LilyBelle00

This is so true. We were in the Nauvoo temple a few weeks ago for our endowments and sealing. When we were done and walked out it was pouring rain. It sounds like such a little thing, but it was almost shocking to us from being in such a peaceful, quiet, spiritual place to out in a rain storm. It probably took us a few hours to come back down after being in the temple all that time. We seemed to be a little off kilter. The temples are also filled with the nicest people you will ever meet. Ever. I can't imagine being that sweet and helpful all day long.

1. Become a SAHM 2. Pay off debts 3. Buy new, bigger house 4. Send money to close family members (that I like) 5. Split money into accounts for schooling, emergencies, vacations, so on. 6. Have (or adopt) more children!!!

My husband and I were just recently sealed in the temple (June 29th!) and we are keeping our civil marriage pictures up. They are right next to the 8 x 10 of us and the kids in our whites in front of the temple. :) I wouldn't even have thought to take our pictures down.

I went a really long time without unfriending anyone and accepting nearly everyone. I'm still not very picky about who I accept but I have no qualms about deleting people now. The first person I unfriended was a former coworker fom years ago. He always seemed fairly nice and normal....until the election. All day, every day there was some sort of ugly political post. He hated Obama.... He hated Romney. I was annoyed but I thought I'd hang on until after the election. Then he started posting about how Mormons aren't Christians and blah blah. I calmly and nicely thought I'd correct him and let him know that I was LDS and he proceeded to bombard my page with post about how the BoM was a lie and and anti Mormon videos. So he was deleted quickly. Then I deleted another old coworker for extremely foul language. Every post was vulgar. I also deleted my sister in law and her daughter. Every time I posted something they would read too much into it and call my mother in law (who doesn't have fb) and she'd call me asking what was going on. It was crazy. I'm not one of those annoying people who post vague statuses either. I would post something like "it's just me and the kids hanging out tonight" and my mother in law would call me and ask if my husband and I were fighting. Or a coworker would post something on my wall about work and my mother in law would call me asking what was going on. She didn't even have FB!! It just got creepy to me that my sister in law was watching my page and reporting everything to my mother in law. Like 3 minutes after I unfriended them my husband's phone was blowing up by everyone wanting to know why I had deleted them. Weirdos.

I've always felt a little ashamed over the whole polygamy thing. I didn't really understand it and never really had a chance to since it's not really talked about. If someone asked me about it, I would just kind of mumble something about how it was practiced a long time ago but not anymore. My feelings changed just a few weeks ago. I found out that my poor husband, after being a member of the church for 10 years, for some reason was under the impression that the men married multiple wives just to help them out financially and around the house. He seriously believed this whole time that the marriages were in name only and never consummated. He didn't realize how many wives some of them had and he never knew that any children had come out of these marriages. To be fair, he had been a member for 10 years but we had been inactive for about as long. When I broke the news to him, he was upset. He's very moral when it comes to marriage and he couldn't get it out of his head that it was somehow "cheating" and wrong. In the process of trying to explain it to him and defend it, I feel like it suddenly became more clear to me. There's no way that our church would be what it is today without polygamy. A woman can only have so many children, but a man can father hundreds. Polygamy built up our church's numbers better than anything else could. I feel like maybe that was God's helping hand and after we had our numbers, He decided to let us build on missionary work alone. I really feel like polygamy built our foundation and after it was no longer needed, it was taken away. I'm very thankful for our early polygamy! As for the age thing.... Meh. It doesn't matter to me. It was done back then. We might shudder at the thought but apparently she didn't. It's a mistake to try to put our thoughts and feelings into something that happened so long ago.

To me, your friend is kind of an example of happiness through ignorance. She is happy because she believes that she'll be with her children after this life is over. She is ignorant to the fact that she needs to accept the gospel for that to happen. Ignorance doesn't make someone stupid or sinful, it just means that they don't know something. The word gets used as an insult all the time but in this case I don't think of it that way. I do believe that your friend is legitimately happy, but would she be right now if she knew the truth about needing to accept the gospel? If she passed away tomorrow and learned that she would not be with her children unless someone did the work for her, would she still be happy?

