and One of The best human
Beings i've known in My Life.

"Steven Shane Littlefield, 39, Vineyard 2nd Ward, Orem Utah Sunset Heights Stake; high council, former bishop, counselor in elders quorum presidency, gospel doctrine teacher, ward mission leader, missionary in the Honduras Tegucigalpa Mission. Manager/director of training of the Provo Missionary Training Center. Born in Provo, Utah, to Steven Riggs and Ruth Bernice Tolman Littlefield. Married Amy Lucinda Clegg, six children.

A counselor in the stake Primary presidency, she is a former ward Primary teacher, Relief Society teacher, gospel doctrine teacher, counselor in stake Relief Society presidency and missionary in the Pennsylvania Philadelphia Mission. Born in Soda Springs, Idaho, to Willard Grant and Zan Christensen Clegg."

Jan 10, 2004 http://www.ldschurchnewsarchive.com/articles/44937/New-mission-presidents.html

No specifics were given regarding what Shane said that so offended the OP; it would have been nice if he'd been more detailed.

Regarding the remarks by Hermano Solis, had anyone ever heaped calumny on my MP, Jasper McClellan, I would have stood up for him just as Solis did for Shane. I would have been telling the truth and expect that so is Bro. Solis.

Shane has been a lifetime employee of the CES and the Provo MTC
https://www.linkedin.com/in/shane-littlefield-a8404712

rules I live by

1. Never react

2. Never ell them what you're thinking

3. Never tell them you like or love them

4. Always answer a question with a question