Fence Sitter wrote:I do not write nearly as well as Runtu but this is offered in the same spirit that his story was. I was inactive at the time and did not pay tithing.
About ten years ago my then 17 year old son was riding a skateboard on a sidewalk without a helmet and fell striking the back of his head on the concrete suffering a traumatic brain injury. Fortunately for all of us one of his younger brothers was with him and was able to summon help immediately.
We rushed him to the hospital where he underwent a MRI which revealed a dime size bleed (subdural hematoma) in his brain. Three hours later when he became disoriented with a dilated pupil they did another MRI and discovered that the bleed was much larger and would require immediate brain surgery.
My wife and I spent the next two weeks night and day by his side in a cold ICU room waiting for him to regain consciousness, wondering if he did come back to us what kind of damage had been done. Every imaginable tube and wire was attached to him. There was a heart rate monitor, a body temperature monitor, a blood pressure monitor, an intubation tube, a catheter, 2 IV trees with more clear plastic bags then I thought possible and the worst of all was the wire coming out of his brain. This one indicated the pressure of the brain against the skull as it swelled from the surgery and injury. We knew exactly how to read that monitor and agonized hour after hour as we watched it hover at dangerous levels.
Eventually he regained consciousness and we realized after a lengthy rehab in the hospital he would be, for the most part, fine. It required another six weeks of hospitalization to get him to the point where we could bring him home. During this time his mother or I or both would stay with him to assist in this process.
For those two months his mom and I were living at the hospital. I would go home at night to sleep and the return to the hospital during the day after work, while his mom would sleep in the bed the hospital provided next to our son. (I returned to work about three weeks after the accident.)
All this time our other 3 sons, ranging in age from 15 down to 9 years old, were at home alone. My wife and I did not have to prepare one meal, or worry about how the boys were getting to their three different schools, or the many different sports and church activities in which they were involved. Clothes were washed and the house cleaned by church volunteers, many of whom I had never met. Meal coordination, transportation and cleaning were also planned without our involvement. Basically we were told “Go take care of your son and do not worry about anything else.”
I remember coming home tired and worried a few nights after the accident to check on the boys. I walked into the kitchen and found the table strewn with food that no one had bothered to put away. I lost my temper and immediately began yelling at the 15 year old for not being responsible. “How can you not even take the time to put away the food?” I yelled. He calmly got up and walked over and opened the refrigerator. Looking inside I saw that ward members had brought over so much food that there was no empty room left. My son calmly asked me where I thought the food should go.
For me, when I look back at this experience and the help that was provided in our time of need, I get emotional. For the most part I never knew who was involved in helping us, outside of it being unnamed ward members and a few other close friends. Nor do I ever recall anyone mentioning being involved, it was all done in the spirit of giving and it was humbling to be on the receiving end.
That's a great story, Fence Sitter. It really shows how well a ward can be usefully and quickly mobilized.
From the Ernest L. Wilkinson Diaries: "ELW dreams he's spattered w/ grease. Hundreds steal his greasy pants."
Runtu wrote:I've told this story before, but it's a reminder to me of the importance of giving and sharing without being judgmental. I'm not telling this to bash the church, and my family has forgiven the people involved. And, because I know some people will tell me this is an exaggeration or we don't know the whole story, this story has been confirmed to me by my mother (who was appalled that my dad had told me about it) and two different family friends who were there.
My father told me this story about 3 or 4 years ago. I had never heard any of this, and it still hurts to think about it.
When my mother became pregnant with me, my father was a Ph.D. student at USC. He worked for an aerospace company one day a week, and they paid most of his tuition.
My parents had three children before I was born, and my dad's income barely paid the bills. They lived in a one-bedroom apartment that had been converted from a detached garage behind someone's house. Needless to say, they did not have health insurance.
About 5 months into the pregnancy, my mom started bleeding, and not just a little spotting. The doctor told her that she was going to miscarry, and she should just have a D&C and get it over with. But, since she insisted she was going to do everything possible to have the baby, he told her she would need bed rest until I was born.
My parents sent my brother and two sisters to my grandparents in Utah for four months so my mom could stay in bed. When I was born, the doctors discovered a life-threatening birth defect, and I had major surgery that day. I spent the next six weeks in the hospital before coming home on Christmas Eve.
My uncle gave my dad everything in his savings account, but it wasn't half as much as the bills. The Crippled Children's Fund loaned my dad the rest of the money. My dad was forced to quit school and go to work full-time.
Until I was almost 6 years old, I had to go to the hospital overnight once or twice a week to have my esophagus dilated. By then I had two younger brothers. My family was very poor, heavily in debt, and under a lot of stress.
From the time that my mom started the bed rest until I was done having my bi-weekly procedures, no one from the church provided child care, meals, rides to the hospital, nothing. We didn't get anything from the bishop's storehouse, and no money to help with the bills. Literally, the local ward did nothing to help my family.
Just after I turned six, we moved from that ward. A few days before we moved, the former Relief Society president showed up at our house. She begged my mother's forgiveness for not helping when we obviously needed help. She said that, in a ward council meeting, the bishop had said no one was to help the Williams family because "Brother Williams is not a full-tithe payer."
I can't tell you how much it hurt to hear this story. I gave so much of my life to the church, and this felt like a real betrayal. It still hurts.
But it reminds me that we must help people in need, even if we think they don't "deserve" it, even if it inconveniences us, and even if it's hard. I do not want anyone to think of me as someone who saw their need and didn't help.
I wish i had time to properly respond to this OP as I have many thoughts but not a lot of time (as usual)...i just wanted to say:
"your reasoning that children should be experimented upon to justify a political agenda..is tantamount to the Nazi justification for experimenting on human beings."-SUBgenius on gay parents "I've stated over and over again on this forum and fully accept that I'm a bigot..." - ldsfaqs
Thanks for these stories, they really show how far the pendulum can swing both ways within in the church. People can be utterly cold to their fellows in one context, and unselfishly giving in another.
Thanks for these stories, they really show how far the pendulum can swing both ways within in the church. People can be utterly cold to their fellows in one context, and unselfishly giving in another.
Again, I hope no one thinks I'm condemning the church for the actions of one idiot bishop.
Thanks for these stories, they really show how far the pendulum can swing both ways within in the church. People can be utterly cold to their fellows in one context, and unselfishly giving in another.
Well said, my friend.
~Those who benefit from the status quo always attribute inequities to the choices of the underdog.~Ann Crittenden ~The Goddess is not separate from the world-She is the world and all things in it.~
Spurven Ten Sing wrote:Fence, I will ask the tacky question. Were you a full tithe payer at the time?
Spurven,
You must not have read the first sentence of his post.
I do think that one of the problems of the LDS church is relying on a relatively untrained lay "clergy" for this sort of thing. That's one reason there is so much variance in how these things are administered. It's supposed to be up to "revelation", and how can revelation be wrong?
We hate to seem like we don’t trust every nut with a story, but there’s evidence we can point to, and dance while shouting taunting phrases.
If only the incorporated version of the the Mormon church could take a lesson or two from its members. Remember, it kicked a woman and her child out of its hotel smack dab in the middle of Christmas week last year.
There is some serious disconnect going on with some Mormons and their actions. :/
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.
Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.
Spurven Ten Sing wrote:Fence, I will ask the tacky question. Were you a full tithe payer at the time?
Spurven,
You must not have read the first sentence of his post.
I do think that one of the problems of the LDS church is relying on a relatively untrained lay "clergy" for this sort of thing. That's one reason there is so much variance in how these things are administered. It's supposed to be up to "revelation", and how can revelation be wrong?
