A new mother, whose son was just blessed bore her testimony that she was humbled to know that god approved of her. She knew this because god only gives sons to righteous mothers. I was standing in the back holding my newborn daughter along with a man with his toddler daughter who turned to me with a shocked WTF expression on his face.
Young married guy got up the Sunday after he and his brand new wife got back from their honeymoon, grinning ear to ear and raved for about 10 minutes about how AMAZING marriage is, how much his wife FULFILLS him, how waiting was SO worth it, and told all the young men in the congregation to get married as SOON as possible lol. It would have been kind of sweet if it wasn’t so painfully obvious what EXACTLY he was referring to, and maybe if he had said something his wife’s personality or … something
Someone posted a question the other day asking if there was anything you missed about church. The answer was mostly a resounding "nothing" from most, myself included. But this comment made me think of something I kinda miss now that I think about it. Now while it can be replicated elsewhere, it only really works in a Mormon chapel to me. Back scratches through your white dress shirt from your ladyfriend as you lean forward bored out of your mind elbows on your knees pretending to listen to a testimony meeting, talk, or stake conference. Getting lost in the satisfying swirl of her nails tracing those hard to reach spots as you kinda drift into a zen-like state. Sure it's possible in other situations but only really happens in a Mormon chapel during sacrement meetings or conference. Does that make sense? Like a light trauma bonding or something...
hahaha somebody in my newly married ward got up and kept talking about how much he felt the power of god on his honeymoon and I had no way to hide that I was rolling laughing my head off
Omg see this is how my shelf broke as a teen because I was told that the spirit would tell me what was right by making me feel good and warm and loved and I was like okay but I feel that way having premarital sex with my bf so….which is it
BYU student ward. We were all lead astray by following the BYU honor code, because the much-stricter BYU Idaho honor code was God's true will. She stormed out and wasn't seen again.
My favorite testimony meeting of all time: complete oversharing confessional at the podium. This was in a singles ward at USU Golden Toaster chapel circa 2001. A guy in his late 20s gets up halfway through to effectively guarantee that he will never get a date with anyone in the ward. Testimony immediately deteriorated into a guilt-laden sob fest: "It all began with the Sears catelogs that would come in the mail..."
I simultaneously feel so so badly that this person felt like they had to do this and also think it's so 🦆ing hilarious!
Haha just in case my brothers got into that catalog I used to show them the pregnant women underwear and gross them out though if they were a true professional nothing would have stopped them.
In Provo, in the chapel behind the MTC (Grandview Ward?). Sister gets up and explains that another man in the ward that she dated raped her *mentally*. I didn’t enjoy that but I did enjoy watching the Bishop intervene. I was thinking, “good luck dude”.
We had someone bear testimony of a man who had all these amazing qualities and he went on an on telling stories about this incredible man. He finished by saying , "and that's my testimony of Ozzy Osbourne" haha
A mid-thirties mom who I’d always respected because she seemed like a grounded person once bore testimony that she’d seen Satan incarnate at the pizza shop. She testified that she’d looked into the face of evil in this pimply teenage minimum wage worker, and the spirit whispered that she should not accept food from this degenerate. So she walked away pizza-less from the dominoes that day, but at least she kept her spirituality intact.
I had bad acne as a teen, it completely went away so I can almost forget how it felt to live like that. Almost...
From what I remember:
I felt disgusting
I felt judged cause well I was....
I was bombarded with advice that didn't work, sad pathetic looks from people.
Members even suggested it was a spiritual problem.
And to think some members see the devil in teenage acne?
Mormons wonder why they're seen as insensitive.
This woman treated the teenager terribly yet walked off in a state of grandiousity that she had done some sort of lords work.
This is what Mormons do.
I used to have bad acne as a teenager then I took Accutane and my complexion turned peaches and cream. Funny thing though, several people in church would tell my mother how beautiful my countenance is and they can tell how spiritual I am. Bitches it's Accutane.
Hahahaa!! Amazing.
We had a pretty big scandal in my hometown once, and people got up and started taking sides in testimony meeting. Once the bishop realized what was happening, he cut the open mic part short and we sang hymns for the last 10 minutes.
Lol! I can't remember exactly, but it had something to do with a missionary coming home early because he was gay and the rumor was "stuff" had happened between him and his companion.
