Why I stuck with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints- Childhood

Warning, this is my first overtly religious post, but I have my reasons.
1.  This blog is to tell of my thinking and coping as a person outside of the mainstream of society.  My religion is one of the things that I used to help.
2.  I believe all religion is important and if you believe and try to live your beliefs then good job, continue to be a positive influence upon the world.  You will only do wonderful things.  Sorry atheists.  I believe in God and I am not ashamed of that, but I know it is a sensitive subject.  The Church of Jesus  Christ of Latter-day Saints(LDS) has concepts in it that I use everyday.
3. I am not here to convert anyone.  I did that on my mission.  I am done, but I am willing to answer how I, me came to my conclusions.

So If I have explained myself to your satisfaction, I hope you will continue to read....

I've told you a bit about my family and a small amount on my childhood.  I thought that church was on Sunday.  We did do Family Home Evening when I was younger.  It is one night set aside during the week usually Monday,  when the family gathers together for a lesson.  We are asked to do so much more like Family prayer and reading the scriptures once a day.  My mother would try, I have to give her credit, but the other things would fizzle out after a week.  Blessing the food and Family Home Evening were the constants outside of Sunday growing up.

Should I be honest and tell you what I remember most about Family Home evening?  It was the refreshments!  Do not ask me what my parents tried to teach us, but I remember piling in the car after we said Amen! and heading off to 7-11.  I talked with my older brother and he said we went to Foster's Freeze at first and each of us got a chocolate dipped cone.  With his prompting I found that memory in the back of my brain, but I didn't realize it was attached to Family Home Evening.  No, I have a clear memory of Dad driving us to 7-11 where we were allowed to get a Slurpee(cherry only, the other flavor was coke) and one piece of candy.  I would go for the large Jolly Rancher Stick because it lasted along time and we never really got candy except on holidays.  Back in the car we would squish into the backseat where we would return home to feast on our prizes and watch "Ripley's Believe It Or Not" and "That's Incredible".  My younger brother came up with a song on the ride to 7-11.  It went "7-11! You're Naked!" and we laughed and laughed.  That is soooooo clever when you are four and seven.

 Well, going to church on Sunday was as normal as going to school during the week.  I attended from birth and I was in a great building until the age of 8 years.

 Let me give some information on a day at church.  A congregation is broken down by geographical location.  Invisible lines that decided when and where you go to church.  If you lived on a border you may not attend church at the same time as your neighbor across the street.  These groups are called Wards.  The Wards are run by the members and each of us has a job or calling.  One day you could be the leader of the woman's group and in 2 years find yourself teaching 3 year olds.  Our meetings have become a 3 hour block.  The reason for the Sunday meeting to to partake of the sacrament.  A prayer is offered and bread and water is passed out to all in attendance.  That is our time to renew the promises that we made at Baptism.  We have talks from the pulpit from other members of the Ward and that meeting closes.  Next the children under 12 years of age break off to primary.  One hour they are in a class decided by age with a teacher and in the next hour they meet as a large group.  The teenagers. split up by age range journey to their teachers while adults gather together for their Own group.  This hour is known as Sunday School.  There we get a lesson on the scriptures.  We  study the old testament, the new testament, the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants, concentrating on one book for an entire year.  And then for the last hour the Sunday School breaks into gender classes.  The 18 and under go on to Young Men's or Young Women's.  The older men go to Priesthood and the older Women go to Relief Society.  For those classes there is a manual discussing Church teachings, for example the men and women are studying the words of a modern Church leader or what Latter-day Saints believe to be a prophet.  That is an average church meeting and the order can be different or times change once a year.

I didn't care about any of it growing up.  My first church of memory was originally a fancy country club on the hill.  The Church had purchased it and converted it to a meeting house.  I did everything to avoid having to sit still for hours on end.  For Sacrament I loved getting the piece of bread and little cup of water, it was an expected treat.  I would keep the paper cup the water came in and play with it for a good 15 minutes, undoing the folded rim and carefully un-pleating the paper to get a perfect rippled circle.  Then I would punch a hole through the center put my two first fingers through the hole and pretend they were legs and the destroyed cup was a pretty pink tutu.  I would play on the pew dancing my ballerina legs until I  did the splits ripping my paper circle.  I was quiet, so I am sure my parents were happy with me entertaining myself. having to deal with 4 kids.  When I got bored I would pinch my brother to make him cry.  Screaming children are removed from the meeting as a courtesy to the other members.  This building had the coolest mother's room.  It was on a second floor, one wall was made of windows and the microphone was piped in, so the mothers could still see and hear what was going on in the meeting and us kids could be as loud as we wanted.  I did what I thought were terrible things in those windows.  Only the speakers could see what was happening and I would flash them all the time.  Oh what a brat I am!

I don't quite know how I avoided going to class.  I was under 8 years old and some of my best times were exploring that building.  There were nooks and crannies everywhere.  I remember going to class once in a while, but I played hooky an awful lot.  My favorite thing to do was to sneak out to the back parking lot to a cement wall covered by wild Honeysuckle vines, at the right time of year they would bloom white,blue and purple.  I would pull out the stamens from the back of the flower and let the small droplet of clear sticky pollen alight on my tongue.  Just an instant of the sweetest flavor would spread across my taste buds, then gone.

