Ditching institute/YSA for family wards, bad idea?


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Hi yall, I'm 18, turning 19 soon. Got my first 2 semesters in the institute/YSA , while I have some cool friends and people there, I'm not really looking into dating anyone right now really. 

I wonder if anyone here had decided to go back to their family wards. 

Is it awkward? Will I get nagged every Sunday to return to institute/YSA?

Thank you!!

 

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14 hours ago, B.cole2 said:

Hi yall, I'm 18, turning 19 soon. Got my first 2 semesters in the institute/YSA , while I have some cool friends and people there, I'm not really looking into dating anyone right now really. 

I wonder if anyone here had decided to go back to their family wards. 

Is it awkward? Will I get nagged every Sunday to return to institute/YSA?

Thank you!!

 

Hi @B.cole2. I don't know if you're sharing the same account as mother/daughter, but it would be a lot easier to keep track of your online persona, questions, challenges, advice, etc, if the 2 of you used different accounts. At 18, I think you're old enough to handle your own email address and ThirdHour account.

Edited by mordorbund
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1 hour ago, B.cole2 said:

Hi yall, I'm 18, turning 19 soon. Got my first 2 semesters in the institute/YSA , while I have some cool friends and people there, I'm not really looking into dating anyone right now really. 

I wonder if anyone here had decided to go back to their family wards. 

Is it awkward? Will I get nagged every Sunday to return to institute/YSA?

Thank you!!

 

I imagine it all depends on a variety of factors such as your proximity to a YSA ward, local leadership, your local membership dynamic and so on. I stayed in the family ward until I went on my mission and returned to continue going to family ward for an additional 2 years post mission. The nearest singles ward was an hour drive and I preferred a five minute walk to church. There were still other eligible singles in my ward too. However, I did ultimately end up meeting my wife in a singles ward and she lived in a city (about an hour driving the speed limit away) and they were strongly encouraged to go to the YSA wards. As for me, my family ward was happy to put me to work in various callings and never hinted at the idea I should be anywhere else. I ultimately decided to go to YSA because my youngest sister really wanted to go, but didn't have a ride, so I took the opportunity to drive her in to the next city. The next thing I knew I had a carload of girls wanting to ride to YSA with my sister and I and then I was assigned to home teach most of them simply due to proximity. In any event, I only felt very supported in my decision to be at family ward or singles ward, the only thing that would have been frowned upon is if I had been jumping from ward to ward. As long as I was consistent, which I was, leadership was happy and no one else ever said a thing.

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I went to a YSA ward a couple times after high school graduation. I didn't really like it. I preferred the age variety of a family ward--learning from the experience of the older ladies in Relief Society as well as the bright, young testimonies of the primary-aged kids. I stayed in my family ward. No one ever pestered me about going to the YSA ward that i can recall. It didn't feel awkward to me, but I was a bit of an odd duck. I never gave much thought to what anyone else thought of my choice. I think family wards are very benefited when young single adults chose to stay. I had a calling as primary pianist.

I think it just depends on what you're looking for and where you do your best learning. I have lots of family and friends who love their YSA ward and benefit greatly from meeting and serving with people their own age.

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My life would have been much poorer without the opportunity to make friends with young married women, and loser sisters. Attending a family ward allowed me to see positive examples of married life. Also as a teenager, I had seen many positive male role models. The ability to see men treating their wives well was invaluable. 

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15 hours ago, B.cole2 said:

Hi yall, I'm 18, turning 19 soon. Got my first 2 semesters in the institute/YSA , while I have some cool friends and people there, I'm not really looking into dating anyone right now really. 

I wonder if anyone here had decided to go back to their family wards. 

Is it awkward? Will I get nagged every Sunday to return to institute/YSA?

Thank you!!

 

(I forgot to actually answer the question!)

