That time of month

Dear brothers and sisters, I just want to remind you that it's the last day of the month, so if you haven't done your home teaching (brethren!) or visiting teaching (sisters!!) you'd better be sure to whip up a batch of cookies and take them over to your assigned families tonight!!!

We all know how much kids love cookies and how those cookies are the only thing keeping the neighbor kids from hating our guts totally and completely for interrupting their evening with an hour of boring parent talk, five minutes of awkward "tell us about school" talk, and the even more awkward ten minute "here's this month's lesson" talk. We all know how awful that is, right? These poor kids. What do we think we're doing for them by making them sit quietly while we adults blabber on and on about whatever the hell isn't interesting at all to anyone anywhere?

We might say it's not really for the kids, it's for us. We might, but I think we'd be lying to ourselves. Do we really need to have neighbors come over and read a few paragraphs from an article in a magazine we're already subscribed to? Oh yeah, and didn't we already read and study and pray about that very article in preparation to share our thoughts on it with about three other families already? And aren't these articles little more than a rehashing of yet another primary lesson? How is this supposed to be beneficial again? I'm not seeing the purpose of rehearsing this monthly farce we call "teaching".

Is it about our pride? Is it about making higher ups happy?

Surely it's not for us. Oops! There goes the timer on the oven! I'd better go pull the cookies out.

Direct pressure

 
When it comes to "direct pressure to conform", Mormons have an arsenal of pressures and a wide range of pressure points to work with. Members who question the Church will certainly feel it from believing family and they might get called in to talk with the bishop, who will likely send out a request that home and visiting teachers make a greater effort. Every word and every action gets evaluated constantly in order to understand one's strength of loyalty to the Work.

Nowadays every minute spend in church, every lesson-oriented visit, every Ensign article, every second of General Conference feels like direct pressure. 

The end of LDS sexism

Good news, everyone! Sexism in the Church is gone. Women have finally made it onto the Ensign centerfold! Look!

Wiminz! Church wins! Complainers lose!

Church growth

While on my mission I had access to at least a couple of decades worth of Ensigns in each of my apartments which was great because I couldn't have been more interested in catching up on the words of the prophets. General Conference editions (May and November issues) were by far the best for kids like me who wanted to feast on the words of the Lord's anointed. The GC issues were also of deep interest to my missionary self for the fact that they contained statistics on total Church membership and convert baptisms.

There was nothing I wanted more than to revel in the growth of the Church and the power of God to bring people to it through His missionaries (like me!), so one day I started going through and comparing the stats. Unfortunately they were less than impressive. Sure the general Church membership numbers had consistently gone up, but the conversion baptism numbers were fairly sporadic and generally in decline since the early 1990s.

(from the blog linked above)

What was going on? The rock carved from the mountain had some serious rolling forth to do! There were more missionaries than ever, but conversions were always hanging around 300 thousand per year. At this rate the Church wasn't going anywhere anytime soon. Could it be possible that there's no real divine impetus behind the Church?

Now wait a second there, young missionary! Don't you doubt the Work! It's rolling forth at the Lord's pace. Your mission needs a more Utah-like presence of Mormons and you are there to make it happen!