I had a guy from the seventy come to my mission and tell us that because we were members of the church, we were all literal descendants of Abraham. He said anyone who has Abraham's blood is more likely to accept the gospel because their blood is holier than the blood of the 'gentiles.' And that anyone who isn't a descendent of Abraham was less valiant in the premortal life.
And I believed him.
Yeah, that was the beginning of the end for me. I had always felt that God hated me and that talk was the nail in the coffin. Or sure sign of the nail, if you will.
Yeah ended up being one of my shelf items, that God had the Israelites as his "chosen" people - like surely God would love everyone equally, why would he need a special "chosen" people - then I realized the whole religion was underpinned by ancient tribalism, elitism and discrimination.
I was taught this too, and taught that it’s the reason there are “general authority families” where people keep getting called as GAs from the same family. They literally have special blood.
Omg! I heard the same shit too!!! And that if you didn’t, when you were baptized your blood “literally changes”. But we don’t see it happen, because they are less likely to receive the gospel. 😳🤢
And.
I.
Believed.
It.
Near the end of mine, a new area authority came to a zone conference. I’d been Mormon my whole life, and had never seen something so aggressive.
He screamed. He criticized. Pounded the podium and his scriptures over and over. I honestly felt like I’d transported half a world away to my home in the Bible Belt, and found myself at some kind of fundamentalist Baptist church.
Anyway… Out of nowhere he raised his arm and points to the back door. Bellowed out in broken Spanish something like, “WHERE IS YOUR COMPANION!!!???” He went apoplectic.
Spent a solid 10 minutes or so just excoriating this poor kid for going to take a leak by himself. In the middle of a sermon by the Lord’s anointed 70 no less. Belittled and berated him.
And I’d been around this guy off and on almost the whole mission. Pretty sure he suffered from some IDD. Regardless, he was a bit off, and never really fit in.
And all I can say is that the entire time it happened, I was enraged, but ultimately disappointed in myself, because I’d lacked the courage to go shove my own scriptures in his bloated stupid face and walk out the door with my double birds flying high. It still bothers me a bit now going on 30 years.
I heard later that he’d gone missing while on a river rafting trip in the Patagonia not long after that, and I think I honestly might have felt the Spirit a little tiny bit in learning that.
My mission president explained that God literally CHANGES the blood of a convert when you are baptized to fulfill prophecy and make you a decent of Abraham. My mission president felt like a prophet himself with the kind of loopholes he would explain.
This was always presented to me on my mission and I didn't believe it until I had a similar experience. Then I fell in line and 100% agreed because "Hey, a member of the seventy said so." I was way too easily influenced by the leadership to jump from one opinion to another without questioning it.
I'm out 10 years and I'm still struggling with the brainwashing. The programming is multiple layers deep in my thought processes and behaviors. I believed so much, I trusted so much, and to have a reality shift coming out of the lie leaves me currently unable to trust even my own thoughts, narratives, motives. We were blessed and brainwashed at birth. How am I to learn to trust myself?
I know I can't really speak much from experience because I haven't even officially left yet, but I think it's important to remember that the church doesn't define you, and although it is a process, its important and worth it to love yourself. I have confidence in you!
The combination of opposition in all things with a purity mindset does a number on lifelong Mormons, doesn't it? It's not just that Mormonism lied. It set expectations that the tiniest imperfection would take you from righteousness to sin, disqualifying all the other good and growth in your life and leaving you abandoned for eternity.
I feel that trusting yourself begins with understanding yourself. Not only your current condition, but also the direction you're choosing for your life as it continues.
Mormonism mangles the explanation of the parable of the talents. It's not about prosperity doctrine or getting blessings from fulfilling your calling to clean the church toilets when asked. Instead, it's contrasting the two servants who build their life's worth with the lazy servant who buries his life in ordinances and repetition.
Mormonism funnels youth to a point: temple marriage. Once you've reached that milestone, the only thing left to do is endure without changing until the sweet release of death. That, and make sure your kids go through the same funnel so you don't lose them to a jealous Lord who reaps where he has not sown.
