Ward Crazies - Share your stories here pt1

roxy Aug 2012

OK so I was born and raised in Europe, I don't live there any longer, but the church isn't huge over there. Missions must be very hard and the pickings are slim. The only people in my home ward ever seemed to get baptized were the vulnerable, and the slightly unhinged/mentally ill people. This made for some hilarious Testimonkey meetings

i would like to share a few of my fav examples with you (although i hope no one from my old ward reads this as they will know exactly where I am from and who I am)

1) One Sunday a woman gets up on the pulpit and she says how sorry she is for being a pain in the neck to Bishop and for all the things she has done to him (i dunno bad mouthed or had issues whatever she didn't go into details) and she said she wanted to do something for him to prove to him her regret and sorrow - next minute her husband walks in on queue carrying a large bowl/bucket of water - she then proceeds to tell bishop to take off his shoes and socks as she is going to wash his feet, he goes red and declines - but she is insisting - those to argue politely back and forth you can see have the members are going bright red with shame and not knowing where to look - the other half have their shoulders shaking with trying to stifle laughter!

2) A woman gets up and goes off at everyone about not gosspiing about her and cheating on her husband, and just really yells at everyone including swearing and talking about sexual things- thing is no one really knows them or wanted to as they were really strange and smelt really bad - so i don't think anyone was actually talking about them - mums hurried their kids out of the door!

3)A life longer member gets up and starts talking about re-incarnation and how he was a tiger back in parroh's days. and how he hopes in the next life he will be one again - he was always slightly odd but that was something else!

4)the 85+ yr old organist got up and talked about evolution and how God triggered it millions of years ago and she could marriage her belief in Mormonsiom with her believe in evolution - at the time of course we thought she was mad - now i think - what an awesome lady! :0)

Anyone else from a crazy ward?

upsidedown
Re: Ward Crazies - Share your stories here!
We had a dude that always wore an Navajo Indian print headband and a ponytail with long gray hair. He would yell out "Amen" and "Amen brother" when people gave talks. Kinda cool if you are at a born again christian church but at this ward chapel it was a bunch of uptight republican white rich people. I would laugh my ass off everytime he did it and the congregation would go silent.

Also had a guy give a testimonkey and tell how he knew he was in the lords church now (recently baptized) because he had a vision last night where the walls were bleeding in his house in his bedroom. Kinda freaked out a few of the kiddos in the pews.

Last story. Elders Quorom starts and they go through the usual "introduce any new people/visitors" routine. After a few people introduce themselves a dude says, "Hi, I am a member but I am new in the ward....I had a really bad night last night and decided it was time to get back to church....I loaded my shotgun and threatened to kill my wife....so anyway I'm trying to get active now." crickets

whitmersghost
Re: Ward Crazies - Share your stories here!
lol testimonkey is the new word of the day :P

I will never forget good old "Cliff", he stood up during a prayer once and said: "Bishop, Lucifers here!". Everyone opened there eyes and gasped! It was priceless.

Not to make fun or anything, but I learned a little later that he was a legit schitzo.

Particles of Faith
Re: Ward Crazies - Share your stories here!
Elderly missionary got up in testimony meeting and started reciting the temple ceremony word for word. We were all wondering when he was going to stop. Didn't get to the penalties. Now that would really have been something.
rainwriter
Re: Ward Crazies - Share your stories here!
Not so much crazy as just inappropriate for the aituation. I was in YW and we had just gotten to the campsite and were starting to set up our sleeping bags in our cabbin. I don't know whattriggered it, but one of the leaders told anoher that when she got married, her husband didn't know much about sex and that she had to convince him that people really did that. Not the bnest thing to say in a little room with a bunch of teenage girls. I couldn't look at her husband for months with out thinking that. Later on that same camp, she mentioned the evils of playing cards when someone brought them up, and testified to the reality of evil spirit posession when another leader woke up saying that they had just tried to possess her. Sillyh me, I was sure she was just having a nightmare.

annonnn
at girls' camp
I think I may have shred this awhile back, but my very first year at girls' camp was the summer Nixon resigned. We were having testimony meeting around the campfire on Thursday night. One of the ward camp directors had driven home that day for a doctor's appointment because she had some malady that absolutely couldn't wait. (It was probably a urinary tract infection, and after having suffered a few myself, I can't say as I blame her.)

Anyway, this sister arrived when testimony meeting was underway. She had to cut in front of others who were waiting to bear their testimonies to make the dramatic announcement that President Nixon had announced that his resignation would take effect at noon on the next day. First there was dead silence. Then one brave girl cheered loudly. (I wish I could say that I was the one who cheered.) The ward camp director of the girl who cheered quickly shushed her.

