slipknot

Moksha, jadams and everyone else. This has now been resolved. I stated in the first post about my confusion and my hurt and above all that I am lost. My wife and I are no longer lost. We had a nice visitor today who told us that we didn't do anything wrong, that we are loved and that we are wanted back in Church. We were strengthened with words and a powerful prayer from someone who genuinely cares about us. Heavenly Father gets things right not only in the end, but also sometimes in the middle.

Ok, great advice. @loudmouth mormon: I didn't go to the police. I contacted another priesthood holder and we took it to the branch president who is an attorney for his advice on how to proceed. We also contacted the Elder's Quorum president. The EQ President told us to delete everything off our computer and we did. Any crime that happened is not in this jurisdiction(or even country) so there is nothing that the police could do anyways. I was advised by the branch presidency not to tell anyone this, not even the school principal where this man teaches. Again, legal implications mean my hands are tied, especially since the BP, an attorney, contacted the school to discuss this with them..... @missing something: I have a very strong testimony as to the truth of the Gospel. I know that Joseph Smith was and is a prophet of God. I know that he saw the Father and the Son in the flesh. I know that the Book of Mormon is scripture. I know the gospel has been restored and that this Church is Christ's church. I have an equally strong testimony about the bible and the prophets from the Bible. I joined the Church because the simple truths of the Bible were supported by the simple truths of the Book of Mormon and vice versa. I joined the Church because of the Restored Gospel. @FairChild: Thanks. I wish I had read your message before Church. This is a long week. We didn't go again today. Maybe next week. I analyze things way too much and that is my problem. I know it. I just wish that the BP would have taken two steps back from involvement when he realized that two members had a dispute and that anything he could do would just exasperate the situation. Instead, he has escalated things. He seems so focused on getting these two back to repentance that he is willing to push my family out of the Church just to get it to happen. I can only look at the actions to decide what he wants. If my family being out of the church will help these two come to a full repentance then my family will oblige.

Well, Heavenly Father has taken care of the branch presidency. There will be a new one next Sunday, probably. That's why I am struggling. I feel a certain way but can't properly express it towards any one or any thing. I am so conflicted and confused. I didn't join the LDS Church because I stopped believing in the bible. I joined the Mormon Church because other churches weren't properly following the bible. If I am a fair person, then I will hold the LDS church to the same standards I hold other churches to. It's only fair. If the branch here is not following the bible and Book of Mormon, then ..... I might also state that this man who started all of these problems is the stepson of some important attorney in SLC(or so he says). I don't know if there is some favoritism being shown to him because of his station or not.