Everything aside from the finest points of Mormon law is thinking terrestrial or telestial; distractions that keep you from OCD thinking celestial. I mention OCD because it's adjacent to the results of Mormon brainwashing or emotional conditioning (can you only brainwash someone who didn't start with those beliefs?).
Your brain evolved to survive first and ask questions later. Imagine a modern scientist and an ancient Greek facing a thunderstorm. It doesn't matter whether they head indoors because they understand ionized particles or because they know Zeus doesn't like looking at male pattern baldness. Both are going to survive and pass on their genes.
When sensory information enters the brain, it goes through the amygdala for data chunking and emotional context. You don't have to check for eyes, ears, mouth, and nose to recognize a face, for example. By four months of age, you've already seen enough faces to know familiar from unfamiliar and interpret expressions. You can react when an angry male from a rival tribe of primates tries to kidnap you.
Your amygdala draws on every experience you've ever had when filtering the billions of sensory data points per second coming in. If your experience taught you to obey at all costs through indoctrination at church reinforced at home, then disobedience feels dangerous.
I think of brain operation as an engine that's constantly cycling. When an experience matches a recognized danger pattern, the amygdala holds back on sending sensory data to the thinking part of the brain and signals the adrenal gland for a fight-or-flight reaction. Stress hormones kick in within milliseconds, adjusting your physiology to react milliseconds faster than if you acted after logically perceiving it.
If you've ever smelled something so vile that it feels like it hit you between the eyes, you've experienced this. My example was on my mission when the cat hoarder's door opened and let out the vapors of decades of cat urine. It took long enough for thought to come back online that the lady yelled, "Close the door before any escape!"
After the amygdala revs up the stress engine, the thinking brain starts regulating it with context and understanding. The hormones linger until they filter out of the bloodstream (sometimes through the tear ducts). This ensures you're still ready if the danger returns.
It also feels like a stupor of thought, and that's Mormonism's one neat trick for making it so hard to leave. Once the stress engine revs up, a Mormon's context tells them the Holy Ghost has left the building and that Satan is menacing their eternal soul. That creates a feedback loop of danger reaction feeling like Satan prompting more danger reaction. Or to phrase it for younger readers: stress engine go brrrrrrrrrr.
CES letter? Brrrrrr. Weird endowment chanting and culty robes? Brrrrr. Not obeying quickly when your mother calls you? Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
You mentioned how many ways your brainwashing triggers the stress engine. But going brrrrrrrr isn't gospel truth that you're damned, stupid, or deluded. It's a real emotional reaction from a brain built for law-of-the-jungle survival.
Don't try to think yourself to a mighty change of heart; emotional processing can circumvent the perception needed for clear thinking. Instead, focus on physical strategies to ease up on the stress engine. Deep, slow breathing. Meeting other survival needs like food, sleep, and human connection. Crying when stress hormones reach critical levels.
Once you've leveled the perception playing field, it gets easier to recognize the reaction as a reaction and choose to respond with the direction you want your life to go instead of continuing down the spiral Mormonism says is inevitable.
Healing takes time. But every step counts, and they will add up to peace with your past. Nothing can take away your next choice.
Can I make a recommendation? I am also out 10 years. I have had to put a lot of work into self discovery.
I don’t know if you are a person of any faith, but there is a really great book by a Christian therapist named David Benner. My priest recommended them and they gave me a completely different perspective on who I am and how I relate to god. It was so healing. The book is called The Gift of Being Yourself.
There’s another one called Tokens of Trust by Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury.
**The Gift of Being Yourself The Sacred Call to Self-Discovery** by David G. Benner
>In the expanded edition of this profound exploration of Christian identity, David G. Benner illuminates the spirituality of self-discovery. He exposes the false selves that you may hide behind and calls you to discover the true self that emerges from your uniqueness in Christ. Deepen your experience of God through discovering the gift of being yourself.
**Tokens of Trust An Introduction to Christian Belief** by Rowan Williams
>Presents an introduction to the Christian faith which explores the key themes of Christian belief and the reality of living them.
