Top 10 worst things to hear at a Testimony meeting:
- “This isn’t necessarily doctrine, but…”
- “Last night, I had this dream…”
- “You all don’t know me. I’m Suzy Smith from Utah, and I just wanted to get up and say how grateful I am to attend church with you all here in the mission field.”
- “Hi. My name is Joe, and I’m an alcoholic.” “Hi, Joe.”
- Confessions of sins.
- “I read on this anti-Mormon website about…” or “Last night, I Googled the Book of Mormon, and…”
- “On my mission…” Coming from anyone who has been home from their mission more than six months.
- F-bombs
- Crying mumbling that goes on and on…
- “I’m so grateful for my roommates. I don’t know where I would be without them. They are just, like, the best. And, um, I just wanted to get up and thank them for all they’ve done for me. Yeah. I really love them. That’s all. Thanks.”
I have heard all of these at Testimony meetings. I don’t judge the people from whose lips these things were spoken, but it was the worst to hear.
How about, “This church is a lie. You are all being brainwashed, and I can’t believe you can sit there and listen to these lies.” Yup, no joke. Someone actually stood up and did that in testimony meeting once!
Someone going on and on on how “this is a blessed land” and “no other country is as free” while sitting next to a Canadian.
How about Pioneer Day talks? One talk I heard someone effectively say, “I may not be active but I know because of the great things my pioneer ancestors did I will be saved.”
I once was in a testimony meeting when an old man’s new pacemaker that he just got done talking about shocked him during mid-sentence. He screamed into the mic and collapsed on the ground. That was the worst!
uh, I know Suzy Smith, she and I went to high school together, That sentence may have actually been spoken at one point in time.
Names have been changed to protect the original speakers. Any similarities you may imagine is either coincidence or guilt.
My wife’s finger got slammed in the door and blood was spurting everywhere. I used the power of the priesthood right there! He went into deeper details of the smashed finger and the distance of where the blood had gone… The tone he used was if he was Moses just down from the mount.
My favorite is when a man said, anyone who is overweight shouldn’t be allowed to have a temple reccomend because they obviously aren’t following the word of wisdom! And furthermore should be disfellowshipped because investigators don’t want to join a church full of fatties! You could have heard a pin drop.
I’ve heard people bear the testimonies of their pets before! I’ve heard it twice, actually. The most bizarre was when the person actually barked the testimony of their dog! Even the bishop was left speechless!
This wasn’t testimony meeting, but on my mission in France a woman got up to give the closing prayer, and proceeded to turn it into a 20-minute talk about all the members she disliked and why. And no one stopped her. The bishop of that ward was later excommunicated for teaching that tithing was optional (among other things). This was the same ward where one of the deacons passed the sacrament in an Iron Maiden t-shirt and the Elders Quorum first counselor showed up to Priesthood drunk once. I was a greenie, and it was my first ward, and I thought all wards might be like that (happily, they weren’t, although I remember another ward in Belgium where a guy dressed as Pere Noel gave a talk in Sacrament Meeting about why Jesus Christ was more important than him). Crazy.
The Sunday we blessed our daughter we had both sides of our families in sacrament with us and my husbands 82 year old Grandpa stood up to bare his testimony and told this LONG story about when he was a young boy his beloved dogs tail got cut off and “blood was spurting all over”. I thought my husband was going to die! He turned bright red. I had to try really hard to stop laughing.
This makes me feel much better about my ward’s resident crazies!!
But I can’t believe you missed the BIGGEST one: Talking about any given BYU football/basketball game. Really. In some wards, it happens every month. Just sayin’.
Every Sunday in my ward!
I remember one testimony meeting where it was basically a bunch of back-slapping about how the ward leaders are such awesome people. I don’t think half of them mentioned Jesus even once. Or had any idea how it feels to be one of the ward “untouchables” and hear stuff like that.
One month my brother and his wife tried to fellowship a less active lady. When they showed up to take her to testimony meeting she was drunk. They decided to take her anyway. She got up and tried to get everyone in the chapel to “applaud and cheer for God.”
How about “I’ve never told anone before but I’m gay” (heard that in SF wards) or what there’s also “Our bishop is so wonderful, you can tell him anything but if you don’t feel comfortable talking to him I love you all and I’m always hear to listen” -(heard that a lot in college)
Not one, but two men in my ward told stories about how they told their daughter/ niece that their illegitimate child was going to die because of their sin. It was really dreadful to hear.
In my last ward, we had a guy that would get up if there was a 2 minute pause between speakers and admonish us from the pulpit that we were all faithless heathens and that we should get our butts up to the pulpit. For a couple of months in a row everyone would look around in a panic and if Brother Jones started to get up there would be a mad dash for the microphone.
And not in testimony meeting, but in my BYU student ward, our stake president got up and talked about…something… but the highlight of whatever he talked about was when he said “and six students in this stake have venereal diseases now.”
We get ‘Hello, my name is so and so and I’m an addict’ quite a bit in my ward. I actually like those though.. the most awesome one was an old veteran got up and bore his testimony in Morse Code. Liiike 5 solid minutes of ‘da-da-da-dot-dot-dudee-duhdee. He just recently got up again and began by saying in his gravelly old man voice, ‘Last time I got up here was when I bore my testimony is morse code… I dunno.. I guess I was just showing off.’ I love my ghetto/crazy/freshoutrehab/humble ward.
In my ward a man got up in testimony meeting and he reported that he had recently had his vasectomy reversed and he and his wife were trying to concieve. Then a few months later he got up again in testimony meeting and reported that he and his wife had been successful and was now pregnant. It was just too much information.
Don’t forget, “Alooooooo Ha!” We are NOT in Hawaii, folks.
We had an elderly lady say, ‘as the Lord said: Love me tender, love me true, never let me go’. I don’t think we stopped laughing through the rest of the meeting.
A lady in our ward said, “I’m so happy, I have Jesus in my pocket!!” to which my son, then 7 years old, said, ” I was wondering where He was”.
My companion and I brought a “golden” Vietnamese family to our Paris, France branch who we had been teaching for a few weeks. We thought for sure they would be touched by the testimonies that would be given. However, during the passing of the sacrament the father reached to take a piece of bread from the sacrament tray being passed down his row. An elderly french member reached over and slapped the investigator’s hand away and sternly said, “No!.” Needless to say the father stood up and beckoned his family out the door never to return.
Our testimony meetings have become story time. A lot of our members enjoy telling their life stories every month. Last month, a lady spent 20 minutes talking about how she moved from our ward 20 years ago to Mississippi, and how she came back to take of her daughter with cancer. Not once did she mention anything about the gospel. After her, a fairly new member noisily made his way from the back of the chapel to the pulpit, and swore once he got up there. It was quite the fast Sunday for us!