Elders Will Be Sisters


zil
 Share

Recommended Posts

@zil. I so love this! Great insight into lds life. The hugs! Yes the hugs! The crying! Yes the crying! Some days I just hand out tissues! The centre pieces. The takehomes. 

 I teach conference talks. The preparation takes a month. Once in a while I bump into the guy who teaches the same talk in priesthood. Meh. He wings it! 

Edited by Sunday21
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Bringing food to the RS, PH and Youth Sunday school is such a Pavlovian type of thing to do. Here- rings bells, students slaver and clamor for the treats rather than read the lesson and the scriptures pertinent to the lesson.

Even before my ambulance trip to the hospital with Acute Pancreatitus (which resulted in a 9 day stay), I didn't eat the Treats that were passed around or worse yet tossed at the members. Since recovering from two bouts of AP - and put on a LOW fat diet added to my diabetic diet - the only thing I can eat without injecting insulin is raw vegetables.

As for gluten free. If you have NOT been diagnosed as Celiac, stop with the gluten free foods. We have only one member in our 295 member branch who is a true Celiac. Because she never knows what is in the Pot Luck dishes that are brought, she doesn't eat. Because I don't know the fat content of the Pot Luck dishes, and most of the meat that is brought are hot dogs, kielbasa, Lil' Smokies. even Spam chunks - all HIGH in fat, or super charged cheesy (high fat) super charged (carb) casseroles and maybe a tossed salad big enough to serve two for the 30 who do show up - - - I don't eat either.

We have at least 6 other members who admit to being diabetic - insulin injecting diabetic. I know there are more, because I bump into them at the Diabetic Wellness Clinic at the hospital.

Since I am no longer the Librarian and don't have easy access to get in to get the emergency glucose chews for the couple of members who often *bottom out* with their sugar levels (drop to 60 or lower) - I now carry two packets of the chews and two bottles of the liquid. The thing is they HAVE TO TEST 15 minutes after, and once their levels are up to at least 65, they HAVE TO EAT a full balance meal. That meal could be a breakfast bar that has to required amount of carbs, and dietary fiber and protein. For me, that bar had better have less than 10% fat.

How many of your members have food allergies? Deathly allergic to peanuts? Cinnamon? Best to NOT bring Reward Foods to any of the church classes.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

17 hours ago, Just_A_Guy said:

FWIW, I didn't intend to mock the diseases themselves; but rather, the antics and drama created by some of some of those who insist on excessive accommodation.  Apologies for any hurt feelings I may have caused.

Just_A_Guy, YOU did not hurt my feelings. The RS Presidency at my Branch, the RS Evening Meeting Coordinators & their many, many helpers and the entire Branch Presidency have hurt my feelings, as well as those feelings of Sister Celiac and the other members who are diabetic, deathly allergic to certain foods, etc.

In our Branch we have only one person who is actually diagnosed as a Celiac. The other two think they are, but absolutely refuse to find out for sure. THOSE two are the ones who cry the loudest, demand and insist on excessive accommodation.

If one persists in being " Food Politically Correct" but are only catering to the Gluten Free crowd, find out from all of us what foods we CANNOT eat, and then follow through appropriately.

Just today in RS someone brought cookie treats. Cinnamon, oatmeal, raisin w/peanut butter chips. For the last two months in every: Sunday Program, weekly emailed newsletter, weekly notice in our branch fb page there have been blurbs stating that our newest Sister Missionary is deathly allergic to cinnamon and allergic to broccoli, that Sis AB is deathly allergic to peanuts/butter. There was NO excuse for the cookies that were brought. Poor Sis AB made a mad dash out the door to the parking lot to get her Epi Pen from her car! Plus it was not sugar free, or low fat, BUT it was gluten free. Or so they thought. Only the oats were gluten free. The flour used was wheat.

Hubby & I turn down dinner invitations to members homes because of our dietary restrictions. We are limited to certain restaurants to eat out at. If their menu is not listed on the internet [their own web site], then I cannot preview it. I must do that so I can inject the correct amount of insulin before eating. I have to know the total carb amount I will be eating, so i can inject the correct amount of HumaLog insulin. ALSO I absolutely have to know the fat content. 10 g per meal is my limit. Anything over 12 will cause my pancreas to flare up and drop me to my knees in pain. No, I am not going to read the menu, pull out my little note book to figure out the total carbs, then do the math. THEN excuse myself to go into the filthiest room man every invented - - the Public Restroom - -  to inject my insulin. I don't even do that at Church. Hubby and I go into one of the empty rooms, he makes sure the door stays closed and he also blocks the view from the window in the door as I bare my belly so I can inject.