I don't know if this is the way it was at all girl's camps, but we always had a priesthood holder at camp for the entire session. This particular priesthood holder was a bishop of another ward in our stake, and mist have been a fairly staunch republican. upon hearing the announcement, he immediately ran into the woods maybe twenty or thirty yards -- far enough that we couldn't see him but could most definitely hear him -- and began loudly barfing his guts out. The sound resonated through the trees and off the mountains.

The stake camp director, who was a member of my ward and was always something of a mystical nut, stood and began screaming, "Everyone back to your cabins immediately. The Spirit of the Lord is no longer with us and the Spirit of the Adversary has taken over. hurry, hurry, back to your camps and into your tents IMMEDIATELY." She mentioned something about the constitution dwindling and hanging by a thread and there being no oe to save it. {Shouldn't George Romney have been in D. C. at the time? Couldn't he have saved the constitution?] The lady was sort of yell-crying the words at us, and she was thoroughly out of control. a few other ladies were picking up on her hysteria and starting to grow hysterical themselves. One girl asked if we shouldn't have a closing prayer before we dispersed. "NO, WE SHOULDN'T HAVE A cLOSING pRAYER!" she screeched, "I said,'THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD HAS LEFT US!' Don't you even KNOW what that means?!"

We all moved along to our individual ward campsites, though probably not fast enough for the stake camp director's liking. Many of the girls were crying, some of them were becoming hysterical, and a few were even throwing up. The girls from our ward rolled our eyes and muttered under our breath. We'd all seen her craziness before and recognized it as such, though why anyone in power ever put her in charge of an event such as girls' camp was a mystery for the ages.

I didn't know this at the time, but learned a few years ago that two of the sixteen-year-old junior counselors snuck away during the night to a pay phone maybe four miles down the road and called their parents. Their parents called the stake president and told him he needed to get up to camp and do something about the mass hysteria. All I knew at the time was that the stake president and several parents were there in the morning, and that the stake camp director and the designated camp priesthood holder were gone and replaced before we all made it out of our sleeping bags the next morning.

Whiskey_Tango
Re: at girls' camp
That is an incredible example of mass hysteria..Amazing.

abinadiburns
Re: Ward Crazies - Share your stories here!
The story about the woman insisting on washing the bishop's feet in SM is one of the funniest things ever. I am having fun imagining my own past stodgy bishops in that scenario and it is effing hilarious. HA!

Finally Free!
Re: Ward Crazies - Share your stories here!
One of my sunday school teachers when I was a teenager had "calculated the date of Christ's return... just a few months away!"... I don't remember if he quite his job or not, rumor was that he did... He definitely had food storage and warned everyone in the ward and gave a lesson to us in Sunday school.

My Dad, when I told him what we were taught, basically said, no one knows when it will happen and to not worry.

Needless to say, the day came and went, true to form for most end of days prophets, he adjusted his calculations, that day came and went... He went part-active for a while, then moved a way... Apparently in shame if I remember what I overheard from my parents talking.

idleswell
Re: Ward Crazies - Share your stories here!
We had a brother who emigrated from Central America. One testimony meeting he vowed that he wouldn't cut a hair on his head until he had converted 100 Lamanites to the Church. Nothing happened - other than this brother getting very hairy.
idleswell
Re: Ward Crazies - Share your stories here!
One testimony meeting a sister spoke for the entire hour. She went home and died that afternoon.
idleswell
Re: Ward Crazies - Share your stories here!
A brother once bore testimony that he was going to have a son. About a month later, daughter #4 was born.

Our bishop said while he was browsing a newsstand waiting in an airport he found a book, "Choose the Sex of Your Child" (the exact title escapes me today). The bishop says, "Immediately I thought of buying the book for Roger. Then I read on the book cover that the authors were parents of 5 daughters. I just didn't have the heart."

rainwriter
Re: Ward Crazies - Share your stories here!
Wait... I thought that the spirit converted people...

rainwriter
Re: Ward Crazies - Share your stories here!
Hehe, that would have been too mean.

Luis C. Ferr
Re: Ward Crazies - Share your stories here!
Well I can't remember great details.....

But in one of the Spanish branches I was in while waiting for my Brazilian visa, we had the 2nd councillor who had recently suffered head trauma start to ordain a young lady to the priesthood when he was confirming her.

