Week #3-Mormon Week-The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

We were excited for the Sunday when we would walk in and everyone would know we were intruders among the believers.  That Sunday came early, and unexpectedly not in the form of us attending Sri Venkateswara Lotus Temple, but at church #3 The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, you guessed it (or read my facebook post) we went Mormon,  for one major and one minor reason.  Minor reason: a Mormon could seriously be president of this United States…Major reason: Brian’s 2009 Halloween costume. 

Like most Americans who do not live in Utah or open their door to strangers, my knowledge of the Mormon faith comes largely from the always judicious Trey Parker and Matt Stone.  If you lack even this basic background on the faith, you have two choices before you proceed with this blog:  If you are wealthy, well connected and frequent Midtown Manhattan, you can catch Trey and Matt’s acclaimed Broadway production The Book of Mormon.  If not, take 22 minutes and watch Season 7 Episode 12 of South Park, the Mormon episode.  http://www.southparkstudios.com/full-episodes/s07e12-all-about-mormons (Side note some knowledge can also be gleaned from the 1997 cinematic masterpiece Orgazmo).

Ok, now that you are up to speed, I will not need to spend the next 10,000 words describing the logical and grounded history and belief’s of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS)- I believe this is their official name, or at least what they put on the sign in front so the uneducated Evangelicals don’t know to judge them as “non-Christians” when they drive by in their Chevy Suburbans with their “Gun Control Means Using Both Hands” and “Welcome to America Now Speak English” bumper stickers .  For those of you who haven’t taken the time to watch South Park, skipping the common knowledge, here are some random facts about Mormanism that I knew going in: 

•   Mormons are in fact Christians, yup that means they believe in the same Jesus that you do
•  Mormons do not drink coffee, tea or alcohol (I too abstained from coffee before the service, not particularly out of reverence, but because our stupid orange cat literally knocked my coffee off of the end table this morning onto the carpet and after cleaning up that mess I was kinda over coffee and that cat)
•  The individual churches don’t have websites, they all direct you to the main LDS site
• They believe in contemporary prophets- that there are prophets alive today with us
• They do believe that Jesus stopped somewhere in the American Midwest prior to his ascension into heaven - and why wouldn’t he, there are great state fairs with fried Oreo’s, its where Balki from Mypo’s settled on the show Perfect Strangers, and is home to the world’s largest mall
•  Mormon men do not have more than one wife, well none that I’ve met.
• They are all crazy nice

Armed with that information and about 17 additional minutes of web surfing, we dove right in to week #3.  Thankfully, in that 17 minutes I stumbled on a site mentioning that you can “wear any modest clothes you are comfortable in to a service, but most women wear skirts and most men shirts and ties”.  Good thing because we soon discovered that if you want to be “comfortable” you better have a tie and a skirt below your knees.  I, however, do not own a skirt that goes below my knees for two reasons: I’m barely 5 feet tall and it simply is not a flattering look for my body type, and well, I’m not a Mormon.  We phoned in our modestly just enough to past muster, and the first couple to greet us were none the wiser, even asking us what “ward” we were from.  A “ward” is kinda like a group of churches I mean “meeting houses” the local “wards” make up the “stake” which is like a diocese I guess.  Oh, did I mention the Mormons also apparently have their own language.  Brian is in sales so he breezed right through that conversation.  I see why people get into this religion too, the people are really, really nice.  I mean who wouldn’t want to be around insanely nice people, Brian was eating it up.  Only a judgmental cynic would be uncomfortable here, needless to say, I was eyeing the exits. 

So the actual service was interesting.  There was a minor validation of one factoid I read.  Apparently the church can volunteer random members for random service projects. Today one young couple was volunteered for something (not sure what) and the congregation was asked to affirm (scratch that “manifest”) their assignment.  We raised our hands and said “manifest away” – we’ll never be here again so they can’t mandate that we do anything.

 The hymns were soft and akin to any traditional Christian religion.  It was our first week without a megatron TV, actually there were no icons at all, no stained glassed windows and no paintings on the wall, there wasn’t even a cross at the altar, nothing but a ficus.  The order was also different than most other Christian services (thankfully there was a program this time so we knew that from the onset).  After just two hymns, we were on to communion….I know already!?  However, there was no communion line or even background music, instead 6 blonde 12 year-old boys delivered it aisle by aisle in metal baskets surrounded only by the sound of crying babies. (Mormons believe in the whole family worshiping together, so no baby cry room, and they have lots of babies so apparently no concern for the ears of one time church crashers either). 

So after we all ate some Jesus, and I thought we were about to move to the next phase, the boys returned to the altar and came back ready to distribute the “symbolic” blood of Christ.  I say symbolic because I’m sure there were no mini-shot glasses of holy water at the Last Supper.  I should have guessed that there would not be wine, but part of me was still hoping.  In the end, I think the line system is a bit more efficient, but the mini-shot glasses were definitely more hygienic.  Brian also preferred the torn up wheat bread to the traditional Styrofoam wafers (sparing me from hearing that these should be BBQ flavored).  Actually, I’m not sure who tore up that bread so I may take back the hygienic comment.

After communion, we moved on to some more hymns and the speakers.  There were 3 different members who spoke as appose to the traditional one preacher.  I loved that, actually the whole service was very inclusive of many members which was awesome.  The first two speakers were even women (actually the first was a 11ish year-old girl).  They spoke on the weekly topic and their experience with Jesus, it was emotional and beautiful, but the weekly topic brought you right back to the fact that this was a Mormon church.  This week’s topic was “the pre-existence” and our “pre-mortal lives”.  What?! you say… Mormons believe in a life preceding our existence on earth.  Mormons call this the “pre-existence,” “pre-earth-life,” or “pre-mortal existence.” Before we were born on the earth, we lived in the presence of our Heavenly Father as His spirit children. In this pre-mortal existence, we attended a council with Heavenly Father’s other spirit children. At that council, Heavenly Father presented His great plan of happiness or the “Plan of Salvation, which was ratified by all of us.”

So yeah, that is what the speakers talked about, different, but interesting.  All three read from a pre-written paper, but I’m not sure if that was a function of public speaking skills or tradition.  I will say that 11-year-old girl has quite a future ahead of her, and the second women spoke of a very difficult situation that her beliefs got her through, and it was touching and I watered up.  The last speaker apparently left a D1 soccer scholarship to do his mission, I guess that was meant to be touching too, but all I was thinking is that I would cry too if I left an opportunity like that to ride a bike around Deltona, FL for 2 years getting doors slammed in my face. 

Oh so that was only hour #1 of 3, and that is all we had in us.  The next two hours were Sunday school followed by Woman’s Relief Society (which I gather does good for society).  Thankfully a few members also left at that point, but the welcome committee did invite us to stay.  It was like that episode of The Office at Pam and Jim’s kid’s baptism when Michael is enamored by the niceness and energy of the people at the church that he decides to jump on the missionary bus.  I see why people believe and want to be a part of this, regardless of what modern archeologists or historians have to say.