My sister visited over the Summer until early this week with us, so we accompanied her to Sacrament meeting as often as my gig schedule allowed. It was ENTIRELY an act of sacrifice on our part and only because we know our former ward is weird and we didn't want her to have to fear being there by herself. As I posted a month or two ago, it wasn't so bad, just tearfully boring to sit through an hour-plus of people confidently displaying a fundamental lack of critical thinking skills...but I digress...

So during the last F&T meeting we attended, Sister Mormon Barbie the RS president (who is actually a very nice lady, despite the fact that she believes crazy shit) got up to bear her testimony. It started out as a run-of-the-mill testimony (I know the church is true, I know JS and/or TSM is a prophet of God...) until the tears welled up as she, looking obviously and only in our direction (Why oh why did we sit in the front row?), expressed her gratitude to God for the fact that in attendance that Sunday were some 'old friends' who had not been to church in a while. She continued to smile sweetly toward us and tearfully affirmed "I know you are in the right place, that this is exactly where our Heavenly Father wants you to be and that you will be blessed for being here". She continued for a few minutes and then sat down.

My husband turned to me and said, in singsong voice "Awk-ward". I turned to my TBM sister and said "I guess people are really getting the wrong idea about us being here. I hate to break her heart but once you head home, we're not coming back". And my sister replied "Maybe we should try a ward that you aren't known at so that you don't have to deal with any more of this" (smart, merciful girl).

BTW, TBM sis had a great time living it up with the apostates. She watched the Matrix movies with full knowledge of the rating (first and only R-rated movies she has EVER seen) and got hooked on some network TV that never would have passed our parents' LDS standards. She also helped me pick out clothing for performance events that never would have passed our parents' modesty standards. I was really surprised at some of the items she picked out for me to try on because I know how she was raised-- she dresses like a nun wearing street-clothes would.

She also got to enjoy our apostate Sabbaths-- we ate out, shopped, attended music performances, hiked and watched movies and TV on Sunday. She hung out at a local cafe for internet on the Sabbath and let me buy her lunch and ice cream. Though she didn't try any of it, she did develop an appreciation for the whiff of coffee, and we've got her hooked on tea (herbal only for her) as a lifestyle, which will probably lead to some experimentation with caffeine in the form of Green Tea in the future. She even skipped a few church meetings entirely due to some "mystery illness" that subsided as soon as the meeting block would have been over.

Only two or three times did she indicate that she felt guilty about some decisions she had made and every time she did, we'd respond with "I can't believe God would really care about that-- He cares where your heart is and I don't think he'd object to quality time with your family like this". We talked a lot about how judgey Mormon culture can be and she is totally on board with "live and let live" and doesn't see anything wrong with everything she knows about our lifestyle. We didn't drink or swear in front of her-- we thought that might put her over the edge--but we certainly did give her some new experiences and her comfort-zone has been expanded considerably and she totally took it like a pro.

This has been a MAJOR departure culture-wise for her. My parents are so letter-of-the-law obedient and radical, I'm surprised she was so comfortable with any of it. I'm really proud that she has been so open-minded. The only person she has been hard on over any of it is herself (and we talked about that too-- she's sadly, very caught up in the Mormon Perfectionism cycle).

In other good news, the day after she got home ('rescued' from the apostates by our brother, Peter Priesthood), she texted me that she was bored-- which I take to mean she'd like to come back. I told her we'd pick her up for another long-term visit any time.

It was a such a great visit with so many positive steps made. I'm so relieved that she has somehow figured out that our parents (and the church) aren't quite right about a number of things. I'm not sure how it happened, maybe because she has had to reconcile the awesomeness of her two apostate sisters with the claims of the church, but whatever caused her to be so reasonable at a fairly young age and while being under the influence of so much irrational nonsense-- I'm grateful.

will bear a rich harvest at some point down the road. She has your shining example of non-judgemental live-and-let-live attitude to compare to the criticizing, judging and sometimes even character assassination of others around her. And she had a good time with people who were able to accept her as she is and not place unrealistic expectations on her. I'm very happy for both of you because it sounds like little sister has had a wonderful broadening of her horizons and like both of you have had some lovely bonding time. Congratulations!

Ah, you devils are sly. You showed her normal reality. Now she is in trouble.