dahlia

I'd wear pants on purpose from now on, just to annoy him and let him know he can't tell me what to do - but thats just me!

@Just_A_Guy my only experience about wearing pants came from a YW President. 
I was like 14 and it was seminary graduation. I was so excited because they asked me weeks in advance to offer the opening prayer. When I reached the stake center, I saw my name printed on the program etc. I was beyond nervous but very happy! Everything was going well until they called my name to offer the prayer.
I slowly approached the pulpit...the Stake YW President saw me, came to me and quietly said: "Suzie, you cannot offer the prayer because you're wearing pants" and then she sat down while talking to other leaders and choosing someone else to pray. I stood there not knowing exactly what to do and I quietly sat down while everyone was just staring at me. It made me feel like I have done something wrong and of course, at that age, concerned that others would think I wasn't worthy to offer the prayer.
When they called someone else to pray, all I did was to look at my name printed on that program...
Mind you, I was wearing some really, really nice dress pants....

I did my dissertation work on managers and their immediate staff in Seattle's City Hall. I can tell you that I was so impressed with the work ethic of everyone I met. I'm from DC and very familiar with the type of person who works in DC's City Hall. It's night and day. Seattlites are actually proud of what they do and want to help the citizens. Folks in DC could care less. They get their check whether you're in line for 4 hours or 40 minutes. Trust me, I went in expecting a bunch of clock-watchers, but everyone was just the opposite.
You are correct that one of the fears I heard repeatedly was doing something that might wind up in the papers. : ) 
eta - I miss Seattle; it was a lovely place to live, but it's gone downhill and gotten too expensive at the same time. I had thought about going back to that area to live, but not now.

Strangely enough, I say yes. I never had them until I had some missionaries help me with a move. One of them asked for a pizza with pineapple, a request that was almost enough to make me barf. But, being the adventurous soul that I am, once I got it home, I took a piece and really liked it!

So I was watching a documentary showing Roosevelt getting sworn in and I wondered, when taking office or swearing in court, what do Mormons swear on? The Bible? The Book of Mormon? A Quad? 
Could you swear on the BOM?
Do Mormons take oaths?
 

Girls? You mean women? And every woman who goes to work, tries to tell a doctor who thinks she's 'imagining' her symptoms, or is told she shouldn't do this or that because she is a 'girl' is affected by feminism.

I'm not leaving  (and I had completely forgotten the story about the misspelled name. It happens so frequently to me that I wouldn't be speaking to anyone if I let it bother me.  I was just saying, I see how people leave over what seems like minor things to other people. 
I certainly see how people become less active. 
If you had heard the Brother's tone, you might have felt differently. I don't know what he does for a living or what kind of people he's used to speaking to, but he needs to get a grip. If he had said, "Is there something else you can do?" I wouldn't have taken any offense at all. That, to me, would be a logical, inclusive, kind of question. But 'explain'?  Heck no. 

I will try to be civil when I see this brother next. Humble may take more effort than I am willing to give. 
I hate to go down this path, but when stuff like this happens, I have to ask myself, "Would he ask a man this? Would he ask a white man this? Why are you asking me these questions?" Not everything is gender or race related, but then a lot is and sometimes you have to call people on their garbage.
My stepfather was a litigator. One day he won an especially large settlement and the judge actually asked him, "What are you going to do with all that money?" Wha????  White litigators pull in big money all the time, but no one asks them what they going to do with their fee.  Yeah, you have to be watchful, because people can get up to all kinds of shenanigans. 

I have done this twice before and after 5-6 years in the ward, don't recall ever being asked more than once to do it. Now it's not only 3x, but 3x w/n 5 months! Enough already!  And I already do what I can do. The repetitive motion stuff like vacuuming is out; I do the dusting, but it is repetitive enough, given the amount of space to cover. We have a young ward with many families with multiple kids. They come through and have multiple people working on the family's 1 task while I have to do all of my work myself. I've had it. 

This is why you just let people tell you what they have to say and move on. He had no right to ask me to explain myself. BTW - I'm a lapsed lawyer (changed careers). I reallllly know enough not to ask if someone has passed the bar or gotten a job 'yet.'  I think some people were raised in barns. 