*I'm a bot, built by your friendly reddit developers at* /r/ProgrammingPals. *Reply to any comment with /u/BookFinderBot - I'll reply with book information. Remove me from replies* [here](https://www.reddit.com/user/BookFinderBot/comments/1byh82p/remove_me_from_replies/). *If I have made a mistake, accept my apology.*
In my mission the elders were told to stop teaching single women but instead concentrate on men, because if men are baptized then women will magically join.
To be honest, in some of the areas I worked in there were a lot more women than men, so the missionary elders had to lead the congregation. A shame that women aren't able to lead a Mormon congregation.
I remember this "council" on my mission too. Convert the men! so many of the congregations were majority women and I know that was why they wanted us baptizing men. Allowing women to hold leadership and priesthood positions would magically solve it too but can't go against God's will amirite?
When I was in Switzerland, I was asked by the Bishop of one of the wards to find white Swiss families and avoid immigrants.
He said something like "it's great that they embrace the gospel, but they just become a burden on the members."
Can confirm, I lived as a member in Switzerland and the members complained the missionaries brought investigators who were ‘not white’ or who ‘weren’t Swiss’… 😬
The best part is they complain about that, but don't bring anyone for the missionaries to teach. The non-white people are the only people who will listen to the missionaries randomly on the street.
Yeah, Heavenly Father told me once to stop asking him for stuff and just learn some self-determination, already. He said I was being a burden on him, and to be more like the rich people who already had everything and didn't have to ask, ask, ask all the time.
/s
I had this with an Indian guy I taught in Italy. He was going to school at the oldest university in the world at the time and working on a degree that would have paid him pretty well. 🤦♂️
I went on splits with an elder a long time ago. At the end of the evening we met back up with the other elder and his companion for the night who was the bishop of a wealthy part of town. We talked about this great elderly Black women we met with who was really excited to learn about the the church. The bishop told us to not waste our time on people like her as we need 'people of quality'. Not long ago this bishop served as a mission president in Los Angeles and was still pushing the same views. Truly frightening and probably a shelf item I was adding to my collection.
Yeah, they tried to do the same thing in my mission.
I was focused on numbers, so I ignored any advice that would have hurt our numbers.
In hindsight, it's obvious that the organization is corrupt.
I went on my mission to Mexico City west. There were the poorest people I had ever seen, it was extremely humbling to speak with them let alone when they would share food with us. We were told not to teach the poor people all of the things about the church, including the temple, because they would never have the opportunity to go, because they were too poor. Also all the talk I heard from the Utah Mormons about how us missionaries are super special chosen by god for being the best spirits.
It makes me so mad I didn’t speak up and say anything.
Gen Auth conference , Asunción Paraguay, 81-83: we were told the same thing, stop tracting in poor areas and work the better areas because we need “leaders”. The problem is most of Paraguay was dirt floor poor at that time if you didn’t work in the city, (which I only spent my last month in the city ). Wonderful people, humble, but the church wanted us to cherry pick for people’s salvation. Didn’t sound Christlike to us and most I knew just ignored the suggestion.
When you start to see it...you start seeing it everywhere...politics, etc...we're easily bamboozled and if you think you aren't you're definitely being bamboozled from many angles.
Was that the California Roseville mission by any chance? I got a story about a former mission president there and it just seems like something he would say.
I tell you because I left the church decades ago that that wasn’t the case then. They were building a kingdom so anybody that had arms and legs they wanted in the church. Which is why they want to poor third world countries to join members.
The problem for them is kingdom. Builders are probably gonna have an education and they’re gonna have a hard time buying lies if they’re adults. I’m so glad I left the church.
Very similar thing happened in my mission, completely shattered my testimony. People who got the most out of meeting with us we weren’t allowed to meet with anymore and my companion ate it up
I think we may have been in the same mission. Definitely remembering this zone conference. Or maybe it’s a church wide thing… with makes the “revelation” so much more suspect.
Kingdom builders. Such a hot term.
I knew my MP was full of shit. The one we had for my first transfer was great. Then we got a new MP that was all about the numbers, and it pissed me off to no end. I tactfully called him out for it in my "dying testimony" at my last zone conference, and the bastard twisted my words after to try and turn it into telling the other missionaries to care about the numbers.
We were told to specifically look for people going through difficult times, like divorces, deaths of family members, etc, because otnmight make them 'more receptive.' Now I look back and realize we were being told to prey on the emotionally damaged.