My husband and I just received our endowments a couple of days ago. We were also sealed together with our children! :) This was in Nauvoo. In my experience.... It wasn't anything that "freaked me out" or made me question the church in any way.....but I did think it was a little odd. It seems like they could find a better way to tell the story. I would have been more comfortable just listening to someone talk. The other stuff didn't bother me, really. It was different but I expected it to be. The sealing was lovely. My children looked amazing. My 2 year old daughter was sleeping when they carried her in and she looked like a little angel all dressed in white. My 4 year old son walked straight up to us and spread his arms out and said "look mommy daddy, I'm dressed like Jesus Christ." That caused some giggles in the room. Everyone was amazingly nice and helpful. I was so nervous going in but once inside it was very peaceful. We met the temple president and he was friendly and very funny. He was teasing other temple workers and making little jokes. I only wish that we would have spent more time in the celestial room. It was pretty crowded and all the seats were taken so there was standing room only. We stood there for a minute and everyone was asking us if we felt different... I think I nodded but I was kind of foggy at this point because I had been up since 4am and had been fasting. I was kind of in a daze. Then a temple worker came to us and told us that when we were ready we could go into the sealing room and my husband said lets go. He was excited to get to that part. I don't think we spent two minutes in the celestial room, honestly. I would have liked to sit down and think for a few minutes in there. My husband is already making plans for us to go the the St Louis temple in a couple of months.

Nope. No fits were thrown. The YW president and her counselors were there and it was previously approved by the bishop. I think it was because of the way it was done. It wasn't a bunch of girls giggling over sex talk. It was a sit down serious talk.

I agree. In fact I get slightly annoyed when people sat things about Mormons being "scared" of sex. It's just more of a private matter. Most people don't see it that way anymore. You should hear some of the awful graphic (and some times funny) things I hear at work! I don't talk to everyone I know about my finances.... Trust me, I'm not afraid of money!!! When I was in YW, we had a Wednesday night activity where the YW pres told all of us girls to write questions about sex, marriage, child birth, and the like on little strips of paper. Then she put them all in a hat and pulled them out and answered them one by one. :) It was a little awkward and embarrassing but it was also something that I'll never forget. The YW president was a very quiet, reserved lady and I know it must have been uncomfortable for her, but she was the one who arranged it because she thought it was important for us.

When I was a kid we had the missionaries over and served something with tomatoes in it. One of the missionaries was discreetly trying to pick them out. My mom said something about it, not being mean, just asked if he didn't like tomatoes and he went on this big long lecture about how "In Utah, the church headquarters, they teach that the tomato is the fruit of the devil because of the plumpness and red color." And so on and so on.... Of course he was only kidding but he had us kids' rapt attention at first. Lol. I'm a really picky eater. I'll eat any fruit or vegetable but I don't like eggs or most meats. I just try not to eat over at anyone's house unless I know what they are making. Otherwise I just choke it down and don't ask for seconds. WoW is completely different.

I'm really sorry to hear that. I've been feeling sorry for myself all day because I didn't get the promotion that I wanted, but I guess it could be a lot worse. Best of luck.

I have a hard time understanding some of the reasons listed here. Also when I first read the quote about sin being the reason people quit attending church, I was offended. But as I read the excuses for not going to church, I started rethinking it. Wouldn't it be a sin to quit coming to church because you envy other members' physical looks or financial status? Even if it's not envy, wouldn't it be a sin to let something so worldly keep you from renewing your covenants and serving in the church? Wouldn't it be a sin to leave the church because you can't forgive someone who offended you? Are we supposed to go to church because we like all the people there or are we supposed to go because we love and obey The Lord? I know that there are the occasional legitimate reasons to stop attending (health and some cases work) but I would say 90% are just excuses. We have two families in our branch (twig) that have recently stopped attending. Both because they got offended by another member. It's just so sad to me. One guy stood up to give a talk and instead announced that he was leaving the church because he heard that someone else said something about him. Another family quit coming because their teenage son got caught stealing and the branch president told him that he couldn't pass sacrament... That was too harsh apparently. All of this is coming from someone who was inactive for almost 10 years. I know about excuses.

When I first came back to church I was so unsettled by how many people had their phones out. Then I found out about the LDS library app and felt a little better. I still, personally, feel weird even using that at church. I feel like I need to announce that I'm reading scriptures and nothing else. I guess maybe it's because I took a 10 year break from the church but the cell phones and iPads at church really bug me. We have a nursery teacher that would sit in nursery and play games and look at Facebook the entire time she was with the kids. If you were in the room for some reason (crying baby, diaper change) she'd show you all the funny stuff she was looking at. It was crazy to me that she didn't realize how inappropriate that was. I bring my phone and ipad to church but they are not for playing games. I don't even let my children play with them during church. I write my talks on my ipad and my husband uses it to give the YM lessons. I hope that when the time comes for my children to have their own phones that I keep my rules pretty strict.

