Let’s lean into this Elon Musk trick, the “name five things you did last week so I can fire you” demand. Let’s say that after he has a falling out with Trump next month, he is hired as an Honorary Seventy to combat waste and fraud within the ranks of the Church, running the newly created Department of Understanding and Negating Church Efficiency (DUNCE). He sends out a demand memo email blast to the whole Church. If you don’t respond you will get exed. President Nelson says you will sort of get exed. The other apostles say, “Who is this non-apostle guy and why is he sending emails to the whole Church?”
- You are a bishop. Name five things you did last week.
- You are an LDS missionary. Name five things you did last week.
- You are an LDS chorister. Name five things you did last week.
- You are an early-morning LDS seminary teacher. Name fifteen things you did last week.
- You are a regular bro or sis in the Church. Name five things you did last week.
I’ll go first.
I’m just a regular bro at church. Here are five things I did last week.
- Went to a boring meeting on Sunday.
- Went to boring second hour meeting on Sunday.
- Said a prayer of thanks to God there was no longer a third hour.
- Went home and thought about doing some ministering bro stuff.
- Thought about not really knowing what the heck a ministering bro is supposed to do.
Your turn. Respond with a comment within 48 hours, or else.
.
.
Wheat & Tares 
Ordinary in the pews member.
1. Practiced daily several different instrumental hymn arrangements for future prelude music items.
2. Attended RS evening activity.
3. Attended Sunday meetings where I
4. Spoke with music chair about the recently released new hymns, as I have a fantastic instrumental arrangement for one of them, and arranged to get together to practice later in the week
5. At the request of the Sunday school teacher, played the hymn associated with the lesson on piano at the start of class.
Wry sauce, as an eldest child raised in the church I definitely feel for that sibling.
I met 10% of my scripture reading goals.
I met 100% of my church meeting attendance goals.
I met 100% of my praying goals.
I met 100% of my temple attendance goals.
I met 100% of my quoting President Russell M Nelson goals.
kind of a silly thought experiment. But I’ll play along:
2. Taught early morning seminary each morning. Testified of Chist and his restored gospel daily to 13 high school kids.
3. Great Jesus-centered discussion with my Uber driver while traveling in Florida on business.
4. Worked on being present with my wife and kids, love and serve them.
5. …. I think that’s it. Lol.
As far as actual Church stuff goes, I could just echo Dave B’s week, but that would make this thread as boring as the meetings. So I’ll list 5 things that are at least Church-adjacent.
(1) Uploaded new data to my website (hreplaces.com) so that now people with ancestors from the area between Bremen and Hamburg can enter historically correct place names into their genealogy programs.
(2) Wrote a second draft of a paper on the math underlying polygamy, which I hope to submit somewhere as a guest post in the not-too-distant future.
(3) Reached a less-than-satisfactory, but hopefully stable, equilibrium with my handicapped son regarding his nighttime continence. Suffice it to say that my laundry duties will be declining. (The bishop seems to be treating the care of my son as my Church calling.)
(4) Phoned into my mom’s 90th birthday party, which I didn’t attend because of #2 above.
(5) Watched the first three episodes of The House of David, which seems to be trying to capture the feel of The Chosen, but with limited success. Still better than most biblical epics, but not as good as the 2009 show Kings, which was cancelled way too soon.
Whoops. I reordered my list but did not correct #4. I did not attend because of #3.
I am not sending anything in, in the hope that they really excommunicate me. That way I don’t have to go through their jump through hoops to get out and it is the church firing me rather than me resigning so my dear hubby won’t have as much to have hurt feeling that I don’t want to be sealed to him. Like getting fired so you get unemployment instead of quitting so you have no unemployment insurance—see it wasn’t my fault.
So I would say to the chainsaw wielding Mr. Elon and Pres. Nelson, It’s okay, you can ex me.
Watched CBS Sunday Morning to get a spiritual foundation for the week even though I was embarrassed by the reporting of our President and VP bullying the President of Ukraine in the Oval Office.
Made breakfast, biscuits and gravy with eggs, for my wife which we ate during sacrament meeting which we didn’t attend or watch on Zoom but used the time to reconnect after a hard week.
Had a zoom meeting with my brothers and sisters headed up by my gay daughter as we planned the 90th birthday party for my mother later this year. Was impressed by her organizational ability and how my siblings accepted her leadership and guidance in the process.
Worked on a musical podcast I’ve been wanting to start called “Little Known and Local” where I talk about music that I’ve heard that I love and that other people have not heard. I want to get 10 episodes done first before I start posting them both for practice but also to get into the flow of work and the process of finding out more about the music I love. Did an episode on the “B” side of Green Tamborine, the first single I ever bought called “No Help from Me.” It was not on any Lemon Piper albums until a few years after the band broke up and there was a “Greatest Hits” album which included it.
Watched a couple of episodes of Comedy Central which we missed last week. We had to get our news. Made air popped popcorn and had an orange juice to go with it.
Well josh h beat me to it, only that I was going to also add patronized Starbucks. Twice.
I guess this could actually be good for the church if they actually wanted an accurate headcount. My list would show that I shouldn’t be counted. Maybe put my record on a hiatus status? I’ve heard the horror stories of people using quitmormon so no thanks. Cuz what Anna said.
