You are pretty much correct. The budget for YM and YW also varies from year to year depending on the activities planned for that year. For example, once every 4 years the YM go on a high adventure trip, so that year they will have a higher budget. The YW have a nice camp every year, so they often have a higher budget the other 3 years. I don know in my ward the RS budget was often about $1,
Forum: Recovery Board

This is true. When I was ward clerk, we would try hard to report attendance numbers on those Sundays when there was a baby blessing or missionary farewell because lots of visitors came.
Forum: Recovery Board

My kids hate going over to their grandparents' house because it is all church all the time. The only videos allowed are church videos. Conversations invariably revolve around "the Church". If they want to manipulate my kids (or anyone) into doing something, it always involves a scripture or general conference quote. My son just turned 13 this week. His present from them was a new
Forum: Recovery Board

I got home last night about 1 a.m. after a long-cross country flight and a full week of work. I woke up this morning and my wife said we had been "assigned" to clean the Church at 9 a.m. My first question was "did anyone ask us?". She said no, it was just an email informing us of our day and time. I said I didn't appreciate that approach and would not be going. She actu
Forum: Recovery Board

My in-laws are the biggest suckers for MLMs. They went through a phase a few years ago of drinking healthy juice that normally cost $60 a bottle, but they were given a "deal" and only charged $40. Sold of course by a church member that they knew. More disturbing was a case last year where a fellow temple worker began discussing special vitamin supplements that cure all sorts of men
Forum: Recovery Board

For me it would be the Christensen* family. Just all around arrogant and unpleasant. One time I called Brother Christensen at about 8:30 p.m. on a Monday to dutifully collect the monthly hometeaching report from him. He hadn't responded to my email and I was getting pressure from the powers above to turn it in. I had waited until I thought it was late enough to not interrupt Family Home E
Forum: Recovery Board

Granted, I'm coming from a perspective of the most Mormon of Mormon places -- Utah County where I work. On my immediate work team there are 8 males, average age of about 35. Of those 8, all have LDS backgrounds, and 7 served missions. Their current religious status is: -- 1 went completely inactive a couple years ago. He is the one who did not serve a mission. He is the son of a forme
Forum: Recovery Board

My companion had them. TGM's presentation was so authoritative and certain. It was very impressive to hear about Joseph Smith from such a spiritual and expert perspective. My companion loved the quote "I feel like saying hallelujah every time I remember I knew the prophet Joseph Smith", said by one of his contemporaries.
Forum: Recovery Board

That's a good analogy. I honestly think that if I quit attending all together it would break up our family. I'm not ready to risk that upheaval for the family at this point.
Forum: Recovery Board

Ha ha ... yes for a Sunday morning it was better than average ... stink eyes and all.
Forum: Recovery Board

I know many of you express how great it is to have Sundays liberated, but I'm not to that point yet. Today is a good case in point. I work out several times per week. I generally take Sundays off, but I have to catch an early flight tomorrow, so decided to exercise today. Being in a heavily Mormon area, the rec center is only open from 10 a.m.-3 p.m. on Sundays. With the 3-hour block, alon
Forum: Recovery Board

My son's scout leader told him that he can count indexing names for the temple as valid for his 8 hours of service required for his citizenship merit badge. I came home from work and he had already done 3 hours. I don't agree at all that some ethereal work for dead people, sitting at a computer in our comfortable house should count as service. I want him out doing tangible efforts for those
Forum: Recovery Board

In my wife's case, there is definitely a biological component. However it is exacerbated by Mormon culture. She will go to church and come home depressed because she sees all these happy perfect women accomplishing it all. Sometimes they are nice to her but it often seems superficial. In her home life growing up, and even now, there was a serious lack of meaningful communication. That's
Forum: Recovery Board

I "forgot" to pay tithing these last three months. Miraculously the total saved just about covered my son's braces. Not only that, but a second miracle has occurred. We just got an unexpected refund check for $1,200 due to over-payment in our mortgage escrow account. I'm just wondering how to best share this good news with the ward.
Forum: Recovery Board

