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Mormon/Ex-Mormon Thread of 3 hour blocks and salvation flowcharts

F

Fathead

Member
CorvoSol said:
Yeeeeeesh. And the Church does NOT handle this one lightly. The manual has all kinds of rules about this today. Missionaries cannot even hold children for this exact reason.

Also, I am going to Pocatello tomorrow. No idea how I'm getting back.
Click to expand...

What time would you need to head back?
 
S

SillyEskimo

Member
CorvoSol said:
Yeeeeeesh. And the Church does NOT handle this one lightly. The manual has all kinds of rules about this today. Missionaries cannot even hold children for this exact reason.
Click to expand...

When I was a kid, I remember there was a Missionary who got in trouble for helping a kid in the bathroom. I guess the dad walked in right as he was helping the kid pull up and zip his pants or something. There was the usual rumors but all they did was transfer him out within a week's time. Literally, he was not there the following Sunday.

I think people were just blowing it out of proportion. However, when the whole Catholic priest thing blew up years ago, I thought about that Missionary and how the Mormons did the exact same thing. They hushed everyone up and transferred the "problem" to another location where I'm quite certain his previous issue was not brought up or discussed with his new ward. I think that's a really shady thing to do.

I wonder whatever happened to that guy.
 
C

CorvoSol

Member
SillyEskimo said:
When I was a kid, I remember there was a Missionary who got in trouble for helping a kid in the bathroom. I guess the dad walked in right as he was helping the kid pull up and zip his pants or something. There was the usual rumors but all they did was transfer him out within a week's time. Literally, he was not there the following Sunday.

I think people were just blowing it out of proportion. However, when the whole Catholic priest thing blew up years ago, I thought about that Missionary and how the Mormons did the exact same thing. They hushed everyone up and transferred the "problem" to another location where I'm quite certain his previous issue was not brought up or discussed with his new ward. I think that's a really shady thing to do.

I wonder whatever happened to that guy.
Click to expand...

Sometimes a transfer is all a guy needs to make a fresh start. More often it was my experience that bad eggs were bad no matter which basket you put them in. The hard thing is that initially you never know whether a guy is gonna reform or not. I mean, I was a moderately crummy missionary for a time, but my President didn't transfer me. In fact he said I wouldn't be leaving the area until I got my act together.

But yeah, transferring guys never helped. Although I've had to help my fair share of kids pull up their pants as a Sunbeams teacher. Not my favorite part, but hey, kid goes "I GOTTA POTTY NOW" and I don't have time to reach their folks. Usually I sent them with my sister, though.
 
R

ronito

Member
DRAMA!!!

As you know John Dehlin is the guy who gets a lot of attention for putting himself right smack in the middle of the exmormon/mormon experience and gets loads of flak (a lot of it deserved) for it.

Well I guess there was a hit piece written by a guy in FARMS (a church apologists group) about Dehlin. Actually there's too much let me use someone else's sum up


- Early last year Greg Smith of the Maxwell Institute (FARMS) wrote a rather lengthy (100+ pages supposedly) critique of John Dehlin.

- John Dehlin was tipped off about the article before it was published, with his source using the term "hit piece".

- John emailed a General Authority friend of his, CC'ing Daniel Peterson and some others, asking that the publication be prevented because a hit piece on Dehlin would be detrimental to everyone involved.

- Things got messy, with Daniel C Peterson and his cohorts claiming it was not a hit piece.

- Gerald Bradford, the head of MI, not only stopped the publication but also ended up firing DCP and some of his cronies. It was assumed, but not confirmed, that this was due to pressure for General Authorities as high as an Apostle.

- Since then, Dehlinites and apologists have been fighting over whether or not it was a "hit piece".

- Now that we have a review and some quotes, it does indeed appear to be a hit piece, in the sense that it was not a scholarly article (FARMS always claimed to be a scholarly publication), but rather a lengthy and negative analysis of John Dehlin's character and motivations in an attempt to discredit him.
Click to expand...

Here is the review: http://mormondiscussions.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=28421

Seeing some of the quotes it looks like GAF level ranting.

Personally I think it's bad on all parties.

