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LookingHard wrote:
So instead I would say, “I like attending Sacrament meeting and I feel good after that meeting, but when I go the entire 3 hours I come away drained and very unfulfilled, like I don’t want to come the following week. So I am doing the best that I can. I fear if I am strong-armed to feel like I am not welcome if I only come to Sacrament meeting, then my decision might be to skip that also. I don’t want that.”
Hmm…that sounds better than “bishop, have you ever tried to stay awake for three hours with a hangover?”
OK, never did that one, but I have pointed out to him a few times that I’d gone to a Church singles activity 2-3 hours away that ended at midnight, and it was pushing my limits to make it to 9AM Sacrament meeting at all.
SilentDawning wrote:Lessons as coma-inducing in EQ!
Bread, water, and some guy who makes Ben Stein sound like a tweaker reading a magazine article to me verbatim. Do I go to church on Sundays or a third world prison?
Quote:I would add the chair-setting up and moving requirements that men buy into when they join the church. It should be part of the baptismal interview as it’s lifelong commitment!!
That, and the punishment for being five minutes early is getting roped into setting up everything, while the guys that get there late eat all the food, even though there’s still setup to be done. Twice now, I’ve gone to activities where I ended up helping set up only to find that by the time they were finally done with me, the only thing left was wilted salad and tap-tepid water. That, after a two hour drive in traffic to get there, and the activity ending after all the decent restaurants closed.
Joni wrote:On the other hand, we already have a laundry list of extracurricular activities for the kids – piano, wrestling, swimming, basketball, soccer, Mutual
Easy solution; pull them out of all of it and put them in a time management class instead.
It amazes me that people who can’t find a spare few minutes during the week go to such lengths to get their kids in the same habits.
Roadrunner wrote:The other thing you didn’t mention is a literal addiction to caffeinated soft drinks.
Fortunately, caffeine is one of the easiest addictions to overcome; your body will quite simply fix the issues in a (miserable) week if you go cold turkey or 2-3 weeks if you taper off slowly enough to avoid significant withdrawal symptoms.
Quote:I’m with you on this one – few obey the word of wisdom parts where meat is eaten sparingly, etc, and at least half of my ward is overweight.
I seriously doubt any of them got overweight from meat. As has been discussed (here? another forum, maybe) before, that part made perfect sense in a time without a freezer in every home or a butcher in every grocery store providing meat in various sizes. It takes a lot of people to eat a cow before it spoils in 90 degree weather, so summer meat would have been either small game that a family can easily finish at one sitting, or a communal slaughter and roast to use up the meat. Either way, unless you had a great rabbit hunter in your family, 8-16 ounces of meat at dinner wouldn’t have been a daily thing. As modern refrigeration has changed the way we handle meats, the Church hasn’t emphasized that part, but I can see how HF would hardly feel it’s worth a repeat of Peter’s vision to explicitly repeal it.
Rob4Hope wrote:Now,…let me make a disclaimer here. I am not a medical doctor. I do not have an EMT credential, am not a nutritionist, am not versed in herbology and don’t have a deep understanding of vitamins.
Another hazard of LDS “Scouting;” the cooking merit badge includes a fair bit about nutrition, and it’s required for Eagle. I remember a pretty in-depth quiz (what each nutrient type does for you, what foods it is found in, and roughly how much you need) to get that section signed off. That, and it was frickin’ cold on that campout, so making breakfast for the patrol was the best reason to be right by the fire first thing.
In my ward, there are a few guys with NESA lapel pins who can barely grill a burger. From my old (non-LDS) troop, I’ve kept up with three of the Eagles, and they still use the skills they had to pick up for it on a regular basis.
DevilsAdvocate wrote:Pesonally I don’t think it is something where Church leaders consciously go out of their way to make single adults feel unwelcome or like second-class citizens as much as a largely unintended by-product of the Church being so strongly geared around the idea of marriage and families.
Maybe not consciously, but I’d say it’s often at least careless. Something akin to telling a bunch of one-armed people how wonderful juggling would be for them if they’d only make it happen.
nibbler wrote:What if 80% of the YM decide to join some other troop, leaving 20% behind for the YM activities in the church? Lot’s of what ifs.
Well, one could hope that would be a wake up call to fix some issues, but I doubt it.
GBSmith wrote:I attended scout camp with my son when he was eleven and then for a day at a time as a member of the bishopric and witnessed several successful boy led troops. The catch is they were sponsored by other churches, were large with 30-40 boys, and it was clear the cadre of leadership was in charge. The scoutmaster and his assistants stood in the back and supervised but it was the senior scouts and the patrol leaders that ran the show.
This is how my troop was, and though we probably had 40-60 Scouts on the books, typical weekly attendance was more in the high teens to low 20s. Once in a while when we were planning something big, we’d actually get 30-35 attending. The adult leaders made a few announcements, then sat back and mentored those who needed it while acting more as advisors to the SPL, ASPL and PLs who conducted the meetings. Camping, the adults had a somewhat more active role, as the youth leadership was doing a lot more hands-on work, (leading by example) so the adults were more available than the SPL/ASPL at that time, though even then it was usually a process of PLs seeking guidance from the adults to work out an issue on their own.