I also loved to listen in on the adults and spy on them.  The country club had a large concrete balcony.  I could crawl under the balcony and listen to people talking above me, as their heels clicked above my head.  If my mother mentioned a name I recognised I would tell her what I had learn in those conversations.  I must not have heard anything juicy because she never asked where I got my information.

I was able to get back to the kids group meeting because a bell rings through the church signalling the end of class.  I would try to make the adults think I was with my mother the whole time by sneaking in next to her during the class transition.  Then when someone from primary would come to ask my mother where I was I would be standing next to her.  I would make them "convince" me to go primary with them.  Oh, I can't believe I did this, but I promise you I did!

I did get caught, but I just learned what not to do the next time.  My Father was Sunday School President and one of his jobs was find wayward teens who were trying to skip their Sunday School class.  It was quite a trick to hide from him!

That building was closed for renovations and we were moved to a new building in Hollywood.  I never saw the county club again.  My family moved before it was finished, but that is fine.  I love having it in my memory as the way it was.

With the move to the new building my wandering ways were curb.  That building was set up like a fort or a motel. Four buildings full of classrooms around a courtyard.   I would be spotted in a heartbeat, but something funny happen.  I became one of the only active in the whole primary.  That means I would go to my classroom and I would be the only person who showed up.  Even the teacher didn't come! But I recognized a good thing when I saw it.  I took the roll, check off my name, pushed it back under the door and sat and read my book.  The squeaky wheel gets the grease and I figured out if I stayed quiet and didn't cause any problems then I was left alone.  Everyone had something to do at church and I learned how to blend into the background good or bad.

So imagine my utter shock and dismay at my life being turned upside down by moving to Simi Valley.  The primary had a hundred kids.  In my class alone were 10 girls!  I did not like girls, they were a complete mystery to me.  I find girls to be backstabbing, highly emotional double agents.  You could never tell if a girls was really your friend.  Boys I could read like an open book.  Two choices- hostile or willing to put up with you.  Girls play games with perception and it starts in childhood.  They just become more covert as they get older.  I do not know how to do that.  I am blunt and straight-forward and I say what I mean.  I love all the comments that say so & so wishes they had tried harder to get to know me.  Hey, I was not easy to love!  You had to be brave to be my friend, not only because of the abuse of others, but because I can be very harsh.  Not on purpose.  I die inside when I am told I have hurt someone by being too truthful.  I have learned how to regulate myself with time, but I do not apologize for what I see and for what I feel.

The point is I did not look at the Church I was in for knowledge. I did not "study" the teachings. I did not understand that my parents were trying to be honest and good. At church I was shielded by the good people who were trying their best to follow God's commandments. Truly bad people would not sacrifice to be a member of the LDS church, it is way to hard. So I did not look to the institution to learn about Jesus Christ or the Gospel. I did not care. Church meant only the personal interactions I had with the people who happened to live in my same geographical area.

So I went into Young Women's.  Could not stand it.  Like I said in a previous post, I felt hypocrisy.  I hid in the car.  I hated my life from 10 to 16 years of age.  During that time I hung on by my fingernails.  I thought of death constantly and I was considering the best way to kill myself.  It is a good thing I am a wimp because every way I came up with to finish my self off sounded too painful to try.

The difference that kept me going to the meetings was a woman who was called to be my leader at the age of 16.  She let me into her life.  I had never had that before,  She let me come to her house and I would sit in her kitchen and talk for hours as she made lunch and them made dinner.  She began with the usual Latter-day Saint cliches, you know the saying that we use in response when we don't know what else to say, but that would passed and she was willing to explore my deeper observations.  This leader let me express my thoughts, the concerns I had about peoples behaviors and my own in reaction to them.  I was not judged or told to stop.  She offered her advice.  She offered her support and she was the first person that I could be negative with and she still accepted me.  I learned what it was like to connect with another person and the beautiful interactions that human beings are capable of.  I had yet to experience another person on such a one-to-one level.  This woman was my leader and a teacher that I could connect with was called.  All the older girls I did not connect to graduated except for two.  For once church was the best place in the world.  It was a haven from school and I hung out with these people outside of the Sunday meeting.  The leader continues to be a major part of my life.  We would separate for years sometimes,but we would always reconnect and find each other.  I love her dearly.  I happen to know that she reads this blog.  We have been unable to overcome the distance in our relationship.  Her family had to move to a different state and she had to adapt to her new surroundings.  She would come back and see me, but our interactions were not the same.  Finally I moved to Virginia.  I am also still friends with the girl a month younger then me in church, but a year below me in school.  We reconnected after my mission because I believed she was the only one who would understand the difficult, almost traumatic side of serving a mission.  We talked and we have never stopped.  She is one of the best sounding boards I have ever had.  If I have a thought chewing inside of my brain.  I call her and she lets me say whatever I need to.  It can be negative.  It can be against God.  It can be incredibly spiritual and so sacred it is hard to discuss, but she lets me do it.  This peer has followed me through my whole evolution. 

And that is why I stayed as a teenager.  Two people who made a difference.  Two people who loved me.  It is amazing how one person can influence the rest of our lives.

Next I will post my decision to stay as an adult.