Background: So real quick I am a less active church member turned atheist that attends with my TBM wife and children for the first two meetings only on Sunday. We go as a family maybe twice a month and do family activities the other days. Its a comprimise thing. I have been a non believer for about 4 years. Anytime that home teachers have tried to make appointments I have refused and always tell them the same thing. Take the hour that you were going to visit me and go spend it with your own family. The bishopric tries to set up visits and I or DW(thank her lovely heart) decline and chalk it up to being too busy. Very thankful my wife feels the same on the visit subject as I do.
Here is the situation: So my next door neighbor is the Elders Q Pres. I have not attended EQ in 2 years and I am very brief in my communication with him. He once passed me in the halls at church and said, I personally invite you the EQM today. I responded that I was not interested, but thanks for the invite. I am always brief yet cordial. My inactive landscaper lives across from me and we chat a few times a month when his crew works on my yard. EQP asked the landscaper yesterday if he could be the intermediary with me and EQP. Landscaper asks why he needs that. EQP proceeds to tell him how I don't like him and have made it very clear that I do not want anyone from the church in my home. Funny that he can't ask me himself why I apparently don't like him or why I don't want visitors. No one in my ward has ever asked or been told of my disaffection. All assumptions at this point. EQP then tells landscaper that since I don't want members of the church in my home he would like him to be my neighborly visitor. Landscaper asks what that is. EQP tells him It’s for people that don't want the church members in their home. They just find someone to contact them once a month to see how they are doing. WTF? Isn't that home teaching? EQP says we will contact you once a month to see how that is going.
Anyone else know of neighborly visiting? Just semantics? Or is this a real program of the church?
I am kind of the anomaly that no one knows how to deal with since I attend and want nothing to do with any of them and refuse to tell them.
I was asked to do essentially the same thing with my inactive neighbor as a visiting teacher. I knew she didn't want to have a "church" visit and I respected that, we'd had that discussion. All that matters is to get the numbers. As long as I waved, said hello, I could count her as visited. I counted her every month weather I saw her or not, or waved to her family members. I figured if they were that loose in their description of visit teaching to get the numbers I could be that loose in reporting her as visited. A win, win for all.
Seems exactly what they want all the time. To get into all effects, aspects and areas of your life, no matter how "dirty" the work is. They take any angle possible to toxify and monitor their sheep- this is not feeding the sheep, it is a projection of force, a form of intimidation, a corrupted system of intense fraud, subtle yet severe manipulation and junk-religion and one prone to abuse and adulteration: when a young man wants to make more out of a church and system of ladders than out of himself, his family (and how they too suffer) or forbid, another, you know he is lost. Therefore how can you follow him. You know where you are going.
M@t
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/21/2014 01:21PM by moremany.
You have to ask yourself, why all this push to get people to church that clearly don't want to go or have any interest?
And why do they take it personally?
My take on this nonsense. They are hard up for tithe payers. The local wards are not getting enough money back to run the show.
Secondly, they are so threatened by anyone that leaves that they think they are going to take a bunch of loyal believers with them, which indicates the testimony is about worthless if they really think that. All those weak testimonies are easily swayed and they know it.
And thirdly it's the old: don't like my dog, don't like me!
Suisie I think I tend to agree with you. I have wondered if I was actually paying tithing if any of this would be an issue. At that point they would accept the "I am too busy" excuse. I also think he assumes that he has offended me in some way and that is why I apperantly don't like him. In all reality he is a nice guy but we have zero incommen.
I take solice in the fact that we were the first house built on our street. I had a key that got me into all of the neighbors houses while they were being built. So that meant DW and I got to consicrate all of their homes before they did...If you know what I mean. Its like a personal victory over all of them.
Yes- this program is alive and well in my ward. We would assign neighbor visits to members of the EQ when traditional HT was not successful in getting in a home. We had some HT companions that were only assigned neighbor visits. I have not been in the EQP for several years, but I know that there are still several houses in the ward boundaries assigned monthly neighbor visits, not traditional HT.
I have said this many times and still people don't get it.... TBMs are VERY DENSE. Unless you make it VERY VERY VERY clear that you don't want them around, they will be hounding you continually. I find it seriously juvenile to have him ask someone else to intervene.
