Without trying to offend anyone, what got me most angry were deserters. When active people would move in, find out how much they had to do, and then purposefully leave for a comfortable suburban ward…it really got me angry. I became more so when I found that active students that were considering moving there to go, e.g., to med school, were being advised by the large populations of students in these suburban wards to avoid our branch because it was too much work. I don’t know that I disagreed with the work part, but I know it was never going to get better so long as we were treated like a pariah. I’ve since decided that I will never choose where to live by what church unit the house lies in, good or bad. I just choose the right house or apartment for us, and then we go and help out where we’re needed.

I’ve also thought a lot about the kids issue. The complaints among some families (we were childless at the time) were similar to Kaimi’s: not many other kids and primary teaching leaves something to be desired. But I’m not sure the lessons they can learn growing up in one of these units more than compensates for the lack of programming in primary. The few active families that had stuck it out until the recent flooding really had some great kids who understood what service to others meant.

Does managing 4 or more callings compare to losing your home, your land and members of your family to mobs while you prepare to walk across a frozen/muddy/arid landscape with all your belongings in a small handcart on the way to settle a land that you’ve never been to that is inhabited primarily by Native Americans who by and large haven’t had good experiences with white people of whom you are one.

Again, I’ve been through my own dysfunctional branch and been pretty overloaded. It’s not that I don’t sympathize. I just wonder if my murmuring is unrighteous or if the Lord really doesn’t want me to have to deal with such a mess.

I have also found, though, that so-called “struggling” wards are a deserved challenge that the Lord has deliberately set up for faithful members — it gives them an opportunity to serve and to learn something.

I loved my time in that YW program. Thinking back on it, it was because the leaders cared about the girls- all of the girls, no matter what. They couldn’t be selective about who to love, because none of the girls were what I would call “cool.” The Cuban immigrant got the same treatment as Molly Mormon. The leaders talked about chastity, but were kind to the pregnant girls, and taught the rest of us (by example) that we love sinners, too.

Then we moved to Idaho, to a ward with a full presidency in the YW, and in every other organization. No one in my family had callings for months. The YW leaders focused on the girls who were similar to their children- in other words, the cheerleader types. The other girls were ignored at best, or tormented and publicly embarassed at worst. This was coming from the leaders, not the other youth.

My “dysfunctional” childhood ward didn’t hurt me, not even when I was a teenager. But the “normal” ward caused some problems. I guess the bottom line is that it’s hard to know what kind of ward will be best for your children.

My husband simply quit going, and I tried with the kids, but I usually ended up out in the car crying until the block was over. This went on for six months, which isn’t long, I know, but it felt like the end of the world to us. The Stake President called us one night, and no questions asked, transefered us back to our old ward, regardless of the new boundaries.

My point is, for some of us, the option of hanging onto the balloon just doesn’t work. We would have died on the vine and probably never returned to activity, and the thought of that makes me feel ill. Because of compassionate leadership in our stake, we are now doing fine, and on our way to the temple in January.

I know that the other ward needs a lot of help- they still do, but not all of us are able or qualified to give it, no matter how hard we try. For us, being given permission to let go of the balloon is what saved us. And I am so grateful.

I’ve never faced the dire situations described here, but I did struggle with burnout from having up to four callings at once during the six years I and my husband lived in a rural branch. More than once I met with the branch president and told him that I simply couldn’t take it anymore, that I had to quit doing something, and both times they agreed to release me from one of my callings. However, in spite of those periods of being burned out and overwhelmed, I loved that branch. It was, from all accounts, much more stable than the erratic situations Kaimi and others describe. I felt accepted there as I never did in the large Utah wards in which I grew up–which, by the way, had fully staffed and highly functional gala youth programs in which I spent some miserable years, due in part to some youth and leaders’ unkindness, but due much more to what I can only call profound cultural disconnect. I loved the branch because they had to be glad to take me, even though I was a hopeless nerd, because I showed up and tried to stagger through my callings.

I tend to think the ideal church unit is small but stable (clearly a difficult combination both to come by and to sustain). A ward that has an assistant building cleaning coordinator is too big.

(That term _unit_ always sounds like a toaster to me, while _ward_ sounds like a hospital room. _Branch_ is so nice and organic.)

-t

Still haven’t decided what we’re going to do about it, though.

NO

I don’t wish to trivialize the post, because I think it is a profound one, but I wish the Mormon film genre would tackle themes like this one instead of settling for the inane themes which will soon be exhausted if they are not already. The best film has lead characters pulled in two equally compelling directions as Kaimi’s post does. Here he stands on the edge of being a saint or being a sinner, an agonizing place to be. Then he faces the awful recognition of realizing his decision may be responsible for the welfare of his children. We would do well to try and capture that human dilemma.

I have to admit that we’ve loved homechurching. Sometimes I wonder if small neighborhood meetings in members’ homes in these difficult places might be better.

Now I live in another ward, also in Utah. I have very different views now! My current ward is still far more functional than Kaimi’s description, but we struggle in many things. Elder Perry’s talk in the first Worldwide Leadership Training satellite broadcast, titled as I recall it “The Basic Unit,” talked about how small wards feel very stretched because they think they have to implement the whole program of the church. He then explained that this isn’t true. I wish the text of that talk were available on the internet. I no longer have a copy.

I wonder if our failure to grasp that “basic unit” concept makes church more difficult than it needs to be.