FARMs shouldn't have written a hit piece. That's not their mission.
But Dehlin shouldn't have gotten the GAs involved
And they certainly should not have fired people over it.

I get that the article might've hurt Dehlin's business but I do think that if you criticize then you must be prepared to be criticized in return.

Personally I sorta view this with bemused schadenfreude. The whole thing seems silly to me.
 
C

CorvoSol

Member
Doesn't FARMs have kinda have a history (by which I mean one or two other isolated, but similar instances) of such petty squabbles?

But all this drama yet remains beyond my circle of caring. It's snowing again (just as the snow was beginning to melt!) and my reasons to leave the apartment for social causes dwindle with the temperature.

New Testament was fun this week. We spent a good amount of time discussing the reasons why Luke 2 is so famous a passage. It was nice to think about Christmas, months in advance.
 
B

bluemax

Banned
oatmeal said:
But how do they track me? How do they know where I moved? Especially when I went to a new country. I never told the.m.
Click to expand...

They have ways. They found me at one of my first addresses after college.

Probably through the letters I was getting from my missionary brother.
 
M

mik

mik is unbeatable
Same here. And I'm pretty sure I'd have been relatively vocal about it, which is completely antithetical to my nature.
 
R

ronito

Member
Yoritomo said:
That stake president's talk is making the rounds on Facebook.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/126671218/President-Matthew-DeVisser-s-Talk
Click to expand...

You know I've always said that the way leadership is set up in the church it leads to two things:

1. Hero Worship
2. Self Worship

Now thankfully for the large part people with #2 are pruned out before they get to be GAs for the most part but in local leadership it happens everywhere. And this is just an example of that. Here we have a guy who is so caught up in his own political views/acopalypselust that he thinks it the word of god and decided it was of most importance to let everyone in his stake know about it, not only that but to write it down and email it. A more humble person would think "Well these are just my views. I'll keep them to myself".
 
Y

Yoritomo

Member
That scary part is it's being forwarded by old companions from my mission as "Finally someone said what needs to be said!" sort of thing.

I thought I had unfollowed all the militant mormons.
 
R

ronito

Member
Oh I always hoped the militant conservative mormon thing would dissapate but it's not only very alive and well but it's growing. I'd gladly rather spend an hour on 4chan than 15 minutes than my wife's facebook page. It is a dark, terrifying place. Personally I don't see how she puts up it at all. It's a testament to commitment to her family. Cause I unfriended swathes of people just to maintain my sanity.

I really do worry that the church has got to get this shit under control. It used to be that people left the church but more and more it looks like many just feel pushed out. Someone on reddit posted a quote from Ballard saying that he didn't understand why when he hears about how some parents wont let their kids play with other non-mormon kids. And I'm like "Really? Have you not been paying attention?"

Anyhoo, it's is reality that almost daily my wife says "You have to see what my cousin said on facebook" and I reply "Please don't show me. It'll only infuriate me."
 
Thaedolus

Thaedolus

Member
ronito said:
Oh I always hoped the militant conservative mormon thing would dissapate but it's not only very alive and well but it's growing. I'd gladly rather spend an hour on 4chan than 15 minutes than my wife's facebook page. It is a dark, terrifying place. Personally I don't see how she puts up it at all. It's a testament to commitment to her family. Cause I unfriended swathes of people just to maintain my sanity.

I really do worry that the church has got to get this shit under control. It used to be that people left the church but more and more it looks like many just feel pushed out. Someone on reddit posted a quote from Ballard saying that he didn't understand why when he hears about how some parents wont let their kids play with other non-mormon kids. And I'm like "Really? Have you not been paying attention?"

Anyhoo, it's is reality that almost daily my wife says "You have to see what my cousin said on facebook" and I reply "Please don't show me. It'll only infuriate me."
Click to expand...

Sounds like Satan's influence over you is really intense if you're not on board. You should probably repent.
 
C

CorvoSol

Member
I didn't know there were parents who forbade their kids from playing with nonmembers. I mean, on my mission the kids all acted like it was weird to have more nonmember friends than member friends (which makes sense for them, since the youth groups I saw were infinitely more tight-knit than any I've ever come across in America) but having nonmember friends is kinda the norm to me.