We had a stake activity last night about family history. They talked about how to use the familysearch.org website and it got me wanting to try it. I did quite a bit a few years ago but I haven't touched it since then. So I started putting names in and matching relatives. I started working on my husband's family and of course I was having to enter in everyone since he's the only member in his family. Suddenly I put in his great grandparents names and they popped up. Along with his great greats. They've had their temple work done!!! The same person has been doing all the temple work for that side of the family. My husband has always felt a little lonely being the only member in his family but he must have some distant relative who's an active temple going member! That made me cry. I was so excited to tell him that. I found some other distant relatives of his that had their work done in the 1890s! :) I do have a question though. Is there any way to contact the person who is doing the temple work? His great grandparents' work was done just early this year. I think it would be neat for my husband to find out who this person is and hear their story.

I agree that it seems tacky. If you are going to do something big like that, you should plan ahead and have the funds saved. I can see the couple letting it be known (tastefully) that they are taking a trip and then letting friends or wedding guests give cash in lieu of presents just to help out on their trip or make it a little more comfortable. I know a couple who adopted a little boy from Russia last year and they asked for donations to cover the adoption and travel expenses. Some people donated generously and others that it was wrong of them to ask for money. I was on the fence about it. On one hand adoption is a wonderful, beautiful thing and I would fully support it. On the other hand, these people are not short on money and they were taking it from people who had much less. Since the adoption they have taken several vacations and trips. They recently just came back from two weeks in Hawaii...

LilyBelle is my daughter's nickname. My name (Leah) was taken. :) I really was just curious about what made non members seek out and join a Mormon forum. I can see coming to read the posts to learn more and even logging in to ask some questions, it's just odd to me that so many stick around and stay. Not odd in a bad way, just something that I don't really understand. It makes me wonder what response I'd get if I joined a cat forum with the introductory post "Don't care much for cats but I have a couple of dogs..." Lol. :) PC, you were that main person I was worried about offending! I knew you were a moderator and a well respected poster here. I enjoy reading your posts.

Yeah, I don't mind it... I just think it's odd. I do understand about making friendships online. I have a group of online friends who I've known longer than my husband. In the group there are people of all different backgrounds and beliefs....but we met on a common interest forum and got to know each other there. I'll freely admit that I join a lot of forums. My husband makes fun of me for it. He even tried to sign me into a forum for people addicted to forums. One of my dogs is a Havanese so I'm a member of a Havanese forum, my other dog is an Olde English Bulldogge so I'm a member of a bully breeds forum. I recently adopted two parakeets so of course I joined a small bird forum... Then there's the tropical fish forum. Not to mention a couple of parenting forums......a crochet forum.... This is probably why I fall into just being an annoying lurker, because I don't have the time or energy to keep up with all my forums. Anyway, my point is that I have never before seen a forum that people joined just to disagree with the members. No one who hates dogs joins a dog forum.

I haven't posted anything in a while, mostly just come to the forum every week or so to read through some of the posts. :) Every since I first joined the forum I have wanted to ask: Why are there so many non Mormons here? It seems like there are several atheists, agnostics, and other denominations. Why? This is an LDS forum, correct? I don't mind of course, everyone should be welcome here and I'm glad they are. I'm sure some members like the back and forth and different perspectives from non members. I can definitely see someone of a different faith (or no faith) coming here to learn more about the LDS church but I do find it a little odd that so many choose to join the forum and stick around just to occasionally say "I don't agree with you". I would never feel the urge to join a Catholic forum just to argue with Catholics. I want to add that I know there are several well respected non LDS members here. Certainly more well known and respected than myself! I promise that I'm not trying to cause any offense to them. I'm just genuinely curious. :)

