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Thanks for asking how I am doing Pale, much appreciated! Yes, Moksha, we do know how to have a good time...not sure just how much damage has been done to the car, but all of us in it are feeling much better now..

I attended this Single Adults' Convention over the weekend, here in the UK in Wales and really enjoyed myself. I travelled down with 3 other members/investigators from my local ward on Friday afternoon, stayed over till Saturday night and then travelled back in the early hours of Sunday morning.. Unfortunately, on the way home, just outside of Bangor, we had to cross a ford and the car crashed into the wall at the other side!! Fortunately nobody was badly injured, we were all wearing our seatbelts (mine is tatooed across my chest now..very pretty, lol) so just sustained bruising and sprains..the car was injured a little more than we were and had to be towed 130 miles or so back to our hometown.. I loved meeting new people at the convention on Friday night, we were all given name tags which displayed our own names and the name of a famous person/couple, my nametag was Laurel and the partner I had to try to find and speak to was Hardy...we had a lovely buffet on this first night, with music and a quiz to follow. Saturday morning we had breakfast at Oswald's restaurant, followed by a short devotional and everybody then went to their separate groups to either explore Snowdonia, the mountain (due to bad weather nobody was allowed to actually climb Snowdonia, but I believe those who went there managed to walk around its base and saw other attractions too), visit a Slate Museum and the Electric Mountain, visit Penrhyn Castle or the Greenwood Centre/Adventure Park. Others chose to explore Welsh seaside towns or just stay on the site to relax...I did the latter as I was very tired after travelling on Friday. Saturday night we were invited to a Dinner and Dance at which there was also a Strictly Come Dancing competition... I thought the convention was a success, lots of people attended, and some new friendships were formed..I'm looking forward to next year when I may be wide awake enough to take part in all events offered, and to meeting some of our new friends again..

Thanks for the explanation Dr. T. :)

Great to hear you're mastering the guitar Dr T. I tried a few times but could never get the hang of it..can't blame my tiny hands/fingers either cos I tried on a half sized guitar and still only made weird sounds.. Btw, in what way does the title of your thread relate to your subject matter? That isn't a song title you're quoting is it? (feeling thick now, lol!)

Hiya Mrscurlymo! Welcome to the site..your post has lots of energy and is great! I really hope that you enjoy being on this site and sharing your stories/opinions with everybody.. :)

Perhaps once you're attending the meetings you could try to find a befriender? Somebody who could help motivate you on the days when you don't feel you can get out of your bed? I have the same problem with my depression/anxiety, I often hide away in my bedroom..I admitted this to one or two close friends that I made at church so that they would be aware of my tendencies and could reach out to me more to support me so that I didn't miss out on too many services/activities. Good Luck :)

A lovely post, thank you :)

LOL Morningstar!! HethePrimate, thanks for giving me a Missionary's point of view re role play..I suppose it is something you either like immensly or dislike embarrassingly!! lol.

Elphie, I'm pleased that you're still around (Iggy, you too!) but am sad that you sometimes still have to explain why you're here... I love history, LDS and non-LDS, and love the things I've learned from your historical threads on here.. :)

Hi Checkers! Welcome to the site, hope you enjoy it and stick around for a long time! :)

Thanks for all the extra replies! The Missionaries told me that the role play is something they do at the MTC, and that they thought it was a good tool to use in teaching new member lessons...I don't know if other Missionaries use this, or just the ones in our Ward. I was told that the new member lessons would be taught to me by the Missionaries..I did originally have a couple of Home Teachers assigned to me, but they moved to another town so I haven't got any now..I do have Visiting Teachers, one is the Librarian who I work with in my calling as Assistant Librarian, she has become a good friend..we have gone to concerts together and such :) The Missionaries haven't been visiting me weekly for a while, they were concentrating on other new members who had relatives interested in the lessons too, and it's only since we got new Missionaries that they've started asking to come to see me again on a regular basis. Iggy, thanks very, very much for your reply...I do feel that the local members are most willing to help out with gospel questions and whatnot..I do attend Gospel Principles class and find these helpful, they are much like my own R.E. lessons from my Roman Catholic school, but with the addition of LDS teachings/Scripture :) so I suppose the basics aren't really that difficult for me to master.. I'm thinking more and more that it is just the idea of feeling like I'm being tested that makes me feel uncomfortable with the role play, and the knowledge that it isn't real so I can't address all the issues a real non-member would have. Anyway, I will see how I feel this week, in view of all your input, and thank you for it! It's much appreciated :)

Welcome to the World, baby Luke! :)

CONGRATULATIONS DR T!!!!!! I wanted this post to be colourful, and hoped to find a picture of a cute cat, to celebrate the birth of your new 'kitten', lol..newborn babies are just like kittens to me, smooth, soft and virtually blind!! Very, very cute too... Congratulations to your wife and other children too..

