Flatus and Testimony Meeting

I remember once the first counselor got up after the bishop and said "I'd like to thank our penis (instead of pianist). He then noticed his mistake and just sat down with his face in his hands.

Funny thing happened in church -by PO

Went to church yesterday to see my grand nephew being blessed and the meeting was held up for about fifteen minutes because someone forgot to bring the bread. So the bishop had to apologise to everyone for the hold up, but didn't say why.....next thing I see a young man walk in with a loaf of bread that was unopened and brought from the local store....he walked in past the congregation to the front and handed over the loaf of bread....it was testimony meeting so I left not long after the blessing to spare myself from ignorant bearers...this is in Brisbane.

The Bishop had a hard time trying to keep the congregation quiet for fifteen minutes. I was eves dropping and the lady behind me was saying "I wonder what's going on? Maybe there's something really wrong, this never happens, we are never late starting". Was amazing to see how restless everyone was, staring at the clock etc etc the bishop making gestures to the young men at the sacrament table trying to get them to be quiet.

Can they make sacrament out of bread bought ON the sabbath? :-) - by Hervey Willets

Duck bread - by Reen

This happened in our ward, too. My son quickly rushed home, and got bread, because we live close to the ward house. I didn't know this. When I took the sacrament, the bread tasted moldy, and I recognized my own homemade "duck bread." I kept old bread to feed the ducks, and at breakfast that morning, I noticed it was moldy, and put it out on the counter to be thrown away later.

Talks first - by rosered

This has happened in a ward I've been in too. The bishop just moved on to the talks and when the bread arrived we had the sacrament.

New direction received on this recently - by AlmostGone

There was a recent letter sent to Stake presidents to be presented to ward leaders, NOT sent or to be read in sacrament meeting that had many "clarifications" about ward meetings.

One of the items was that the order of the meeting should not be changed. (ie.. talks before sacrament). One of the more funny items was that there is not to be a rest hymn to take up empty time, and if the chorister would like people to stand for a hymn they need the permission of the presiding authority.

What about gluten sensitives - by govina

So what about people who are celiacs (gluten sensitive)? Bread is about the worst thing you could eat. Has anybody heard if they are going to do anything special in the future?

Freezer Burn - by Jod3:360

Happened in our ward all the time, so the remedy was even worse because the kids kept forgetting, they decided to keep extra bread in the freezer in the kitchen. Then it would get microwaved to thaw, and had that nasty freezer burn taste. Nice way to bring the spirit into the meeting there, kiddo.

When I was a True Believing Mormon (big time) I was sitting in Fast & Testimony meeting one Sunday, right near the front. Suddenly a man walked in, followed by his wife and children. The children sat down in the front row, and the man and his wife went up front. They waited for their turn to talk. They were strangers so everybody was particularly curious to hear from them, it seemed. The man stood up and he said,

"I would like to stand before you this day and tell you that I know beyond a doubt that this church is NOT true, and it is based on falsehood and lies. I have spent quite some time researching the history, and when I found out what Emma went through (he holds up some papers for proof) that was it for me. (he then explained some things about Emma but I was so shocked, I don't remember what he said) He told of other things he learned (very briefly) and referenced some books.

He then held up the paper that had his priesthood ordination on it (the certificate). He said, "I now denounce my priesthood openly in front of all of you witnesses, and I no longer am a member of this church."

He then turned around and handed the Bishop his priesthood certificate. He then thanked us for listening and he took his wife by the hand and walked off the stand, gathered his children and walked out of the chapel.

An old man ran up to the podium as fast as he could and yelled into the microphone, "Brother!! Brother!! Pleeeeease don't go. WAIT! WAAAAIT!!" Of course, the 'brother' just trotted out with his family, ignoring the old man.

Then the old man cried and bore his testimony. Audible sobs could be heard in the room. People's faces were white. There was dead silence except for the crying.

I felt like I was going to have a panic attack.

I knew someone who took more than one piece of bread on Fast Sunday if they had been broken too small . Excused himself by saying `He could never get enough of Jesus`. You can`t argue with that.

OK, this is the best testimony experience ever. I served a mission in New Zeland, which strangely enough led to me leaving mormonism.

During one F&T meeting, a big Tongan guy came up to the podium. This is how it went (fyi I am trying to write his accent, bear with me). "good mornin broddas and sistas, I know dis church is true, I know Joseph was the true Smith. Yestaday, I go to hit my wife and I tink would Jesus do dis. No, Jesus wouldnt do dis. So I push her, tru dee wall, she make a big hole, big fat woman. You all come to my house for dinna. Amen."

I swear I almost pissed myself. The funniest thing is that the congregation actually nodded approvingly at the man and we did have dinner at his house after church, and there was a big hole in the wall. PRICELESS......

I'm an ex-Mormon and during my career as a lawyer I've had several Mormon clients. Since I left the Morg years before I moved to this community none of them of course know I'm an ex-Mormon.

A year or two ago I was representing a Mormon woman in a child custody case. Her adult daughter was trying to get custody of her minor children for many reasons but mainly because Mom was dealing with cancer and could barely take care of herself, much less small kids. Mom was fighting the case with the help of the kids' grandmother because the adult daugther was herself very screwed up. In fact, without a doubt all three generations of this family that I met were totally screwed up.

My client's disease finally overwhelmed her and she died rather quickly. I went to her funeral service, the first Mormon funeral I'd attended since leaving the Morg. A more dismal funeral service I cannot imagine. I was one of the first to arrive and was sitting in the back while the organist was playing some prelude music and playing very badly---constantly hitting the wrong notes.

Only a handful of people showed up. The woman's totally estranged family did show up, about a dozen in all, and a few others. The service was ridiculous. The organist continued to screw up at the organ. The Bishop got up to give a eulogy but it was plainly evident that he barely knew the deceased woman (she and her family I doubt had stepped into any church in years, Morg or non-Morg).

He gave a little biography of her and said she was survived by her husband, kids, etc., not knowing apparently that her husband had left her years before, no one knew where he was and I think he was suspected as a sex offender. Her brother got up to give a talk which was pretty maudlin and then he sang a hymn, accompanied by the inept organist and sometimes getting off key himself. The Bishop announced that another person had been scheduled to read a poem she'd written on behalf of the deceased but that person didn't show up so there wouldn't be any poem reading! The entire affair was about as sterile and unspiritual a service as I've ever witnessed.

This older fellow in our ward was VERY hard of hearing. He got up one Sunday during F&T to bear his testimony. He farted QUITE LOUDLY while there at the podium.

Not embarassing for me, nor I think for him (I think he didn't know others could actually hear it..). His wife looked like she wanted to crawl into a hole.

In between the more 'heavy' callings, I seemed to always do a stint as a primary teacher of one of the rowdy class of boys. They usually wouldn't participate in singing time, so I taught them my own version of a few primary songs. examples of my versions:

I lived in heaven a long time ago, it is true,
I lived in heaven but I don't recall seeing you!

another,

The Lord commanded Nephi to go and get the plates,
So he took a sword to Laban, and made him four-foot eight!

It earned my exasparated looks from the primary presidency, but it always got the boys singing, and since the burn-out rate for teachers was so high, they always left me alone. I was gratified to hear years later that the one about laban was still going around.

I was about twelve years old. My dad was the town undertaker, and we lived in an apartment on the second floor of the mortuary. Everbody knew us (very small town), and we were in church every Sunday.

One fast & testimony Sunday I decided to bear my testimony. I was a very serious and devout boy. I had been thinking a lot about death, and I wanted to share my thoughts.

I hadn't said more than a dozen words, and I noticed that half the congregation was struggling to stifle giggles and guffaws. I couldn't understand why, when I was trying to be so serious.

So I cut it very short and sat down. Afterwards I asked a friend why everybody was laughing at me. He said, "You started your testimony by saying, 'All my life I have been close to death.'"

I was about 12 and sitting in Sacrament Meeting with a bunch of other Deacon friends. We were rowdy boys.

One Sister who was also a music teacher in town was singing a solo, a bad transcription of I Know that My Redeemer Lives from the Messiah. Let it be said that just because she was a music teacher didn't necessarily mean she could sing, and if you know the piece, you'll understand why it could sound a little whoopy when rendered by an amateur.

Anyway, there's a passage where the song goes, "I know..., I know!" After several repetitions of that passage I finally blurted out, "We know you know!

Of course everyone turned and looked, and I was in big trouble at home and in church, and forever thought to be a nasty little boy by the Sister and her family.

At heart, I fear I'm still a nasty little boy.

I am an inactive member of Lea Valley Ward of the Hyde Park stake within the UK Mormon church.

History:

I joined in 1978 when Joyce McKinney was kidnapping a Mormon missionary (lucky bloke) and the Osmonds were on the scene, and ethnic minorities could now hold the priesthood.

I near enough did the whole package. Baptised as a Latter-day Saint, recieved patriarchal blessing, served a few callings, didn't go on a mission - thank 'god, got married. It just didn't work on my 3rd attempt, so I'm divorced 3 times over. Though I'm not a poligamist like Joseph Smith who had 49 I also went through the evil Masonic rituals in the temple.

I left in 2004 due to being allergic to my own chapel plus the death of Princess Diana plus 9\11 plus UFO experiences plus discovering truths from an author I respect most called, David Icke.

Chapel Experience:

On the Sabbath just before 11 a.m. I entered Lea Valley Ward in Walthemstow (NE London) dressed in my Mormon temple clothes of mushroom hat, sash, robes, apron, jacket, trousers, socks and shoeslooking like a chef, feeling like a pra, but a confident prat.

My purpose of going there was to let the youth and children see what they will look like when they go to the temple because in temple preparation classes they dont even tell you this.

I have a question for them. Is God a Mormon? So why the need for all this in the temple?

Anyway, I go in and sit down in the hallway passage and greated a few individuals. Within 5 to 7 minutes it became clear to the ward that things were not right. Pandamonium set into me, it looked like a fire drill.

They locked all the doors, bouncers (members) in front of each door! The threatened me, said they were going to get the police if I didn't leave. (But could they arrest me for wearing an apron?)

With all eyes on me, one ex-bishop on my left trying to put me on guilt trips. On my right someone was trying to coax me away. One member said God gave him revelation right there on the spot. Bishops wife looked upset, telling me you shouldnt be wearing sacred clothes.

There was so much fear that day. This was fast and testimony day and I could see they were not going to let me bear my testicles. I also noticed the children were being ushered from their classrooms so that they wouldn't see me.

So after this I left. It was crazy! I didn't have foot and mouth. And it shows how much clothes make people react. The ex-bishop called me a psycopath and I'm not even a killer! Mind you I was making him laugh at the same time.

So thats my story. Can anyone top that?