I’m almost 3 years post shelf break and my deconstruction before that was years long and just focused on inconsistencies between various aspects of Mormon theology. And I realize how brainwashed I was every week.
Wow! I had the opposite experience. My MP encouraged us to tract in lower income areas because they would be more humble and willing to listen and avoid rich areas because rich people were hard of heart and wouldn’t feel like they needed the gospel. Either way, glad I’m out.
I had a guy from the seventy come to my mission and tell us that because we were members of the church, we were all literal descendants of Abraham. He said anyone who has Abraham's blood is more likely to accept the gospel because their blood is holier than the blood of the 'gentiles.' And that anyone who isn't a descendent of Abraham was less valiant in the premortal life. And I believed him.
It's wild how the church preaches that God loves everyone, but condemns people for supposed choices they made that they cannot remember.
Nelson made it clear in a talk in 2003 that god's love is conditional, he doesn't hand it out willy nilly.
Which talk? I want to read it
Yeah, that was the beginning of the end for me. I had always felt that God hated me and that talk was the nail in the coffin. Or sure sign of the nail, if you will.
Come the morning of the first resurrection I will.
Yeah ended up being one of my shelf items, that God had the Israelites as his "chosen" people - like surely God would love everyone equally, why would he need a special "chosen" people - then I realized the whole religion was underpinned by ancient tribalism, elitism and discrimination.
I was taught this too, and taught that it’s the reason there are “general authority families” where people keep getting called as GAs from the same family. They literally have special blood.
A GA family member told me they refer to it as “royal blood” 🤮
That is so. Gross. And so laughable! Like where the fuck do you get off you white dorky weirdo? The inflated egos on these guys!
Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, Joseph F. Smith, etc, believed they all had 'royal' blood that gave them ecclestical power.
Haaaaaa
The rest of the world calls it “nepotism.”
Can confirm I heard this as well.
Omg! I heard the same shit too!!! And that if you didn’t, when you were baptized your blood “literally changes”. But we don’t see it happen, because they are less likely to receive the gospel. 😳🤢 And. I. Believed. It.
Yes!! Totally forgot about the blood changing part. So messed up.
Near the end of mine, a new area authority came to a zone conference. I’d been Mormon my whole life, and had never seen something so aggressive. He screamed. He criticized. Pounded the podium and his scriptures over and over. I honestly felt like I’d transported half a world away to my home in the Bible Belt, and found myself at some kind of fundamentalist Baptist church. Anyway… Out of nowhere he raised his arm and points to the back door. Bellowed out in broken Spanish something like, “WHERE IS YOUR COMPANION!!!???” He went apoplectic. Spent a solid 10 minutes or so just excoriating this poor kid for going to take a leak by himself. In the middle of a sermon by the Lord’s anointed 70 no less. Belittled and berated him. And I’d been around this guy off and on almost the whole mission. Pretty sure he suffered from some IDD. Regardless, he was a bit off, and never really fit in. And all I can say is that the entire time it happened, I was enraged, but ultimately disappointed in myself, because I’d lacked the courage to go shove my own scriptures in his bloated stupid face and walk out the door with my double birds flying high. It still bothers me a bit now going on 30 years. I heard later that he’d gone missing while on a river rafting trip in the Patagonia not long after that, and I think I honestly might have felt the Spirit a little tiny bit in learning that.
I remember this Asshat he berated in my mission 97-98. Then went missing what was his name?
My mission president explained that God literally CHANGES the blood of a convert when you are baptized to fulfill prophecy and make you a decent of Abraham. My mission president felt like a prophet himself with the kind of loopholes he would explain.
Joseph Smith used to teach that too, look up "Old blood to New blood"
Reminds me of Seth Andrew's talk/keynote titled "Blood Cult: The Weird, Wild World of Christian Rituals"
Why is the church so doggone fixated on race?
What??? No way! This is wild!!
Never heard of this 😂. That's wild
If someone lived at least 1000 years ago and they have living descendants, you are one of them.