Thanks for your perspective on the Pope vs LDS Prophets Rameumpton...I agree with your comments regarding the Missionaries too..thank you :)

Hi Dale, thanks for the suggestion of searching FAIRS links to find the Roman Catholic vs Mormon debate, I would be very interested in reading that.. I was very mindful yesterday about the amount of knowledge that the Missionaries were likely to have, or not have, in certain aspects of the church, that is why I felt like I couldn't ask deeper questions which I may have asked if I'd been a genuine non-member challenging the church..I felt it might have been a little unfair to do that to them and they might have thought I was being a little too negative, lol :)

That was the way I felt, Morninstar, that it wasn't real enough..when I said I felt more comfortable speaking to 'real' people as opposed to somebody pretending to be a non-member the emphasis was jokingly changed to 'how does it feel to not be a 'real' person Elder..?' which made me feel even more uncomfortable about it..I suppose I've always been a little self conscious and perhaps this was coming into play too yesterday..

LOL @ MOE's answer..I'm sure the OP will take it in the way it was intended, comically!! Though, to be honest, there probably are people out there who wouldn't be surprised if we did do what MOE suggested, even more surprised that a member was admitting to doing it..lol!!

Wow! I just went back and thanked you all for your comments, they really were useful. It took me a while last night, to post this thread, because I felt so bad about what the session opened up for me. Being an ex Roman Catholic I found it difficult to reason that Joseph Smith and currently Thomas S Monson were Prophets, but that the R.C. Pope could not be..I still find myself trying to defend the R.C. church to some degree...I think I feel guilty for leaving that church, my whole family ancestry (that I know of) is based around the RCC, so I felt like I'd betrayed them when I was baptised LDS..so the fact that I was asking questions as if I was a non-member of the LDS church made me feel I had to ask the questions a R.C. would be asking, and I felt as if I could have delved a lot more into the questions in that respect, but that that wasn't quite the purpose of the exercise. I felt as if the purpose of the exercise was to be able to give simple, yet thorough answers to simple questions about the basics of the church..so it wasn't really that 'realistic' to me.. Skippy, I think you might be right about the Missionaries feeling embarrassed about how the session went. Originally they were asking me the questions, such as the ones comparing the BOM and Bible, and what relevance the BOM had to us today, and about what the BOM was..ie. a record of the Nephites etc. as well as being a book to explain doctrine more clearly and a Testament of Jesus, but when they turned to questions such as the Nature of God..the attitude of the church to the Trinity etc. this is where they didn't question me directly and so the fellowshipper with us jumped in with his own, very detailed answer, so I wonder whether they thought that I might not know the answer to those sorts of questions? I suppose I felt a little redundant once the fellowshipper started to answer questions, because his replies were so detailed and mine, up to that point had been so simple and short, lol. I will definitely have a talk with the Missionaries about the session, so that I feel more comfortable about it next week. I do appreciate the efforts to prepare new members for any negative questions they may receive from non-members once they've been baptised, and I'm really grateful to all of you for considering my thoughts and commenting on them so helpfully! Thank You :)

Thanks a-train..I agree that reading and re-reading Preach My Gospel and other literature, and studying them is really useful.. I think the reason I felt as if I was being tested was because of the comments the other Sister made regarding my friend's Role Play lesson..perhaps she shouldn't have shared her comments with me, as it made me feel as if her husband, the guy who accompanied the Missionaries in my lesson tonight, might have gone home to her and 'scored' me on my given answers.. I understand the 'teaching by the Spirit', and felt that this is what I would be doing in realistic circumstances, perhaps knowing that the Missionaries already knew the 'correct' replies (not parrot fashion, of course), put more pressure on me to be correct and perhaps I was searching for more positive re-inforcement that the replies I gave were okay..maybe I should just have a chat with the Missionaries about how I felt following the lesson, before they come to teach me and continue with the role play next week..

Thanks Ben, it wasn't so much that they asked me questions I hadn't been taught about, it was more that the guy who was sitting in on the lesson with us sort of took over when they didn't look directly at me when asking a particular question, and I didn't feel confident enough to interrupt him with whatever I was going to say..also, when they asked if I thought either the BOM or The Bible was more important than the other, I said that, to me, they were equal to each other, but I didn't really know if that was the 'correct' reply, or whether I ought to have said that the BOM was the more correct of the two because of the history of lots of translations of the Bible over the years, books removed etc..so perhaps some of the questions they asked were a little too similar to each other, and I wasn't sure that the answers I gave were varied enough, particularly in regard to the BOM which I haven't yet fully read..