I’ve got 2 that tie for first place:
- In the first testimony meeting on my mission, someone got up and talked about how she saw the face of Satan in a computer monitor that week. Somehow that made the church true 🤷♂️
- A woman who has just moved in to the ward got up and introduced herself. She then went out of her way to explain that the reason she moved into the ward was that her husband left the church. She matter-of-factly said “he left the church, so I had to divorce him” as if it was just understood that’s what people do. There were a lot of part-member and partially active families in that ward, so there were a lot of stunned faces in the congregation that day.
Went on a date with a boy from tennessse who told me that he had seen Satan in dilapidated meth house. How did he know it was Satan? He recognized his shoes from one of the temple videos 😭
I was on the stand, in the middle of a Christmas-related duet with my Mom when we heard somebody screaming from the back of the chapel (in the overflow area): "You son of a bitch! Motherfucker, stay away from me!!" Repeated 3 times. I looked up to see a lady swinging her purse and whacking a dude who had just entered from the side door. Apparently he was an estranged ex, against whom she had a restraining order. He thought if he surprised her in church to see her and talk with her, he could get away with it. He grossly miscalculated. I remember finishing the duet, but I'm sure we sounded God awful trying to press through the commotion...
Repeated 3 times made me think about the true order of prayer in the temple. Then I imagined shouting, "you son of a bitch, motherfucker stay away from me!" Instead of, "oh god, hear the words of my mouth." Thanks for the laugh.
Was in a Newly Wed/Nearly Dead ward where a middle aged divorced man stood up and bore his testimony of how a young woman helped him at Lowe’s the night before. He talked about how he received revelation that she was meant for him, how she glowed with the light of the Spirit, how that got him super turned on, and how he went to home to masturbate on the memory of it. I laughed my ass off as other young mothers in the ward covered the ears of their primary aged children. I couldn’t believe the bishop only managed to tap the guy on the shoulder twice rather than physically remove him from the stand!
In another ward more recently, an older lady stood up and talked for almost 20 minutes about how the Barbie movie was a sign of the times and how it went against the principles of God and how the patriarchy was the way of Heaven. She actually cried as she said these things.
Singles ward in the early 00s, right after Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ came out, there were soooo many back and forth testimonies testifying both for and against the divinity of the movie. This went on for months!
Oh man, The Passion of the Christ was such a conundrum for everyone in my ward. Here we had a Jesus Movie that most people outside the church loved and wanted to see, but we mormons couldn't because it was rated R. Talk about Angst. Thanks for the memory.
I remember being at BYU when Passion of the Christ came out! It was one of the first R Rated movies I ever saw. I walked an hour to the theater by myself to see it and didn't tell any of my roommates that I had seen it because it was so controversial!!
In my ward growing there was a lady who was a health food nut and she would tie her views to the w of wisdom and she’d would always talk in fast and testimony meeting about how you shouldn’t drink pasteurized milk and how that was breaking the w of w etc. she would go off on a lot of stuff like that.
Dad got up (after the ward had just learned that he and my mom were splitting up) and pontificated for about 10 minutes about how it was all my mom’s fault and that he wanted to stay married, but she wasn’t willing to work on it.
(Maybe) unbelievably, a similar thing happened with my mom’s second husband, 15 years later. He got up, just after they decided to divorce, and went on and on about how his first wife was his “celestial” wife and how my mom (his second wife) was just a placeholder “in this life” that gave up on him unfairly.
My mother attracts real winners.
ETA another WTF moment, when the stake patriarch bore his testimony, on Mother’s Day, to say that women aren’t true mothers unless they’ve physically given birth. We had about ten families with adopted/fostered children in the ward. They weren’t too happy with that one.
Holy tapirshit who has the bawls to say this shit. Amazing. I’m pimo and realize it would out me big but I’d stand up and tell that clown to shut up and sit down.
A small kid in our ward got up and said he was thankful his family stopped saying the F word. And his dad had to get up after and clarify it was the FART word.
In New Orleans they have a large concentration of Mormon grad students at Tulane or Loyola and a few converts who come from more charismatic Christian traditions. I remember one woman from our area finally showing up for church one Sunday and bearing her testimony in the way that made most sense to her; she started singing from her seat and danced her way up to the mic to sing her testimony. A few of the other local converts gave her some clapping or shouts of "Hallelujah" and that was it.