So, for those of you who do the planning for the treats, dinners, lunches, pot lucks - - - ask for the diagnosed celiacs, diabetics, those who are allergic to foods,  to stand up. Write down their names and find out what their dietary restrictions are. Oh, forgot to add those who are on blood thinners, salt restrictions, etc. Ask them for menu's, recipes. They know best what they can and cannot eat. Those who have no restrictions will not be hurt if they eat the Lo/No fat Chicken Casserole made with Lo Salt, Wild Rice, NO cheese, no fat sour cream.

When I was the food coordinator for our RS Evening Meetings, I had a 3 x 5 file box with the restrictions of the members, along with recipes that they had given me. Not just the sisters, but their husbands and their children. I passed that filled tight file box on to the newly called Evening Meeting Coordinator. Apparently she tossed it out, because none of the foods provided have been for anyone except the restriction free. :(

I have repeatedly asked that there be a card with the nutrition of the dish listed on it, set by the dish. All that is really needed is:: Fat, Carbohydrate, Whey[gluten], Peanuts, Cinnamon, Broccoli, Salt [sodium].

When I fed the Sister Missionaries at the end of last month, I had just bought a new batch of bulk cinnamon - before I transferred it from the plastic bag into the square plastic container, I put the bag into a container twice the size I needed, made sure the lid was on really good and then put the whole thing in my freezer. No way did I want even a micro-gram of that spice floating around for her to inhale.

One of my dear friends died when a well meaning neighbor made spaghetti sauce and put pureed mushrooms in it. The neighbor thought that my fried just didn't like the look or feel of the mushrooms - so if they were pureed, then there would be nothing for her to not like. Her death was a really unnecessary and very painful death.

I don't like liver. Not even when it is pureed and drowned in spaghetti sauce. I can taste it. I am not allergic to it, I just dislike it tremendously. At a Church Pot Luck, I want to know what is in the dishes that are being offered. And if after I walk down the buffet table, asking for the ingredients to each dish, then go either outside or to an empty room, don't take my actions personally. I am deciding what I am going to eat that is safe for me, and then injecting accordingly. If you take it personally- - Get. Over. It. If after checking out the dishes I find that they only thing there that I can safely eat is the tossed garden salad with NO dressing, yet there is only enough there to feed one adult and 1/2 of a child, and Husband and I then leave. Get. Over. It.

More to the point, stop and figure out why we are probably leaving. Call me up the next afternoon and ASK.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 5/20/2017 at 9:24 PM, Iggy said:

As for gluten free. If you have NOT been diagnosed as Celiac, stop with the gluten free foods.

Can you please be more sensitive to your fellow brothers and sisters in the gospel? My child is pretty allergic to wheat. Not diagnosed Celiac, but has a probability of being one. Gluten makes my poor child vomit. Being diagnosed as Celiac requires expensive testing and requires that he eat Gluten for a period of time, which we know he doesn't do very well. So why put him through the testing? I'd rather not do it just so we won't be judged by ward members with a "gluten free diet" chip on their shoulder. For some reason it is hip and popular to rag on people with gluten free diets. Really not sure why. Let's be more sensitive please.

Also for the record we do not ever ask for special accommodation. When there is a potluck we bring food that meets our own special needs. My son is constantly going without the treats that are brought to various functions and we do not say anything about his diet unless asked about. The only slight exception to this is nursury. We have brought our own snacks for our child to nursery every week before, and other times, we have asked the nursery leaders to refrain from feeding my child gluten. We have never asked the nursery to go out and buy gluten free foods. 

We know the diet is very difficult so we try our best to handle it on our own. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

35 minutes ago, eddified said:

Can you please be more sensitive to your fellow brothers and sisters in the gospel? My child is pretty allergic to wheat. Not diagnosed Celiac, but has a probability of being one. Gluten makes my poor child vomit. Being diagnosed as Celiac requires expensive testing and requires that he eat Gluten for a period of time, which we know he doesn't do very well. So why put him through the testing? I'd rather not do it just so we won't be judged by ward members with a "gluten free diet" chip on their shoulder. For some reason it is hip and popular to rag on people with gluten free diets. Really not sure why. Let's be more sensitive please.