In the home ward I grew up in there was a guy who would oft talk about UFOs and their role in local cattle mutilation during f&t meetings.

xyz
Re: Ward Crazies - Share your stories here!
I lived in one of those White & Delightsome wards, but then during the late 1970s it began to get a little more integrated. Our biggest thrill as kids was during F&T meetings, when the new converts would go all Fundamentalist on us and start speaking in tongues or throw their heads back and start singing in the middle of a testimony. To our dismay, nobody ever writhed on the floor, but the rest was fun.
Tristan-Powerslave
Re: Ward Crazies - Share your stories here!
When I was still active, one of the clerks got up in F&T & started saying that archeologists found remains in Egypt that proved the cult was true because the remains of the people were wearing what he believed to be garments with all the same markings & such. I was just like WTF, what a whacko.
Aaron Hines
Re: Ward Crazies - Share your stories here!
Mentioned these ones before, but a middle-aged childless couple in my second ward started teaching fundamentalist conspiracy theories in Sunday School. Like about Revelation referring to the Gulf War, and the Mark of the Beast being microchips that would be implanted in people to replace credit/debit cards. They were released the following week, and shortly afterward moved to a ranch in rural Utah, taking several other ward members with them.
WinksWinks
I cuss
My seminary teacher was tapped into some rumor mill in the church and told us all that the missionaries(prophets?) of Revelation had received their patriarchal blessings. This was in 1996, just in time for them to be doing their mission thing in Y2K, you know, as prophesied in the bible.

One of many things that made me thing college would be a waste of time, clearly I just needed to stock up on my doomsday stuff.

My other crazy story isn't too odd, but it was a testimonkey given in Spanish. Now I follow just enough to get the gist of what he was saying. He was very emotional about a wall decoration made of Pampas grass, that big fluffy pale grass. See it caught fire and somehow this proved the church was true.
I confess I did not follow what happened to cause the church to be true because of a fire, but it had something to do with missionaries.
Perhaps they knocked and he came out to answer the door as the grass went up in flames, not really sure.

Not so much of a crazy story as some of you have. :) My ward was full of racists, sexists, homophobes, but not too many nuts.
Although my mom tells of this one lady who started seeing penguins on people so her husband divorced her. Treatment for mental illness? No, divorce.
I grew up around people who perpetuated the mental illness equals evil stereotype. Funny thing, they are the most twisted people ever, and none of them will ever get help because that would somehow equate to admitting to sin.
Sick...

stbleaving
Of all the things I miss about the church, I miss the crazies the most-NOT.
Garments and Sex in F&T Mtg: Occasionally in the 1970s, older men would bear solemn testimony that their children had all been "conceived through the garment of the holy priesthood." One F&T Sunday, our ward's resident sexy divorced lady got up and admonished all the women to "take back their bodies and take off their garments during the act of marriage." She was ushered fom the stand. I don't recall ever seeing her again.

Visionary Home Teacher: My relatives had a HT who was a stake executive secretary, so he had scads of personal information about people that he didn't actually know. When he had particularly juicy inside info about a relative stranger, he liked to sidle up to these people at church and insinuate that he'd had a vision about their job search/marital woes/wayward child. Once, he accosted a woman from the stake while she was sitting alone in the Celestial Room of the temple to inform her that the spirit of her dead husband was standing right behind the couch. (Said husband had died a few days previously and the news wasn't really out yet.)

Testimony Fight Club: Sleazy Bishop was very defensive about his testimony. Every Fast Sunday without fail he would proclaim that HIS testimony was the product of HIS spirit and HIS heart and HIS mind and DID NOT depend on anybody else. So one day a semi-active sister got up immediately after Sleazy Bishop's testimony and addressed him directly, telling him that he sounds a little aggressive and should let the love of the Lord into his heart. He let her finish, then got up to proclaim that HE was the bishop and ALWAYS acted with love and we were NOT to question this. A high priest gets up and berates the bishop for not letting him and his wife go on a senior mission. Sleazy Bishop gets up again and reiterates that he has the RIGHT to receive revelation for ward members and they MUST OBEY or face the consequences. An elderly lady who had had public spats with Sleazy Bishop got up next and bore a passive-aggressive testimony about how the Lord will lead his children, even if their leaders make huge mistakes. I walked out of the meeting and went home at that point.

flyboy21
Re: Ward Crazies - Share your stories here!
We had a clearly developmentally disabled man in my first congregation. No shortage of stories there.

My favorite was when we'd be praying and he'd walk through the aisles, testifying in a Holiness/Pentacostal fashion, and then put his arm around your shoulder and ask you for a dollar. He was my kind of people in church, but unfortunately the leadership didn't see it that way and asked the couple who would give him rides to stop.

idleswell
Re: Ward Crazies - Share your stories here!
I always assumed that my family were the ward crazies!

My favorite scripture is D&C 68:31: Now, I, the Lord, am not well pleased with the inhabitants of Zion, for there are idlers among them.

I could always have fun with that verse because we are the idlers (literally). An elders quorum president selected me to read that scripture the *very day* that I moved into his ward.

My ex-wife could not endure more than a month (or one menstrual period?) without a public confrontation with any of the other sisters in the ward. Once she slapped some teens who were talking in the row behind us. She had a shouting match with another sister in the choir who pointed to the place in the song when my wife lost her place.