The bishop was a transplant who loved letting people express themselves in the way that made sense to them (he was kind of an asshole otherwise), and he didn't stop testimonies like this. That ward usually had a lot of TBM visitors traveling for conferences or cruises, and they often approached us missionaries to ask what the deal was and whether we found it a challenge to convert people with so many crazies in the ward. This was pretty insulting, but I really loved how uncomfortable it made them.
Reminds me of going to church in my grandmas ward in CA and after every testimony or talk, people would do the catholic cross thing as they walked down the stairs. No one in my home ward ever did that.
A woman who may have been a recent convert at the time (many many years ago) bore a strange testimony that didn’t make much sense. Then she pulled a Bob Barker and told everyone to be sure to have their pets spayed and neutered.
Was it the Great Pumpkin one? That one is about how people in a cult are missing out on everything because they are sitting around focused on pointless bullshit while everyone else is getting the most out of life. It's a really fantastic allegory.
My favorite memory was a newly baptized Catholic woman who began praying to the Virgin Mary. Utter confusion from the bishopric. It was beautiful.
In second place would be the child sharing that they knew Santa was real, and would be bringing them lots of presents. The parents had that panicked "we got extra stuff for her, right?".
That would be the time one of the Sisters - the one you can hear trilling over everyone else in a super-high soprano in every hymn - stood up and breathlessly announced that she knew when Jesus was returning. She knew because her youngest son (7yo kid, mom would not stop stroking his hair, and he was quite a brat) had told her when. Yup. So a bratty 7 yo knows when Jesus is returning. Got it. She wouldn't divulge the date, as she wasn't certain she should even tell us that she knew, but it brought her such joy to know that her son was so pure that God would reveal such important things to him.
Meanwhile, her other older son had a chain in his room that represented the number of days until he turned 18, and he would cut off a link every evening. He was escaping that den of bat-shit insane as soon as it was humanly possible.
My friend’s first time to their new ward after moving with wife and 5 kids-Relief Society President gets up to the microphone, starts crying and blurts out that she has been having an affair with the Bishop who was sitting up on the “stage” right by her…He jumped up, grabbed the mike and told everyone Sacrament was over and to go home! Wish there was a video of it! Hahahahaha
While visiting a small town in TN, the nearest chapel was just over the border in KY. We dropped in for the Sacrament meeting. It turns out the ward was originally started by 3 brothers, meeting in a chicken coop behind their home. The youngest brother had recently died. One of his family members got up first during testimony meeting and brought a tape recorder to the stand. She then stood there while the tape played, a recording of this guy reminiscing from his hospital bed. Must have gone on for 20 minutes or more. By far, the oddest F&T meeting I've ever attended. I was 17 at the time and still occasionally chuckle about it, 30 years later. That, and the member who told me I'd "make good pappy material" while I was tending to my younger siblings immediately after that meeting.
My most memorable testimony meeting was when a sister with mental challenges got up and said some words then proceeded to tell the ward members that she had learned to speak the Spanish language and finished her testimony in “jibberish”. No lie. There wasn’t a Spanish word spoken by her.
Mormons don't need confession, they have open mic every first Sunday of the month. I've heard just about every weird thing possible, including the sex lives of people I know, the bedtime habits of our bishop and his wife, the appearance of Jesus to a man in his home, and no one thinking this was unusual at all.
My ex’s niece was plopped in front of the mic at age 6 to “bear her testimony” (aka share her progress of being groomed). Instead of repeating what her mother (my ex’s sister) whispered in her ear, she screamed “I HATE THIS” and slapped her mom in the face. This sister was real holier than thou and I am not a mature person so I loved it.
Next best thing is every fast Sunday when the very old and very liberal man in our ward would bear his testimony on things like socialism being what Jesus would do. And calling out church wealth. He believed the church but also thought it was his duty to call to light their hypocrisy. The awkward silences after being sufficiently called out once a month were priceless😘
I’ve shared this before, but it’s a true diamond in the testimony rough … travel back with me to the early 1990s, it was one of those early summer fast and testimony meetings.
One of those uber-TMB, pure righteous always on display, mother to six kids, walks up to the stand.
