I left the church five years ago but still attend Sunday School and sacrament meeting with my wife in order to keep her company and help watch our little kids.

A few months ago, a lady moved into the ward and shared with the Relief Society sisters that her husband had passed away and she had recently just moved back into a house that they owned in the area but had been renting out.

She only attends church every once in a while because, according to her, she has a job that requires her to travel all over the country quite often.

She recently spoke in sacrament meeting and shared her story in great detail. She had high-profile jobs with a couple of very-high-profile companies, converted to the church, and married a returned missionary. She quit working and moved to Utah to start a family.

After trying for several years, she finally got pregnant but lost the baby. Six months after burying the baby, her husband was killed in a car crash. A general authority spoke at his funeral and offered her words of comfort which she shared with us.

After bearing her testimony of forever families and whatnot, she sat down. The next speaker, the high council rep, was noticeably emotionally moved by the story and thanked her for sharing it.

After thinking about her story for a while, a couple of facts that she shared about her job didn't add up to me. So I googles her. To make a long story short, her husband is alive, a nonmember, and she has only been a member for maybe two years. To make things worse, she has a boyfriend from Utah that she plans to spend Thanksgiving with and meet his family.

I showed what I had found to my wife and a family friend that happens to be in the bishopric. My intention was that she obviously needs some type of intervention and counseling before she hurts someone or herself. But I don't know how the bishopric plans to approach the subject with her. Should I have reached out to her family? I have never personally spoken to her before.

Any advice would be appreciated. All I want to do is help because she obviously has a lot of issues to work through.

I think it was good to alert someone in ward leadership so at least SOMEBODY knows she's either lying or crazy. I wonder if she's a scam artist.

But I'd let it go now. You said yourself that you don't know her, and it's not your place to fix her. In fact, I wouldn't WANT to get involved in a situation like that.

Don't even try. You can only alert those she might be "taking in" to her shenanigans...

Stay the hell away as much as possible, keeping up big boundaries, and hope she winds up locked up to prevent further harm to others...

She'll lie at the drop of a hat, and she'll smear or implicate you if you get in her way...

Not worth it...

You are not Mormon, but you go to church every week anyway. Some whack job bore her testimony and it rubbed you the wrong way. So you GOOGLED her, then TATTLED on her to the Bishopric???

How very *Mormon* of you!

People like the sister you've described usually sink their own ships - she really doesn't need any extra help from you. I agree with the above poster: "You've done enough."

;o)

I was going to reply, "I think you obviously have a lot of issues to work through."

If Googling someone to fact-check their suspicious story was wrong, then I'm sorry. I don't like being lied to. Fact-checking suspicious stories is what led me out of the church.

And if alerting some of the people she lied to so they don't get conned or hurt is tattling, then I am sorry again. It seemed better than saying nothing and letting her continue to hoodwink everyone.

But thanks for your advice. I think I had better just let it go at this point.

Have you talked to her about it?

She might be being asked to give a story she's not conftable with for some reason and she's givieng hints hoping to be found out.

Here is a list of people you can work on for a while:

http://www.house.gov/house/MemberWWW.shtml

Have fun.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/17/2010 05:40PM by MJ.

Furthermore, in what way are you qualified to diagnose someone based on a few interactions at church? You attended a funeral, heard a talk, and now you have a pathology to report?

How do you know that she didn't just lie because she doesn't want to be branded as that poor, sad, long-suffering sister who is married to a nevermo? I might make up an elaborate story too, just to be treated like a valued member of the community.

Lying does not necessarily equal mental illness.

Tattling, however... I dunno. Certainly says a lot more about you than it does about her.

Thank you raptorjesus. Reading some of these responses I thought I was loosing my mind. Unless the poster has a history of making weird comments,why is not being taken serious? But I've never heard of googling someones name for info either. I think he did the right thing. Tell 1 person that you trust and drop it. If the woman needs help-she needs help!!

Call her to RS President.

I Googled myself once and found out:

1. I'm in jail in Chandler AZ.

2. I'm the President of the Chamber of Commerce in Pinconning MI.

3. I won the 200 meter hurdles for class C high schools in Maine in 1996.

...buncha other weird stuff.

Since when would Google tell me if I'm LDS, have a spouse that's LDS... very strange, as Jim Morrison will tell you.

Ron

"I'm in jail in Chandler, AZ."

Lol! Funny stuff.

;o)

My name in quotes brings up 6,000 hits, and its an uncommon name. The first one at the top is my real website. Woo Whoo!!

in investigating a story that sounded fishy to you.

This woman clearly has mental issues which shows us, once again, what type of converts the morg attracts.

BUT that is not all -

For God's sake make sure your kids are not in any classes she might "teach" - or worse yet, the nursery.
Often, members are incredibly naive in giving others access to their kids or family.

Also, who would want such a lose cannon coming into homes as a VT ? Heaven knows what she might think up.

You have good reason to be concerned!!!

The Mormon church has almost no safeguards in place to protect members from other members who might be either plain nuts or criminally insane.

I spend a lot of time here, some of it getting really down-and-dirty with those who blast 12-Step Programs. However, if your uncle--or more likely his wife, your aunt; codependents tend to be even more out there than the "identified patient"--told you something like that, he or she was yanking your gullibility gene...

