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Doesn't get your name removed from your local ward's Christmas card list.

I wonder if they send Christmas cards out to all their members, or just the inactives and those like me who would rather just disappear.

Don't get me wrong, a Christmas card is a very lovely gesture, and the one I got is very pretty, all red and gold...

But I do not know the people who signed it, they don't know me, and I doubt they would care very much about me if they were to know me.

Why can't my wishes to simply be forgotten be heeded? The last bishop I had contact with was in a branch in DC, where my records had been transferred to. The bishopric that sent me this card is from the one near me. It's been months, haven't the records been updated? What's next, a visit from the elders with a care package?

The only LDS contact I want is my friends. I want to be a distant and quickly fading memory in the minds of everyone else. Is that too much to ask? I learned quite early on that as a member, I was only as good as my money and my testimony. Why are these strangers contacting me? This is as weird as the dude who got my number off of the ward directory and found my address on the internet. He was sure I was his eternal companion. Why, is something I won't get into.

Yes, the card is pretty. But I am not a fan of empty gestures.

Your post is pretty much EXACTLY what author Natalie R. Collins complains about on her weblog. She had her name removed from the records, not once but TWICE, but it STILL showed up on the ward list with all the attendant Christmas cards, invitations to homemaking night, etc.

So you're not alone. I essentially proved that the church doesn't remove "removed" names from their records here.

GIMR wrote:Doesn't get your name removed from your local ward's Christmas card list.

I wonder if they send Christmas cards out to all their members, or just the inactives and those like me who would rather just disappear.

In my ward, everyone gets one, not just inactives or the wanna-be-disappeareds.

Shades, it strikes me as strange, simply because it seems my name got transferred back to my home ward months after I requested my name to be removed. I still have the letter. It really has been a couple of months.

Harmony, your ward is one of those "good ones". Perhaps the environment that you and other LDS with kind hearts such as you came up in have to do with your good vibrations.

The entire time I was being made to wait while the church felt I had thought long and hard enough about my decision before they removed my name, I kept getting calls from the missionaries.

In the rest of the world, such persistence would be met with far more anger than I showed. In fact, I showed none. I just didn't answer the phone, and I didn't talk to anyone but that one last bishop. And we didn't discuss much. I let him know it wasn't personal, and he moved on his way.

But my name is still circulating in the LDS database.

GIMR

Those databases never die...they just keep on keepin on...which is what scares me

On my mission we had a list of people who had requested no contact, and we were told to specificly avoid those houses when we went tracting.

Anyway, can I get you a subscription to the Ensign as a christmas gift?

Gaz

GIMR wrote:Doesn't get your name removed from your local ward's Christmas card list.

I wonder if they send Christmas cards out to all their members, or just the inactives and those like me who would rather just disappear.

Don't get me wrong, a Christmas card is a very lovely gesture, and the one I got is very pretty, all red and gold...

But I do not know the people who signed it, they don't know me, and I doubt they would care very much about me if they were to know me.

Why can't my wishes to simply be forgotten be heeded? The last bishop I had contact with was in a branch in DC, where my records had been transferred to. The bishopric that sent me this card is from the one near me. It's been months, haven't the records been updated? What's next, a visit from the elders with a care package?

The only LDS contact I want is my friends. I want to be a distant and quickly fading memory in the minds of everyone else. Is that too much to ask? I learned quite early on that as a member, I was only as good as my money and my testimony. Why are these strangers contacting me? This is as weird as the dude who got my number off of the ward directory and found my address on the internet. He was sure I was his eternal companion. Why, is something I won't get into.

Yes, the card is pretty. But I am not a fan of empty gestures.

And there is nothing more empty than someone who never sees you sending "Their Warmest and most beloved of best wishes this holiday season"

...signed...the jackasses who wont leave you alone.


Consider it a cultural/religious version of spam.

Gazelam wrote:On my mission we had a list of people who had requested no contact, and we were told to specificly avoid those houses when we went tracting.

Anyway, can I get you a subscription to the Ensign as a christmas gift?

Gaz

Society, be humane. Neuter your willfully ignorant humans.

GIMR wrote:

Gazelam wrote:On my mission we had a list of people who had requested no contact, and we were told to specificly avoid those houses when we went tracting.

Anyway, can I get you a subscription to the Ensign as a christmas gift?

Gaz

Society, be humane. Neuter your willfully ignorant humans.

I always was leery of Eugenics but the original implementation was so poor. Now that we have more information concerning Genetics and heredity we can make better inroads at stamping out those genes that should not propagate.

Dr. Shades wrote:Your post is pretty much EXACTLY what author Natalie R. Collins complains about on her weblog. She had her name removed from the records, not once but TWICE, but it STILL showed up on the ward list with all the attendant Christmas cards, invitations to homemaking night, etc.

So you're not alone. I essentially proved that the church doesn't remove "removed" names from their records here.

This certianly does not prove that names are not removed. There were a couple of slight abberetions. I can assure you that on a local level, names properly processed for removal are indeed removed. Of course I cannot say whether there is a master list in SLC that these names still show up on. But onthe local ward if ten people askes to have their name removed, and the paper work is properly processed, that ward's membership drops by ten.