[Joni]

Quote:

These testimonies are not speeches or talks. They are not pre-written. They are not a time of advocacy. They are short, extemporaneously expressed, heartfelt feelings about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and how we have been strengthened by it.

And yet, when the Ward Weirdo bore his testimony of Trump, he was allowed to finish speaking.

They may be able to explain this incident away, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg. The Church isn’t only going to lose Savannah, they’re going to lose an entire generation of Savannahs. The current leadership has decided this is acceptable. And when the excrement hits the oscillating device, the current leadership will mostly be dead.

[Joni]

I haven’t read the Ensign article in question, and I don’t intend to

It’s my understanding that Elder Montoya compares doubt to a fungus. I’m a little curious, is he not familiar with huitlacoche?

[Joni]

Skimming through your initial post, I thought you were talking about reading Moroni 9. Which is also full of hateful bullcrap 😈

[Joni]

Hypothetical question: if a person leaves the Church, but improves her relationship with God, is that a net gain?

Obviously I can’t leave the Church (at least not until my husband divorces me), but I sometimes wonder, just as a thought experiment, if I could relate to God the way my mainstream Christian friends do. If you could have a concept of God that isn’t a petty tyrant, minus the 19th century sexism and the weird underwear and the 3 hours of church and the paying 10% on unemployment and the threat of eternal polygamy and the rules about how many holes I can have in my friggin’ ears, would it be easier to love that God? An orthodox member like my husband would say of course not – that once you leave the Church you have cut yourself off from God’s love forever and ever and ever (unless you come back, of course). But I wonder if a less Calvinist God would work better for me. (Like the one the Episcopalians have. I find it interesting that a lot of ex Mormons end up there.) What I have right now is simply not working.

[Joni]

Update, in case anyone was wondering: DH is still unemployed, and I am still convinced God hates me, in t the absence of evidence to the contrary. It’s starting to look like this layoff is the one that breaks us. Once you’ve been laid off FIVE TIMES, potential employers assume you’ve done something wrong, and won’t touch you with a ten foot pole.

Also, has anyone else had a… weird experience with getting food from the bishops storehouse? Literally every time I’ve done it (and this is MY responsibility, not my husband’s) I’ve ended up getting shamed by somebody for doing it wrong. And yet every time we’ve tried to do it, the procedure has been different. And I’m really NOT in a place, mental health wise, where I feel like enduring embarrassment and self loathing for some ground beef and eggs.

I suppose the conventional wisdom here would be “beggars can’t be choosers.” Except that we aren’t beggars. The bishop offered this assistance to us (even after we told him that our kids aren’t in any danger of going hungry). And we’ve paid probably $80,000 in tithing over the last twenty-odd years, that’s still a net gain to the church.

Anyway, I’ve picked up a third job and I’m probably going to be going back to school soon. When I do, one of the first things I’m doing is resigning my calling. I’m already spread pretty thin. And I’m no longer concerned about serving God when I already know how He feels about me. There is nothing I can do to gain His love or even His approval, so why even try?

[Joni]

Here’s how it actually went down: Son was visibly frustrated/confused. Despite Husband’s insistence that he would help, he was on the other side of the chapel from Son. However, there were several other adult men passing the sacrament (we don’t have that many deacons) and they helped steer DS in the right direction.

Not sure what the lesson is here? Your dad won’t help you, but someone else’s dad will? At any rate, I’m grateful for the assistance DS was given, and that was honestly not something I had counted on.

I’m sure that next week DH will insist that DS is fine to pass the sacrament without ANY assistance, since it wasn’t a disaster this past Sunday. And if my husband can learn something after doing it once, the kids should be able to, too.

[Joni]

I think the English equivalent for this word is “New Coke.” 😆

[Joni]

Update: Today is the first Sunday that DS will pass the sacrament. He asked his dad to help him by actually walking alongside him, meaning that DH would not be carrying a sacrament tray himself. (There is precedent in our ward. A young man with special needs was assisted by his dad not only the first time, but EVERY time he passed the sacrament. I never heard any ward members complain.) DH flat out refused. His actual words were, “He doesn’t need that.”

Needless to say, I am furious. (The fact that my husband, because he holds the priesthood, gets to override me doesn’t help.) What kind of lesson are we teaching our son? That the appearance of passing the sacrament a certain way is the only thing that matters?

At my son ‘s last case conference at school, his teachers and I spent a lot of time talking about how to get DS to advocate for himself. (He is on the autism spectrum, as I’ve mentioned, and he is very aware that he is ‘different’ and smart as a whip besides.) How am I going to teach him how to speak up for what he needs when my husband, because he holds the priesthood, can *instantly* dismiss that request? And how do I convince my son that passing the sacrament is really something he wants to do when DH insists on being so inflexible about it?

[Joni]

On Own Now wrote:

To me, I think it is probable that Emma was baptized prior to April 6, 1830, but that the baptism was not recorded, or that the record was lost. All who were baptized before April 6 were subsequently rebaptized, so Emma’s official date of June doesn’t deter me.

That answers the next question I was going to ask, which is why did it take until July before Emma was baptized.

[Joni]

Thanks, everyone. We had the Priesthood Preview last Sunday (there are only two 11-year-old boys in our ward and their birthdays are three weeks apart). The Deacon’s quorum president sort of inadvertently made my point for me: he listed about six or eight responsibilities of a deacon, and only one of them involved passing the sacrament. We talked about that on the way home. Arguably, the most important responsibility of a deacon is to stand as a witness of God… which is funny… because my fourteen year old daughter stands up every Sunday and pledges to do that very thing.

I did have to do a little bit of debriefing with DS because several of the speakers mentioned the importance of wearing a white shirt and tie and the church isn’t emphasizing that as much (especially since Packer has passed, I think). My own husband who is pretty orthodox has passed the sacrament in a yellow shirt and nobody leapt up to stop him.

[Joni]

Rousing performance of How Firm a Foundation!

[Joni]

This is such an odd, heavy-handed talk.

[Joni]

I’ve missed quite a bit – has there been a prayer given by a woman during one of the general sessions?

[Joni]

YES

YOU GO, SILVER FOX

[Joni]

This is great. Seriously. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a talk like this before.

[Author]

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