So, my name (misspelled) showed up in the bulletin for the 3rd time to help clean the church. I did it the first time, but not the 2nd. As it turns out, the brother in charge of cleaning schedules was standing in the foyer. To be polite, I told him I wasn't going to come. He asked me, "Can you explain?"  What? OK, fine. I did it once. That's my commitment. I have to take an arthritis med before and after I do that assignment and I just don't feel like bringing on pain in order to clean the church. 
I walk toward the door, and I'm so hot I turn around and go back. "I've already done it once, "I repeated. Then he says he's done it four times. I am supposed to be shamed into compliance? Did he expect me just to roll over and say I'll show up? I'm 64. I don't need to explain myself to some white man about why I do or don't do something. 
No one told me I'd have to be a maid to the Church when I joined. And people wonder why folks become less active.
 

So, my name (misspelled) showed up in the bulletin for the 3rd time to help clean the church. I did it the first time, but not the 2nd. As it turns out, the brother in charge of cleaning schedules was standing in the foyer. To be polite, I told him I wasn't going to come. He asked me, "Can you explain?"  What? OK, fine. I did it once. That's my commitment. I have to take an arthritis med before and after I do that assignment and I just don't feel like bringing on pain in order to clean the church. 
I walk toward the door, and I'm so hot I turn around and go back. "I've already done it once, "I repeated. Then he says he's done it four times. I am supposed to be shamed into compliance? Did he expect me just to roll over and say I'll show up? I'm 64. I don't need to explain myself to some white man about why I do or don't do something. 
No one told me I'd have to be a maid to the Church when I joined. And people wonder why folks become less active.
 

With Sid Vicious singing 'My Way' as I rise from the grave.

With Sid Vicious singing 'My Way' as I rise from the grave.

Will my resurrected body be shaved?  Hairstyled?  Manscaped?  Toenails trimmed neatly?  Nose hair carefully clipped?
We modify our bodies in dozens of ways.

This feed is old but if someone finds it I wanted to clarify the men's and women's garments question. The garment is not specifically male or female and can be worn by either sex. I wear men's bottoms because they are vastly more comfortable than women's bottoms. My male friend went to the garment store and requested spandex bottoms, at the time they were only available in women's and that is what they offered him and told him he could buy one pair and see if they worked for him. 
The women's have a seam straight up the butt crack and all the extra fabric climbs up and digs in. It causes chaffing and irritates any hemorrhoid and I suspect causes them. There were some changes made around 2015/16 that didn't actually make garments fit the human body any better but did give more options. The new DryLux men's bottoms have a weird butt seams three inches apart that go up either side of the crack, the extra fabric gives the men an opportunity to enjoy the same wedgie all the women endure but with two seams. Fun times! 
I seriously wonder if the people who design garments have ever seen the human anatomy. 

I have done this twice before and after 5-6 years in the ward, don't recall ever being asked more than once to do it. Now it's not only 3x, but 3x w/n 5 months! Enough already!  And I already do what I can do. The repetitive motion stuff like vacuuming is out; I do the dusting, but it is repetitive enough, given the amount of space to cover. We have a young ward with many families with multiple kids. They come through and have multiple people working on the family's 1 task while I have to do all of my work myself. I've had it. 

So, my name (misspelled) showed up in the bulletin for the 3rd time to help clean the church. I did it the first time, but not the 2nd. As it turns out, the brother in charge of cleaning schedules was standing in the foyer. To be polite, I told him I wasn't going to come. He asked me, "Can you explain?"  What? OK, fine. I did it once. That's my commitment. I have to take an arthritis med before and after I do that assignment and I just don't feel like bringing on pain in order to clean the church. 
I walk toward the door, and I'm so hot I turn around and go back. "I've already done it once, "I repeated. Then he says he's done it four times. I am supposed to be shamed into compliance? Did he expect me just to roll over and say I'll show up? I'm 64. I don't need to explain myself to some white man about why I do or don't do something. 
No one told me I'd have to be a maid to the Church when I joined. And people wonder why folks become less active.
 