Frankly, looking back on it, I’m impressed with the guys we had as SPLs and ASPLs during my time in Scouts. Sure, we were still kids, and we all screwed up plenty, but I see a lot of “professional leaders” who couldn’t do as good a job of keeping a room full of teenage boys under control. I remember being a PL for a while, (and somehow the backup ASPL, though that was usually only needed when attendance was way down due to school activities interfering – our SPL/ASPL were rarely out for any other reason) but I only had 3-4 Scouts to deal with as PL at most meetings; I can’t see the leadership benefits really appearing until you have to lead more than you can easily keep track of in your head. (Having the full patrol (
there made for a much different dynamic that needed a whole new category of skills, and the whole group was a different kettle of fish altogether even when the room was mostly empty.)On Own Now wrote:I think the program has a lot of good to offer, but the Church’s implementation of it leaves it incapacitated.
IMO, BSA has incapacitated itself over the years since I was a Scout with liability concerns and politically correct garbage.
According to one old timer, it started when they brought in the Wilderness Survival merit badge back in 1973. (Before my time. I got that badge in 1988) As he put it, for a Boy Scout of that era to have a merit badge for wilderness survival would be like having one for tying your shoes; it became an accessory skill rather than a core value the Scouting was teaching.
Lately, it’s the de-emphasis on several useful skills due to overzealous attempts to avoid liability. If we got through summer camp without at least a first degree burn and one cut that put our first aid skills to the test, it was a wasted summer. Now, the ban on homemade stoves means they’re not learning to build small alcohol stoves (I have everything needed rolling around the floorboard of my car, including the bottle of HEET to fuel it) or rocket stoves (pretty sure I have the right cans in the trash at home) that could make a huge difference when there’s a multi-day power outage at their all-electric house and they only know how to dig a firepit in the lawn, or they get to the campsite for a long weekend of primitive skills practice and see a brand new “no ground fires” sign.
Holy Cow wrote:The scouting program outside of the church is run by people who WANT to be there. They take it seriously, and they focus on leadership development, and the things that scouting was really meant to be.
This. My former (non-LDS) scoutmaster is still very heavily involved in Scouting 25 years after his youngest son made Eagle, biding his time in a District spot until his great grandson is ready for Cub Scouts. Two of the three assistant scoutmasters also stayed well after their sons had moved on. The local Church troop changes leadership every time the scoutmaster’s son ages out, so the experience level is limited, and the leadership’s interest level in the other Scouts’ advancement is often not what it should be.
LookingHard wrote:It would seem odd that the BSA would have done this on purpose without the LDS leadership being there, but where was the LDS leadership?
Probably got there late, as per Holy Tradition, and completely missed that part of the meeting.
On Own Now wrote:Now the kid can tell time. Except, all they are doing is reading numbers on a display.
Every ward I’ve visited only has a cheap analog clock hanging on the wall at audience left, so if they want to know how much longer F&T meeting is going to last, they have to figure it out from that.
Personally, I prefer an analog watch with a second hand as a “coin toss” generator; mentally divide up the circle into segments, then look at the watch and go with the segment the second hand is in. Not my method for investment decisions, but when I’m having trouble deciding between pumpkin pie or peach cobbler, it speeds up choosing which one I’ll have first.
DarkJedi wrote:My son serves in a poor South American mission and does not have a car or bike (they all walk or take the bus). In each area he has lived in there have been at least two sets of missionaries per small apartment. He is fed every day by members.
I have a friend serving in South America right now. She hasn’t mentioned how often she gets a meal from members, but did say in her area it is considered rude not to offer snacks to missionaries of any faith, (and rude to refuse the offered food as well) so they spend most of the day grazing from investigator to investigator. It’s a poor farming area, so a lot of what is offered is fresh fruit, vegetables, beans or rice. She mentioned that there have been days she realized at dinner time that she hadn’t actually had lunch, but had eaten so much she couldn’t eat anything else.
IMO, it seems like her mission so far has been a great learning experience for her; she’s from a quite well-off family, and she’s commented a few times about seeing happy, faithful families living in a house smaller than her bedroom back home, without electricity or running water, and how that has given her a better picture of what “the necessities of life and protection” really are, especially when these are the people who bring out enough beans, rice and fruit to feed a dozen missionaries, then speak of the blessings they have in their lives.
Rob4Hope wrote:NightSG wrote:russdm wrote:This could only work in Utah. The people are crazy like that…
In Brown County TX, those would have gotten him bonus points.
Hey…I resemble that statement!!!It’s the one place I’ve been where I’m absolutely sure all the locals were actually trying to hit other cars and pedestrians. As in, going out of their way and taking extra time to do it. I used to do a sales territory that included Brown, Comanche and Mills counties, and it was always a relief to cross the county line outbound.