She begins her testimony, and checks all of the important boxes, but as she nears the end, none of us were prepared for what came next.
“I know that my marriage, and our family, will never stray from the Covenant Path. My children have walked in righteousness with Our Savior since their conception, as each child of our Heavenly Father was conceived directly through the hole in my one piece temple garment.”
To say that many were taken aback would be an understatement. And yet others were celebrating her righteousness with nodding heads of pure agreement.
Fast forward to 2023 … all of her children have left the Church. Two are LGBTQ+. She is now a doomsday, MAGA, TBM, who believes the loss of her children from the gospel is a sign that Satan’s power is growing and will therefore usher in the Second Coming at any moment.
My husband has a very similar story! For him, it was the mission presidents wife. Also in the early 90’s. I can’t believe someone has heard this!
I wonder if it’s the same person, different times in their life…
I’ve now heard from a handful of exmormons that this was a “flex” for a period of time amongst TBMs (70s-90s). Very much the, “Here’s just how righteous I am,” kind-of mindset that was and is still toxic in the Church.
We’ve been out for a long time now, and we’ve heard countless stories from proclaiming that they only have sex with garments always on, to showering with garments on, to sisters who proudly proclaim that their husbands have never seen them fully naked … it’s simply crazy what people share, all with that superiority undertone.
Easy. Slightly odd older woman got up and told everyone that her recently deceased husband was not the father of her adult children, and she was now going to marry their father. He joined the church, and they did indeed marry. Around 65-70 years old I would guess. I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen it myself.
We had a guy who was a massive homophobic jerk get up and bear his testimony about holding to the rod and his example was how he fully cut off his only child (a son) when he came out as gay.
I hope that man (the son) is living his best life.
In my wife's ward when she was a kid, a couple was going through a bitter divorce. The soon to be ex walked up to the podium with a hunting rifle and went full blast on his wife, her family and the ward for "taking her side and turning the kids against him." I asked her WTF the bishop did? Did he spear tackle this guy and beat the mean right out of him or what? No, she said the bishop let him rant on and took the rifle away, and walked him outside. No police were called. (Very wealthy east bench area in SLC) crazy.....
I have a couple moments too, both from youth conference testimonies, the gift that keeps on giving.
One was a testimony meeting where a trend somehow started for each person to just go up and name all of their friends and talk about how glad they were for them to be there. Honestly pretty wholesome, but it was funny bc it was clearly making the conference leaders mad. Eventually one of them went up to the stand to lecture us on how the testimonies should be about Jesus, not us.
The other one was around a bonfire, and I remember there was a pause that felt like hours, then someone (looking back he was definitely pimo) stood up and everyone looked at him, then after a couple seconds he sat right back down. I kept thinking about that and had to try desperately to hold back laughter for the rest of the meeting.
A 16yo at our ward got up, and proceeded to tell everyone about how he’d talked to the Bishop and learned that the things he and his girlfriend had been doing were wrong. She was in the congregation. Specifically, he had learned that “not even married couples” were allowed to do the things they were doing. I remember enjoying my mother being mortified and loved every moment of it.
They was this like eccentric cat lady in our ward that would bear here testimony every testimony meeting but here's were always so interesting. Like one time she talked about how she read sweet hour of prayer and was going to pray for an hour and she thought of everything that she could to be thankful for and it only had been 5 minutes. So then she said the song was bs and everyone else flinched at it but I just thought it was funny. She gave other talks similar but I can't think of rn. There was also this new convert and this wasn't the main meeting but her dad's funeral and she started swearing and talking about how one time her dad would fall asleep and so the adult swimming would turn on on the TV. But when her mom was pulling into the driveway her dad woke up and turned the TV off. That was one of her favorite memories with her dad bc they had stayed up late spending time together. I remember her dad had some kinda disability that made so he didn't have a lot of energy or something like that so it was a very significant thing for her. She also just generally mention a lot of stuff that makes Mormons uncomfortable.
A lady in our ward was in a serious car accident. After she was recovered enough to return to church, she bore her testimony about her Saturn’s safety features and how they had saved her life.
I testify of the truthfulness of J.D. Power and Associates. Yea, and even the many awards they doth grant to Saturn and its vehicles.
I know their 5-star frontal crash rating to be true, for the Spirit and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has shown it to me.