Weird. Then again, there are families that don't eat chocolate, either.
 
P

Patryn

Member
CorvoSol said:
I didn't know there were parents who forbade their kids from playing with nonmembers. I mean, on my mission the kids all acted like it was weird to have more nonmember friends than member friends (which makes sense for them, since the youth groups I saw were infinitely more tight-knit than any I've ever come across in America) but having nonmember friends is kinda the norm to me.

Weird. Then again, there are families that don't eat chocolate, either.
Click to expand...

I only pipe into this thread occasionally, as I'm not sure my experience as a Michigan Mormon is quite the same, but I can say that even in my more liberal Mormon area, it was drilled into us that it was best to be friends only with members, but if you must have non-Mormon friends, you should be actively working to convert them. In fact, several leaders of the ward outright stated that the only reason you should be interacting with non-Mormons was to work to convert them.

I remember when I was in high school working at a grocery store I bumped into a family friend from church while I was bagging. As the cashier rang her order up and I bagged it, the three of us (the cashier, the family friend and I had a nice conversation). As she had a lot of stuff, I helped the family friend bring her bags to the car, and as I was putting her bags in, she started telling me that because the cashier and I were friendly to one another, I really needed to start working on converting her right away. All all I could think was how wildly inappropriate that would be for a workplace.
 
Thaedolus

Thaedolus

Member
I will say that, while my most of best friends were Mormon growing up and I was encouraged to hang out with them, my two best friends were Catholic kids who were just as welcome at my house as anyone else. In fact I'd only have had like 3 friends in high school if I was limited to Mormons. When I moved to Logan for school, I almost certainly gravitated to non-LDS friends because I thought the Mormons in Utah were so Pharisaical I couldn't stand to be around them. I loved when I heard my roommate say "shiiii" and "fuuuu" all the time without every saying the last consonant because he thought it was funny, then give me a hard time when I shattered a glass and said "SHIT!" Like...he seriously was upset I said the T.

I'd say "only in Utah," but the dude from Idaho that lived with us was actually way worse. He'd walk out of his room and share particular Anne Coulter passages that he had just read which he felt were inspired. Not even joking.
 
Y

Yoritomo

Member
CorvoSol said:
I didn't know there were parents who forbade their kids from playing with nonmembers. I mean, on my mission the kids all acted like it was weird to have more nonmember friends than member friends (which makes sense for them, since the youth groups I saw were infinitely more tight-knit than any I've ever come across in America) but having nonmember friends is kinda the norm to me.

Weird. Then again, there are families that don't eat chocolate, either.
Click to expand...

I grew up in Oklahoma and this happened to me with baptist parents who found out my family was mormon.

They told their kids they couldn't play with me. But then again one of my best friends in elementary school was the son of a Baptist preacher. They were always cool to me.

Parents do weird stuff trying to protect their children.
 
L

Laurentius

Member
I had some non Mormon friends growing up in Utah, but I always felt guilty that I wasn't converting them to the church. Even as young as 8 years old I had a non-Mormon friend, and I remember praying before he turned 8 that he would all of a sudden convert and get baptized. I thought that if he wasn't baptized when he was 8, that he was sinning or something, and that it was my responsibility to fix that.

Maybe the associated guilt with not converting your friends might play a bit into some Mormons not having non-Mormon friends?

This kind of stuff scared the crap out of me when I was an active member:

Well, the danger may be hard to see, but it is real, both for them and for us. For instance, at some moment in the world to come, everyone you met in this life will know what you know now. They will know that the only way to live forever in association with our families and in the presence of our Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, is to choose to enter into the gate by baptism at the hands of those with authority from God. They will know that the only way families can be together forever is to accept and keep sacred covenants offered in the temples of God on this earth. They will know that you knew. And they will remember whether you offered them what someone had offered you.
Click to expand...

There was a lot of pressure there, and it was easier to just not deal with non-members.
 
Thaedolus

Thaedolus

Member
Those kinds of statements and articles are what make the semi-annual facebook deluge of "OMG CONFERENCE!!! I LOVE THE PROPHET!!!" so obnoxious to me.
 
