Late Night Ramblings

Dal made me go to bed early tonight. I guess he was tired or something and I had nothing better to do with my time.... so I went to bed. And then lay there...... lay there...... annoyed Dal with my inane chatter for a while - I "discussed" (he just lay there listening) why some people seem to have a bucketload of motivation and others (like me) have more than a bucketload of desire, but no motivation. It seems to me a bit unfair. But that's for a different post.

I finally decided to get up from bed and just talk at the blogosphere, because Dal went to sleep and the blogosphere NEVER sleeps (as far as I know, anyway).

So here I am, going to tell you all about my day (or part thereof). It involves a lot of Mormon lingo, so if you aren't Mormon and would like to decipher this post (exciting - it's like a secret code post) then you could go to www.mormon.org. OR you could completely ignore this post and I wouldn't be any the wiser, and you would have saved yourself a brain injury from reading it. I COMPLETELY understand. I have also taken the liberty to link certain words directly to the glossary found on Mormon.org.

ENOUGH. On to the real reason I am typing at midnight.

We attended our new ward today. In the time it has taken us to move to three different wards, I have come to realise the inevitable truths about LDS wards in Australia. They are as follows.

1. The Sunday School teacher is ALWAYS going to be either very dry or just plain crazy. So dry that you end up falling off your chair from doubling over in pain. OR so crazy that you want to hurt yourself to cease the endless dialogue between the crazy, the guy who thinks he's funny and the loud guy. This dialogue inevitably goes completely off the subject.

2. Despite telling myself before church that I am NOT to answer any questions, because it may seem a little overbearing to have the newbie take over the discussion..... I ALWAYS end up saying the most in lessons. And this is usually to the detriment of any future friendships that I may have struck up with the now disgusted Relief Society women.

3. I am going to be lucky to get one decipherable talk per month. Most talks from the pulpit will be either spoken in an accent so thick it may as well be in the speakers native language, or it's the Sunday School teacher speaking.... and he doesn't make sense at the best of times.

4. There will always be that man (or woman), who is usually older who believes that whatever he has to say is pure gold and any time he deems it necessary to talk, he will (by jingo) talk. And talk he does, on and on and on and on. And at the end of his story, you will have learned every single detail of his life up until that very moment. According to him every part of that story related to the gospel.

5. There will always be THAT family. and Dal, Hel and Bel will ALWAYS manage to sit right in front of them during Sacrament Meeting. You know the family, where the dad is probably sitting on the stand (either in the Bishopric or is the Sunday School teacher going to give a talk) and the mother is wrangling her six or so children. I give props to the mother, but WHY do we always manage to sit in front of that family in EVERY ward that we attend? Is this something to do with having a child now?

6. Despite all the crazies that come into our lives while attending these wards, we will always realise that it's not the people for whom we attend church, but the gospel and it's teachings. We will continue to nudge each other when the Sunday School teacher starts preaching false doctrine (unaware, of course) or when we hear a particularly good story from the old loud man. Because of all the unorthodox people that surround us, we learn to appreciate the people that eventually become our friends and allies in an ever increasing world of crazies.

Cheers to our new ward, that seems to have more young families than a last one. Hooray!

Early Morning Edit: It has been brought to my attention that we did indeed have a fantastic Sunday School teacher in my last ward. I completely agree with that and apologise Dennise! I guess in my haste to call someone crazy, I just plum forgot about all the GREAT Sunday School teachers!

LQ ready for church in mummy's church clothes