Tonight when the Missionaries came to teach me my New Member lesson, they chose to do some role play...1st I had to ask them questions about the church, any aspect of it, and they had to give me the answers, then they had to ask me and the other person in the room (an older member of the church who's been a member for years) questions and we had to give them the answers. I know that the purpose of this was to enable me to answer questions that non-members might come up with, but it all felt a little uncomfortable..like I had to sort of rehearse set answers, and as if I was being tested on my knowledge since being Baptised. A friend of mine had this particular lesson some weeks ago, and the sister who sat in on the session told me afterwards that the Missionaries were surprised at how little this person knew about the Gospel, the Joseph Smith story etc. How do you feel about these role playing lessons? Have you, as a recent Missionary had to conduct this lesson with others? Next week they are returning to continue the role play, I think they felt that the older member answered too many of their questions tonight, to be honest I did have some answers ready to give but he just got in there faster than I did!! Also, having got started asking questions as a non-member might got me thinking of all sorts of questions I could ask, but was afraid that the Missionaries either wouldn't have been able to give me satisfactory answers to, or that might be a little too controversial, so I didn't really feel comfortable with the session. I did tell them that I felt much more comfortable answering questions of 'real' non-member friends and family because I knew how they generally felt about the church and how to tailor my replies so that they would be more genuine..tonight I just felt like I was being quizzed. I've been asked to read Alma 17 before they come around next week, I suppose I ought to be reading Preach My Gospel too, as they have been 'promoting' that as an aid to member-missionary work, as they want me to role play sharing the Gospel with somebody next time they call...

I used to help out with a newsletter for a local community group I was involved with..we too tried to interview one or two people per issue so that others got to know them better. I have thought about producing a smaller newssheet for the Single Adults programme in my ward, and am pleased to read that somebody else has the same desire to interview others and to share their thoughts, circumstances, interests with others in the hope that they will all become closer to each other..Thank You :)

Thanks for the link, I found this talk, and the National Geographical site really interesting.

Thanks for your replies..I've spoken to the guy again tonight, I don't think he was really looking for a serious partner until the Missionaries started putting pressure on him to change his lifestyle, drop his current drinking friends, and get Baptised asap..he has admitted that he enjoys his current lifestyle, he wanted to attend the LDS church because the people he met there seemed to be less judgmental and more honest than his family and current friends, however he now feels that the Missionaries are pushing him to find a good Mormon girl to date, so that he has a reason to give up drinking and smoking and having one night stands..he says the drinking and smoking is easy for him to cope with, not the one night stands..at least he's being honest with me...I don't think he's ready to join the church myself, and have told him so, he's afraid of admitting this to the Missionaries because he does enjoy the church generally, but now that the Single Adult programme is getting going again, he wants to be mixing with the age group he feels most comfortable with rather than with people older than himself..he's been fellowshipped by an older couple, in their late 50's/60's who are quite devout, and dare I say it, old fashioned, and he's beginning to feel that just visiting them isn't enough..he's afraid that the Missionaries will try to stop him from speaking to me, or seeing me if he admits that he's discussed not yet being ready to be Baptised, that maybe they'll think that either I'm not a good influence on him because I'm not pressing him to just pray and read his scriptures in order to get a testimony, or that they'll be afraid that he is a bad influence on me as a new member of the church myself.. Anyway, I'm sorry, I've taken this discussion off topic I think! I've told the guy to start mixing with the younger married couples in the church, late twenties/early thirties, so that he will widen his group of friends, perhaps make friends with people nearer his own age group in other wards, and just get to feeling more at ease with the church in general once he feels he has a peer group with which to mix..maybe then he will think more seriously about the spiritual side of his commitment..I did say that a lot would be expected of him as a Priesthood holder, that being baptised wasn't a decision to be taken lightly, and that he would have to respect any LDS woman that he might date...I certainly wouldn't like him to marry into the church and then possibly drag them thru a bad relationship either...I wouldn't recommend he try to find a girlfriend in the church until he'd already joined and was certain that he really wanted to be LDS...thanks again for your advice everybody!!

We've got a guy in our ward, an investigator aged 36, he attended our 1st Single Adult Fireside with me and another male from our ward last night, unfortunately it was very poorly attended, I found that some of the wards in our stake do not have single adult reps. yet, which isn't very helpful..he was the youngest of the group who attended last night and this morning he texted me to say that he no longer wanted to attend our Church activities/Single Adult events as he feels he's always gonna be the youngest person attending and he's interested in dating women in their late 20's rather than 31+..he is attracted to some of the younger end YSA women, but as they're only aged around 19 he doesn't think it right to pursue them..I have noticed that he is going off these women's looks rather than trying to get to know them first and find out if they are suitably matched that way..he also seems to want to find an LDS girlfriend before he gets Baptised as he thinks that she would help him live the Mormon lifestyle more easily...I have told him not to join the church just for a woman, but to make sure he's really into the church itself. In our ward there are only around 4 YSA, they are all aged under 20 so there is nobody locally for this man to consider as a potential girlfriend at the moment...he feels the SA programme should be aimed at people aged from 18-80 and should just allow people to pick and choose their partners from any age group they feel attracted to..I tend to agree that there should be a larger SA group, say from 18-60 and that those aged 61+ could be classed as Senior Single Adults as generally their needs differ from those below that age?