Which type of ward you go to is completely up to you.  Do what works best.  My sister LOVED the local ysa ward and found it to be a ton of fun.  I hated it-- church just wasn't church without screaming babies in the middle of Sacrament meeting.  So I went to family wards to listen to that music, no one ever bugged me about it. 

You can choose not to date and attend a YSA ward, and you can choose to actively date being involved in a family ward.  Do what works best for you.  

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35 minutes ago, B.cole2 said:

Ok. this is the mother: she'll make one for her own.. everybody can rest in peace now.. lol

Oh thank goodness, my anxiety level was shooting through the roof ;)

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22 hours ago, B.cole2 said:

Hi yall, I'm 18, turning 19 soon. Got my first 2 semesters in the institute/YSA , while I have some cool friends and people there, I'm not really looking into dating anyone right now really. 

I wonder if anyone here had decided to go back to their family wards. 

Is it awkward? Will I get nagged every Sunday to return to institute/YSA?

Thank you!!

 

Definitely stay in the YSA. You may or may not get nagged, but YSA and institute are made to help young adults grow in the gospel and offers real growth and opportunities to serve. 

You have experiences and strengths that are best served around those your age.

Going to a family ward as a YSA you will likely be out in primary and become stagnet there for a LONG time.

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23 hours ago, SilentOne said:

Is there some reason you couldn't go to the family ward and institute?

Thinking back, I didn't really do much dating during my time in institute and singles wards.

Yes. A person can still take institute classes if they are attending a family ward. That's what I did.

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47 minutes ago, Connie said:

Yes. A person can still take institute classes if they are attending a family ward. That's what I did.

Same here.  You can also attend a family ward Sunday morning and go to any/all midweek YSA things.  It's really whatever combo of things you want to do.

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On 4/3/2019 at 6:18 PM, B.cole2 said:

Ok. this is the mother: she'll make one for her own.. everybody can rest in peace now.. lol

I'm not ready to rest in peace yet.  I have too much still to do in this life.  :P   

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  • 3 years later...

Bumping this up because of recent events that have happened IRL.

About 15 years ago, the stake where I live got permission to launch a YSA branch because we had, on paper, 400+ young single adults. I say "on paper" because we live right next to a major military base and most of those 400+ people were service members who had long since been reassigned due to other bases but whose paperwork was still with us due to inefficient record-keeping in the home wards. 

Even though I aged out only a few years later (I'm pushing 40 now), I remained with the YSA branch voluntarily, both to provide continuity and to assist the YSA members as our numbers were often so few that they sometimes didn't have enough priesthood. The latter was due in part to a toxic elder's quorum president we had once whose ego prevented him from truly being of service and resulted in a number of brethren refusing to attend. 

Well, at the end of last year it was determined that the branch would be closed, and this past Sunday was the final round of services.

During sacrament meeting, a member of the stake presidency explained matters in detail. 

Why was the branch being closed?

The home wards had need of the members of the branch. 

Part of it was because there were callings going unfulfilled. 

The other part was because over the last few years the branch had adopted a largely non-judgmental attitude towards others, and that attitude was lacking elsewhere.

Take note of that latter reason.

As a branch, we had gotten used to people coming in as they were. Jeans. T-shirts. Long hair. Et cetra. I myself usually have at least one earbud in because I'm listening to a favorite radio show while also listening to everything else. 

So long as you weren't starting drama, you were welcome however you happened to come to us. 

Apparently, the home wards aren't so welcoming, and stake needs us to bring that spirit back with us when we return to try and change things. 

For those who are reading this, keep that in mind, that YSA branches often have a very different vibe and can be far more accepting. 

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1 hour ago, Ironhold said:

The other part was because over the last few years the branch had adopted a largely non-judgmental attitude towards others, and that attitude was lacking elsewhere.

Take note of that latter reason.

As a branch, we had gotten used to people coming in as they were. Jeans. T-shirts. Long hair. Et cetra. I myself usually have at least one earbud in because I'm listening to a favorite radio show while also listening to everything else. 