I have witnessed a few situations that seemed strange to me during my investigation. One Sunday morning before the Sacrament Meeting, a lady was talking to the bishop in the crowded hallway of the Chapel. I noticed the young girl at her side (her granddaugther) who looked terribly bored and distinterested. She was tall and slim and was wearing the shortest possible pair of denim shorts and a tiny top tied under her breasts. She looked really out of place among the members and visitors.

Strangely, nobody seemed to notice her, and I thought it was sort of respectful not to stare at her as they would have done in other churches if she had shown up in that attire.

After one baptism one of the elders told me a funny story. The basin used for baptisms was filled first with cold water, then heated slowly along the whole night or day, depending on the time the baptism was scheduled for. So this lady was going to be baptized and the Elder went into the water and found that somebody had switched off the heater and the water was ice-cold. He did not say anything because he would not postpone the baptism.

The lady who was going to be baptized entered the font and could hardly breathe. Everybody was intent on her expression and whispered how moving this whole thing was and that this lady was so moved by the Spirit. Actually, she was almost turning blue because the water was frozen. Awesome, really.

Fast and testimony meeting in Madrid Spain. The third speaker is a non-member who smiles at the congregation and says that he feels "great sympathy" for the Church and goes on to explain that he also does not smoke nor drink alcohol and does not sleep with girls so that he pretty much identifies with the missionaries! And he feels happy to be there on Sunday morning! End of the testimony.

For the rest of my life I will never forget the F&T I went to 4 years ago to attend the blessing of my sister's youngest daughter. (Which by the way is about the only time I ever attend church. I wish people would stop having babies, getting married, or dying then I could be off the hook. Maybe once I resign they will get the clue and stop asking me to come.)

My sister had for the 6th or 7th time in the last 10 years been moved to a new ward in Spanish Fork, UT and so this was only the 3rd time she and her family had attended church services with these people. Basically everyone was new to everyone else because this ward had just been formed.

My husband was working, so I was sitting with my mom, dad and my two children, and because mom and me are both heathens we basically were talking through the entire meeting (in whispers of course) when for some reason we stopped to watch this rather large fellow walk up to the podium to bear his "testimony".

First off he gave the usual jargon about knowing the church was true, and Jospeh Smith being the prophet blah blah and how happy he was to have been called to be the SCOUTMASTER for the 10 and 11 year old boys in the ward. Then he said he wanted to address the church on a matter that was plaguing him for quite some time. He said that for most of his life he has struggled with temptations of the flesh, moral weaknesses, and carnal thoughts.

Well naturally at this I perked up like a dog that's just been offered table scraps. He stated that he wanted to stress how much the sisters in the ward, (particularly the younger ones) needed to help him by dressing more modestly. That their desire to be fashionable was leading to an inordiante amount of skin showing and that it was making it hard for him to cope.

Well about this time my mom and I were suffocating ourselves with our hands to keep from busting out laughing. While all around us there was uncomfortable shifting in seats, and teenaged girls turning red and burying their faces in their hands.

I glanced at the bishop who looked like he wanted to slit his throat, and the quorm members were on the edge of their seats ready to pounce on the confessor at any moment.

He went on for a bit longer about temptation, and lust then proceeded to step down and walk all the way back to his seat (all eyes upon him) and sit with his wife who put her arms around him clearly praising him for his bravery.(If that had been my husband I would died in front of everybody for making an ass out of himself)

We had just sung the closing hymn, "Master the Tempest is Raging". From the middle of the congregation, a recent convert stood up and at the top of her lungs yelled, "Hallelujah. Praise his wonderful name. Thank you Jesus. Amen. Amen. Amen." That was a classic.

We all know Mormon meetings could use a little more whoop-ass. :)

Two experiences - Third Witness's Wife

The first was not funny, but it sure was a memorable moment. A young woman was giving a talk. Suddenly she stopped, said sorry to the congregation, and fainted.

The second was when my daughter crawled on the organ pedals during our choir number. I was in the choir and did not realize my daughter had crawled away. I also did not realize that the organist had not turned off the organ until it was too late. It would have been absolutely hilarious if I had not been so embarrassed. I am laughing now!

My son - ctus40 poor as a church mouse

My son, when he was about 4 or 5, was sitting with me in the very back, in the overflow area. We were on folding chairs, as was the row in front of us. There was a lady sitting in front of us, (one of my best friends sisters, no less) who is fairly large. My son kept poking her in the back and backside gently. I kept telling him to stop and he kept doing it. I finally got a little more stern with him, and he said to me, in a loud voice, "But Dad, she's SO FAT!"

Embarassed, hell yes. But inside I was laughing my ass off!!

Large lady in Sacrament Meeting - Observer

One day, as a young adult, I was sitting with my girl in a pew near the back, just as people were filing in for SM. A very large lady passed close by and I leaned over to my girl and whispered "I think the Bombers (football team) may have just solved their defense problem." She started laughing convulsively and hit me hard, on the arm. This attracted considerable attention and my girl kept laughing throughout the meeting.

And yet another - Standby

My older brother and I were seated, ready for the meeting to begin. Two large ladies walked by and my brother said quietly 'Do you remember the story we heard as kids ' Tinker and Tanker ' ?

And yet another one still - Titania

Though this woman's size has nothing to do w/ the story. My sis and I were at church w/ our father. Both my sis and I were mentally out of the church by this time, and this was a particularly boring SM. This would have been before mp3s and ipods, and neither one of us had a cell phone or PDA, etc. that we could play w/, so we were stuck w/ either falling asleep or counting the ceiling tiles. This was a family ward, and not even the children were misbehaving(or they were, and I just didn't hear it). Anyways, during the last talk, this woman gets up, which I noticed only b/c I knew I had never seen her before. She begins to tell us that she has some kind of an announcement, and that we're all sleeping spiritually. My sis and I are both very entertained by this, and kinda wanted her to stay, despite the fact that she was obviously a few slices short of a loaf, but it was not to be; my father, and another local guy from the ward pratically dragged her out of the chapel, while she's telling us about how we're in a spiritual coma or whatever.

Weird dude - Ron Jeremy

Weird dude in a singles ward gets up to bear his testimony. While bearing his testimony, he leaves the podium and proceeds to walk about the chapel, still bearing his testimony (no microphone, just talking louder). He makes a full circuit around the chapel. Back at the podium again, he finishes and then sits down.

Once, when a baby was blessed - Deenie, the dreaded single adult

...in my university ward, the grandparents had come in for the event.

An engaged couple was in the congregation, and the woman had just bought the man a new watch, for his birthday.

So, grandma's up at the stand, weeping and wailing and telling how happy she is about the new baby, her new daughter, etc. ...

...and the watch alarm goes off, playing "The Yellow Rose of Texas" loud enough for all to hear! It's so new, of course, that the guy doesn't know how to turn it off. He tries sticking it between his knees, and finally trots out of the meeting, with his wrist jammed under his arm. All of us were shaking with laughter--but, apparently, they couldn't hear the watch up at the stand, and grandma went on weeping and wailing, and the bishopric wondered what'd happened to make half of the congregation act so goofy... :^)

How about a fist fight? - D. P. Gumby

Back when I was in college, there was a fight between two of the youth (both former bishop's kids). They were sitting in the overflow on the opposite side from me. One (son of two bishops ago) was a jock type. The other was the son of the previous bishop and was not the jock type. I don't know what started it, but in the middle of the usual dry, boring, droning SM talks, there came this load crash from across the chapel. I looked over and those two were on the floor swinging at each other. The second counsellor came flying off of the stand , but the EQP was sitting in the back of the chapel and broke it up first. Both of these AP holders were taken out of the meeting and the Bish soon left as well. Nothing was ever said about it afterwards.

Racism - Jacko Mo Mo

During fast 'n testimony a youth stated, "blacks and indians are O.K., but Mexicans are not".

slobbered all over - goodbye

Little kid slobbered all over sacrament cup puts it back in and old man take the cup and drinks it.

And I was the sacrament passer.

Another funny story: One guy at testimoney said That the people don't know how to bear testimonys and he told them to stop telling stories about their life. Next someone got up and said the stories teach us, Then the guy got back up and apolygized.

Crane his neck - Mom of nine

One guy in our ward would sit with his shoulder over the seat and crane his neck to turn around and look at certain women as they filed into the meeting. The pretty women were always stared down every Sunday. I'm sure It was quite embarassing for his wife. Not only did he do that, but he was always rubbing his daughters backs and playing with their hair. ( they appeared to be a touchy family and it grossed ,me out!) We finally could not stand it any longer and changed seats.

Wife mix up - VictorZebra

Stake Conference: The Stake President was talking about his wife and called her by the wrong name. She spoke later in the meeting and said "Who is that woman."

Injured scrotum - anon

Once in fast and testimony meeting, a sweet sister in the ward got up and proceeded to tearfully share all of the hardships her family had experienced since her husband had injured his "scrotum" at work. She went on and on, "Bob can't do this anymore, Bob can't do that, the neighbors have been so kind to take over his duties around the house that he can't perform anymore.." (That perked up a lot of ears)

So finally she finishes, and her red-faced husband gets up and says simply, "I just wanted to clarify that it was my STERNUM that I injured. My STERNUM." And sat back down.

I've got a couple - Jerry Sloan

As a young lad, I had an electronic gadget called a "cybiko" which allowed local instant messaging with another cybiko. So, I was chatting away with the bishop's son, who was sitting behind his dad's chair in the front of the room (they always assigned a deacon to assist the older brethren)... and I decided wanted to send him a song I made with the gadget. Instead of pressing "Send" I pressed "Play" ... so while the Bishop was "burying" his testimony, my cybiko proceeded to wail the Super Mario Bros theme. Haha. I tried stepping on it to turn it off, I was so frantic.

Another time, the bishop's wife fainted. She got up, continued with her talk, and fainted again. I thought it was funny at the time, but man, I have nothing by sympathy for her now. Whenever someone is that afraid to speak, they are just REALLY caring of what others think of them, and that's not really something to make fun of.

Finally, whenever somebody cried, it was classic.

Turf war - No One You Know

There was a family visiting from another ward. They marched down to the front and took seats that another family obviously considered theirs because they looked daggers at them all through the meeting. But the funniest thing was that the mother, a tiny bone-thin woman, sang everything very, very loud, very, very flat and a beat behind the rest of the meeting and the organist. Gradually she dragged half the hall out of tune and tempo.

Saw my first adult female breast - dwindler

I'm at my first sacrament meeting as a missionary in Bolivia. We're sitting left side of the aisle, about half way back. On the other side of the aisle, and slightly beind me a baby is crying at the topof her lungs.

It's kind of distracting, and I'm thinking.."why doesn't someone take that child out". Then, in an instant, dead silence. I don't know if it was the spirit that prompted me or what, but I turned around to see what had happened, and there, right before my eyes, was my first bare adult female breast, it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life. So round, so perfect, so engorged with milk.