Yes, the behavior is possibly consistent with alcoholism/addictive disease, but a personality disorder is also a possibility...

BTW, Jimmy Carter was president when I stopped drinking, and I wasn't "instantly cured," and none of the thousands I've encountered since were either; "recover" is an action verb, and it may not take much of a person to quit drinking, but it does take all of one...

And the problem with stories like yours is they're just like Mormon faith promoters; some "belief" in something that will work for what was originally a "hopeless situation" is useful, but too much reliance on "magicthink" is a setup for failure...

Leave the support of alcoholics/addicts to their own recovering peers...

Nobody here knows the motives behind why she is telling lies. As I have pointed out in another post, lots of exmormons have lied about their status as a Mormon for lots of different reasons, are they all suffering from some sort of disorder? Sorry, but telling lies in an of itself does not prove any personality disorder.

Yes, there are people who go to their first meeting and never drink again (although the ones I know keep going to meetings).

They are in a very small minority, although my experience is the vast majority who commit to meetings, step work, and a sobriety-based lifestyle do achieve one sooner or later. But that isn't because they are "cured" because they can never safely drink again; it means they've learned a way to live with abstinence...

As has another poster on this thread, so I'm not flying solo with my claims... And trust me, being abstinent is essentially "an unnatural state" for an alcoholic...

The reason I say keep coming back is it'll help you learn to be a little discriiminating with your perceptions (and by "discriminating," I don't mean judgmental; I just mean the ability to see beyond the obvious). There was doubtless much of your uncle's life you didn't see, and recovery from Mormonism means shedding that black-and-white thinking in favor of more nuanced stuff...

Besides, I really took issue with that "12 Step people are professionals and they can fix about anything" claim... I won't let anyone put me on that kind of pedestal (although the strokes I get here are nice, but I learn more by reading and observing than pontificating).

Also, Glenn Beck is a 12-Step veteran, and he's a raging looney tune...

YOU CAN'T HELP HER!
You need to protect your family from her!

A person like this would need a full psychiatric evaluation plus a good look at any previous charts.
Has she had any run-ins with the law?

Apparently a lot of posters fail to grasp the seriousness of mental illness.
The Mormon church, unfortunately,fosters a high degree of tolerance for aberrant behavior.

The original posters has good instincts,I don't blame him for being concernd.

By what you said, she is lying, but telling lies does not indicate with certainty that she is suffering from any sort of mental disorder. She may have had some motive that was cold and calculating that you know nothing about, but would not be the result of mental issues requiring psychotherapy.

How many exmormons here have misrepresented themselves and lied when they were in church? Quite a few. Some lied to try to provoke people, some lied so family would not find out, some lied to get a temple recommend so they could go to a wedding... Do all these people need psychotherapy?

May I suggest you take a good look at yourself and why you felt the need to single this liar out of a pack of liars for such scrutiny. Seriously, the whole LDS church is built on lies and you are helping to instill those lies in your children, and you are worried about that woman?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/17/2010 05:29PM by MJ.

Back when I was a member there was a woman with 3 children who moved in. She bore her testimony introducing herself and told stories about having been blind and recovering her sight, and other oddly extreme attention seeking types of behaviors. I had some inside information from the RS president that she was hiding from an abusive ex-husband. I had a personal conversation with her that made my skin crawl...so I googled her too. I found pictures of her and her children on the Missing and Exploited Children and FBI websites showing she had abducted her children from California. (There were pictures of how she and the children looked before she dyed their hair.) I called the FBI and they picked her and the children up within hours. I don't feel bad about it.

The issue Anon raises is complex because what I sense he's saying is that it raises a sense of danger when a person makes false stories about themselves in a supposedly intimate but public group. There's a purpose to the stories, a desire to be known as someone, who apparantly, they are not. It has an implication of interpersonal exploitation because it's not just a story, it seeks something from the community. And he's not sure yet what it is she's seeking from her lies.

I say good for you for having a sixth sense about when someone's stories don't sound right--when there's something incongruous about their demeanor or affect and their story.
Beyond that I would wait and see and intervene only if you see a situation where she might be exploiting someone.

But also be careful because google can mix people with the same names up. It's not 100% that the pieces you found relate to her (assuming you didn't see her picture on facebook or something like that.)

But don't feel bad for having that sixth sense and satisfying your discomfort by pursuing an answer. That's not the same as someone investigating people for voyueristic reasons. Anything people claim in public seems fair game to me.

"After thinking about her story for a while, a couple of facts that she shared about her job didn't add up to me. So I googles her. To make a long story short, her husband is alive, a nonmember, and she has only been a member for maybe two years. To make things worse, she has a boyfriend from Utah that she plans to spend Thanksgiving with and meet his family."


You don't find this information on Google. Where on Google for instance would you find out about her boyfriend planning to spend Thanksgiving with her and introducing his family?

I smell a rat...

Jon Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

>
> You don't find this information on Google. Where
> on Google for instance would you find out about
> her boyfriend planning to spend Thanksgiving with
> her and introducing his family?
>



facebook?

Or maybe she blabbed it at church?