So long as you weren't starting drama, you were welcome however you happened to come to us. 

Apparently, the home wards aren't so welcoming, and stake needs us to bring that spirit back with us when we return to try and change things. 

For those who are reading this, keep that in mind, that YSA branches often have a very different vibe and can be far more accepting.

I wonder if the stake presidency might have decided that the YSA branch had lost all sense of decorum, and did not want it to become a mirror of the so-called come-as-you-are churches. We welcome all and do not have a dress code for visitors, but it is assumed that members of the ward or branch will sooner or later (probably sooner than later) catch on that a culture of Sunday dress and decorum enhances the worship service for all involved.

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2 hours ago, Vort said:

I wonder if the stake presidency might have decided that the YSA branch had lost all sense of decorum, and did not want it to become a mirror of the so-called come-as-you-are churches. We welcome all and do not have a dress code for visitors, but it is assumed that members of the ward or branch will sooner or later (probably sooner than later) catch on that a culture of Sunday dress and decorum enhances the worship service for all involved.

No, he specifically said that the whole bit of judging others on appearances was a weakness some of the home wards had. 

My guess is that something gnarly went down, and that this was decided as the best way to fix it. 

As it is, most of the people in t-shirts were either investigators (who likely didn't know anyway) or people assigned to the local military base who were either coming in straight from training or had to go straight to training once church was over (t-shirts are allowable under certain circumstances). 

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Well, I mean, t-shirts are always "allowable". No one will be asked to leave the meeting or denied the sacrament based on wearing a t-shirt. I imagine no one would likely be denied a temple recommend on such a basis, though the bishop and stake president might stress dressing appropriately to attend the temple. But I have seen a couple of cases where an utter lack of caring about such things among the wider membership coupled with a few people more or less in open rebellion against the counsel of authorities, deciding that they were going to wear whatever they wanted to Church to try to teach someone or other a lesson (including wildly inappropriate, revealing clothing), prompted the bishop to give both public and private counsel to dress the part when you come to Church. So I was imagining this might have been such a case. Perhaps not.

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16 hours ago, Vort said:

Well, I mean, t-shirts are always "allowable". No one will be asked to leave the meeting or denied the sacrament based on wearing a t-shirt. I imagine no one would likely be denied a temple recommend on such a basis, though the bishop and stake president might stress dressing appropriately to attend the temple. But I have seen a couple of cases where an utter lack of caring about such things among the wider membership coupled with a few people more or less in open rebellion against the counsel of authorities, deciding that they were going to wear whatever they wanted to Church to try to teach someone or other a lesson (including wildly inappropriate, revealing clothing), prompted the bishop to give both public and private counsel to dress the part when you come to Church. So I was imagining this might have been such a case. Perhaps not.

What I meant is that for certain designated activities, the Army considers it acceptable for people to wear a designated T-shirt as part of the uniform. Usually these activities involve physical training or other athletic activities (in which case a single-color shirt, usually olive green, is stipulated), but may also include select group functions like morale events (in which case it's usually a black shirt with the unit logo).

In general, it's common to see people come to church in uniform because of our proximity to base, either because they just got off duty or because they have to go on duty as soon as they get out. 

We've also had instances where someone who was transferring into base packed their church clothes away during the move because they misjudged when they'd arrive and so had to attend services in whatever they had.  

That being said, as a YSA branch most investigators are late teens and twenty-somethings who often haven't been to a church before or who were raised in environments were they merely paid lip service to notions of religion. A lot of them *legitimately don't understand* that many more traditional churches still prefer people to go "Sunday best" and so they often come in with whatever they have. We're used to seeing people like that and so it's no big deal. 

Apparently, however, the family wards aren't used to seeing any of this happen (people coming in street clothing, et cetra) and so aren't entirely as welcome as they should be because of it. That seems to be part of why the branch was dissolved, so that the members could create a more welcoming environment in their home congregations.

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