I had had my first witness, my first hmmmmm spiritual experience. I now knew with every fiber of my being what we were fighting for....

Bare breasts part 2 - outa here

Sacrament meeting: My sisters and I were bored to distraction, and kept squirming and whispering to each other. My mom kept "shush"-ing us, finally deciding to ignore us completely, staring straight ahead at the speakers.

My baby brother, also bored and fussy, climbed into her lap... and over the course of several minutes, fiddled with the buttons on Mom's blouse until they were undone and her shirt was gaping open.

More whispered giggles from us. Mom glared at us, and stonily returned her gaze to the front... I remember thinking "well, if she doesn't me to talk, then I can't tell her her shirt is open!"

Sisters and I watched in glee as baby brother then pushed on the little quick-release catch on Mom's nursing bra... causing her bare breast to literally pop out in plain view. THAT made her pay attention to us! The scoldings in the hall, as Mom put herself back together, were worth it!

Oh, and now that I think about it... this may be the one case where GARMENTS would have offered protection! Too bad my parents hadn't been through the temple yet!

A little boy in the pew in front of me had eaten something - Sandy

That obviously didn't agree with him. By the time he was through hurling the mass of vomit around the room, he had nailed just about every member of the family in the pew in front of his.

His mom's frantic attempt to drag the kid from the room only caused additional airborne barf across the entire chapel.

The carpet in the lobby was stained for years. It probably still is.

Once in a ward in the Northeast - Pat Lewis

A lady was giving a talk about faith... and every few seconds she'd blow air into a big red balloon, filling it up with more air to demonstrate how our faith can stretch. Finally, when the balloon was obviously filled to capacity, she just held it up through the rest of her talk for us all to see.

Then at the end of her talk, to show how fragile some people's faith is, without warning she poked the balloon with a needle next to the microphone. The whole chapel sounded as if a bomb went off.

We still laugh about that sometimes.

Missionaries and hoops - B.H.

From my mission: The Bishop was a bit new to the church and wanted to get things going. The missionaries had just a bit more experience church wise, but we were hesitant to get in the middle because we didn't want to hurt the guy's feelings. He was trying some weird stuff though. The first thing I remember was that he reversed the order of the sacrament (water first, bread second). He said he wanted to shake things up a bit. (In hindsight, this is all a big "who cares, whatever gets you through the day pal".)

Next week went back to normal and we had a sigh of relief. (I wish I had kept these meeting programs.) Week 3 we get to church and there are two opening prayers and two closing prayers listed. We were like "What the H is going on?", but assumed it was a typo. Nope. He had decided that we needed "extra prayer power" and proceeded accordingly. However, week 4 was the classic. We had an investigator coming and rushed to get a copy of the program for the week. All the speakers’ spots were blank. We figured he was throwing in some "extra testimony power."

Not quite. The sacrament ends and the Bish announces that today we were going to do something a little different. He holds up a bottle of consecrated oil and says, "The missionaries are going to come up and give blessings to everyone that wants one." People started marching up to the front. There was no way I was giving an hour of blessings to the ward, so I went up to the front and whispered to the Bish that, "The Mission President has told us to let the local priesthood perform the ordinances." He says, "Oh yes, of course." He then proceeded accordingly.

We called the Mission President that night and told him what was going on. Some stake leaders showed up and everything went back to the handbook after that. In hindsight, the call to the MP was the worst move I made on my mission. :)

We lived in a downtown ward when I was a teenager. Many local kids played hoops at the chapel, etc. and we had a good community service reputation. You could enter the chapel from the side at either the front or the back. Just as the Bish was about to make announcements one week a local Non-Mo kid came smashing through the front door and started to run toward the aisle (which would take you to the back door).

About two seconds later he was pursued by two other local kids that grabbed him, but as they did they stopped realizing there was a meeting full of people. After freezing for about two seconds, the first kid took off for the back door and the other two pursued him. The meeting went on from there as if nothing had ever happened.

Nudity, of the male kind - tigerbiter

It was while I was a missionary and it was a family we were teaching. The oldest son, about 15 or so was a couple bearings short. They were sitting on the row right in front of the overflow area. We weren't too far away, I looked back in the middle of one of the talks and lo and behold there the horse was out of the corral and he was sitting there smiling and playing with it and making little grunting sounds of pleasure, his mother looked on as if she didn't care and his younger sisters and brother were recoiling away from him as though he were playing with himself, which, of course he was.

I just turned around and tried to burn the memory from my mind, which obviously didn't work. And whenever he tried to shake my hand after that I politely ignored him. We finally dropped them as a family since they weren't going anywhere.

Then there was Jeff Lindsay's first counselor in the bishopric - tigerbiter

I had to translate during the entire duration of Sacrament Meeting for the members and investigators. I chewed gum to keep my mouth from drying out. I noticed the first counselor call one of the deacons up and hand him a note. He did this all the time, so I didn't think anything of it.

Till the kid started walking towards me. He handed me a note that said, "Spit our your gum, it's not very missionary like." I took the note and wrote down, "How do you expect me to translate for an hour without my mouth getting dry?"

Then I paused a moment in my translating and walked up to the pulpit in the middle of a talk and handed the note back to the first counselor. He looked mighty embarrassed even though only he and I knew what was on the note.

O/T I told Jeff once, when he'd invited a bunch of us over for dinner, a huge whopper about how I learned to speak the language so well. I spun a nice little tail invovling two american doctors a few years after the Veitnam war in Laos who were doing some volunteer work. They had an affair which resulted in me, but then they died in a freak accident and the Hmong parents who were watching me at the time adopted me as their own till we came over to the US as refugees in 1987. etc.

The look on everyone's face was priceless, and later when I told them it was a joke the apostate missionary of the bunch said, "up until that point I thought you were the most anal son of a bitch in the mission field." It was a good thing I wasn't otherwise I would have reported the TV and X-box I found in his apartment after we broke in to steal their lightbulbs.

Deacon falling down the stairs while serving sacrament - sm

At the front of the chapel there was a choir section on one side. It had a flight of stairs to allow access to the multiple rows of choir seats. There was a choir present that evening in Sacrament Meeting. The deacon who was taking the sacrament to the choir tripped on about the top stair and took a head-first fall down the stairs. Fortunately the lad wasn't injured. But it sure was a shock to everybody in the meeting.

Party poppers in the hymn racks - Sam

The most disruptive thing I ever saw at a Sacrament Meeting was when some of the youth put those exploding party poppers in the hymn racks. Then after the opening hymn, everyone put their books back in the racks. It sounded like caps going off all around the chapel. Some people even screamed. But the meeting continued with the opening prayer as if nothing was wrong.

Once when I was about eight or nine years old, I was with a couple of my friends and we rode our bikes through the church. This was back when they used to hold Primary during the week. We went through the back of the church, down the hall past the Primary room, and then out the other door. They were holding Primary and the partitions were open. I was picking up the rear, so by the time my friends passed all eyes were on me, riding my bike through church. It was a frightening moment. Luckily, it was one of the other wards and nobody knew me.

When I was a Deacon, I used to have a dog that ran away a lot, and one time he was gone for several days and I thought I had lost him. That Sunday, I was passing the sacrament at church, and I heard some ruckus at the door and my dog was in the chapel. He had apparently followed us to church, gotten in and made his way to where we were. Hardly anyone saw it, because my Mom was there in a flash, scooped him up and was gone. But I spent the next few minutes thinking how cool it would be to have my dog sitting with me at church.

Hangers on the coats - B.H.

Good one on the poppers Sam! Now that we are venturing outside the sacrament meeting, I will tell you my "evil" teenage moment. A friend and me were bored at Stake Conference, so we went outside to think of something to do. I got the bright idea to go in the coatroom and hang hangers on the belts of as many of the coats as possible. I think we got about a hundred on coats. After the conference there were a hundred people walking around with hangers on their backs. We stood back in tears.

People would be in the middle of a conversation and someone would walk up ... tap, tap, tap on the shoulder, "Do you realize you have a hanger on your back?" (Did they really expect that it was a fashion accessory?) I cried laughing just remembering that one. I confessed to this event in my last Mo sacrament talk and mortified half the audience. There is a 57% chance that I am personally responsible for the fact that all the Mo-coatroom hangers are now annoyingly attached to the bar.

Fainting spell - MishMagnet

During his homecoming talk an Returned Missionary fainted. Face hit the podium and he kind of bounced off and onto the ground. I was a teenager then and for some reason was quite sure he'd died. His mission was over, he'd done what he needed to do in life and Heavenly Father had just ended it in front of all of us. The chorister got up and started leading a hymn but only a few people were singing.

There was a guy in my ward growing up who was not right. I'm not sure what his mental issues were but in addition to the mental issues he was albino, so different in appearance. He hit on all of us mercilessly, trying to find someone to marry. Oh, this guy also called my dad (the Bishop) all through his mission to complain about his companions not getting along with him or using too much toilet paper.

One day in Fast and Testimony this guy got up and told all of us young girls that we were "snots" and "stuck up" for rebuffing his advances.

There was a family in the second row and their kid was really acting up. The kid was about 3 or 4. Finally the dad gets up carrying the kid out. The kid is screaming loudly "No Daddy! Please don't hiiiiit meeeee! Don't hiiiiit meeeee!"

For Mothers Day one year the current Bishop (not my dad) decided that all the deacons would come up to the stand and say why they loved their mothers. Everyone was towing the line until the last kid who said "I love my mom because she lets me out of the basement to eat every evening."

Machete threat - Hotwaterblue

Anybody living in the Kamas, Utah Valley will never forget the day John Singer stood up in Fast and Testimony Meeting, pulled a machete out of his jacket and called the entire Rhodes Valley ward to repentence.

This particular action got him excommunicated.

Two years later he was shot and killed by local authorities when he resisted arrest and pulled a gun on them.

One Christmas Morning - Dawn Moya (garfield Dawn)

When the sacrament was being passed my litttle brother (He was about 16.. I was visiting for Christmas.. my home ward) was passing the sacrament. He came to our row and handed me the tray. All of a sudden he just passed out right on top of me. Good thing I was related.

My mom was up with the choir and all I remember doing was saying out loud. "SOMEONE HELP ME! BRYAN JUST PASSED OUT, MOM HELP!"

I never in a million years thought I would speak outloud during a service.. CRAZY.. so the bishop came running down.. he was an EMT and we took him out to the front. He was ok.. just fainted... TOO FUNNY.. a classic Christmas story in our house... :)

Sunlight streaming through the chapel window, illuminating the angelic face of the girl I had a crush on. - Stray Mutt

Quacking outloud - Primus

It was the middle of the sacrament. Everything was nice and quiet until his son about 4 decides to start quacking outloud at the top of his lungs like a duck "QUACK QUACK!"