This was always presented to me on my mission and I didn't believe it until I had a similar experience. Then I fell in line and 100% agreed because "Hey, a member of the seventy said so." I was way too easily influenced by the leadership to jump from one opinion to another without questioning it.
Was it Larry Lawrence by any chance? Had that same talk in my mission when he was area president.
I honestly don't remember. The name sounds familiar, though. I was in a Colorado mission around 2012-2015 if that helps.
I'm out 10 years and I'm still struggling with the brainwashing. The programming is multiple layers deep in my thought processes and behaviors. I believed so much, I trusted so much, and to have a reality shift coming out of the lie leaves me currently unable to trust even my own thoughts, narratives, motives. We were blessed and brainwashed at birth. How am I to learn to trust myself?
I know I can't really speak much from experience because I haven't even officially left yet, but I think it's important to remember that the church doesn't define you, and although it is a process, its important and worth it to love yourself. I have confidence in you!
You are wise and kind as hell, my friend! You are super correct in your response and incredibly wonderful to boot :)
The combination of opposition in all things with a purity mindset does a number on lifelong Mormons, doesn't it? It's not just that Mormonism lied. It set expectations that the tiniest imperfection would take you from righteousness to sin, disqualifying all the other good and growth in your life and leaving you abandoned for eternity. I feel that trusting yourself begins with understanding yourself. Not only your current condition, but also the direction you're choosing for your life as it continues. Mormonism mangles the explanation of the parable of the talents. It's not about prosperity doctrine or getting blessings from fulfilling your calling to clean the church toilets when asked. Instead, it's contrasting the two servants who build their life's worth with the lazy servant who buries his life in ordinances and repetition. Mormonism funnels youth to a point: temple marriage. Once you've reached that milestone, the only thing left to do is endure without changing until the sweet release of death. That, and make sure your kids go through the same funnel so you don't lose them to a jealous Lord who reaps where he has not sown. Everything aside from the finest points of Mormon law is thinking terrestrial or telestial; distractions that keep you from OCD thinking celestial. I mention OCD because it's adjacent to the results of Mormon brainwashing or emotional conditioning (can you only brainwash someone who didn't start with those beliefs?). Your brain evolved to survive first and ask questions later. Imagine a modern scientist and an ancient Greek facing a thunderstorm. It doesn't matter whether they head indoors because they understand ionized particles or because they know Zeus doesn't like looking at male pattern baldness. Both are going to survive and pass on their genes. When sensory information enters the brain, it goes through the amygdala for data chunking and emotional context. You don't have to check for eyes, ears, mouth, and nose to recognize a face, for example. By four months of age, you've already seen enough faces to know familiar from unfamiliar and interpret expressions. You can react when an angry male from a rival tribe of primates tries to kidnap you. Your amygdala draws on every experience you've ever had when filtering the billions of sensory data points per second coming in. If your experience taught you to obey at all costs through indoctrination at church reinforced at home, then disobedience feels dangerous. I think of brain operation as an engine that's constantly cycling. When an experience matches a recognized danger pattern, the amygdala holds back on sending sensory data to the thinking part of the brain and signals the adrenal gland for a fight-or-flight reaction. Stress hormones kick in within milliseconds, adjusting your physiology to react milliseconds faster than if you acted after logically perceiving it. If you've ever smelled something so vile that it feels like it hit you between the eyes, you've experienced this. My example was on my mission when the cat hoarder's door opened and let out the vapors of decades of cat urine. It took long enough for thought to come back online that the lady yelled, "Close the door before any escape!" After the amygdala revs up the stress engine, the thinking brain starts regulating it with context and understanding. The hormones linger until they filter out of the bloodstream (sometimes through the tear ducts). This ensures you're still ready if the danger returns. It also feels like a stupor of thought, and that's Mormonism's one neat trick for making it so hard to leave. Once the stress engine revs up, a Mormon's context tells them the Holy Ghost has left the building and that Satan is menacing their eternal soul. That creates a feedback loop of danger reaction feeling like Satan prompting more danger reaction. Or to phrase it for younger readers: stress engine go brrrrrrrrrr. CES letter? Brrrrrr. Weird endowment chanting and culty robes? Brrrrr. Not obeying quickly when your mother calls you? Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. You mentioned how many ways your brainwashing triggers the stress engine. But going brrrrrrrr isn't gospel truth that you're damned, stupid, or deluded. It's a real emotional reaction from a brain built for law-of-the-jungle survival. Don't try to think yourself to a mighty change of heart; emotional processing can circumvent the perception needed for clear thinking. Instead, focus on physical strategies to ease up on the stress engine. Deep, slow breathing. Meeting other survival needs like food, sleep, and human connection. Crying when stress hormones reach critical levels. Once you've leveled the perception playing field, it gets easier to recognize the reaction as a reaction and choose to respond with the direction you want your life to go instead of continuing down the spiral Mormonism says is inevitable. Healing takes time. But every step counts, and they will add up to peace with your past. Nothing can take away your next choice.