C

CorvoSol

Member
Yoritomo said:
I grew up in Oklahoma and this happened to me with baptist parents who found out my family was mormon.

They told their kids they couldn't play with me. But then again one of my best friends in elementary school was the son of a Baptist preacher. They were always cool to me.

Parents do weird stuff trying to protect their children.
Click to expand...

This about sums it up for me, I guess. I dunno. I don't consider myself actively trying to convert my friends. I try to be a good example of what a good Mormon is like so that they have a good impression of Mormons, and I'd probably jump like a hungry dog if the chance to talk about it with them ever arose, but for the time being, I don't want to force an issue with them.

I dunno, growing up that just seemed the polite way to go about things. Don't force issues and nobody will force them on you. Even on my mission I didn't like to be insistent, since it felt too much like kicking against the pricks. I disliked going door to door (so much so that after my second transfer I honestly never did of my own volition) and preferred to go about it other ways. Mostly because toward the beginning of my mission someone asked me if I was the kind of missionary I'd want to teach my family, and it helped me to think about a lot of how I wanted to conduct things.

At the same time, where I served finding new people was pretty easy, as it was a fairly evangelical area and people just plain loved to talk to you about Jesus.

But now I'm kinda rambling.
 
S

SillyEskimo

Member
Patryn said:
I only pipe into this thread occasionally, as I'm not sure my experience as a Michigan Mormon is quite the same, but I can say that even in my more liberal Mormon area, it was drilled into us that it was best to be friends only with members, but if you must have non-Mormon friends, you should be actively working to convert them. In fact, several leaders of the ward outright stated that the only reason you should be interacting with non-Mormons was to work to convert them.

I remember when I was in high school working at a grocery store I bumped into a family friend from church while I was bagging. As the cashier rang her order up and I bagged it, the three of us (the cashier, the family friend and I had a nice conversation). As she had a lot of stuff, I helped the family friend bring her bags to the car, and as I was putting her bags in, she started telling me that because the cashier and I were friendly to one another, I really needed to start working on converting her right away. All all I could think was how wildly inappropriate that would be for a workplace.
Click to expand...

I was a Michigan Mormon too. Where were you from?

I had a core group of Mormon friends all my age. We all went to seperate schools and only saw each other at church and at church functions, where we pretty much tried to ditch or elude everything church related. We were a real project for the Young Men's teachers, lol! I wasn't pressured into converting anyone, ever. I really miss those guys. They were all awesome.

A girl I really liked and had dated for a couple of weeks when I was 16 had a mother who forbid her from dating me because I was a Mormon. It was crazy. It was the only time I ever faced discrimination for being Mormon. She was cute as hell too. I think we had a great chance for a serious relationship. Ironically, her family was from some weird offshoot of Baptist and quite cult-like in their behaviors and actions. Usually being a Mormon was a HUGE plus. Afterall, parents thought that if I didn't even drink caffine there was no way I was going to try and have sex with their daughter! (I did. Disgusting sex. A lot. Sorry Jesus!)
 
R

ronito

Member
I grew up in Utah so I never felt discriminated against for being mormon. I only moved out once I was in the professional world and then it was essentially an oddity there. I did get left out of lots of after work gatherings. But then I wouldn't have known what to do anyway.

Though I did have all kinds of crazy discrimination because I was latino. My first real girlfriend told me that she at first she didn't know if she should date me because I was latino. Her parents hated my guts despite that I treated them as nicely as possible, and would occasionally drop talks from the brethren where they said it was best to date within one's own race. She ended up cheating on me for a white guy who beat her. Him they loved.
Third girlfriend was something similar. Her parents just didn't like me at all. Of course that might've been because when I went to pick her up for a date and her dad said to bring her home by 10pm I laughed.
 
F

Fathead

Member
I refuse to ever be the kind of parent that inflicts a child with that kind of superiority complex, (except for fans of that football team in north texas, those guys deserve to be ridiculed).

Seriously though, I want my kids to eperience different viewpoints. I want them to experience life. I don't want them to make stupid mistakes of course, but I want them to see what life has, and make the best decisions for themselves.
 