Also for the record we do not ever ask for special accommodation. When there is a potluck we bring food that meets our own special needs. My son is constantly going without the treats that are brought to various functions and we do not say anything about his diet unless asked about. The only slight exception to this is nursury. We have brought our own snacks for our child to nursery every week before, and other times, we have asked the nursery leaders to refrain from feeding my child gluten. We have never asked the nursery to go out and buy gluten free foods. 

We know the diet is very difficult so we try our best to handle it on our own. 

Which part of the country is this?  I've never heard of a gluten-free diet chip on anybody's shoulder.  And we have several people I know who is on a gluten-free diet as a health food choice and not because they have some kind of disease.  Gluten-free is a niche here so much so that Walmart carries gluten-free spaghetti.

As far as Church.  My son is a deacon and he gets to hold 2 trays every Sunday - one regular tray and another tray for the few who has some allergy to wheat or something.  We used to put the special cracker in a water cup and put it on the same tray as the bread.  But that wasn't good enough.  It has to be put on a different tray.  At least he can carry it at the same time as the regular bread tray so he doesn't have to go back for the other tray.  I've never heard of anybody say anything negative about the special crackers.  And yes, we do get treats in RS with wheat stuff.  They just don't eat it.  They're not deathly allergic to it that they can't be in the same room as bread.  RS does have other stuff available if you don't like what the teachers pass.  Like, some teacher would pass down chocolates and we have several sisters who are on weight-loss diets and can't have them so they just don't eat the chocolates.  I grab 5.  Hah hah.

Anyway, I find that compassion goes both ways.  We - the people who can't even spell celiac let alone understand what that is - needs to be compassionate to those who have it.  At the same time, those who have celiac needs to be compassionate (and patient) to those who are ignorant about their condition.  It's not easy to know everything there is to know about everybody's food sensitivity so you don't forget to bring X food.  Hah, I'd be surprised if all our RS teachers know the ingredients of the food they bring in, let alone remember somebody has sensitivities to it.  Of course, I'm one of those who brought Filipino pork bar-b-q to a party where the host is Muslim... He's a good friend of mine, and, of course, loves me enough to understand it just completely slipped my mind and so we had a good laugh about it.  He put the pork bar-b-q on the table and put a sign on it so the Muslims at the party would know not to touch it.

Edited by anatess2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sorry to be the killjoy in the room. I'm not saying the video lacks a kernel of truth, but it has been decades since I have participated in a quorum that ran as portrayed by the "Relief Society". If the teachers for the men's quorum and group don't prepare centerpieces with doilies and little refrigerator magnets, they generally do prepare the lesson thoughtfully and elicit real, heartfelt conversation. Maybe I've just been blessed with exceptional quorums, but the video is an unfair parody of the men I've met with.

And I doubt the Relief Society lessons are typically that saccharine, though I may be wrong.

Edited by Vort
Link to comment
Share on other sites

31 minutes ago, Vort said:

Sorry to be the killjoy in the room. I'm not saying the video lacks a kernel of truth, but it has been decades since I have participated in a quorum that ran as portrayed by the "Relief Society". If the teachers for the men's quorum and group don't prepare centerpieces with doilies and little refrigerator magnets, they generally do prepare the lesson thoughtfully and elicit real, heartfelt conversation. Maybe I've just been blessed with exceptional quorums, but the video is an unfair parody of the men I've met with.

I'm glad to hear this.  It seems a fairly common "joke" that the EQ Sunday meeting is, while not as extreme as the video, not that different either.  I personally know one man who gave that as his reason for not attending EQ (though he also could have exaggerated it in his own mind).  He said something to the effect that it's not like RS.  (How he would know what RS is like, I do not know.)

33 minutes ago, Vort said:

And I doubt the Relief Society lessons are typically that saccharine, though I may be wrong.

What happens in RS stays in RS. :cool:

(Just kidding.  I've never, in all my years, been in an RS meeting like that.  It was very definitely an exaggeration / parody of reality.  Individual pieces may be seen here and there, but perhaps never all together like that.)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Vort said:

Sorry to be the killjoy in the room. I'm not saying the video lacks a kernel of truth, but it has been decades since I have participated in a quorum that ran as portrayed by the "Relief Society". If the teachers for the men's quorum and group don't prepare centerpieces with doilies and little refrigerator magnets, they generally do prepare the lesson thoughtfully and elicit real, heartfelt conversation. Maybe I've just been blessed with exceptional quorums, but the video is an unfair parody of the men I've met with.

And I doubt the Relief Society lessons are typically that saccharine, though I may be wrong.