So, my name (misspelled) showed up in the bulletin for the 3rd time to help clean the church. I did it the first time, but not the 2nd. As it turns out, the brother in charge of cleaning schedules was standing in the foyer. To be polite, I told him I wasn't going to come. He asked me, "Can you explain?"  What? OK, fine. I did it once. That's my commitment. I have to take an arthritis med before and after I do that assignment and I just don't feel like bringing on pain in order to clean the church. 
I walk toward the door, and I'm so hot I turn around and go back. "I've already done it once, "I repeated. Then he says he's done it four times. I am supposed to be shamed into compliance? Did he expect me just to roll over and say I'll show up? I'm 64. I don't need to explain myself to some white man about why I do or don't do something. 
No one told me I'd have to be a maid to the Church when I joined. And people wonder why folks become less active.
 

So, in my ward, the Teachers Quorum is assigned the task of coming up with the Cleaning Schedule.  My son was the only Teacher in our ward for almost a year.  So he had the sole responsibility of the Cleaning Schedule.  I know FOR A FACT how hard it is to come up with a Cleaning Schedule.  People decline, people don't respond, people commit but not show up... it was starting to look like we have all these awesome people in the ward yet we can only count on the same 10 people to do everything outside of regular church callings - calling on volunteers to to help with a move, set up and clean up for a ward activity, make meals for a sick member, and yes, clean the ward building too.  So, for that almost-a-year period, we ended up cleaning the ward building at least once a month because my son just couldn't find anybody else.  Sad, huh?

I'm on dietdoctor out of curiosity. It is low carb, but definitely, with all the meat, not low cholesterol.  Veganism/vegetarianism will get to the low cholesterol, and you can do low carb if you need to go that way.  A little harder (I'm diabetic, so I know from carbs), but it can be done.
I don't know why you've been asked to go low carb, but I will say that many diabetic ve*gans eat carbs and are OK. Some of my lowest blood sugars are when all I eat are potatoes.

So, my name (misspelled) showed up in the bulletin for the 3rd time to help clean the church. I did it the first time, but not the 2nd. As it turns out, the brother in charge of cleaning schedules was standing in the foyer. To be polite, I told him I wasn't going to come. He asked me, "Can you explain?"  What? OK, fine. I did it once. That's my commitment. I have to take an arthritis med before and after I do that assignment and I just don't feel like bringing on pain in order to clean the church. 
I walk toward the door, and I'm so hot I turn around and go back. "I've already done it once, "I repeated. Then he says he's done it four times. I am supposed to be shamed into compliance? Did he expect me just to roll over and say I'll show up? I'm 64. I don't need to explain myself to some white man about why I do or don't do something. 
No one told me I'd have to be a maid to the Church when I joined. And people wonder why folks become less active.
 

So, my name (misspelled) showed up in the bulletin for the 3rd time to help clean the church. I did it the first time, but not the 2nd. As it turns out, the brother in charge of cleaning schedules was standing in the foyer. To be polite, I told him I wasn't going to come. He asked me, "Can you explain?"  What? OK, fine. I did it once. That's my commitment. I have to take an arthritis med before and after I do that assignment and I just don't feel like bringing on pain in order to clean the church. 
I walk toward the door, and I'm so hot I turn around and go back. "I've already done it once, "I repeated. Then he says he's done it four times. I am supposed to be shamed into compliance? Did he expect me just to roll over and say I'll show up? I'm 64. I don't need to explain myself to some white man about why I do or don't do something. 
No one told me I'd have to be a maid to the Church when I joined. And people wonder why folks become less active.
 

Are these scripture challenges mandatory? Can you just ignore the challenge and just keep reading the scriptures you choose?
M.

As a former Catholic, I learned my Catechism, not the Bible. So, there were a lot of times when the missionaries would tell me something, and in the back of my  mind, I'd think - y'all have got to be fooling - then I'd find out it was right from the Bible. This is one reason why I believe the Church is true - every time I doubted, the missionaries were able to point to the Bible and show me where a belief or practice came from. Cool.
Well, I've been asked to give a short talk on Christ's mercy and was looking up some relevant scripture. Earlier this evening I was reading a thread here about being cast into outer darkness. "Outer darkness" was another one of these phrases that I thought the LDS had made up. So, imagine my surprise when I read, "but the sons of the kingdom will be cast out into the outer darkness." Matthew 8:5-13   Wait - 'Outer darkness' is in the Bible??? You mean Joseph Smith didn't make it up?  I love it when this happens to me. I've read the BOM a few times. Maybe for 2018 my goal should be to read the Bible. I might learn something.