Church in the Home State

I hate going to the home ward. It's always so awkward, because people act weird around me. People that I knew growing up seem to be tip-toeing around the marriage topic, and it makes me feel awkward. I'd much rather just have an open acknowledgement that no, I have not been married, and it is okay.

Spending this summer in the ward boundaries has therefore created a dilemma. Every Saturday I'm left trying to figure out where it is I'm going to attend church the next day. Fortunately, a friend of mine allowed me to tag along with him to an adult singles ward. The first Sunday was admittedly kind of scary, and a couple of times I was approached and had to stop myself from reaching out and grabbing the arm of my friend to yank him back to my side for protection. The next Sunday was Fast Sunday, and he reassured me that I definitely wanted to come back for the next week's testimony meeting. I didn't have any better offers, so I agreed, but we worked out a rescue signal on the way there.

I didn't really, truly believe the hype about these testimony meetings. This friend had told me many times that crazy things go down all the time, but I was convinced that he was exaggerating. I stand corrected. The Stake President was there, and he started off the testimonies by asking everyone to be considerate of the time, don't take more than a few minutes, and basically don't turn testimony meeting into personal story hour. His request was promptly ignored by all but maybe one, possibly two of the testimonies, and I'm pretty convinced by the abrupt ending of a few that they got the red light. That in and of itself was pretty interesting. People were actually bearing testimony about weird things, like the perfection of the fake plants in the temple, and people that get blown up and disemboweled in foreign countries.

About halfway through the meeting this guy who would have looked more at home at a Hell's Angel's rally came walking in the door in his blue jeans and hoody and walked up to the stand. My friend was ecstatic, you could just kind of tell that he was a loose cannon. This guy waited until the very end of the meeting so that he could be the last testimony and then got up and started off by saying that he hadn't intended to bear his testimony that day, but once the stake president got up, he knew that he had to say something. From there he launched into an apostate "testimony" bashing the stake president, advising us all to ignore him, and stating that the church is in a state of apostasy and that we no longer have a living prophet. Then he huffed off the stand and out the door, leaving the stake president to do damage control. Needless to say, it was the most riveting testimony meeting I've ever sat through, and it was all topped off with that bit of craziness. I'm not sorry that I was in attendance.

All the same, I decided this week to brave the family ward, and I actually kind of liked it this time around. Nothing weird happened, and it was dull in comparison to that other ward, but who knows, I might go back sometime before I leave.