R

ronito

Member
wow. People shot in a temple parking lot.


http://www.10tv.com/content/stories/2013/02/26/columbus-multiple-people-shot-on-west-side.html

Columbus police responded to a shooting with two victims Tuesday afternoon before 5 p.m.

According to police, the shooting took place in the parking lot of the Columbus Ohio Temple, a Mormon temple, on Gateway Blvd. in West Columbus.

Officials said the shooting had nothing to do with the temple.

Police told 10TV a man was meeting with his girlfriend in the parking lot when her ex-boyfriend arrived.

Officers said the woman's boyfriend fled. They then say an altercation took place between the remaining man and woman and shots were fired.

Police said that the woman as well as the man were transported to the hospital in critical condition with gunshot wounds.

They suspect the man may have been the shooter.

The names of those involved were not immediately released.

Watch 10TV and refresh 10TV.com for the latest news
Click to expand...

I'm sorry but I had to laugh at the "the woman's boyfriend fled." line.
 
L

Laurentius

Member
ronito said:
wow. People shot in a temple parking lot.
Click to expand...

Well that sucks. =( Hopefully the gunshot wounds weren't too bad and they pull through alright.

I'm sorry but I had to laugh at the "the woman's boyfriend fled." line.
Click to expand...

Reminds me of this one time on my mission. I was stationed in a town completely full of crazy people. We were walking home one night at about 8:30, and saw a guy ahead of fuming so much that it looked like his head was about to explode. There was a man and a woman with a baby in front of us. The man told the other angry man to "calm down, dude". At which point angry man turned around and started screaming at placating guy. Placating guy put up his fists like he wanted to fight, but angry man dropped his backpack off and made it look like he was going for a gun -- he even pulled his hand out like he was holding a gun. (His hand was empty, thank goodness.)

So what does placating guy do when he thinks the other guy is going to pull a gun on him? He runs off in the other direction, completely leaving his wife/girlfriend/whoever and the baby with us. Angry man continues to pursue him screaming. We called the cops, but as far as I know they never caught the guy (or just didn't care -- seriously, this town was nuts). While I was on the phone with 911 the lady just left, so I don't know what happened to her.
 
R

ronito

Member
SenseiJinx said:
Well that sucks. =( Hopefully the gunshot wounds weren't too bad and they pull through alright.



Reminds me of this one time on my mission. I was stationed in a town completely full of crazy people. We were walking home one night at about 8:30, and saw a guy ahead of fuming so much that it looked like his head was about to explode. There was a man and a woman with a baby in front of us. The man told the other angry man to "calm down, dude". At which point angry man turned around and started screaming at placating guy. Placating guy put up his fists like he wanted to fight, but angry man dropped his backpack off and made it look like he was going for a gun -- he even pulled his hand out like he was holding a gun. (His hand was empty, thank goodness.)

So what does placating guy do when he thinks the other guy is going to pull a gun on him? He runs off in the other direction, completely leaving his wife/girlfriend/whoever and the baby with us. Angry man continues to pursue him screaming. We called the cops, but as far as I know they never caught the guy (or just didn't care -- seriously, this town was nuts). While I was on the phone with 911 the lady just left, so I don't know what happened to her.
Click to expand...
Wow, I'd rather face a guy with a gun than my guilt or my wife's wrath for leaving her and the kids on their own in that situation.
 
P

Patryn

Member
SillyEskimo said:
I was a Michigan Mormon too. Where were you from?

I had a core group of Mormon friends all my age. We all went to seperate schools and only saw each other at church and at church functions, where we pretty much tried to ditch or elude everything church related. We were a real project for the Young Men's teachers, lol! I wasn't pressured into converting anyone, ever. I really miss those guys. They were all awesome.

A girl I really liked and had dated for a couple of weeks when I was 16 had a mother who forbid her from dating me because I was a Mormon. It was crazy. It was the only time I ever faced discrimination for being Mormon. She was cute as hell too. I think we had a great chance for a serious relationship. Ironically, her family was from some weird offshoot of Baptist and quite cult-like in their behaviors and actions. Usually being a Mormon was a HUGE plus. Afterall, parents thought that if I didn't even drink caffine there was no way I was going to try and have sex with their daughter! (I did. Disgusting sex. A lot. Sorry Jesus!)
Click to expand...