When I was in MIDDLE SCHOOL (called JUNIOR HIGH then), my friends and I might get into a spat about some silly teenage tragedy or another. Let's call us A, B, and C. Let's say A and B had the spat. Then one of us A or B would ask C to write a note (on our behalf) and place it in A or B's locker or speak with A or B (on our behalf) to find out why A or B was angry.
Do TBMs know what the work ELDER means? In the old sense of ELDER it means OLDER. So why are they acting like kids in middle school? Because they are MORONS. GAWD that culture in Utard sucks! SO happy NOT to be there.
You handle this the same as you would with middle school kids when you were in middle school - except you have to be even more blunt because they have had years of being told to act like MORONS.
So, to get rid of this behavior and this hounding, you say in a blunt and loud forceful voice "F*CK OFF AND DIE."
I guarantee this works....really.
"And why do they take it personally?" - SUSIE Q - because kids in middle school take everything personally. They are hormones with feet.
I'm guessing that the landscaper is supposed to report back that he's talked to you and that all is well/not well. So the EQP is setting up a spy network in the neighborhood.
I have heard of this...but only in RS so far. My wife has been told to be "Neighborhood friends" with a few ladies in the past while we were in Syracuse Utah.
*Sarcasm filter on* I think its so awesome that the church will assign you friends
NOT to make the EQP part of your business arrangement. Then approach the EP and tell him you don't appreciate his inteference with your private business associates. If he has a question about you he can ask you.
As far as not liking the EQP president, you can mention to him that it isn't easy to talk to people with a hidden agenda that includes talking behind your back with a business associate.
Make sure the EQP knows you equate this with government interference in the private lives of citizens, or harrassment.
I'm glad your wife is on the same page as you are. Boundaries have to be set and this is a good time to set them.
"Also for the investigators. Vladimir and Katya came to church this sunday. I arranged for some guy to friendship Vladimir and he did beautifully. I asked for some lady to friendship Katya at church and...she didn't! "O well..." "
How very nice and genuine to arrange for someone "to friendship" someone else.
In the early seventies, when I first became inactive (but was still on tscc rolls) the local ward leadership wanted me to receive home teachers which I refused to do. However, a fellow in my carpool was an elder and got himself assigned to me.
Problem solved - we never discussed the church and the ward got to count me as a "contacted member". So much for the Mormon bull crap numbers racket!
Sounds like what they did with us when we went inactive. A family we consider friends and swapped BBQ parties with was "assigned" to be our HT and report back. They never made regular visits with us before and never really changed what they did after. They never reported anything but "They are OK" when asked.
Good friends still but they moved out of state so we don't see each other.
Probably an idea the EQP saw on a message board and decided to try. Not an official church policy but a way to get the all important numbers up.
Many of the responses here sound like conversation in the middle school lunchroom. It reminds me of a song...
"I dont' want to play in your yard, I don't like you anymore....."
I can't remember the rest..
F*CK OFF AND DIE works better, TRUST ME ON THIS! Then nobody has to report back (like a 12 year old tattletale). Oh no! But, what if Jonny tells Jimmy and he tells Ronnie and then he tells my mom? I don't want Mary to know since she is the RS president and she is going into 9th grade next year too so she can make life harder for us 8th graders." (sticking tongue out) - "I'm gonna tell on you. So, NA NA NA NA NA! SO there."
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/21/2014 04:14PM by verilyverily.
Assigned home teachers and visiting teachers are asked to make "neighborly" visits to those that don't want actual visits with church lessons all the time. "Go down to the family apostate on 5th street, don't reveal that you are a true messenger from the ward father, see if they have been true and faithful in wearing their garments, avoiding loud laughter and evil speaking of the Lord's anointed, etc... Return and bring me word."
They don't do that sort of thing here, never heard of a neighborly visit. Out here people they can't get people to do their regular home/visiting teaching. We saw our HT maybe once a year, and my VT maybe once a year if that.
When I was a VT, I was assigned to a friend that I genuinely liked. I visited her regulary. Then she moved and I got assigned someone else, who I never visited.
When I was EQP there was much pressure from the stake to get more home teaching done. They let on, probably unintentionally, that it was a budget issue. It's probably a prestige issue too. We were given a few formulas to apply to count people who weren't contacted or who were under-contacted. This reminds me of that. You're getting counted as home-taught to church HQ.