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Hi Harmon-y, A couple of thoughts. The church doesn’t require one to be in the country legally for the ward to provide assistance. I’m not sure why exactly they didn’t want to help. I live in Arizona where a few years ago a prominent member of the church who was in the state legislature sponsored a bill that harmed illegal immigrants and was viewed by many as racist. The law was eventually removed but some Mexican American members of the church left because they thought it was endorsed by the church.
There is a rule of thumb – I don’t remember if it’s formally in the handbook – that the church doesn’t pay for medical expenses simply because they are too expensive. Even a simple surgery might cost many thousands of dollars. That sort of makes sense to me but on one occasion I did write a check (with fast offering dollars) for several thousand dollars to pay for a surgery. It’s a hard decision.
I don’t have many suggestions for how not to be jaded. My wife sometimes says that I’m cynical when it comes to the church but I think it’s realistic to understand that normal people run the church, they have real and strong biases, and that God doesn’t speak to them. I give them the benefit of the doubt and I believe most leaders do their best, but sometimes it’s difficult to see, especially when people get hurt. We just have to do our best, which is what you’re doing by providing your own assistance in spite of what the branch does.
Hang in there. There are good days and bad days.
Roadrunner
mom3 wrote:
Now that some time has passed what are the family’s feelings on it?
Hi Mom3. My two oldest daughters have brought it up a couple of times. My oldest daughter is engaged to a good Muslim man and has said she appreciates the open-mindedness. Her fiancé thanked me for the sentiments also. Interestingly he’s said that he can’t find anything in LDS theology that isn’t covered in Islam…My second daughter just came home from her mission today after being out for three months. Sent home from oversees because of Covid 19. She’s a BYU student but the most liberal out of my kids and I think she needed to have some support in her beliefs.
My wife puts up with me. She’s pretty orthodox and has said “why can’t you just believe??” But we get along really well most of the time.
I’ve rarely observed this in non church life. I’ve observed it only occasionally at church. A Bishop once told me that Adam set the example in the temple and that we should arise when a woman enters the room as Adam did when Eve arrived.
I’ve heard this explanation verbally and it may come from Cleon Skousen, but I’m not sure where it originated. It raises as many questions as it answers: Justice isn’t demanded by God, but rather by entities that we don’t normally think of acting for themselves. The elements for example, and mountains, and rivers, and the weather. Jesus commanded the elements and they obeyed immediately and without question. The natural universe always obeys the laws of physics, yet humans are not required to obey our commandments. Therefore, a mediator is required to satisfy justice and fairness for those things that are perfectly obedient.
This seems bizarre to me, but I wanted to throw it out there, and I know at least a few of my own family believe this.
Old Timer wrote:
I know lots of poor members who have served.I think local church culture is a big factor, as well as some huge cultural issues for many members, especially those who provide a significant amount of financial support to their families.
Hi Curt,
Our stake president told us that family finances should absolutely not be a factor in the decision process of whether a young man or women serves a mission. He flat out said we’ll find the money if a family can’t afford it. I would hope that’s a common attitude church-wide. However, I can easily imagine parents telling their kids they won’t serve a mission if the family has to ask for financial assistance.
SilentDawning wrote:
Does the church cover missionaries for medical expenses when on a mission? Or are the parents expected to keep their children on their health insurance package? Assume the parents are in Canada or US and their son or daughter is in the same country…
Hi SD,
I don’t know whether the church covers medical expenses while on a mission, but my guess is that the church will pay for medical treatment if family insurance doesn’t cover it. I know that in the missionary application you have to say whether you have insurance, what kinds of insurance, even provide the name and policy number of the insurance company. It asks whether your medical insurance covers costs out of country. The paperwork instructs parents to not cancel insurance for their kids while they are away.
My wife was hit by a car while on her mission and she said she always felt treated well and was cared for by quality doctors. She was in England where public hospitals were common, but the church sent her to a private hospital.
While I agree that the increase percentage feels big (25% at once), I think for some of us $500 is cheaper or near equal the cost of keeping them at home. My 19 year old daughter is at BYU and while she does have a job, I heavily subsidize her. Rent, food, car insurance, utilities, and… college tuition all come out of my wallet and total more than $500 per month. You could argue that a mission adds to the time I’m financially supporting her, which is true, but to me it seems the financial sacrifice is *much* smaller than the time she’s giving up.
Like others have said, I have issues with how we observe the WoW, but I also appreciate that I’m not dependent on alcohol from an addiction standpoint or as a prerequisite to have fun. My eyes were somewhat opened recently when a good friend of mine who’s an ER doctor in a predominantly LDS community told me that in his opinion it would be less harmful to society to have legal marijuana than legal alcohol. Not that he was (or that I am) taking a stance on marijuana, he explained to me how incredibly addictive alcohol really is. I think he said it’s probably in the top 3 drugs for ease of getting addicted, which I hadn’t known. Virtually all of my non-LDS friends drink regularly and it looks like they have a great time doing it, but I suspect I’m not missing all that much in the long run.