Hilarious

Really Bizzare Stories - visiting

During one Fast and Testimony meeting, a mom of five stood up and told a story of a car trip where her oldest son, aged 13 (who wasn't the brightest), had pooped his pants and denied it while they all smelled something and how they had to pull off to the side of the road where she sniffed everyone's behind. When she found out it was the 13 yr old, she made him strip down naked to wipe him off napkins and how that didn't work so she had to use his t-shirt, and he had to ride the rest of the four hours home naked without even a blanket to cover him up.

Another Sunday, a returned missionary got up to give his talk and told how he had dreamed that God came to him and told him that he wanted to him sit on his right side while Jesus was on the left and how it was a prophecy that he would be equal to Jesus Christ and would become a great prophet of the church.

Invalid talks - Spiritual&Spirited

1. During a talk some couple who were very immature gave talks. One talked about the other church's superstitions and pulled a crucifixion cross made out of 2 popsicle sticks out of and yelled 'Get Back Jack!' and spun/flung the thing out into the congregation.

2. The wife gave a talk and told a story from the Bible about the INVALID woman...but kept pronouncing it like the definition meaning not valid.

3. My sister was at a BYU ward and a girl got up to bear testimony. She said she had to bear it in the way that's most expressive for her, dancing. So she did ballet moves at the podium and then sat down.

4. I lived in Provo and we had stake conference in the tabernacle downtown. I was out in the foyer with some girlfriends and we watched some cute little girl (about 3 yrs old) go up to the drinking fountain and start drinking. At the same time she began peeing. It looked like she was drinking it and it was going right through her!

5. My mom lived in a ward with the lady who played the mission president's wife in God's Army. This lady was leading the singing in Sacrement Meeting and her little girl (4-5 yrs old) came and stood by her holding her mom's dress in one hand and then she pulled up her own cute little dress in the other and was buck naked in front of the entire ward...especially the deacons on the front row! The mom never caught on--just smiled and led the music.

6. I've mentioned this one before...the bishop making serious straightfaced announcement that the 'Redeeming the Dead Committee' will meet at 4pm in the overflow room instead of 5pm. I about peed my pants on that one.

A couple of stories - anon

My dad has a glass eye on his left side. He can't blink and it doesn't close when he's sleeping. My sister was about five years old and climbed up on to his lap one day during Sacrament Meeting while he was sleeping. She reached up to pull on the eyelid to try to get the glass eye to close and instead suceeded in popping the glass eye out of its socket.

It rolled under the pew in front of us and the family sitting in that pew heard something hit the ground and leaned over to see what it was only to be confronted by a glass eyeball staring up at them from the floor. The mom gave sort of a muffled squeak, but the kids started screaming at the top of their lungs. The mom grabbed them with one hand, grabbed the eye with the other and walked all the kids out of SM while surreptitiously dropping the eye in my father's hand on the way past his pew.

After a sort of stunned silence the speaker picked up where he left off and it was business as usual.

Another story indirectly involving my dad's eye. My dad always sat closest to the aisle in our pew so he could prop his arm on the armrest and his head on his hand and have a nice little nap. He usually waited until after the sacrament to fall asleep but some Sundays didn't quite make it. Well, on this particular Sunday the deacon had come to our pew to serve us the bread. Unbeknownst to us our father was fast asleep at the head of the pew.

After standing there uncomfortably for about a minute the deacon softly nudged my dad in the arm using the sacrament tray to try to wake him up. He woke him up alright. My dad jerked into consciousness instinctually flinging his left arm because the deacon had nudged him on his blind side and my dad had no idea what had hit him. The tray went flying. Little pieces of bread went everywhere.

The deacon and the rest of my family were laughing so hard tears were pouring out of our eyes and the rest of the congregation was staring at us like we were all nuts. People started scrambling around trying to pick up the "sacred" bread and one little boy managed to stuff about ten pieces into his mouth before his mom caught him.

The bishop of our ward and his family had taken a very fast trip to California and had arrived bakc home about 3 a.m. on Sunday morning. After very few hours of sleep they had come to our 9:00 a.m. church. Five minutes after the sacrament was over the entire family including the bishop up on the stand was sound asleep with the exception of their youngest, a boy about three or so.

He belly crawled underneath the pews until he was at the short front pew in the very front where the deacons always sit prior to serving the sacrament. He climbed up on the pew, removed his pants and underwear and proceeded to perform what my family refers to as the hootcha hatcha dance, swaying and gyrating and having a good old time while his parents slumbered on. They didn't wake up until the laughter of the entire ward finally penetrated their sleep.

Then the mom performed this amazing rubber arm move and reached completely over three pews, grabbed her son and pulled him over the heads of the congregation in front of her all the way back to their pew. It was so funny.

Not funny but weird - JackMormon'sWife

Mine's not so funny, but weird, weird, weird. A new couple moved into our ward. Their son was serving a mission in Italy, so naturally we became his "home" ward when he shortly returned from his mission.

He started out his talk normally enough, but after a minute or so started stammering and seemed to become frustrated and confused. Finally, in exasperation, he switched to ITALIAN and continued on as if nothing was amiss. He gestured emphatically, cried, looked heavenward etc. while he babbled for more than a half an hour.

Of course NOBODY could understand a word he was saying and we all kept glancing at each other with WTF?! looks on our faces. His parents sat proudly beaming in the front row.

He finished, was thanked and congratulated by the Bishop and nobody ever mentioned it again. It was hard to know what to say to the family or the RM since we all barely knew them. "Good talk???? Welcome home??"

I think his mission made him mental. Bizarre.

This was one contradiction (of many) in mormondumb - scutter

Attributing the Returned Missionary's foriegn language ability/impediment after his return to "gawd's gift of tongues" ... yet the scriptures seem precise on this matter that if there isn't someone in the audience equally blessed with "interpretation of tongues" then the "tongues" gifted shouldn't speak at all (oh, that's the part the "saints" can just ignore).

One small blip on a huge wart of humanity.

Bravo - Jenny

My son used to stand up in the pew after every hymn, raise him arms above his head and shout "Bravo!!! Bravo!!!"

His dad is an opera singer so he'd been trained young to appreciate singing. And he did, every single time we sang in church. We really couldn't stop him, he just had to outgrow it.

Proud parent story -- my own kid - scutter

My boy (along with the rest of the scutter family) were the agenda for the sacrement meeting. Our young son had worked on his talk with us quite a bit and he had a typed written talk (parent prepared) that he studied from. At the time he wasn't a very good reader and we never intended him to use the typed version of the talk for that reason. Anyway, as he clambered up the pedastal to reach the microphone he pulled from his pocket this practice sheet. We were in shock. He stood and not a word was coming from his mouth. Apparently fear and reading didn't mix well for him at that time. After a minute or two of stambering and silence, my wife finally went up to the pulpit and snatched the paper from his hand and she went back to her seat. My boy delivered his talk as planned and very well spoken.

My wife receive quite a few complements for her "solution" to the problem.

We had been trying for months to get this innactive kid in our ward to come to church. He had been ordained a Deacon a few months before and the bishop was hounding us to get him activated.

Not long after, in mid-winter, we were sitting on the bench just about ready to stand up and pass the sacrament. Suddenly, in comes this innactive kid. We motioned to him to come and help pass. He walked up to the front of the chapel, peeled off his coat and took his assignment. After the prayer was said, we stood up and received out trays of bread. It was then that we noticed that this saintly innactive kid was wearing a white 'Coors' T-shirt.

He took his tray and began to pass. When the bishop noticed, he about had a nervous breakdown right on the stand. After the sacrament, we all exited the chapel and had a great laugh. To a bunch of heathen deacons, it was relegated as the funniest moment in our lives to that point.

The circle had about 13 men all side to side to side confirming my little bro. He was sitting on one of those uncomfortable metal church chairs. While his dad is giving the confirmation, he starts squirming and then starts farting. Of course being on the metal chair it echoed through the room.

You could feel the priests trying as hard as they could to hold back the laughter and the ripples of stiffled laughter were going through everyone's shoulders.

Dad of course, giving the blessing, raised his voice a little higher and sterner, trying to bring the "spirit" back to the blessing.

When we finally sat down, his primary teacher said, "Well, that will be one to remember." and I looked at my little sis who looked at me and that was it, I couldn't contain it and we all burst out laughing.

Dad of course, was sour pussed, thinking we were ruining a oh so spirishual meeting, but we laughed for days.

Many years ago, in another time and place, I was a Mormon (I know, those who know me, it is hard to believe). I belonged to a congregation in Milwaukie, Oregon.

One dark, rainy, winter Sunday evening (this was before the consolidated Sunday schedule--back when you went to Sunday School in the morning, then Sacrament Meeting later on in the day), when the one of the visiting stake leaders was droning on up front, and everyone was lightly dozing in their seats, this kid, about age 9, gets out from the side pew (I was in the middle section, in the second to the last row) and starts peeing into the aisle towards the front of the church. I watched, incredulous, as the urine arched and just barely missed some people. I could see the patterns he was making on the carpeted floor.

Just then, the mother (there was no father, but several other children of varying ages) looks up and sees the little sh-t and reaches out a long arm and wrenches him back into the pew. The urine arched up high before it was cut short. Within moments, the mother has her troops packed up and out the pew they went, and out the side door into the parking lot.

No one said anything. The speaker continued to drone on. No one, apparently, had noticed but me. The speaker hadn't noticed. The meeting ended about fifteen minutes after the mother had herded her brood out the door. The urine was still visible on the floor. I asked several people if they had seen the child whizzing in the aisle. No one had.

It was the most surreal experience in a ward house of my life.

At a ward in south central PA, a young mother and her 5(or so) year old son got up to bear their testimonies. As the mother was reverently walking up, the tie on her wrap around skirt became loose and the ENTIRE skirt fell off. She kept walking as her son picked up the skirt and followed behind her pulling on her slip trying to get her attention. She kept her arms folded, setting a reverant example until they got to the stairs leading to the pulpit, where she turned around to see her son waving her skirt in the air. Her skirt falling off was not the weird thing. The fact that NO ONE said anything to her as she lead the holier than thou parade was what I considered odd.

In my husband's old ward, a woman got up for what we assumed would be the standard "thank-a-monie" or "love-a-monie". Oh no. She was up there for 15 minutes-- droning on about how this child of hers was in jail and this one had a crack baby, and how thankful she is that she is Mormon and not African or Chinese.

Before the bishop started to look worried. TEN full minutes later she got down from the stand and headed straight for the piano and played 5 verses of an unknown hymn (at least it wasn't recognizable to me) "for the benefit of the audience" she said.

The bishopric looked like they wanted to sink into the floor. Why they didn't get up and gently remind her to take her seat is beyond me. F&T meeting is always rather entertaining in rural idaho.