I haven't read all the replies but I just wanted to share my husband's experience. When he was 17 he was seeing a girl who was 15. This was before I met him and years before he joined the church. It wasn't looked at as a big deal, really. They had known each other for awhile and their parents were friendly with each other. My husband had always been welcomed into the girl's home. They weren't technically dating... My husband was just a dumb 17 year old who thought he was in love and the girl was just a dumb 15 year old who was just realizing that sex got her stuff from boys. She was messing around with other boys and he knew it. Teenage drama. Her parents, like you said, knew she was wild but were in denial about what was going on. Anyway, one day she was at a party and a guy there was giving her alcohol and one thing led to another... Afterwards she called my husband to come get her. He drove to the place she was and ended up in a fist fight with the guy. The cops were called and the fight was broke up. The girl was taken home. Everything seemed fine. A couple days later my husband got arrested at his job. Apparently when the police took the girl home her parents demanded to know what was going on and how many people she had been with and who. Then they called the police with a list of names. My husband was charged with all sorts of disgusting crimes because of this and all they had done was have sex a couple times. He spent a weekend in jail and his parents had to post bail. He went to court several times only for it to be postponed repeatedly. The lawyer said it was because they had no proof of anything and just wanted to make an example out of some of the guys because this sort of thing was happening a lot. He was still in high school. It was really hard on him because his name had been in the paper listing these charges. Her name and age wasn't printed so it just said things like "minor" and "child". He was on house arrest when I met him. Imagine trying to convince a girl to date you after all that! Luckily after three long years everything was dropped. So yes, people get into big trouble for a lot less! It's a big deal! My husband is the greatest man I've ever met! We have two beautiful children and he's respected in the church. I'm so thankful that this wasn't able to ruin his life. He made a stupid mistake when he was young but he learned a big lesson from it and shares it often with others who seem to be making the same mistake. Your son needs to realize that the consequences of this can be huge.

Thanks. Yeah, there's never been much respect there. I think it comes from the fact that my husband's older sister is a deadbeat and his parents practically raised her daughter. They go a bit to far with their "advice". It's actually gotten much better though in the last couple years. I understand exposing your children to guns and teaching them gun safety while they're young. Our main issue was the fact that they gave him a real gun and told him it was a toy and ok to play with. It seems like it would be confusing to him if he ever did come across a real gun. Btw, beefche, every time my 2 year old sees your avatar, she says "aww puppy kissing me!"

I have a quick gun question and I thought I'd just post it here since this is such a hoppin thread. It's actually more of a validation thing than a question... My four year old son is obsessed with guns. I don't know why. I think maybe from talking to other boys at school and daycare. He's always talking about shooting bad guys and deer. It makes me a little nervous. I try to talk to him and tell him that real guns are dangerous and I've shown him pictures of real guns to compare to his toys to see the difference. He's only four though so I'm not sure if he totally gets it. Anyway, my in laws were watching him last night while we had a date night. When we went to pick him up, he ran out with a little black gun in his hand yelling "bang bang". I didn't think anything of it but my husband must have recognized the gun because he jumped up and grabbed it from him then started yelling at his parents asking why they were letting him play with it. Apparently it was an old "real" pellet gun that his parents have had for years. It doesn't work and his parents gave it to him and told him it was a toy. It's a heavy black gun. It turned into a pretty heated argument between my husband and his parents. They didn't see the harm in letting him play with it but my husband said that he didn't want him playing with a real gun even if it was broken because he might get confused on what's a toy and what's real. Of course our son is screaming and crying the whole time and his grandparents are saying "I know, baby. Your daddy took your toy away." I mostly stayed out of it but I do 100% agree with my husband. I was very proud of him for taking charge. They said that we were overreacting and that he should never be close enough to a real, working gun to ever be confused. My little brothers once found a loaded gun in a ditch on their way to school. A bunch of boys were gathered around it daring each other to pick it up. My brothers, who were only in 4th and 2nd grade, took charge. The older one stood over the gun while the younger one ran to school for help. We were so proud of them (and shaken up). They ended up both getting a small reward from the police dept. Are we right about the broken gun though? My son is still holding a grudge this morning.

I want to add that I'm not a snob at all. I grew up poor and we had government assistance. I hated it and that's one of the reasons that I work my butt off today. I have no problems with lower income families and honestly, I support some government assistance when needed. I just have issues with people who live as irresponsibly as they do. They go out to eat every weekend, they have iPhones, they buy animals that they can't take care of. J has several $100 purses and pairs of boots, but they've had cars repo'd and are always asking to borrow money. There are several other issues here too. J is in a very turbulent marriage and she's always leaving, living with friends, then coming back. It's just a very unstable home. On my good days, I feel really sorry for B. Anyway, you are all right. I do need to find a way to let it go. Cutting off contact completely is not really an option. My husband is close with his parents and so we wil be around them sometimes. It is mostly confined to birthdays and holidays though. If it was just about them, I wouldn't even care. For years now it's been almost amusing to see what sort or scrape they could get into (I know that's awful) but now that there's going to be a baby dragged into it, it's a lot harder for me. I think part of it is because I had a very hard time getting pregnant the first time and I guess I still carry some hard feelings. Which is dumb because I have two beautiful, perfect children now. I can only do what I can do.