One Sunday there was a huge fight in the lobby over a knitting project that had gone awry. The voices could be heard all over the building. A bishopric counselor found me in the clerk's office. "At least you're safe. I thought she must be after you."

So, yes, we had crazies at church. My problem was I had to bring mine home with me. Fortunately a pathological sense of humour goes a long way to coping.

Mia
Re: Ward Crazies - Share your stories here!
There was the convert couple who told us they had come to visit us because they wanted a tour of our house. Why? Because they knew that all the wicked people would be leaving town (us) and they would have their choice of nice homes to choose from. Ok then..

Their best friends were another convert couple who claimed to have a entourage of spirits that they could see, and converse with at all times. They would suddenly start talking to the spirits in the room when you were in the middle of a conversation with them. They pulled up stakes and moved to Missouri so they wouldn't have to walk there later. I asked them if they knew about the scripture that says missouri will be wiped clean before the saints returned. They looked a bit alarmed, but moved anyway.

Sister I had a revelation. She had all the kids in the ward married off to each other. Every fast and testimony she would get up and talk about who she knew was supposed to marry who. She then would inform everyone that she was a prophetess and knew these things for a surety. Last I heard she was in a nursing home with dementia.

Bridget
Re: Ward Crazies - Share your stories here!
The very nature of Mormonism brings out the crazy in people. Those who believe it more devoutly, more crazy!

When I was brainwashed, it had the effect of me saying things that looking back now, I believe were totally nuts! I had a point of view that everything was influenced by God or Satan, so my worldview was very distorted.

Thank Buddha that I now have a very different worldview!!!

roxy
Re: at girls' camp
WOW! some seriously unhinged people there - yeah i think i would be one of the snigering away thinking what the hell? LOL...

I have one funny camp story though - our bishop and his wife (the YW preident) - awesome couple i love to this day, both quite young - prob around the early 30s mark - we heard them quietly doing "it" in their tent in the middle of the night! couldn't look em in the face for AGES after that - in fact 15 years on I still can not :|

sam
Re: Ward Crazies - Share your stories here!
Many years ago when I was the EQP, we got 100% HT one month. I had an appointment with the SP and he asked how did we do in HT last month? I said we got 100%. He said, 'Well you didn't do it, God did it, right?" I then said, no, we did it all, I don't think he was assigned to any family. The SP got very upset with that comment.

rainwriter
Re: Ward Crazies - Share your stories here!
What's with all of the one-way streets? If less than 100% is acheived, then it's "your fault," very clearly human error. Why isn't it God's fault then, or why can't you take credit when it is 100%?
rainwriter
Re: Ward Crazies - Share your stories here!
This was in my student ward, so I don't know how much blame can actually rest on the girl. But, there was a girl who usually sat in front of us that decided to pull out her finger nail clippers and clip her nails while the sacrament was being passed. She'd turn around and chastise us for whispering, then go back to clipping away.
judyblue
Re: Ward Crazies - Share your stories here!
We had a bunch of the typical ward crazies:

~ The ward choir director who gave herself all the solos even though her voice sounded like a bunch of drowning cats in a burlap bag.

~ The convert wife of the bishop who told the exact same story every single month in F&T about how because she was raised Catholic and baptised into the LDS church on her 19th birthday she "knows all about what life is like when you're not a mormon and that's why she has a testimony that it's true."

~ The YW leader who gave us our semi-annual chastity lesson using a poster with a corral drawn on it, called the "Corral of Morale" (because she obviously didn't know the difference between "morale" and "morality"), and instructed us not to mess about with our fences because if we do a post might come loose and then the wolves will get in.

But my favorite was the Opinionated Bitchy Old Widow in the electric wheelchair. It loudly BEEP-BEEPed when she turned it on, and her timing was immaculate. She always pressed the button IMMEDIATELY after the closing "inanamejeezchristamen". She had the rhythm down to a science. While everybody in the congregation was muttering "amen", OBOW's chair would simultaneously chime BEEP-BEEP in agreement. It was so amusing to my brother and I started saying BEEP-BEEP instead of amen.

sam
Re: Ward Crazies - Share your stories here!
100%--God gets all the credit

Less than 100%--we get all the blame

Tristan-Powerslave
The crazy people are one of the reasons why I'm out. I couldn't take their craziness anymore.
- These crazy women who'd been married 3 & 4 times, & had like 7 kids.

- Crazy bishops who didn't know crap about anything, & were emotionally abusive.

- The mentally ill people that wouldn't take their meds.

- The conspiracy nuts. Even in my own family.

- The extreme Nazi TBMs. People who practically lock their kids up, & honestly believe that Satan is after them. They were some of the most judgmental people I've ever come across.

- The scriptural literalists. They had no clue of what was really going on, or of history & geography.

I could go on & on & on with this stuff.

"Recovery from Mormonism - www.exmormon.org"