I was visiting a close friend in Las Vegas, and though I was inactive at that time, I agreed to attend - wouldn't you know - it was Fast Sunday, so we endured testimony meeting that day.

After a few of the usual "I know the church is true" offerings by some little kids, a WAY fringe member, at best a ne'er-do-well, got up to speak at the podium. He looked like a street person but was slightly better dressed.

He was far from a polished speaker as he began to complain about how he had been mistreated by both members and non-members in his life. "Well, if they don't like how I'm living my life," he said, "they can just -" .... at which point he raised both middle fingers to the whole ward.

The bishop didn't have time to respond as he turned and walked back to his seat.

We sat, wide-eyed, amazed as we looked at the Bishop, the guy, and each other over and over again.

That was one testimony that burns in my memory to this day! Amen!

Once in a singles ward in Arizona, the high council speaker told a big long Faith Promoting Story about the new Christ picture the church had commissioned. Basically the story implied that this portrait was an ACTUAL likeness of Jesus, because a troubled girl who had had a near death experience RECOGNIZED him when she saw the picture at a fireside. The story left many of the congregation in tears.

Then the councilman proceeded to tell us that the story was fictional and not to believe every faith promoting story you hear!

LOL.

(by the way . . . I was squirming in my chair the whole time because the story just didn't seem legit to me)

I think that was a good object lesson. Imagine how many people he taught to THINK! and not be so gullible.

The bishop was calling people from the audience to speak in Sacrament Meeting. He singled out one sister to speak, and said, "Doesn't Sister "Smith" look great. That new nose of hers (she had recently had plastic surgery on her nose) is so cute, I just want to tweak it everytime I see her."

My friend Sister "Smith" walked up to the pulpit (I could tell she was fuming mad) and said, "When Bishop "Jones" finds me alone in the coat room, the nose isn't what he wants to tweak." She then walked out of the church house.

One Sunday some of the youth put those exploding "party poppers" in all the hymnal racks. After the first hymn, everyone dropped their books in the racks and there were loud pops all around the chapel. Some people even screamed. I thought that was a pretty inventive practical joke.

The LDS church manages to screw up most perfectly good spiritual things. Fasting is one of them. You don't impose a fast on people, it isn't something you do as a routine. You fast because you want to raise to a different spiritual level. You have to want to do it, other wise it's pointless. At least that's the theory.

Fasting is about denial of the body. The body's wants are primal, selfish and distracting. You fast to show mastery over your desires. Classic fasting wasn't just skipping two meals. The old guys would fast for long periods, until they no longer desired food, until they forgot about their bodies, until they started hallucinating. "Woo-hoo! Now I see God!"

But Mormonism treats fasting like any other obligation. Do it because they say so, do it because everyone has to do everything the same way at the same time, do it to show obedience.

"Fasting and prayer," which was originally a form of meditation, has been reduced to a kind of bargaining with the Lord. "If I suffer a little physical discomfort and grovel a while will you answer my prayers better than if I didn't?" Because the LDS God can't answer prayers simply because you ask. No no no. That would be too close to unconditional love. You have to prove yourself first, you have to kiss God's ass.

The following event took place on Nov. 7, 2004 in the Midvale 6th Ward, of the Midvale Stake of Zion.

I was resting my head on the bench in front of me trying to enjoy testimony meeting. A kid starts to bear his "tesitmony." I could hear his mom whisper in his ear to start. The kid repeats, "I like to bear my toast to Mary..."

I almost laughed out loud when I heard that. I sat up to see this kid and his mother.

Using the superficial-prejudgmental skills that I possess, I determined that the mother and son (and rest of family) were not active members of the ward; i.e., they had a "white trash, uneducated, less-active" appearance that only these type of people have.

Anyway, after making his toast to Mary, the kid no longer needed his mom's help (she just stood back and watched.) The kid proceeded to "testifiy" to the ward that he had been praying to God because his family was having hard times with money and that God might provide them with help.

He "testified" that his parents did not have jobs and that he was praying that God might help them pay rent for the month. He "testified" of a his sick sibling and that they needed God to help. He rambled on for a minute or so about his family's problems. And when he ended, he simply closed, "Amen," without the expected "In the name of Jesus Christ." Which, to me, was a "nail in the coffin" sign that this kid and his mom (along with his family) were, indeed, white trash, uneducated, less-active members of the ward.

I deduced that the entire show was premeditated by the mother; that is, she probably wanted financial assistance from the bishop. She was either to embarrassed/intimidated to ask the bishop, or she had already been turned down and had to utilize her boy's "Tiny Tim" persona (in hopes of coaxing the bishop.)

And last of all, when a parent puppeteers their child's testimony, the parent is expected to give an obligatory testimony since they are already up on the stand. This mother was not about to favor us with her testimony. I'm guessing she already felt like an ass by having her son bear his "testimony." And being less-active, she would feel awkward bearing a "real" testimony since she does not "have" one; and bearing her "testimony" about her fincancial situation would only make her look like a bigger ass than she already made herself to be.

Needless to say, they both hurried back to their seats.

The best testimony meeting I ever attended as a kid was when this guy stood up to give his testimony and when he got the microphone, he started telling why he thought the church was NOT true. Then all of a sudden the elders (don't remember how many) converged on him and walked him out in what looked like a circular bear hug. Then - the meeting went on as normal. Pretty potent imgage for a kid though, it taught me never to voice my doubts in church!

Once someone confessed to masturbation in F&T meeting. This young woman--I don't think she was a member of the ward--visited. The ward was located in an inner city area right next to a university. She got up and started out pretty normally, then I think she wanted to testify to God's forgiveness. She started telling us about how she had had this masturbation problem. The bishop got up and asked her to conclude her testimony and be seated. She argued with him, saying that she was trying to give her testimony of.... I couldn't hear exactly what she said at this point. She continued to tell about her masturbation problem, but very quickly a couple of brawny elders got up and escorted her out of the chapel. Someone else got up and reminded us that if we had something to confess, we should confess to the bishop.

I haven't thought of that incident in years. Another time I attended a sacrament meeting where a couple told about their reactivation in the church. One of them--I can't remember which one, very casually said she or he had committed fornication before returning to the fold. The bishop was shocked and you could tell that he was about to bolt, but the speaker moved on and the bishop did nothing.

Some day maybe everyone will have to submit their talks and testimonies for correlation review before they will be allowed to give them.

The Relief Society President got up and gave her testimony and in the middle of it asked the Branch President's wife for forgiveness for "messing around" with the Branch President.

The District President was there. Needless to say...he and the soon-to-be-ex-Branch President retired to the office.

There were a ton of releases and new callings the next Sunday!

Oh yeah...after the lady gave that shocker, a new member stood up and said "I know that the LSD Church is true!"

In case you're wondering...this happened in Western Pennsylvania.

There was a guy in my ward (he admittedly had some mental issues) who got up and confessed to the fact that he had sympathy for Hitler's views about the Jews, however, he wanted to serve a mission and the Bishop said he couldn't with views like that so he was trying to change his views so he could go on a mission and come home to marry one of you lovely sisters who wouldn't date him now, but they would want to when he came back. It gave me chills. The scary thing is that he did serve a mission (despite the mental illness) and came back and literally stalked and harassed a few sisters in the ward. Scary.

I was in a f/t meeting where a guy stood up and started naming people in the ward, saying "it has been revealed to me that they have sinned, and are in need of repentance..." We were all so glad that he didn't identify each sin!! (he didn't name me, but it was a stressful situation, nonetheless)

I've told before about the "dream woman" in our ward, who would get up *every month* and narrate these long, involved dreams she'd supposedly had. They were just a pile of nonsense and blather--like most dreams are--and sitting through them was *excruciating!*

And then there was the one, back when digital watches were new--the fancier the better--and a guy in our ward had gotten one for his birthday the day before. This woman stands up to bear her weepy testimony about the blessing of her first grandchild, and this guy's watch starts playing, "The Yellow Rose of Texas." He couldn't figure out how to turn it off, and ended up bolting from the room, with his wrist tucked under his other arm to muffle the music...

I can't recall if this was a testimony meeting, but it was a doozy. Picture a sleepy rural Australian ward, only about 70 turning up each week. Earlier that morning in a disciplinary council, one perverted scumbag pedophile was excommunicated. He then thought it appropriate for he and his (amazingly stupid) wife to sit up back of the sacrament meeting, even though there were at least 5 of the young boys that he'd molested in the chapel.

Some members were walking about with badges on with his initials & words to fit "someone likes boys"...The bishop was trying to remove the badges in vain!

Anyway, the meeting was going on, amidst constant sobs & a steady stream of people going in & out of the chapel, until one of the dads got up, walked up to the guy, spat in his face, made a remark & walked out..followed by many others, including hysterical kids & adults. The poor investigators sitting 2 seats away from the action took off for the door & weren't seen again.

It was an awful situation, but a sacrament meeting I'll never forget.

Several years ago, my wife and I had our children at F&T meeting. One of the "monthly regulars" got up to bear her testimony. She spoke for about 15 minutes about how endometriosis made her monthly periods excruciatingly painful. I wished the bishop would have turned off the microphone. Later, my wife and I were discussing what happened and we both were thinking "too much information!" To top it all off, she never did say anything about Jesus or how the church is true.

Mormons being high-strung and all, I recall a rather funny experience in testimony meeting when a truly devout, humorless old High Priest stood up to bear his testimony and a fart audibly slipped out as he rose. After everyone tried to not giggle, the microphone finally arrived and he indicated that "obviously, the spirit has moved me to bear my testimony today" at which the whole congregation burst out laughing.

The next to speak was the chorister and she quipped that the closing song will be changed to "The Spirit of God Like a Fire is Burning."

When he was in the bishopric, he'd always do that little lean-over move to let one fly. He thought he was being subtle...

Then my brother informed him that the entire priests quorum had a running bet every sac mtg to see who can estimate the number of "leans" Dad would do that day. It got to be VERY distracting after that--watching all of the 16 year-old boys chuckle and look at each other every time he'd do it.

Now I think it's funny, but that the time, I was a tremendously embarrassed Beehive girl!

There was a man who bore his testimonkey (thank you for whomever concocted that word!) every month without fail. Everyone would groan inside when he would get up there. He not only went on for 15-20 minutes (we were always hoping the Bishopric would poke at him and tell him to hurry things along) but he has a very thick Hispanic accent and when he would start blubbering you could not understand a damn thing he said.

THEN....one F&T he went to the podium and began reading a letter he received. The letter was from a ward member who had written to tell him how "f-ing boring you are", "everyone is sick and tired of listening to you every month", "you never have anything to say that even resembles a testimony" and "you've been in this country 20 years, can't you speak english better than you do?".