I'm making myself miserable. I have extremely negative feelings towards some members of my husband's family. Specifically, his sister and niece. We will call them J and B. I don't even know how to explain it without completely bashing them. They are not responsible people. His sister, J, can be very hateful and rude. She's an obviously unhappy person who tries to make everyone else unhappy. She doesn't pay her bills but likes to buy expensive things. I do not like her at all. He daughter, B, is following her footsteps. When my husband and I got married, I tried to befriend her. She was young and sweet. We would let her spend the night and take her out places. As she got older, she started acting more and more like her mom. Nothing is ever good enough and everyone owes her something. My little sister (she's 17) and I are very close. My sister has always been friendly with B and invited her to bday parties and sleepovers. Then a few years ago, B had a big party planned and invited my little brother but not my sister. We thought it was just a mistake and said something to J and B about it. They told us that my sister was not invited because B didn't like how much time I spent with her and they didn't want me "hanging out" with my sister at B's party. What??? This was after all the times my sister had gone out of her way to include B in everything. So that's when my feelings turned from slightly annoyed to very negative. After that my sister had to put up with rude comments from J and B anytime they were around. My sister was only about 14 at the time and these comments were coming from the mother who was 30 and the daughter who was 12. My husband had to repeatedly talk to them about it. Anyway, fast forward to now. B is pregnant at 15 (got pg at 14) by her boyfriend that she had spent time with once. He recently got fired from McDonald's for stealing (he's 17). J is happy and excited about this. She keeps acting like she's upset but she turns every conversation into something about B being pregnant. I think she feels like the baby's going to be her's since B is so young. Here's the thing. No one has a job. They are on every government assistance you can think of. They have been since before the pregnancy, only more so now (another thing to celebrate). They live in an old mobile office trailer. Like the little offices they put up at construction sites. It has 3 rooms that they are using as a kitchen and two bedrooms. It also has a toilet and sink in a closet. It is tiny. They have four large dogs living inside with them. If it was up to me, they would be completely cut out of my life. I can't get the baby out of my head though. I just found out that it's a boy. I keep imagining how they are going to raise him. I keep picturing a sweet baby boy in dirty clothes, playing on a dirty floor. I would not trust these people with one of my dogs! I can't stop thinking about him. On one hand, I want to help them for that baby's sake.... On the other hand I want to run away. I don't want to see or love the baby because I know my heart will break. I realize that there are bad parents out there and that it could be worse, it will just be so hard for me to see this firsthand. I have no qualms calling the authorities if i see anything amiss, but i think it's wrong of me to already be planning the call before the baby is born. They say that they will clean up their act before he's born. I know I need to let go of these negative feelings but I don't know how. Thoughts? Advice? I feel like I'm making myself crazy with worry about a baby who's not even here yet.

I vote for staying together. I'm not close with my mom or my MIL. When I had my first child no one stayed with me, I just did it on my own. Most things seemed to come naturally. I honestly feel like I'm glad I was alone (besides my husband of course). I really didn't need anyone's help and it was a nice bonding experience. My babies might have just been super easy. :) For me, I could take care of myself and a new baby no problem, but I can't imagine being away from my husband that long. Seriously, he went away for a few days a couple of years ago and we cried and talked on the phone like teenagers. Only you know what's best for you though!

I have no advice for you because I honestly don't think I've ever fasted with a purpose before. I was raised in the church but I was always just told "it's fast Sunday, so don't eat". I'm just now starting to learn how to fast. I was just going to share something that struck me as funny last Sunday. Our branch is newly opened and super tiny. We don't have a piano player and every Sunday they have been playing a cd on a little boombox. It skips, gets put on the wrong song, plays faster than the singing... Awful. Anyway, last Sunday at the beginning of our sacrement meeting, I was reading the back of the program with the upcoming events and it said "February 3rd - Fast Sunday" and underneath that it smaller letters said "Fast for a pianist to move into the ward". Lol. I don't know why I thought that was so funny but I was giggling like a little kid and my husband was shushing me. :)