This post is a great opportunity to point out a minor technical glitch to Dave B and the other great moderators and maintainers at Wheat & Tares. In the not too distant past (maybe a year or so ago?), there was a noticeable change to the W&T comment box. It wasn’t announced (that I was aware of), but commenters were given the ability to add some formatting to their comments: bold, italics, quotes, lists, etc. Since that point in time, the list functionality has, what I consider to be, a minor, but annoying, formatting issue that is seen regularly in W&T comments. Since this post is asking for a list of 5 items, it is an ideal opportunity to point out the issue.
If you look at the comments of WrySauce, josh h, and DaveW, you will see a list with text that is uncomfortably scrunched together and missing numbers or bullet points–to the point that isn’t comfortable to read. I believe that this is because they used the W&T comment box functionality to create a numbered list. When someone does that (as I have done in the past), it looks great in the comment box (the text isn’t scrunched together and the numbers/bullet points are visible), but then when the comment is submitted, it is formatted as you can see above in a way that is more difficult to read than if a list hadn’t been created (the numbers are gone and the text is all scrunched up).
All a commenter has to do is type a “1” followed by a “.” (period) followed by a ” ” (space) for the W&T comment box to automatically create a numbered list. You have to go to a bit of annoying extra work to get rid of the numbered list that the W&T comment box automatically creates by just typing those two characters.
It appears that Hedgehog, Len, lastlemming, and others who have commented have already learned how to avoid the pitfall of the W&T numbered list, but again, you have to know ahead of time that posting a numbered list will end up formatted badly and take extra measures to ensure you don’t get a numbered list. but
I will create a numbered list below to provide another example of the problem. When I typed this into the W&T comment box, the numbers appeared normally and the spacing was fine, but I believe when I post my comment the numbers will disappear, and the text will be a scrunched up:
It’s only a minor annoyance, and the blog is still great, but it’s been happening for so long without anyone bringing it up (that I’m aware of) that I thought this would be a good time to make sure the excellent and ever diligent W&T moderators were aware of the problem. Thanks for all you do!
mountainclimber is right: I had a 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. in front of my bullets but when I pressed “send” they disappeared.
I said my prayers and had good health, good thoughts, and good humor all day, thanks be to God Almighty.
Mmmmmmm, . . . I love biscuits and gravy. . .
I was too sick to go to Church
But not too sick to go over to my cousins for dinner and cards
Watched part of the Oscars
That’s it. I’m fired. I can only think of three.
Got offended
Wanted to sin
Found some anti-Mormon stuff online
Fell down a slippery slope
Got a bee in my bonnet
For what it’s worth, it looks like the problem with the formatting of lists is that one of the css files for the blog has this which turns off the numbering of ordered lists:
ol, ul {
list-style: none;
}
and another css file has this which causes the lines in lists to be formatted too closely together (in my opinion):
line-height: 1
Whatever I feel like—gosh!
lastlemming, shout out to your bishop!!!! I hope other bishops will think through things like that. And stake leaders considering people for callings.
I get the nighttime continence thing. A surgical intervention helped some.
my spouse was bishop while that particular aspect of our child’s disability was at its height. One Sunday our dear RS president cornered me in the hall during church and loudly berated me for not being willing to be a visiting teacher. Why wasn’t I doing more? Since his calling occupied more of my spouse’s time, most all of the caregiving duties fell to me. Some were very onerous.
I went home and cried.
and cursed the rs pres. She was even a nurse. No kids, just her and her husband.
stillresentful, I am sorry for your treatment by your RS president. You are not alone. I don’t say that to make you feel better. You were treated badly and inappropriately.
Instead of looking at what faithful members are not doing (or are doing poorly, or are not doing as well as I might want), why not look at what they are doing and express sincere thanks. Why not focus on where people are trying to make it all work, and encourage them? We may get some short-term obedience by criticizing, fault-finding, and shaming, but that obedience often comes with resentment. Haven’t we learned that we get more long-term commitment by encouraging, helping, and motivating? There may be a time and a place for pointing out faults, but it isn’t the hall at church, and it isn’t from a RS or EQ president who is not a judge in Israel. Oh, and the judgment by the judge only comes when there is a case, and I’m not sure that there’s a case to be judged when a person is doing the best he or she can do. How I wish that Latter-day Saints could judge and criticize less, and love and build more.
Maybe individuals need to look more to the beam in their own eye before they find fault in their neighbor for having a mote in his eye.
One. I thought about my ministering assignments. I didn’t make contact with them, but I did think about them. The closest lives about 15 miles from me, and the others about 20 or 25 miles. It is hard to get me out of the house in the evening after a long day at work. I should do better.
Two. I went to sacrament meeting but we did not stay for Sunday School. Our teacher simply reads from the Come Follow Me manual, and asks only the questions in the CFM manual. I read the CFM manual at home. I wondered to myself as I made the decision to leave that we need to improve the quality of Sunday teaching. My wife thanked me for making the decision, as she didn’t want to do it herself.
Three. I did some family history using Ancestry.com. About three hours. I didn’t find any new ancestors.
Four. I prayed most evenings last week, but mornings get hectic. While I don’t kneel in prayer for hours, I certainly carry a prayer in my heart, and I ponder on spiritual matters a lot, being sensitive to inspiration. I always say a silent prayer before a meal, and my family prays when we eat together. With all children in college, my wife and I don’t always eat at the table.
Five. I helped a ward family load their truck. I was the only person who showed, until about 2 hours into it a set of missionaries came. This family are good people. I will miss them.