People were snickering and trying to hold it back (especially when he actually said the f-word) one kid said in a loud voice "Daddy, he said f**k" that caused more snickering. The guy then went on for 10 more minutes and all he could say was "I have a testimony" 40 different ways. Who ever was in charge of the control for raising and lowering the stand hit the control briefly and the stand went down a couple of inches. He says, "See! God is mad at you for sending me that letter and He's controlling the... (couldn't find the word for podium)the uhm...this DAMN thing here!" He stormed off and plunked himself back into his seat.

That was the talk of the ward for months!

When my son was about 4 years old he was very fond of the rock music group the Village People. One Sunday morning I walked into the Junior Sunday School meeting just as they were starting to sing the song, "Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam". You can imagine my shock and embarrassment when from the front of the congregation came the voice of my little boy singing loudly and clearly, "Jesus wants me for a Macho, Macho, Man!"

The Primary President in my ward is a VERY Molly-Mormon lady. She is so na.ve. Since father's day was approaching she decided to talk with the primary children about the priesthood. She said to the children, "Today we are going to talk about something very special. But I will give you clues and you will have to guess what it is. It starts with the letter "P" and it is something that your father has that your mother does not." Just then a little 5 year old boy yelled out "PENIS". The rest of the adults in the primary room were dying laughing. The primary president never saw it coming. Duh.

Several years ago I was visiting my brother's place of business when a friend of his dropped by and related the following story.

His family had just returned from visiting family members in another ward (I believe that this took place in Southern Alberta) on the occasion of a baby blessing.

During testimony bearing a young boy of about 4 or 5 years old stood up to to bear his testimony and relate a personal experience on the power of prayer.

The little guy started by testifying that the church/BoM/ profit/Joseph Smith/etc are true. He also testified to the power of prayer.

He said that recently he had gotten up one morning and went with his dad to do chores around their farm. One of the chores was to feed the sheep. They took some hay out to the pasture but when they got there the sheep were gone! They began a search of the surrounding area but were unable to locate the missing animals.

He then remembered a recent Primary lesson about the power of prayer. He mentioned this to his dad and offered to pray to HF to help them find the lost sheep. His dad agreed and the boy said the prayer.

"And you know what?!" he said, "we drove over the very next hill and THERE THOSE LITTLE SONS-OF-BITCHES WERE."

Apparently, after a moment of stunned silence, this brought the house down. People were laughing so hard that even the members of the bishopric couldn't regain their own composure.

After a few minutes the Bishop got up to the pulpit in an attempt to restore order. But even he couldn't control himself and just dismissed the meeting without even having a closing hymn or prayer.

Hello there dearies! My name is Barbara Magooistikov, but my friends call me Babs, and i've had my (big mouthful of a) surname shortened to Magoo. Anyway, here is my tale of holiness, humour, and shocking occurrence.

I am a grandmother of four, though because I live far from my children, I don't get to see them much. But, last April, my grandaughter Victoria, came to visit me and stay for the weekend. She was a bit of a tomboy really, and she had brought a friend with her, a scrawny little boy called Eric (who was (and is still, I presume) a no-mo. He seemed a polite enough boy anyway, and so was pleased to take him along with us to the church service that weekend.

I let the two young ones sit a couple of rows ahead of me, so as so they could remain 'cool' by not being with an 'old granny', and so that i could still sit with my row of friends. I had a good view of the children as well, in case they misbehaved. The service went along quite nicely, until we started singing the hymns. I wasn't sure at first, but I was pretty sure that i heard the sound of breaking wind occurring in a short space of time. It was, of course, Eric who was the producer of such noises and gas emmissions, and to my horror i recognised a Tune from the expulsions!!!

Firstly, I best admit my one little guilty pleasure in life- a youthful invigorating inventive and, frankly, sublime, pop band called The Divine Comedy. They have been a favourite of mine for the last couple of years, and easily the best group to have come from that quaint country Britain within the last fifteen years or so. So, imagine my confusion (and shock!) to be hearing a Divine Comedy tune (National Express) coming from the giggling boy! I would doubt my own ears, but National Express has this rather memorable and unmistakeable tune to it, so I was pretty certain of it! But, naturally, I was a bit embarrassed and fearful of what other people would say if I ever told them about it. And thus, I have (up until now), never told anyone else about what i heard that day. Despite the nice choice of song from Victoria's friend Eric (I still don't know if it was a purposeful tune or not), I still blush greatly when I think back of my embarrassment. Needless to say, I haven't let Victoria visit with that rascal Eric since!

I have become particularly attentive in those moments of marginal consciousness--like when I am nodding off in church. Recently about 30 minutes into the Sunday main event I was awakened on the back pew (the olfactory origins for the designation for church benches had, until recently, escaped my attention) by a suspicious noise of indeterminate origin. Without lifting my head I carefully checked around to see if anyone was: 1. Glaring, 2. Holding their breath, or 3. laughing.

Three types of toilets were in use in Japan when I served my mission in the mid 1970's know affectionately as SITTERS, SQUATTERS, AND PLOPPERS. The missionaries in Japan used the word "benny" to refer to the bathroom as it resembled the proper Japanese word "o-ben-jo," which translated literally means "honorable convient place."

Sitters were basic American style toilets and I only got to use a sitter twice, the first and last time of the entire mission, because they had one at the mission home. I heard that they also had them in Tokyo and Okinawa, but there was something about the Japanese ideal of cleanliness that precluded putting your bare ass on the same surface as someone else had put their bare ass.

Squatters were most common and were used 95% of the time. They consisted of a white porcelain trench below the surface of the floor about 30 inches long, 12 inches wide and 8 inches deep. A lip on one end prevented back-splash from the drain hole going down. The water trickled out a hole in the other end. To use it you had to put on the special benny room slippers with slick soles when entering the room, straddle the trench first, pull your pants around your ankles, and get your garments open before you could squat and let it fly. The dangers of the squatter were multitude. First you were tempted to sit on the lip which was strictly forbidden because if you didn't get yourself sat down exactly right you'd find that you had shat on the floor. You could stumble or loose your balance and fall in at any point, especially if you dropped your pants first and then tried to straddle it. Most embarassing was that you could quite easily shit in your own pants around your ankles if your aim wasn't very good.

In order to avoid all these problems I just ignored the benny slippers, took my pants off completely and then my old one piece garments which met I had to take off my shirt and tie. It was such a hassle that I trained my bowels and didn't eat any more than absolutely necessary so I only had to go to the benny about once or twice a week. This one companion would lay these 18 inch long logs down that were about 5 inches in diameter and the water couldn't even come close to washing them away. So he just let them start to stack up. When I mentioned that the room was really starting to stink and was he planning to build a fire with them or what, he took the pancake flipper and just nudged them on their way. I believe that he truely washed that flipper but I have never eaten another pancake since then.

The ploppers were only used in very old buildings and I had the priviledge of one for about 2 months. They were basically about the same as the squatters and used in exactly the same way. But they were just a hole in the floor that went directly into a large septic tank below with no pipe to get clogged. The stench was over-powering. The zoology was equally facinating. Large swarms of flies would rush out of the hole at the first plop and hundreds would swish against your bare ass. Nine inch long shit-eating cockroaches danced the floor. Spiders the size of a softball lurked in the corners above the mountains of dung. Various beetles and wasps could been seen. And the ocassional big black sewer rat might be splashing around below. Could they jump up and take a nip out of a missionary's balls? Who knows.

My companion and district leader in that place with the plopper was the typical hard-core, goal obsessed, numbers crazy, ambitious, brown-nosing pompous self-righteous asshole of a missionary. One day he was squatting over the plopper when his precious appointment book fell out of his back pocket, and down down down onto the peak of poop. That book contained irreplaceable information like the names, addresses, phone numbers, and appointment times of about twenty golden investigators, along with crucial financial information and branch statistics. This was a spiritual emergency. We had to recover that book.

We tried everything; coat hangers, broom handles, etc., but it was too far down. We noticed that the tank extended out beyond the wall of the building into an alley where it was accessed by a small man-hole cover. We easily pried it off.

Honorable District Leader determined that Elder Lund, the other Junior companion would have to go in for it. His companion, Elder Fatso (I've forgotten his name) and I had to wrestle him to the ground and literally force him into the hole. At the last second we thought, what if its say, thirty feet deep and he drowns in there? So we found a rope and tied it around his waist and then pushed him down into the septic tank. I helped because I knew that if he failed I was next. Elder Fatso didn't fit and my companion would never do it as long as he could get someone else to do it.

The muck was only about 4 to 5 feet deep so Elder Lund didn't need the rope, but he was completely submerged in it initially. He soon got to the sacred appointment book and tried to throw it up through the hole a few times before he finally got it through. He hit my companion on the side of the leg with it. My companion swore at him. "Don't get that shit on me you filthy bastard!"

My companion began the translation process immediately, from shit covered English into clean English. Elder Fatso and I tried to hoist Elder Lund out of the septic tank and we couldn't do it. The flimsy rope snapped. Elder Lund began to crack up, he had been crying all along. But he started to scream hysterically and he hit Elder Fatso in the side of the head with a handfull of shit.

A small audience of neighbors began to gather. Generally the Japanese ignore each other as much as possible. Shit was flying up out of the man hole and all over the surrounding buildings amid hellish screams and wails. My companion stuck his head out the window and suggested that we take this opportunity to teach the gathering multitude the gospel. So Elder Fatso began with the usual worn out line, that we represent the ...... and have come all the way from America to deliver an important message to you about...About that moment another handfull of shit sailed past. This was more than even the patient Japanese could ignore.

A ninety year old Granny (obaa-san) stepped forward and demanded that we explain. She couldn't have been much over 4 feet tall and 70 lbs. She hobbled back to the loosened manhole cover and the hole and she was very surprized to see Elder Lund down there gone completely crazy. She took command and ordered a couple of young guys off in two directions. Soon sirens were heard and the Fire Department arrived. They ran up the alley. Where is the fire? The last thing Elder Lund needed was another 6 inches of water in there. Then the benny wagon arrived. This was a small truck with a tank and a pump and several big black hoses. The truck was lime green and played music like the ice cream trucks in America.

The first two benny guys in rubber hip boots couldn't figure out how to get Elder Lund out. So they called in a papa benny guy. He quickly evaluated the scene and disappeared. He came back with a 16 foot long thick pipe with thick bolts in it, like a one legged ladder. We put it down the hole and Elder Lund was able to climb out. Then the fire department hosed him down. The pressure was a little high and it knocked him to the ground but they turned it down. Then Granny made them cut his cloths off and put them in a big plastic bag and she personally disposed of it. "My garments, my garments,..." he shouted in vain.

Then Granny deceided all three of us needed more hosing down along with the rest of the alley. After that a blanket appeared for Elder Lund. Finally, Granny marched the three of us to the bath house with the help of six neighborhood junior sumo wrasslers. We went in, stripped, (all nine of us) and she stood there, not more than two feet away and made sure that we really scrubbed thoroughly. All this time she was lecturing to us and I couldn't understand most of it except that she said over and over that Japan was a clean country and I learned the word in Japanese for shit.

