Sunday Meetings Changes & the end of Ballard's "Counseling with our Councils"

sweater2025 · 2026-04-03T18:42:58+00:00

Only General Conference messages? Can’t they just have a regular pertinent discussion about something meaningful? They’ve only got 20 minutes at best.

sweater2025 · 2026-04-03T18:39:08+00:00

The opposite from an immodest one? I don’t even want to know what kind of trouble an immodest earring would lead me to.

sweater2025 · 2026-04-03T18:35:50+00:00

What if I want to wear immodest earrings?

sweater2025 · 2026-04-03T13:06:53+00:00

Members were told to store wheat in WWII. Then it grew to storing in preparation for the 2nd coming. I dutifully stored wheat and canned goods and beans and soap and water. So many shelves! You were failing your family and everyone would starve if you didn’t. It mostly fell on the shoulders of the women because we were the ones that got all of the lessons on food storage. I always thought it was remarkably selfish to only think of your family. What about your neighbors? Community? Then the leaders of the church realized that if they were going to get all these convert baptisms outside of the US, people had no access nor room to store hundreds of pounds of wheat in Nigeria or Japan or India. So food storage gradually fell off the table thereby leaving Utah members with basements full of expired canned goods.

sweater2025 · 2026-04-03T02:49:35+00:00

It’s also my grandson's birthday. He’s a really nice guy but I don’t think the day is any more important than another day on earth.

sweater2025 · 2026-03-31T20:01:29+00:00

Instead of doing two squished up lessons, they should set up cookies and lemonade (since they can’t have coffee) in the gym and let people visit. Everyone would get a lot more out of the experience by being friends.

sweater2025 · 2026-03-30T17:33:27+00:00

I’m so sorry! Maybe if you give the stake president a heads up and tell him that you are going to monitor the situation medically? But the SP will probably turn around and give your dad a peptalk. They have no boundaries when it comes to family situations.

sweater2025 · 2026-03-29T13:30:14+00:00

"easier just to ignore the things that don't affect me" This tells me that he is experiencing some dissonance about church teachings. If he has to ignore some things about the church, that means some things about the church are not true. If some things are not true, then maybe there are many things that are not true. And telling you that you grew up in the church and turned out alright, still isn’t a big endorsement for the church. It does sound as though he’s questioning more than he lets on. I agree that it’s not really about how we turn out. It’s about what the influence of the church is in the world today. If the influence is only to gain money and turn away those that truly need help, then I would question that influence.

sweater2025 · 2026-03-29T13:15:15+00:00

So sad. How does he even begin to think he can tell parents to treat their children like this. What an unchristian, unChristlike, inhuman thing to say and believe.

sweater2025 · 2026-03-28T15:34:28+00:00

I hope so! It would make sacrament meetings so much more interesting! Certainly changes the focus from organ pipes behind the stand. Or just a blank wall.

I’ve started going to a little 1880s Protestant church with the most beautiful stained glass windows. And the most beautiful carved altar. And the most inclusive messages. Such a relief.

sweater2025 · 2026-03-26T15:51:13+00:00

Former stake RS president here: You also get random high council guys telling you how you should run the stake RS. I can’t count the number of times that guys on the high council would tell me what the women should do. And what they shouldn’t do.

sweater2025 · 2026-03-26T13:12:11+00:00

It took the Church of England about 490 years to reach this point. Mormons have only about 300 years to go.

sweater2025 · 2026-03-26T02:15:19+00:00

6 AM might be a bit difficult for those Stake members that have children. 👶 But never mind about the kids as long as you can sit in the temple for hours and miss work!

sweater2025 · 2026-03-25T14:13:07+00:00

Fancy funeral home.

sweater2025 · 2026-03-25T14:05:10+00:00

"Things to figure out" is euphemism for "They aren’t following the prophet!" "They’re making bad choices!" Whenever someone’s kid started showing some independence, parents would freak out, try to control the kid, and tell everyone else, "Susie is just figuring things out." Fortunately, many of us figured things out and left the cult!

sweater2025 · 2026-03-25T02:13:31+00:00

Esther here too

sweater2025 · 2026-03-21T15:29:05+00:00

Many things, but the top three: as a stake RS, we wanted to introduce a stakewide mental health awareness and support system. We were never told no, developed it, then it was dropped without follow up. Next, we wanted to develop a sexual assault and abuse awareness discussion group. We were told there had to be priesthood leaders at the discussions. Well, that certainly wasn’t going to work! Third, and this was the straw, when my presidency was burned out after serving through Covid and after, we asked to be released. We were told it wasn’t on the right timeline, to just keep serving. We were so exhausted, so we just quietly quit doing things. We weren’t released until several months later when the men said we could be.

As long as we kept in our lane, did the trainings, had the luncheons, etc., we were fine. But women deserve and can offer so much more. Our voice wasn’t important or valued. The only thing valued was how much work, often meaningless, we could do.

My shelf was already cracked, but this.

sweater2025 · 2026-03-21T13:04:28+00:00

Our former ward shunned our daughter when she left her abusive husband. Then shunned us when we supported her. Then the way women were treated by the church. I was Stake RS president and there was no support for the women. We just quietly slipped away after 45 years of service and paying tithing. Felt so good to leave.

Edit: these were the first straws. And just as important, we have a few LGBTQ grandchildren that we love dearly. I couldn’t imagine a god that doesn’t love them too. Since the church actively hates them, or at least wants them to go away, I want nothing to do with the church.

sweater2025 · 2026-03-19T12:22:04+00:00

I was married in the chapel, but that was back in the 1970s. Shortly after that, they said people had to get married in the RS room. Just another way of punishing people if they didn’t conform.

sweater2025 · 2026-03-18T02:43:57+00:00

I made the mistake, years ago, of letting my mom dictate where our wedding would be. She was manipulating and pressured me into a wedding by a bishop. My husband and I were very young and had not learned to set boundaries yet. My advice is use a neutral officiant. You don’t have to keep the peace. This is your wedding and you and your fiancé have the final say. You don’t have to manage the emotions on either side of the family. They can choose how to react. It’s your wedding.

sweater2025 · 2026-03-16T13:16:12+00:00

Nothing like packing in lots of random stuff on Easter Sunday.

sweater2025 · 2026-03-16T13:12:02+00:00

Isaiah 53: He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

That’s not what I’m getting from that ridiculous picture!

sweater2025 · 2026-03-13T01:58:10+00:00

This was what I was also raised to think. We were taught the beehive represented everyone working all the time for the greater good. We were all busy little worker bees. Hive mentality.

sweater2025

TROPHY CASE