Ours run closer to the video... We have an RS Room.  With a board on both front and back walls.  And a piano and a closet full of goodies and decorated posters and a long cardboard chain of all our service work (we write each service we've done that week on a strip of cardboard and link it onto the chain).  And a weekly newsletter with reminders and lesson topics and birthdays and a spotlight of an RS sister.  And we get soft padded chairs.

The EQ meet at the overflow section of the gym.  With the folding chairs.  They could use one of the 2 rolling blackboards but the Primary and the Young Women usually use those (in addition to their room's blackboard).  They don't have a piano and on the other side of the divider is the nursery with all the screaming kids.

Why do we not give our men some importance?  At least give them the priority on the blackboard and the projector, etc.  Or give them their own room.   And hymnbooks.  We women can alternate rooms with EQ every Sunday, can't we???

Edited by anatess2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...
On 5/22/2017 at 5:10 PM, eddified said:

For some reason it is hip and popular to rag on people with gluten free diets. Really not sure why. Let's be more sensitive please.

The ragging is primarily aimed at those who think that gluten-free is the latest Atkins path to health.  Most people don't recognize the 'actual' problems with gluten because most of the people on gluten free diets don't really need to be.  That kind of ruins it for the people who actually have a problem with gluten.

Sorry, but that's life.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 5/22/2017 at 8:21 PM, Vort said:

Sorry to be the killjoy in the room. I'm not saying the video lacks a kernel of truth, but it has been decades since I have participated in a quorum that ran as portrayed by the "Relief Society". If the teachers for the men's quorum and group don't prepare centerpieces with doilies and little refrigerator magnets, they generally do prepare the lesson thoughtfully and elicit real, heartfelt conversation. Maybe I've just been blessed with exceptional quorums, but the video is an unfair parody of the men I've met with.

And I doubt the Relief Society lessons are typically that saccharine, though I may be wrong.

 

On 5/22/2017 at 8:59 PM, zil said:

I'm glad to hear this.  It seems a fairly common "joke" that the EQ Sunday meeting is, while not as extreme as the video, not that different either.  I personally know one man who gave that as his reason for not attending EQ (though he also could have exaggerated it in his own mind).  He said something to the effect that it's not like RS.  (How he would know what RS is like, I do not know.)

What happens in RS stays in RS. :cool:

(Just kidding.  I've never, in all my years, been in an RS meeting like that.  It was very definitely an exaggeration / parody of reality.  Individual pieces may be seen here and there, but perhaps never all together like that.)

If I knew nothing about the topic or either of you and your background, I'd find it interesting that Vort commented that neither side was even near accurate.  zil commented that the elders were correctly portrayed, while the RS is not.

I've personally experienced both.  Minus the caricature, they both seemed rather accurate.  That is NOT to say it is necessarily typical of all the meetings I've attended (yes, I've attended my share of RS meetings).  But they do happen.

I was in one elder's quorum where the EQ pres regularly just opened up the manual and read some bold headings and opened it up for dicussion.  I was clear he had not opened it up before the meeting.  And for some reason, no one in the meeting seemed to know anything about the topic.

Example:

Quote

Topic: Heavenly Father shows the example of how to be.

Statement: An important part of life is finding our purpose.

Question: So what is Heavenly Father's purpose?

<painfully long pause>

My response: Moses 3:19?

Shocked reactions.  What?  They begin opening their scriptures to find out what I was saying.

In RS, I actually did hear statements and questions very similar to the ones the men said in this video.

Edited by Guest
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

zil commented that the elders were correctly portrayed, while the RS is not.

I commented that people commonly joke about EQ being this way, and that I knew all of one inactive male who made this claim.  I did not state that it really was that way.  I am a woman.  How in the world would I have any clue what EQ is like?

4 minutes ago, Carborendum said:

In RS, I actually did hear statements and questions very similar to the ones the men said in this video.

Now I'm gonna have to re-watch the video...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

45 minutes ago, eddified said:

Who says most don't "need" to be? Is there some data on this ?

Yes, about 6000 years of case studies on humans.

Do you have some data stating that gluten is the next trans fat of nutrition?

Edited by Guest
Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 minutes ago, mordorbund said:

Maybe if you had responded Moses 1:39 the reactions would be less shocked.

Oops.  Uhmm.. would you believe it was the keyboard? (Maxwell Smart).  Ehrr... how about a fat finger entry?  Auto-correct?  no?

Well, yeah, I guess it was just a brain-...

Edited by Guest
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
 Share