My companion hid in the house and was furious with us for leaving him alone, for loosing the garments, and for us being with a member of the opposite sex, naked. Even if she was ninety years old. Elder Lund was still in shock and probably should have been checked into the nut house. Elder Fatso gave him a blessing and was inspired to tell him that he had done something greater than giving his life for the Kingdom. Because of the exceptional service he had performed, his calling and election were made sure that day. No matter what sins he committed in the future, he would inherit the celestial glory in the next life. This made Elder Lund feel better.

A couple days later my companion was feeling sort of bad that he didn't have such an "easy" opportunity to have his calling and election made sure. Elders Fatso/Lund and I looked at each other and then out the window to the alley. And the possibility did cross our minds. But the benny wagon had sucked it all out while we were at the bath house. And we didn't want to face Granny's wrath again. Of course they sent us a huge bill we couldn't possibly pay and so we had to explain it all to the mission president. And it reflected badly on my companion so that he never made zone leader because of it.

In the end, I learned that, other than crazy Elder Lund, most missionaries don't really know shit.

1. Early last year, in a nearby ward where my TBM brother serves as ward clerk, a non-member guy burst into sacrament meeting during the singing of a hymn. He rushed over to his TBM wife, who was seated near the rear of the congregation and began strangling her (hands around her throat). A recent convert (and former boxer) was sitting close by and rushed to the sister's aid. A full-on fist fight then developed between the husband and this recent convert. A missionary who was sitting in the row behind, stepped forward to separate the two combatants, and received a punch in the face from the husband. The missionary, losing his cool, retaliated with some telling blows of his own. By this time, the bishop and several henchmen had arrived from the stand, and the rampaging husband was soon subdued and the police called. During all of this, many in the congregation were unaware of the scene unfolding behind them, and continued singing, so that the fight took place with a musical accompaniment.

2. During Sunday morning priesthood meeting in a small branch, a high councillor was at the podium, complaining of the careless attitude of many who were present. A guy in the congregation interjected, "That's a lie!". The high councillor then walked down from the podium, taking his coat off as he did so. He walked over to the interjector and said, " Nobody calls me a liar like that." and then punched him. A scuffle ensued, which resulted in the whole branch being put on a 'repentance program'.

3. During the Tuesday night Young men's activity program, one of the boys was interrupting and making a general nuisance of himself. The YM president finally grabbed this boy by the arm, and marched him out of the room. At the end of the night, as boys were being collected by parents, the father of the ejected boy burst into the rec hall and grabbing the YM president by the throat, yelled, "If you ever touch my son again, you'll have me to deal with!". As it happened, a new family, with several teenage boys, had moved into the ward the previous week, and observing this scene at his first visit to Young Men's, one of the new boys looked at his brothers with a grin, and said, "Looks like we've landed in the right ward, boys!"

4. The ward clerk had had a bad day and wasn't in a good mood as he sat down to keep minutes in the mid-week priesthood executive meeting. During the meeting, the bishop showed disappointment that this ward clerk hadn't completed an assigned task. The clerk then stood up suddenly, and slamming his minutes book on the table, exclaimed, " Well you can keep your f***ing calling then!" and strode from the room. The stunned silence that followed, was broken by the Elders' quorum president who burst out laughing and said, " I didn't know he had it in him."

5. A young returned missionary from my ward ( who had served in the same mission as me, but some years later), told me that two Elders had been sent home for leaving their area and bunjee jumping from the famous bunjee bridge in southern New Zealand. I responded with the thought that while, this was a serious breach of mission rules, it didn't seem to warrant being sent home. With a grin, my young friend then continued, " I didn't tell you the rest of the story. You see, the guy who runs the bunjee jump, let's you jump for free, if you do it in the nude, and ........"

SUNDAY AFTERNOON AT THE FIGHTS really hit home. I swear almost every one of those events has happened to me.

1. I have never seen a fight in the chapel during services. (I said almost every one, didn't I?) Of course, maybe I was one of those singing away in the front, oblivious to the swinging away in the back.

2. I wanted to do a certain activity once when I was EQP. The Bisopric said no and I told them that as Aaronic Priesthood officers, they had no authority over the Melch. Priesthood! A week later they said that the Stake Pres. had cancelled my activity. I phoned him and found out he hadn't. The next Sunday I called the 1st and 2nd C. to the Bishop "a damn pair of bastardly liars." They both attacked me. My old man was a pro boxer and some of the things he taught me came in pretty handy that morning. We had my activity and the Bishopric didn't attend. We were too ashamed of our scuffle to tell anyone about it so we missed the "repentence program."

3. I believe in the "laying on of hands" when it comes to the Aaronic Priesthood and I have even taken my belt to some of the YM in the various wards I've lived in. I have been sued twice and no settlement was awarded either time. I love to play basketball with the boys, wearing a pair of combat boots. It is about the best opportunity to kick their little punk asses. My most recent run-in with the Bishop is over throwing a brat Scout out of the church and making him stand in the rain. Know what? The boys love it.

4. My secretary told me to "shove it" once, again back when I was the EQP. I honestly can't remember what set him off. I didn't hold it against him and he got over it.

5. My favorite missionary companion and one of the ZL's went out to the beach on P-day near this big bridge near Tampa Florida and they mooned this car load of babes in bikinis. It caused a wreck and stopped traffic for hours. No one ever told on them and they completed honorable missions.

6. This one is sort of a combo. Years ago we had this big Tongan missionary in our ward that was really beating us up on the basketball court. After about the third trip taking someone to the ER, I cut his legs out from under him on a lay-up, about the dirtiest flagrant foul possible. He fell hard and almost broke his neck. He got up with blood running all over his head and chased me around the church. But he couldn't catch me. He was one big dude I didn't want to tangle with. Transfers came the next week.

One counter-point I would like to make: This kind of shit goes on in every other church that has young people and volunteers. It even goes on at my office at work to some degree. It doesn't prove that we are any worse than the next church. I appreciate the work this website does in getting these things out in the open.

These are opportunites to grow and improve. I regret being so hot-headed some of those times. Not all of them though. Most of those people are good friends now.

So just get over it. And ask yourselves: What good have I done lately?

Last month our High Council (just what are they high on?) quite outdid themselves. I wish I had taken notes. Embarassing stories, antedotes, and heresay flowed nonstop from their sclerotic lips.

One story I will never forget: This old guy went on vacation for about 15 days. When he returned, he found a large dog in his swimming pool. At first he thought the dog had drowned. There was no way for a pooch to get out of the pool once it fell in. This dog had found a large eyebolt in the wall of the pool generally used to secure a rope across it seperating the deep from the shallow end. The dog had clamped its teeth on that bolt to keep its snout above water so it could breath when it became too exhausted to swim any longer. The dog had hung on for about 15 days and could barely move.

The old guy pulled the dog out and it just layed there hardly breathing. So he went and got it a bowl of what? WATER! Then he noticed that the dog had severely macerated skin and the flies were gathering so he sprayed it off with some Raid and the poor thing drug itsself to the lawn and collapsed. All the kids at church wanted to know what happened to the dog but he never told us. One of his neighbors had been missing their dog for about 15 days.

This story was given as an example of the kind of determination we Mormons are going to have to demonstrate in order to stay active in the church.

So, next time you start feeling down on the Mormon church, just remember that dog in a swimming pool with his jaws latched onto an eyebolt, too tired to swim any more and too stubborn to drown, and his hide rotting off in the chlorine and the hot sun for what must have seemed like eternity to a dog.

12/12/2000 - anon from recovery bbs
My exit out of Mormonism was pretty dull compared to my sisters'...

My sister and I (along with two other siblings) were raised in the church in Boise, Idaho. When my sister was in high school, she was asked to give a sacrament talk. Pretty normal, so far...well, instead of a prepared talk, she stood up in front of 400+ members (and my parents!) and told everyone that the church was not true, that they were a bunch of hypocrites, and that she was leaving and would not come back. Her no-mo friend (who was there for support) and her then walked out and were "chased" by priesthood leaders. After they simply drove away, the leaders proceeded to play "damage control" for the rest of the 3 hours (meeting with the youth to "explain" what happened and preserve the brainwashing, etc.).

10/05/2000 - -L. Snell
Since the average duration of an LDS meeting is 2 hours and 45 minutes, gas is inevitable. So is hot air.

06/15/2000 - Richard Lionheart
My favorite went like this: One sacrament meeting when I was a priest, the other priest at the sacrament table with me, leaned over and whispered conspiratorily: "Did you know that if you take the name of any hymm in the book, and add the words "IN THE BATHTUB" to it, it will take on a whole new meaning?

Well, my curiosity was piqued, so I opened the book. This was in the days of the old hymnals where the name of the hymn was the first line of the lyric. So what was the first one I saw?

"What wondrous things mine eyes behold"...IN THE BATHTUB!

This started a giggle and a stern look from my mother in the second row. I stifled the best I could and moved on.

"Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow" IN THE BATHTUB!

Oh my good lord, I knew I was done for at that point. It was only by a supernatural effort of will and a calling upon every priesthood power I knew that I was able to keep from laughing out loud. I went to close the book and the devil took firm hold of it and opened it to:

"Come Come Ye Saints"...IN THE BATHTUB!

I couldn't take it! Right in the middle of the high councilman's speech I started laughing!

I was called into the bishop's office to explain my actions, and like an idiot, I told him the reason why I laughed. I was disfellowshipped for 3 months and my parents took my car away, but looking back at it, you know, it was almost worth it! I laugh out loud every time I think of it!

09/04/2000 - anon
My ward had a slightly different lyrical variation of "in the bath tub." It was "up your ass."

06/15/2000 - oberon001
I served for several months as a Branch President during my mission. Usually this meant that you could come up with about a thousand excuses for not having to go try to "sell Jesus to the masses". Unfortunately for me, it was branch with a lot of problems and a lot of work. The ex-branch president had started having the meetings in his home cause he was too hung over to come to church. Anyway.....I usually forgot to get bread for the sacrament and had to high tail it to the bakery next door. Because, it was late in the morning, the bread was usually all gone.....but not the pastries. Have you ever tried to scrape pinapple filling off a danish so that you could break the rest of it up into little pieces? When I came home, I was in a ward where they argued if white bread was the only true bread for the sacrament of if it was okay to use whole wheat......I always laughed knowing that when I was in charge we used everything from doughnuts to cream filled Napoleons.

06/14/2000 - rdavi
In my ward, there was one priest who wasn't exactly a big fan of public speaking. The poor guy would mess up on blessing the sacrament, causing the bishop to make him to it over. I think he holds the record by having to go through it five times in the same meeting. It was no wonder why one day he so earnestly started out the blessing with "Oh, God..."