I was in the Bloomfield Hills Ward 1.
 
Thaedolus

Thaedolus

Member
ronito said:
Wow, I'd rather face a guy with a gun than my guilt or my wife's wrath for leaving her and the kids on their own in that situation.
Click to expand...

I don't get it. My instinct is to move closer to my lady when I detect some sort of danger. I tell her to take the 4x4 when it snows. I pull her back from, and get in the way of, situations where she sometimes seems oblivious to danger. It seems like a natural instinct to be protective of my own. How does someone just say "fuck it girl, you're on your own!" in a situation like that??
 
C

CorvoSol

Member
ronito said:
Wow, I'd rather face a guy with a gun than my guilt or my wife's wrath for leaving her and the kids on their own in that situation.
Click to expand...

Does it count as "Fight" under "Fight or Flee" if all I do is freeze up? I mean, I'm not fleeing.

I did mention I got held up at gunpoint on my mission, right? It was scary, the guys were drugged, and not exactly reasonable, but on the other hand, there was kind of an element of kindness in it. Like, don't get me wrong, it was scary and horrid and I fear walking alone at night anywhere, Rexburg included nowadays, but I mean, they didn't beat us (which I'm told is standard ops for people who get waylaid and have nothing of value), they didn't SHOOT us (which was a pretty good plus) and they sent us on our way as soon as they had everything. They didn't even search us!

Still, I basically froze up when it happened. Went straight into compliance mode and prayed my comp would do the same.
 
Y

Yoritomo

Member
Yeah I had a gun pulled on me on my mission. I was invincible though.

Seriously. I was that guy. Super priesthood obedience work your ass off until you have doctor's orders to rest. Because I was obedient I was invincible. Didn't even faze me to have a gun in my face. My companion seemed to handle it decently.

What would make him completely lock up was pretty girls.
 
L

Laurentius

Member
That's scary stuff...glad this guy didn't actually have a gun, because I'm pretty sure he would have pulled the trigger. He didn't want anything, he was just the most angry person I've ever seen. He was probably high on something.
 
A

AlteredBeast

Fork 'em, Sparky!
Yoritomo said:
Yeah I had a gun pulled on me on my mission. I was invincible though.

Seriously. I was that guy. Super priesthood obedience work your ass off until you have doctor's orders to rest. Because I was obedient I was invincible. Didn't even faze me to have a gun in my face. My companion seemed to handle it decently.

What would make him completely lock up was pretty girls.
Click to expand...

A bum had a brick over my head once, and was threatening to smash me with it. My companion ran off, I just sat there going, "whoa, buddy."

Afterwards, I was like, Dude, why did you leave me? :p
 
Thaedolus

Thaedolus

Member
Wow, how many missionaries here got guns pulled on them? I did in Argentina. They got all 15 of my pesos (~5 bucks). I got nightmares for a few weeks.

BTW the running joke when I was in the MTC was "I hope I die while serving, it's like a straight shot to heaven!"

Wasn't so funny when a guy from my district got pulled under a train and killed. news story about it
 
C

CorvoSol

Member
Fathead said:
Getting held up as a missionary was awesome. I laughed and told him he could have all the money I had. Which was nothing.
Click to expand...

I did have to stifle a laugh when they asked for my cellphone, because I'd been trying the entire transfer to be rid of the thing. It had an old alarm-clock screen and if you jostled it (touched it) the chip fell out. It was crap.

In retrospect the whole affair was comical. "Give us your wallet!" "Here, it's empty." "Give us yours!" "I don't have one! He carried the wallet!" "Give us your watch." "Here." "Now yours!" "I don't have one! He had the watch!" "Give us your phone." "Here." "Now yours!" "I don't have one! He had the phone!"

Basically they robbed me and my companion, a newbie, had nothing of value for them to take. Heck, the only thing in my bag was pictures of home and my banged up pocket-Bible. We were even out of Books of Mormon at that point. It's funny after the fact, but at the time, with the gun pointed at me, it was scary stuff.
 
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