Granted it's a small local one in our ward. Our ward decided that the deacons need to stay after and empty all the garbage cans in the building after 4 p.m. Church. Every Sunday for the entire year. Which means we get to stay 20-30 minutes after the end of meetings each week while they do it. She said that's not fair when there are other people who could step in and help or rotate the duty.
Forum: Recovery Board

It's particularly irritating when it's cloaked in an aura of religious correctness and infallibility. I call it my mother inature laws "darts of righteousness".
Forum: Recovery Board

My wife and I went to a standup comedy show in Provo last night at a place called "The Dry Bar Comedy Club". My wife did one of those mobile facebook posts that identifies your location, just saying we were there. The first response was from one of her TBM friends. It wasn't asking if we were having fun or what the show was about. The question was "Do they serve alcohol the
Forum: Recovery Board

Last night, my wife and I had a disagreement about something. At one point she referred to a recent letter from our stake president that said we are supposed "to put our spouse's needs above all else" as sort of a trump card that was supposed to resolve the issue. Then she added the dig "but I bet you didn't even read that." She gets that habit from her mother, who is the
Forum: Recovery Board

I think the Church discourages facial hair because it wants to portray a clean-cut all-American image. Don't want to risk looking either old-fashioned like the Amish, or making people think of Polygamy. Keep up appearances.
Forum: Recovery Board

I once read an article where someone described church Service as 99% "incestuous", which is pretty accurate. I've been grateful at times to receive service from ward members, but it is very inwardly focused and not much for the community in general. My kids have various service-hours requirements for school and scouts. I'm purposely looking at community organizations for them to he
Forum: Recovery Board

We had a mission presidency counselor on Sunday share 3 instances where he was prompted to share the gospel and the people were receptive. The whole time I was thinking "what about the other 997 attempts you aren't telling us about?"
Forum: Recovery Board

Yesterday we had a speaker who worked for the LDS Church. He said how great it was that they could have gospel conversations at work (gag ... well I do on occasion too, but it's usually not in quite the glowing light his are). It seems to me that saying only about 150 General Authorities are receiving "living allowances" is misleading when you have thousands of other full-time emplo
Forum: Recovery Board

My marriage is no picnic. I'm married to a spouse with bi-polar. The divorce rate for bi-polar people is over 90%. To say we have ups and downs is an understatement. But there are several factors that prevent me from cheating. None of them are really religiously based. First, I would have to come home and realize I've committed a betrayal. Second, I would be risking my kids' home life
Forum: Recovery Board

I have a few thoughts on the subject. For me religion is permanently entangled with mental illness, and not in a good way. My very first post was about the experience we had with a calling that the bishopric gave my wife. http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1865698,1865698#msg-1865698 She has bi-polar. Sometimes it is controlled (the last couple months have been generally ok), sometime
Forum: Recovery Board

Sorry ... somehow I got the link wrong. This is the link to Daniel Peterson's response: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2017/01/living-stipends-general-authorities.html
Forum: Recovery Board

My wife sent me this in response to the stipend issue. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/danpeterson/2017/01/living
Forum: Recovery Board

My daughter has cheerleading practice until 7 p.m. There is also a fireside starting at 7 p.m. If she could just show up in her practice clothes, she could be there at 7:15 or earlier. Instead the requirement is "Sunday Dress". So that means she would have to come home and change and go back out and end up being 40 minutes late. Even my wife decided it's not going to be worth it.
Forum: Recovery Board

"That's not fair" was reference to the amount being too high. She grew up in a single income home where her father was a school teacher. They were generous with their tithes and offerings. So $120k seems like a lot. I'm pretty sure it bothers her more than she admits.
Forum: Recovery Board

She hadn't heard the news, so I asked her to guess how much GAs get paid. "Nothing, they are serving the Lord" was her response. I then said nope it's $120k per year. She then said that must be made up by anti-mormons. I said it was pretty solid and showed her the news reports. Her next response was "that's not fair." Then a few minutes later she came back and said
Forum: Recovery Board

She was just trying to be helpful, bless her heart :)
Forum: Recovery Board