One day the missionaries asked me to join them because they were teaching a young mother, and as a member of the Bishopric I could help with the lessons. Her parents were dead set against Mormons and she was having a hard time. When we got there after a few minutes of chit-chat, one Elder asked if she had been reading the Book of Mormon. She had, but she had a problem with some of the content.

It turns out that she had read the portion where the Lamanites turned dark when they were evil and light when they repented. She felt that she needed an answer to this dark skin punishment. We sort of hemmed and hawed, and I promised her that I would get her the answer to this difficulty.

When I got home I went to the web to get answers and came across FAIR and BYU with some articles by the church apologists. And while I found and downloaded the answers that we needed, I knew that not only was the answer not true, it also didn't make any sense. I don't even recall the content- just the usual million-word non-answer.

I gave the disk to the missionaries to share with her. A few days later we went to her house to follow up and she said we were full of sh-t and please don't ever come back.

Yes, I knew that the church answer was not true, and I chose it because it was what the church would want me to use.

Good for her for telling you guys to take a leap! It sucks, what the church makes good people do--lying for the Lord. How could I have been so stupid as to have joined this dip$hit outfit?

How long after this did you stop attending?

Yeah, wish my daughter would have told them to take a hike!!!

When I was 14 and decided to get baptised, my mother said I would never last in the Mormon church. That was all she had to say and didn't make any efforts to stop me. Of course I was offended at the time. Now 15 years later I asked her if she remembered saying that to me and what she meant. She said you are far too smart and independent to be in a church like that. I never doubted you would find your way out, but you had to be the one to do it.

Don't lose hope for your dd!

This was a strange time for me. I had been involved in a bunch of Creationist v Evolutionist arguments and had read a lot, and fully believed in the Evolutionary model, which made me an unworthy member of the church. Yet I was supposed to be this spiritual giant because Isat on the stand...

Aboutt this time I also heard a General Authority state in General Conference that we as a church fully believe in the Noah story, and I was like WTH? This bothered me a great deal and when I went to my HighCouncil Representative, he referred me to Jeff Lindsays site. Jeff wrote me and assured me that the Flood was a localized event, but that people saw that as the whole world.

He seemed to forget that LDS theology revolves around a worldwide flood/baptism of the earth.

Then the Stake President took me aside (HCR ratted me out) and had a long talk. At that time I was also growing increasingly Agnostic and was reading all about Osiris, and Mithras, and how the Winter Solstice not only works well for the Birth, but also Resurrection of many gods including Jesus. And yet, somehow I would not consider that the church was not true, even if Jesus was a fable. Maybe it was fear and pride mixed with a strong sense of commitment and duty...

All of these things were happening when I gave that young woman the diskette.

A year later the Bishop resigned the church, retracting everything he had ever said or believed.

A year after that in 2007 I came across the evidence and in another year later I was out.

So the shorter answer is it took me three more years before I and my family would leave.

I would love to hear the story of how you exited, JoD. I admire your knowledge of doctrine and books.

Furthermore, how did you get your family out? And how did the members around you take it?


BTW, it was an investigator's question that let loose the hounds of apostasy for me. They said they'd heard a rumor about the Book of Abraham. I decided to go find the facts to show them the rumor was a lie. I never did talk to that person because I was in shock at all the things I was reading.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/11/2011 01:17PM by derrida.

They pulled that we know who your ancestors are BS on my wife. Would love to bust that missionary in his lying mouth.

…years or a lifetime of cult slavery.

At the time, you felt uncomfortable because subconsciously, you were feeling the cognitive dissonance that afflicts every exmormon-to-be. Your shelf was getting heavier but had not fallen down yet.

However, by providing the investigator with church-approved FAIR and BYU answers, you allowed her an honest view of the church’s B.S. Were she to read on this website today what many exmos have been through, she would thank you!

During the part of my mission that was in Utah (I served in Puerto Rico and Utah). For reasons I don't recall, a 14 year old boy wanted to join the church so we were assigned to teach him. His mother was an EX MO! We didn't know at the time how she felt about the church because she let him make up his own mind and we went to the house to teach him. It was a really nice house in Layton.

I had a very flirtatious airhead companion who tried to convert people through flirting. We were at his house for the second discussion, already setting the baptism date. His mother was in the other room but was apparently listening intently. My companion was teaching fluffy stuff. She had a bag of MM's and was doing an illustration about how the atonement is like if you sin and lose some of your MM's and only the Atonement can restore them so you have a full bag again.

I guess because this was just days before her son was going to be baptized and she was listening to this stupidity, the EX MO mom could no longer contain herself. She flew into the room and in a very controlled but commanding way said to us in front of the kid, "What are you doing??? This is not a joke! My son wants to join your church. So you need to explain to him what its going to mean for him to commit to be a Mormon! You need to explain to him that this is a serious commitment for the rest of his life. You need to explain to him about committing to paying tithing for his entire life, about not having sex, about not drinking coffee, about going to church every Sunday, about only marrying a Mormon. He needs to know exactly what he's committing to do."

It was really impressive. The kid sat there just quiet. I have a feeling he must of had a Mormon girlfriend. And the mom was trying so hard not to forbid him from joining. I was transferred soon after so I don't know if his baptism happened.

...in a Great Lakes state, we went to a follow-up appointment with a black woman about 25 years old.
She was a college student.
She answered her apartment door (the only time I'd met her...my companion/trainer had taught her the previous week just before I arrived).
She asked us in but she was very nervous. She didn't offer us a seat. As we stood in the small living room she hurried to a back room to fetch the Book of Mormon which she had gotten the week before...along with a reading "assignment".
She had done her reading alright.
She had 2Ne5:21 highlighted, and handed us the book and asked us to explain it.
My companion launced into apologetics mode (or "resolve concerns" mode using the old "commitment pattern"). But, he had nothing but pathetic answers that only insulted her more.
She likewise told us that our explanation was not only inadequate but was as much of an insult as the verse itself was, and that she didn't want the book, and was not interested in further "study".
She was dignified, and in fact I felt a sense of shame and humiliation that we were beneath her dignity. But, I got over it. On a mission you have tunnel vision, and the incident simply faded.
But, you can find the same insulting answers in the apologia today.
FAIR has an article about how the "curse" was separation from God, whereas black skin was simply a convenient "mark" of the curse, not racism.
<This is where any racially-sensitive person's jaw drops at the sheer racial-INsenstivity of that "ANSWER">
But it only gets worse.
Mormons go on to explain that being black is only a mortal/temporal condition and they'll be turned back to their true white in the afterlife.
<jaw drops, fixed stare>
The mormon takes for granted that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ are white men, unapologetically.

Bottom line is...the mormon expectation of blacks is that they just get over the only minor temporary inconvenience of being black and start thinking white now...for when they get their white body in the ressurrection.

Mormons really need to video themselves and their "answers" and see how it looks and sounds. I really (don't) wish I could see myself bullshitting people on my mission...and especially the LOOKS I'd get from people too polite and dignified to call BS on me.

And things like Lindays's "localized" flood event?
1. That can be refuted using LDS scriptures
2. A local genocide is moral?
<flop>



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/11/2013 07:11PM by amos2.

...when I said I knew the church was ture and Joseph Smith was a prophet of God.

And I lied by omission when I didn't tell them important things about the church.

As for the dark skin thing, in Canada I was assigned to teach Lamanites exclusively. We never told them about the curse and benefitted from the fact that none of my investigators ever actually read the BoM.