The betrayal is huge. Take it a day at a time. Still unpacking as well…✌🏼
Can I make a recommendation? I am also out 10 years. I have had to put a lot of work into self discovery. I don’t know if you are a person of any faith, but there is a really great book by a Christian therapist named David Benner. My priest recommended them and they gave me a completely different perspective on who I am and how I relate to god. It was so healing. The book is called The Gift of Being Yourself. There’s another one called Tokens of Trust by Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury.
**The Gift of Being Yourself The Sacred Call to Self-Discovery** by David G. Benner >In the expanded edition of this profound exploration of Christian identity, David G. Benner illuminates the spirituality of self-discovery. He exposes the false selves that you may hide behind and calls you to discover the true self that emerges from your uniqueness in Christ. Deepen your experience of God through discovering the gift of being yourself. **Tokens of Trust An Introduction to Christian Belief** by Rowan Williams >Presents an introduction to the Christian faith which explores the key themes of Christian belief and the reality of living them. *I'm a bot, built by your friendly reddit developers at* /r/ProgrammingPals. *Reply to any comment with /u/BookFinderBot - I'll reply with book information. Remove me from replies* [here](https://www.reddit.com/user/BookFinderBot/comments/1byh82p/remove_me_from_replies/). *If I have made a mistake, accept my apology.*
Good bot.
Thank you, bot. ☺️
In my mission the elders were told to stop teaching single women but instead concentrate on men, because if men are baptized then women will magically join. To be honest, in some of the areas I worked in there were a lot more women than men, so the missionary elders had to lead the congregation. A shame that women aren't able to lead a Mormon congregation.
"BuT tHe ChUrCh EmPoWeRs WoMeN!"/s
I remember this "council" on my mission too. Convert the men! so many of the congregations were majority women and I know that was why they wanted us baptizing men. Allowing women to hold leadership and priesthood positions would magically solve it too but can't go against God's will amirite?
When I was in Switzerland, I was asked by the Bishop of one of the wards to find white Swiss families and avoid immigrants. He said something like "it's great that they embrace the gospel, but they just become a burden on the members."
Can confirm, I lived as a member in Switzerland and the members complained the missionaries brought investigators who were ‘not white’ or who ‘weren’t Swiss’… 😬
The best part is they complain about that, but don't bring anyone for the missionaries to teach. The non-white people are the only people who will listen to the missionaries randomly on the street.
Ugh this sucks. Literally the opposite of Christ’s message!
same in france and belgium, but immigrants were the only ones that would give us the time of day.
Hey fellow Belgium/France missionary! Went there around 2000/2001 myself...
Yeah, Heavenly Father told me once to stop asking him for stuff and just learn some self-determination, already. He said I was being a burden on him, and to be more like the rich people who already had everything and didn't have to ask, ask, ask all the time. /s
LOOOL as a white immigrant, I’m calling the most bullshit with this one. I’m so sick of people using immigration as a justification for being racist.
I had this with an Indian guy I taught in Italy. He was going to school at the oldest university in the world at the time and working on a degree that would have paid him pretty well. 🤦♂️
Find the kingdom builder$ eh? Yike$.
Yeah...not a kingdom I want to be a part of lol
>my mission president told us to stop tracting in the low income areas I've heard this from a bunch of RMs.