Hi DJ, The temple recommend questions haven’t been updated recently. And as you say, leaders still aren’t supposed to add to the questions but calling them out is a no-win scenario. One could internally justify answering the real questions by saying they are abusing their authority and being disobedient themselves.
Roadrunner
Here are a few random thoughts from a currently serving bishop and father to two teenage girls and two teenage boys. Your son has neither a father nor a bishop, keep that in mind as you both talk to him. The perceived power distance between your husband and your son is more than you can imagine. Any punishment from a bishop and father to a young teenager is greatly magnified by most youth. I’ve asked youth to skip the sacrament for a couple of weeks and it’s almost the end of the world to them. They are afraid everybody sees it and everybody knows exactly what the problem is. I’ve seen this firsthand a dozen times.
Porn and the accompanying masturbation are probably an issue for 80% of the men in the ward and maybe half of the women in the ward. If everyone who struggled, whether occasionally or frequently, old or young, there would be nobody to fulfill any callings. As the senior bishop in my stake (who conducts quarterly bishop councils) I’ve suggested that they never punish masturbation and don’t worry about porn too much. The stake president agrees with me.
I had a daughter who dabbled in porn and my wife and I freaked out. Almost everything you can imagine to fix the problem, we did it. We almost lost my daughter because we went so overboard. Since then we install anti-porn software on our devices and computers knowing there’s probably a way around it. We tell all our kids it’s their responsibility to avoid pornography but that there’s not much more we can do than to help them police themselves. I’ve had mission presidents tell me that they know many missionaries view porn on their missions – they discourage it but never send missionaries home because of it. It’s a struggle that many people will have on-and-off their whole lives. The mission presidents I’ve talked to say it’s a fact of life and they have to learn how to deal with it.
If I were you, would not force your son to meet with his bishop. Have dad take him to ice cream or just stop in his bedroom for a quick chat and say, hey pornography is mysterious and exciting and even fun. It’s also bad for the participants and bad for your soul. Do your best to control it. End of conversation.
I love the temple and design. I have a bit of an inferiority complex though – and I usually get annoyed when I see the little guy get treated normally but the special guy treated, well special. Rome is special. Snowflake, AZ (home of a somewhat recent small temple) is not. Part of me is thrilled we built a beautiful building in Rome – it will be one of our more visible temples I suspect. On the other hand, will Christ me likely to visit Rome than Dallas because of the fancy building? It’s a nit pick and not totally fair because I don’t want plain vanilla temples everywhere either. I do remember that the Gila Valley temple in Arizona was bragged about because it’s the home of the Kimballs and the Eyrings and that location got special church permission for a 3 color scheme instead of the standard 2 color scheme for small temples. Rome looks like it was given an open check book.
This list makes me happy. Huge step in the right direction, kudos to the Q15 and other GAs. I think changes for those putting them into effect can be among the most difficult – to some extent they have to consider that what they previously created and administered needed improvement. I’ve been visiting Salt Lake City all week and I’ve heard a few people talking and speculating. They are all orthodox faithful members. I don’t think these will shake many people.
I can see why this would be difficult for some Young Single Adults. That being said, wards and individuals have explicit permission to meet as groups after church on Sundays as needed or desired. I guarantee that the YSA wards at BYU schools will have additional after church activities and I don’t see any reason other YSA wards can’t. The downside is that it will probably come down to the energy level of local leadership. My first reaction was similar to DJ’s: that it doesn’t really matter much. But I’ll add my $0.02 to hopefully continue an interesting thought experiment. I’ll look at it from a different angle. What if the two twins are born in a prison cell in a completely controlled environment. Everything about their lives is exactly the same. However, twin #1 for some reason has very vengeful and wicked thoughts while he is trapped in prison his whole life. All he wants to do is kill his captor and cause havoc in the world after he escapes. Twin #2 for some reason only wants to forgive his captor and wants to live a nice peaceful life after he escapes. Their actions are completely equal because neither can leave the prison cell – the only difference is their thoughts.
One might argue that since Jesus taught about committing adultery in our minds that perhaps that might apply to committing murder in our minds. Based on that, one can conclude that the twin who wanted murder, while perhaps understandable, didn’t live the gospel as well as the more peaceful twin.
Back to DJ’s point, though, I think that God will ask why the vengeful twin had such negative thoughts. Perhaps he had a gene that was flipped that made him more predisposed to violence. Perhaps the scenario wasn’t completely equal because he was first out of the womb and therefore his life isn’t completely equal. In the end I have to believe that God is more merciful than we can possibly imagine – it’s the only way I can wrap my head around all the terrible things supposedly good people do in this life.
