We have a lot of converts here. No doubt many remember being a "visitor" or "investigator" (READ: "outsider"). My experience watching the elders and sister missionaries is that the investigators are taken to a bench and then flanked or hemmed in by the missionaries. I supposed that's a tactical move to keep them from bolting or to easily pursue them if they do. How rude does this tactic seem to people in general?

Since they were the ones who invited me to church, I guess I expected they would sit with me.

One of these days I'll get around to writing down my whole story.

My husband and I decided we wanted to go to church for a while without any intervention. We wanted to get our own take on it.

We showed up properly dressed with our three little kids all dressed in their church clothes. I saw to it that we all made it to the right places at the right times, and did everything a mormon would do while at church. We didn't know a single person there.

Nobody talked to us. We didn't even get strange looks. We did this for three months! It was starting to get funny. Nobody asked who we were. So weird!

Then one sunday a some guy asked my husband if he would substitute teach his class. My husband told him he couldn't because he wasn't a member. The guy looked stunned! He asked if we had ever talked to the mishey's, my hubby told him no.

So, he brought the mishey's over so they could meet us. It was fun while it lasted. My hubby bonded with one of the mishey's. He was obviously a little rebellious guy. My husband liked to help him break the rules. Nothing big. Stuff like going swimming, and playing on the trampoline.

When I was investigating families in the world sat with me and spent time with me. Very nice people and I miss them now and then. It was a low-key experience for me and good at that time in my life. I lived in a small town in Northern CA with a small branch. Going to BYU was a real eye-opener. Hard adjustment.

It didn't seem rude to me. Like the others say, you'd expect the people who invited you to church to sit with you. :o)

There were plenty other things about the Mormon church services that bugged me, tho. I blogged about it ( http://smorgzone.blogspot.com/2011/10/mormon-encounter-part-3-going-to-mormon.html ). I guess if you were born into Mormon culture it wouldn't seem weird to you, but if you have been to other sorts of church... the atmosphere is really not uplifting.

I found the seating of church leaders on the stage behind the podium pretty oppressive, especially since unlike the Christian church leaders who sometimes also turn up on the stage, the Mormon ones seem intent on having the serious face on the whole time. I made the mistake of waving to the bishop when he looked over. The guy kept his poker face on the whole time, but was friendly once the meeting was over and they came filing down the stage into the main sanctuary. :oP And the tacit omerta code of silence feels especially unnatural... In fact, the whole thing felt unnatural... like everyone was stuffed in this invisible strait-jacket of properness or something. It didn't help that everyone kept repeating how important 'obedience' was...

The missionaries kept trying to get me to go to their church on Sundays. I couldn't seem to get them to understand that their church creeps me out...

I have.

When I was an investigator, a family in my neighborhood in No. Calif. came by to introduce themselves. I thought they were just being neighborly and friendly. I grew to admire them greatly being I was a single mother. They had everything I wanted--he was handsome, she was beautiful and they had sweet children and seemed so happy.

A couple of years later, to my shock, the man of the family bore his testimony that he never liked me, thought I was a phony, etc, etc., but because I had baked bread with molasses for his sick wife (helped her carry her baby by giving her iron she could assimilate), he now realized I was a good person.

This stunned me because I thought he was my number one fan. I almost burst into tears realizing that all that friendliness, all those kind supportive words, the grass cutting, the helping my little boy, all of that was 100% phony.

Mormons wonder why people seem to instinctively think they are not sincere? Well, guess why.

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