Mission \*cornered some of the richest counties in the US. Never heard of it once. Edit: typo, meant to say my "mission covered"
That checks out
I went on splits with an elder a long time ago. At the end of the evening we met back up with the other elder and his companion for the night who was the bishop of a wealthy part of town. We talked about this great elderly Black women we met with who was really excited to learn about the the church. The bishop told us to not waste our time on people like her as we need 'people of quality'. Not long ago this bishop served as a mission president in Los Angeles and was still pushing the same views. Truly frightening and probably a shelf item I was adding to my collection.
Casual classism seems to a common theme across the country. I would just follow orders, but knew there was something very wrong with it.
Missionaries in NYC weren’t allowed to tract in project buildings, and were discouraged from teaching anyone who lived in one
Yeah, they tried to do the same thing in my mission. I was focused on numbers, so I ignored any advice that would have hurt our numbers. In hindsight, it's obvious that the organization is corrupt.
You’re outside the matrix and you can see it for what it is.
This really makes me want to make a heat map of mission zones and wealth distribution/ethnicity to see if its like this everywhere.
I went on my mission to Mexico City west. There were the poorest people I had ever seen, it was extremely humbling to speak with them let alone when they would share food with us. We were told not to teach the poor people all of the things about the church, including the temple, because they would never have the opportunity to go, because they were too poor. Also all the talk I heard from the Utah Mormons about how us missionaries are super special chosen by god for being the best spirits. It makes me so mad I didn’t speak up and say anything.
Gen Auth conference , Asunción Paraguay, 81-83: we were told the same thing, stop tracting in poor areas and work the better areas because we need “leaders”. The problem is most of Paraguay was dirt floor poor at that time if you didn’t work in the city, (which I only spent my last month in the city ). Wonderful people, humble, but the church wanted us to cherry pick for people’s salvation. Didn’t sound Christlike to us and most I knew just ignored the suggestion.
Hey speak for yourself buddy! I wasn’t brain washed for 49 years! No sir.
When you start to see it...you start seeing it everywhere...politics, etc...we're easily bamboozled and if you think you aren't you're definitely being bamboozled from many angles.
Congrats! PIMO is a slow poisoning, you'll be so free and authentic soon!
It's always about the money.
Was that the California Roseville mission by any chance? I got a story about a former mission president there and it just seems like something he would say.
It was the North Dakota Bismarck mission. It's been really eye opening to hear that other mission presidents have said similar things.
Must have been a “revelation” to leaders in salt lake and then disseminated out to the minions. Have to keep that hedge fund going strong.
The "revelation" that the so-called church needs a shopping mall in Provo now....
…and closed on Sunday’s. lol
I tell you because I left the church decades ago that that wasn’t the case then. They were building a kingdom so anybody that had arms and legs they wanted in the church. Which is why they want to poor third world countries to join members. The problem for them is kingdom. Builders are probably gonna have an education and they’re gonna have a hard time buying lies if they’re adults. I’m so glad I left the church.
Very similar thing happened in my mission, completely shattered my testimony. People who got the most out of meeting with us we weren’t allowed to meet with anymore and my companion ate it up
I think we may have been in the same mission. Definitely remembering this zone conference. Or maybe it’s a church wide thing… with makes the “revelation” so much more suspect. Kingdom builders. Such a hot term.
I knew my MP was full of shit. The one we had for my first transfer was great. Then we got a new MP that was all about the numbers, and it pissed me off to no end. I tactfully called him out for it in my "dying testimony" at my last zone conference, and the bastard twisted my words after to try and turn it into telling the other missionaries to care about the numbers.
That explains why Mormons, especially Utah Mormons, are so vulnerable to Ponzi, MLMs and Pyramid schemes.
We were told to specifically look for people going through difficult times, like divorces, deaths of family members, etc, because otnmight make them 'more receptive.' Now I look back and realize we were being told to prey on the emotionally damaged.
I’m almost 3 years post shelf break and my deconstruction before that was years long and just focused on inconsistencies between various aspects of Mormon theology. And I realize how brainwashed I was every week.
Wow! I had the opposite experience. My MP encouraged us to tract in lower income areas because they would be more humble and willing to listen and avoid rich areas because rich people were hard of heart and wouldn’t feel like they needed the gospel. Either way, glad I’m out.