03/30/2000 - earlofpembroke
Whenever my Teachers quorum was assigned the task of getting the bread and water ready for the meeting, we amused ourselves by making, what we called, "slosh trays".

A slosh tray was a water tray with about a cup, or more, of water already in the bottom. When an unsuspecting deacon reached up to take the tray (our table was quite high and the smaller boys could barely reach it, having to tilt the tray to get it off the table) he would get doused.

We embarrassed several of the younger boys until one day the Bishop noticed that one of the boy's shirt was all wet. Slosh trays were also good for leaking on the members as they were passed arround in the pews. Most of the members wrongly assumed that it was just water accumulated from half drunk cups.

In my later years I am surprised that no one ever asked the Bishop to buy new trays that wouldn't leak. Or, maybe they did, and got that standard line that "The Church can't spend money on trivial things like that. We'll just have to make do" Ever wonder why a ward that takes in tens of thousands of dollars every week can't afford to tune the organ, clean the carpet, buy deodorant for the "Mother's Room"?

02/16/2000 - anon

When I was 14 yrs old, I "borrowed" my old man's pickup and went to a fireside at a ward in the next town. My Bishop's daughter, about 2 years older than I, asked me for a ride home and I thought I had struck it rich. Maybe I would get my first kiss.

As we drove past our meetinghouse, she pointed out that the side door was open and needed to be closed. I went to shut the door and she mentioned that she wanted to show me something in there. We walked through the quiet, dark halls to her Father's locked office. Then she reached up under her long wool skirt and pulled her white cotton panties off and left them hanging on the doorknob. I started humming a hymn as instructed by Elder Packer, but that wasn't working.

I followed her hesitantly a few steps back into the black cavernous chapel and I could not take my eyes off her hips. She marched up to the pulpit, and snapped on the sound system. "I'd like to, sniffle sniffle, bare my assimony," she mocked. Then she turned around, bent over and she flipped her skirt up to moon all the astonished spirits and ghosts filling the empty congregation. "There's something else I'd like to get off my chest," she continued, pulling her blouce up like one of those girls on a balconey at Mardi Gras.

It was cold and dark, but not so dark that I couldn't see the goose bumps around the nipples of her small breasts. "I've always wanted to make it on the Sacrament table," she ridiculed. "No," I quietly gulped to myself, but...

02/07/2000 - anon
"Wonder Bread" builds bodies seven ways! (maybe eight)

02/02/2000 - anon
J Golden went to a ward dance, circa 1925, held to raise money for a missionary soon to depart. At intermission the missionary was suppose to give his farewell speech. But he and his cronies had been up to their usual tricks with a whiskey bottle hidden out on the window sill. The young missionary stumbled, belched, and swore his way through a short talk, terribly embarassing his parents. "What do you think of him?" someone asked J. Golden. "Ah, he will make a fine missionary. A fine missionary indeed. That is after I get behind him and kick his little ass so damn hard he falls to his knees and repents like hell!"

J. Golden was sent up to Wyoming to a Stake Conference. When he met with the leaders before hand, they described in detail all the trouble they were having with the youth and asked that he center his remarks on the problem. J Golden stood at the general session and began: "The Bishops have told me about you young rascals, (shaking his finger) your drinking and whoring and gambling and stealing every body blind. But,(raising his voice) its all you bald-headed bastards asleep on the front row that's really got me worried!"

02/01/2000 - anon
One of my friends grew out his hair and beard the summer after high school graduation to the point that he looked like Porter Rockwell. One week they asked him to bless the Sacrament. It was the practice of some of the Priests who were not officiating to bring squirt guns, sit behind the deacons and make them look like they had had little accidents or to douce off the guy reading the prayer.

One time my long-haired friend stood up and before you knew it, he had grabbed two of the squirt gun slingers by the throat and was dragging them out into the foyer where he cussed them out loud and good.Called him a bastard and a son of a B. He didn't realize that most of the audience could hear every word. Then he walked back up and took his place at the table to finish the ordinance as if nothing unusual had happened. The Bishop squirmed and turned red. He didn't much like my friend, but his son was one of the squirt gun slingers, and the Bishop could no longer man-handle his own boy, so I guess he thought it best not to tangle with 'young Porter'.

01/22/2000 - Grant
In one of my old wards the priests would occassionaly try to say the sacrament prayer from memory. Once the kid forgot AND he couldn't find the card with the prayer on it so we all laughed when we realized the "Oh God" he just said was a little too sarcastic.

01/19/2000 - anon
I remember two things that we did as teachers, related to preparing the sacrament. One time we broke the bread in advance of sacrament meeting, so that when the priests stood up to tear the bread apart, they found it was already done. Puzzled, they sat right back down! We also used to leave the bowl used by the priests to "dip" their fingers full of water, on the highest shelf in the sacrament preparation room, so that the teachers from the next ward meeting in the building would reach for it and douse themselves.

01/17/2000 - decoy the deacon
While Deacons we often brought squirt guns to church and tried to sneak a squirt at each other during the service. One summer Sunday during the evening Sacrement Meeting (back when they were at night and lasted two hours with out air conditioning)the meeting was boring and I was looking for something to do when I noticed a large bulge in friend's pants as he laid his head back on the pew with his legs out stretched. I reached over and and squeezed the bulge really hard thinking he had a squirt gun in his pocket. Imagine my shock as I shamefully realized that I had just squeezed his "hard on." I was so surprised to have grabbed his "iron rod" that I tried to recover by saying, "Got your squirt gun today?"

01/06/2000 - anon
I don't know about anyone else, but as a deacon I often had to quash a spontaneous erection right before standing up to get the tray of bread. It's like upon hearing the straining organ grind out "now of these emblems we partake..." my (then) little tallywacker would automatically pop up and in Mr Hanky fashion scream "Howdy Ho!" That little bastard has always had a mind of its own! It's gotten me into more trouble than I care to relate in this forum.

Anyhow, I wonder how many in the congregation knew what was going on when my hands went frantically into my pockets to adjust my "Free Willy" upon standing to receive the bread tray.

12/30/1999 - Barbara
I had taken my non-mo boyfriend to church with me for the first time. He was taking the mish lessons, and was receptive. So there we are in church, the sacrament is being blessed by two goons that I had grown up with, and the one blessing the bread drops the microphone that he is holding, and as he picks it up, utters "OH SHIT!" under his breath. This went out loud and clear to the whole congregation--you could hear people stop breathing. The bishop did NOTHING! So the guy starts the prayer over again, as if he had not just defiled the whole thing. I am SURE those guys were about to split a gut, but I was mortified.Oh well, I guess I can laugh now

12/23/1999 - Blowin in the Wind
If you ever blessed the sacrament, I'm sure you were faced with the fear of breaking wind. I remember once, my best friend in the ward and I were blessing the sacrament. He was supposed to go first (the bread). It was so quiet, the microphone was right there, everybody just waiting for him to read that card. He knelt down, microphone in one hand, the card in the other, the pressures to read that card perfectly was building. He clears his throat, and begins, about 1/4 of the way through the prayer - the poor guy broke wind - a real squeaker. The microphone seemed to echo it. The next thing I hear are little snickers from the deacons standing in front of the sacrement table. I lost it, I started laughing - the pressure, the quiet, it was to much. Then, the deacons lost it, we couldn't stop. Finally the bishop, who was glaring at us had to come over to the table, and with a stern voice told us to shape up, this was a sacred thing we were doing. I felt really guilty for laughing during the sacrament, but to this day I can't think of that moment with out chuckling. Oh, the fun days of being in the Aaronic Priesthood...

12/21/1999 - David from San Francisco
When I was a Teacher and had to prepare the sacrament, I brought jars of Peanut butter and Jelly to church and snuck it into the prep room. We used to chow down before Sac. Mtg. One time, we ate so much that we ran out of bread and someone had to go out and get more.

12/21/1999 - cricket
All ten of us Deacons were lined up in front of the Sacrement Table after completing the bread portion of the service. My friend Jerry was in the front row and must have been feeling ill. He fainted and on his way down crashed onto the corner of the table, yanking the table cloth with him. The water trays followed him down and dowsed him, thus reviving him miraculously. The service was delayed for 15 minutes while the Teachers and Priests scrammbled into the kitchen to re fill the trays. Wow, was it hard not to bust out laughing.

I always thought it was hilarious when someone nearly choked to death on the bread or water. Reverence shattered by someone hacking and wheezing was great entertainment. Once everyone had had the sacrament except one Deacon named Wayne. The Deacons always take it last. The Priest hurried to the kitchen to fetch some water, blessed it as humbly as he could, presented it to Wayne who swallowed the contents but began to choke violently. I assumed he was choking because of a guilt reaction from thinking about his Onanistic activites of the prior evening.

07/10/2000 - anon
Old Chinese proverb: He who make big stink in church, sit in own pew.

01/13/2000 - anon
By sitting widely, cheeks in the popular pulpit grip, if you are fortunate enough to have padded seats, one can quietly let off large amounts of gas to the strains of the organ. When it is all over, just quietly sniff and look toward the visiting authority. Their sholders should be broad enought to handle the embarassment. Another favorite is THEE woopee cushon for the visiting authority. Works every time. Helps remind them there still human too.

01/12/2000 - Gaylan M (from a list she belongs to)
My doctor warns that I am rapidly approaching the age when I am at risk for early onset Momentus Flatus. I suspect it is god's way of getting even with college students, and certain adults I used to go fishing with, who turned what should have been embarrassing gastrointestinal episodes into a form of performance art,rite of passage, and pyrotechnic display. However, in the post 55 generation mf can severely limit one's social life until the loss of hearing and the failure of critical olfactory systems catches up.

These days whenever an unidentified noise of indeterminate origin occurs in our house my wife and I glare at each other--as if this is going to prove one or both of us is innocent.

I have become particularly attentive in those moments of marginal consciousness--like when I am nodding off in church. Recently about 30 minutes into the Sunday main event I was awakened on the back pew (the olfactory origins for the designation for church benches had, until recently, escaped my attention) by a suspicious noise of indeterminate origin. Without lifting my head I carefully checked around to see if anyone was: 1. Glaring, 2. Holding their breath, or 3. laughing.

It being fast and testimony meeting Sunday, those who were not already in hypoglycemic shock were fighting bawling babies, popping TUMs to suppress the gastrointestinal battle raging as unemployed hydrochloric acid tried to eat its way out of the large intestine, or were in comas from listening to the monthly harangue from Brother U. R. Sinnoirs who is on number of 29 of his 243 scripturally based reasons why the world is going to be destroyed on April 6, 2000, and where to get good deals on automatic weapons, night scopes, body armor, and freeze dried survival pacs (in 20 years the incongruity has never occurred to him).