I am at a loss right now and frankly I am lost, big time. My wife and I have been members for a little more than a year. This means that we are fairly new in the church. Right now things look like a huge cluster.... so I frankly don't even know where to start. I know only a few things, like my wife and I are offended by the local leadership of the church big time, but I am not really angry at any single member of the leadership. I don't want to go back to church and neither does my wife. It's not because our testimony is any less but rather, well I don't know. I do know that over time our testimony for the truth will decrease and I don't want that. If I could sum up my feelings, I feel like I have been stabbed in the back. I feel like I have taken on the devil, asked for help from fellow church members and I got stabbed in the back by the leadership. I feel disgusted. Maybe it's time for some details instead of justing talking about what I feel, even though I know this has little to do with the events and details and much more to do with how we feel. Ok, about a month and a half, a life long member right from Utah arrived in our branch in a far away land. No one else wanted to help him so I did. I helped him find a place to live and helped arrange paperwork for his wife to join him. Throughout it all, I dealt with his extreme negativity. Never have I seen such negativity in my life. He also insulted my family's very meager and humble home as beneath him. Despite it all, I felt helping was the right thing to do. My helping also meant that I let him use the family computer to check his email and the like. After he left(after four days in the house all day), my kids go on the computer to play their educational games. As they clicked, they accidentally went into his email account and had pulled up a porn picture of this man's wife having sex with another man. I got my kids away from the computer and then I realized there was a problem. I checked to see if it was a fluke or not and when I realized that this man was distributing pornography, I realized there was a problem at hand. (The email that took the cake was the one who sent of him at General Conference, in the conference center, and then right below it in the email was a picture of his wife masturbating) Anyways, I didn't know what to do so I called a long time member friend on the phone and asked for his advice. He said to wait and he'd come over and then we could know what to do. When we took a look, we realized that they were into sadomasochism, sex with underage(under 18) girls, and other very gross and disgusting things. The wife, a member of 5 years, was the instigator of much of it as was determined from the emails. We reported this to the branch president and this should have been the end of it. The branch president brought them in and had a long talk with them and all of that. Frankly, it didn't pertain to me so the only important thing is that they were getting the help they needed to get to repentance. The BP told me that they would convening a disciplinary council and I was like, that's not important for me to know. Anyways, a few weeks later, the wife of a good friend of ours came over to stay and we helped her rent in the same hotel this couple was staying in. She needed to be there 3 weeks before her husband arrived and he asked me to watch over, not only that I sponsored her for her visa with the idea that I would be responsible for her. Anyways, this couple started bothering her and my friend wanted to know what was up- with the couple. I advised him of the behavior they were engaging in. At this point he was scared for his wife and asked me to go to his wife and ask her to call him right then and there so he could explain things to her. Cool. I took my two kids over there to the place and went to talk to her to have her call her husband. They were there and I told the woman, look your husband needs to call you right now, it's an emergency and you need to be alone when you talk to him. They left and followed me out and started questioning me and the like. After several belligerent remarks ignored, they were becoming angry as to why I asked them to leave the room. I was at the bottom of the stairs and they were at the top at this point, but I finally had enough and I knew I wouldn't lie. I told them look, it's not appropriate for you two to be spending time alone with a woman away from her husband. The wife flipped her lid and came bounding down the stairs yelling at me about how bad of a member I was and how she was going to tell the branch president on me. I kept walking out of the hotel and by time I got out of it, the husband had gotten ahead of me, threw off his backpack, yelled "you fat piece of sh*t" and proceeded to take a swing at me. I had my 7 year old son in one hand and my 5 year old son in another. I walked around them and kept walking towards the road and these people kept right after us screaming all forms of obscenities and general scary my kids. We finally got away and about an hour later, the branch president tried to contact me. I callled him back not expecting very much to deal with. I told him my side of the story and then he asked to meet me the next day and I said sure. I didn't expect that I would be the bad guy, but I was labeled the bad guy. At the meeting the next day, I was told that I should do this and that and this. I was like ok. On Sunday she bore her testimony about how to be friendly to other people like she is and all a bunch of other hypocriticals things. Anyways after f&t meeting I was called into the BP office to once again talk about all of this. I told them straight up that I was tired of the hypocrisy and they once again told me that I was in the wrong for warning my friend about this. I feel like I am completely in the right because if they had been behaving appropirately either before or after they went into the BP then none of this would have happen. I was upset that I was being blamed. Fast forward to the next Wednesday, we worked at the same school and my kids were in school and this guy scared them badly. I took them by the hand and told them, don't worry about him, Daddy is here. The guy flipped out and said that I was lying to my kids. I said, wait a second, my kids wouldn't be scared of you if you and your wife hadn't done what you did. He said, I am going to tell the branch president on you. (You can stop laughing now) Anyways, I have to talk to the branch president once again. He tells me that I need to apologize to this couple and I think about it. These people come into my home with their pornography, they insult me, they hurt my kids and then I need to apologize. I have no problem forgiving them and i have done it already, but I have nothing to apologize for. But this wouldnt be an issue if I didn't feel like they have made me out to be the bad guy. Anyways, the next day my wife talked to the branch president and he told her 3 lies about me. These were lies my wife knew weren't true. We decided not to go to church on Sunday. On Sunday afternoon, the BP and EQ President stopped by the house. I confronted them about the lies, one of which involved the EQ President himself. Come to find out, the BP was caught out in the lie(I think he was just misinformed and passed it along as if it was the truth). Fast forward to Friday of this week. The guy is getting let go from his work because of several issues and the BP wanted to talk to the principal about this. Since the BP thinks that I had something to do with it, I am paranoid enough to think that he will talk about me. The altercation and the subsequent activities did not need to involve the branch presidency and the branch presidency doesn't need to be taking sides. And this is where I stand today. My wife doesn't want to ever go back to this branch. I don't want to and this is bad for my family. I am at a loss. I feel really bad because my wife was sustained a little over a month ago as primary president and now she doesn't even want to continue. I feel like Satan has attacked my family and the church leadership helped Satan along. I have no idea what to do. Any advice is appreciated.