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My 18-yr-old daughter was just baptised after months of stalking by her ex-boyfriend's mother and a full-on "charm" attack by 4 of the most adorable (and deluded) missionaries you've ever seen. I tried to raise reasoned concerns with her and the missionaries during her lessons (which she invited me to attend), but all were very defensive and just spouted what my research told me to expect word-for-word ... which just served to verify my concerns. I decided to leave it alone so as to not push her away and hope that this all blows over once she is in college in Texas. (I am a god-less athiest and they all feel so sorry for me ... but I just tried to draw comparisons with reasonable protestant christian doctrines because I knew the athiest thing would just be too much for them.) One of the missionaries has been texting with her at all hours of the day and night and passing hand-written letters now that he has been moved to a nearby ward. Yes, I have violated her privacy by reading them -- I am a concerned mother -- and they are talking about marraige and kids. He is 23 and I know that my daughter's stalker LDS-mom is encouraging the relationship.

Here is my current concern ... please let me know if it is valid or if I am just being paranoid.

I noticed a lesson in her things on Patriarchal Blessings and am concerned that her stalker/supporters will feed information to the "patriarch" so that the blessing will support marraige and children right away and lessen the importance of higher education, independence, and maturity before making these kind of huge decisions. She has worked very hard to get great scholarships and is intelligent but very empathic. I am desperately afraid that she is about to throw it all away and end up like her stalker's daughter who went off to LDS college in Idaho this year and was married to the first man she met before Thanksgiving (talk about classic cliché'!! My daughter thinks "they are so cute together")

Your concern is a valid one. You are not being paranoid. Patriarchs do use techniques that are common to fortune-tellers and "psychics" to try to get their subjects to believe that there is inspiration behind the words being spoken.

MomInColorado wrote:
Here is my current concern ... please let me know if it is valid or if I am just being paranoid.

I noticed a lesson in her things on Patriarchal Blessings and am concerned that her stalker/supporters will feed information to the "patriarch" so that the blessing will support marraige and children right away and lessen the importance of higher education, independence, and maturity before making these kind of huge decisions. She has worked very hard to get great scholarships and is intelligent but very empathic. I am desperately afraid that she is about to throw it all away and end up like her stalker's daughter who went off to LDS college in Idaho this year and was married to the first man she met before Thanksgiving (talk about classic cliché'!! My daughter thinks "they are so cute together")

It totally depends on the patriarch. Most will probably encourage girls to get married and have kids. I've heard of at least one woman whose blessing encouraged her to get post-grad education. Probably a rogue patriarch.

In my blessing, the patriarch didn't know me, and asked me bluntly what my talents are, and then included those in the "revelation." So definitely they work off fed information, like TV psychics.

The church in general encourages people to get married young and make all kinds of important decisions without the maturity/information to do so in any rational, informed way.

First... report that missionary to the mission president, because he's disobeying the most basic fundamental law of the mission: thou shalt not be in contact with anyone after thou hast been transferred.

The MP will put a stop to that crap. And 23 is a little old for a missionary, which leads me to wonder if he's been in trouble before.

The patriarchal blessing isn't a big deal, and no one is going to feed the patriarch anything. He'll ask her some questions (what are your hobbies, do you like music... that kind of thing). The blessing itself will be very generic and will be able to be interpreted a hundred different ways, depending on the individual's own worldview.

harmony wrote:First... report that missionary to the mission president, because he's disobeying the most basic fundamental law of the mission: thou shalt not be in contact with anyone after thou hast been transferred.

The MP will put a stop to that crap. And 23 is a little old for a missionary, which leads me to wonder if he's been in trouble before.

The patriarchal blessing isn't a big deal, and no one is going to feed the patriarch anything. He'll ask her some questions (what are your hobbies, do you like music... that kind of thing). The blessing itself will be very generic and will be able to be interpreted a hundred different ways, depending on the individual's own worldview.

This.

The church itself encourages marrying young and not putting off kids. It will be reflected in the blessing, but in a pretty generic way.
Mine encourages education, obedience, genealogy, marriage and motherhood. Patriarch didn't know me so it says something random about my talents in "creative areas" or something like that. LMAO

Thanks! I have thought about reporting all kinds of extra-missionary shenanigans that have been going on to the MP but I don't want to create a big issue that will just cause her to take sides with them and make me the bad guy ... at least not until after she gets through all her AP tests and final exams (two more weeks!)

how difficult is it for someone outside the church to get contact information for the MP?

MomInColorado wrote:Thanks! I have thought about reporting all kinds of extra-missionary shenanigans that have been going on to the MP but I don't want to create a big issue that will just cause her to take sides with them and make me the bad guy ... at least not until after she gets through all her AP tests and final exams (two more weeks!)

how difficult is it for someone outside the church to get contact information for the MP?

Shouldn't be too hard. Do you know the bishop of her ward? He could get you the number.

ETA: Are you actually in Colorado? Maybe I can help you...

MomInColorado wrote:I noticed a lesson in her things on Patriarchal Blessings and am concerned that her stalker/supporters will feed information to the "patriarch" so that the blessing will support marraige and children right away and lessen the importance of higher education, independence, and maturity before making these kind of huge decisions. She has worked very hard to get great scholarships and is intelligent but very empathic. I am desperately afraid that she is about to throw it all away and end up like her stalker's daughter who went off to LDS college in Idaho this year and was married to the first man she met before Thanksgiving (talk about classic cliché'!! My daughter thinks "they are so cute together")

Your problem isn't so much that the patriarchal blessing will encourage her to get married and start having children right away, although that is certainly a concern. Your problem is that the Church is actively pushing this message in every venue.

For example, many of the recent General Conference talks have stressed how important it is for young men to marry quickly and begin a family. The obvious corollary is that is important for the young women to do the same.

Your daughter will get this message loud and clear regardless whether it is explicitly stated in her patriarchal blessing. The church knows that getting married quickly leads to fewer young adults falling away and it wants to minimize the number of young adults who fall away.

Here, tell your daughter to save some time and click below -

http://www.patriarchalblessing.net/inde ... ssing/read

The blessing she gets from the site will be just as inspired as the one she will get from a live person with his hands on her head. Hey, get one for yourself...and the dog too.

Jonah wrote:Here, tell your daughter to save some time and click below -

http://www.patriarchalblessing.net/inde ... ssing/read

The blessing she gets from the site will be just as inspired as the one she will get from a live person with his hands on her head. Hey, get one for yourself...and the dog too.

That's hilarious. About 1/3 of that matches very closely with my real blessing. Mad libs revelation!