Church is Not For Wimps

Church, and especially the Mormon church, is not for wimps. Giving examples from yesterday's meetings, I will prove that this is true:

Sacrament Meeting

The first Sunday of every month is fast and testimony meeting. This is where anyone who so desires can have a FEW minutes of time to relate their feelings about CHURCH. The problem is that no one seems to have informed the general church population of the rules. Naturally, giving people basically free reign of the microphone without rules has it's consquences. Or, in other words, in some places, i.e. Beaumont, Texas, it becomes open mic for freaks.

Yesterday was no exception. This man who was wearing a brush popper shirt got up and the first thing he did was tell a joke that wasn't funny. As if that wasn't bad enough, when he finished the joke, he struck a John-Travolta-Saturday-Night-Fever pose and said, "WOO! That's for you Sister Jones!"

He went on to inform everyone that he had "been so busy this week that he didn't have time to pass gas."

By that time, I was elbowing Husband while also averting my eyes due to embarrassment FOR him, and hissing, "Somebody get up and stop him! He doesn't have enough sense to be embarrassed for himself!"

Twenty minutes later, after he had revealed the past transgressions of EVERY MEMBER of his family, he sat down.

In the future, I vote that we have testimony bouncers.

Sunday School

As I've already said, I have a new assignment to teach the 13-14 year olds. Yesterday I had FOURTEEN kids in a room the size of a matchbox. I generally LOVE this age group because I've worked with them in years past (I have a degree in working with kids that age for heaven sake!).

Nearly 40 minutes into the class, we had gotten through ONE scripture due to the fact that TEN of them have diarrhea of the mouth. They were all shouting over each other, vying for attention. I tried everything that I knew about crowd control. I asked them nicely to please be quiet, I sat and waited for them to be quiet thinking that they would get the hint, I gave them dirty looks, I stood by the loudest three with my hands on their shoulders (you know you have a problem when there are three that are causing problems and you only have two hands). Every time I asked them to be quiet, two or three of them would yell, "Sister Little gave us candy to be quiet."

Ummm...since when did bribery by candy become compulsory at church?

When I teach, I generally have a three strike rule. If I have to ask them to be quiet more than three times, the lesson is over. Yesterday I gave them six strikes. I've never been in a room that loud at church. Finally, when I just couldn't take it anymore, I told them that I was out of ideas. I told them that if they weren't willing to respect me, I was not willing to respect them. Then, I walked out of the room. I knew at the time that it probably wasn't the most constructive way to handle the situation but I couldn't think of anything else.

Word got around pretty quickly. By the end of church, the Sunday School President had talked to me, the Bishop had spoken to all of them, and someone had spoken to the parents. Half of the parents walked up to me to ask what they could do and one even offered to "tighten some screws" in his son if there were any more problems. Hopefully next week will be better.

Relief Society

They are starting a new program in Relief Society called, "Ten Cow Woman". It is based on Johnny Lingo (which is a movie about a man who goes to bargain to marry the girl that everyone thinks is the ugliest girl in the village. Instead of the expected 1-2 cows, he offers 8 cows for her. Naturally, at the end of the movie, she gains self-confidence because her husband had shown her that she was worth 8 cows. Oh, and did I mention that she also becomes hot?).

Yesterday, they started talking about all of the different things we would be working on throughout the year which included self-worth, parenting, organization, spirituallity, physical health, etc.

And, who was sitting in Relief Society but crazy old Bobbi King. Crazy Bobbi King is the old lady who randomly shouts out comments in all meetings. Whatever she has on her mind comes out of her mouth VERY LOUDLY. For the teacher, I'm sure it's annoying but for me, it's hysterical.

When the lady was talking about physical health when she said, "Well God must be mad at me. Gave me a perfectly good body and I wrecked it."

There were several other comments but the funniest one came when they showed the very end of Johnny Lingo where they are talking in his hut on the beach. Bobbi King said, "Well I sure do wish I was a 10 cow woman. I sure do fancy myself in that hut on the beach with THAT MAN!"