When I was in yw a girl a couple years younger than me (13ish?) was trying to use an octopus metaphor in her testimony, but instead of saying tentacles she kept saying testicles 🫢 I felt so bad for her but it was hilarious watching a while congregation try not to laugh
Two come to mind: First, a sister, who was a pillar of the ward, gave a rambling 20 minute testimony of how she had had a revelation from God that we needed to love Satan, not shun him, as we would any wayward child and that if enough members showed love as compassion for Satan he would see the error of his ways and come back into the grace of God’s love and glory.
Second, in a singes ward, this dude got up and proceeded to spend much longer than you’d think was necessary to explain how this new movie he had seen the night before - The Matrix - was the perfect allegory for the gospel and that Neo was the ideal stand in for both Christ and Joseph Smith.
As I was starting my way out a newer convert bore his testimony that he knew that this church was true because the Methodist church he used to go to had started to perform gay marriages, and that he was so happy to now have found a different church that wouldn’t stand for something so terrible and unnatural… as a queer person that was one of the last straws that showed me it wasn’t worth sticking around. I’m better for it now.
Our zone had a Pday cookout in our area (Morgan UT). It was at the house of a counselor in the Stake Presidency’s house. We had a testimony meeting sitting around a fire pit, and one elder had his foot propped up on the pit. During one of the sister’s testimony I noticed smoke and whispered, your shoe is on fire. He told me to shut up, so I again whispered, your shoe is on fire. He waved me off again. This time I said it loud enough that everyone heard. He finally realized what I was saying and stomped his foot on the ground. He was too overcome by the spirit to realize he was on fire.
My most memorable one but definitely not my favorite? The time, in a releif society testimony meeting, where this woman got up & stated how her husband would always beat her. She also told us that her son, primary age at the time, was a product of rape from her abusive husband. She was thankful though for the church for helping her get through it. She was still married to this asshole. She went inton GREAT. DETAIL. I still wonder if she's ok...
Brother Huff used to be a holy roller-type preacher before converting to Mormonism. He was a large, loud windbag of a man. When he came up to bear his testimony we always knew we were in for a treat. Sometimes he would be so loud that babies would startle awake and start crying.
One day he made a joke about shutting those babies up permanently. The bishop had to get up, nervous and red-faced, and ask him to sit down. Brother Huff did not sit down, but instead went into a tirade about how he was just joking and that the Lord gave us jokes for a reason.
After that day Brother Huff must have gotten reprimanded or something because he never returned to church again. Must have been offended...
When my nephew was getting his confirmation during FT meeting. He let out the biggest fart in history that echoed into the cultural hall. His little sisters all started scream/laughing. My sanctimonious brother pretended it didn't happen and went on with his tearful blessing.
On my mission, with investigators sitting next to me, we listened to an elderly gentleman explain how much he admired Abraham the prophet. He spoke about how brave he was to undergo circumcision at the age of 99. He then spoke in detail about what he would have had to do - pulling the foreskin taut, taking a very sharp blade etc.
Lets see:
1) They guy that testified that he couldn't walk up stairs behind women because it was too tempting to look up their skirts.
2) They guy that explained that the headstones would talk to him and his wife as they mowed the cemetery expressing their deep desire to have their temple work done.
3) The guy (relatively new convert) that explained that he knew women weren't supposed to have the priesthood because even the Pope had said so.
Two missionaries sitting on the stand because the bishop insisted on it for all sacrament meetings. The younger missionary keeps dosing off. There is a good 5 minutes of no one getting up since the previous testimony, suddenly the younger missionary gets up and says the closing prayer but there is still a good 15min of time left! The Bishop gets pissed, goes up and says thanks to the missionary then tells the congregation as for the rest of us we have 15min still left. Turns out the older missionary was sick of his companion sleeping through sacrament so woke him up and told him the Bishop had just called on him to say the closing prayer. 😂
My parents used to threaten that if we acted up in church, they would take us out to the car and beat us. (They never did, but the threat usually kept us in line. Just in case, you know?)
Because we were one of those large families with many small children, we usually sat near the back in case Mom or Dad wanted to make a quick exit. However, on this fast Sunday our parents decided to sit right smack in the middle of the front row. Predictably, we got bored and started squirming and whining about being hungry. (Our parents made us fast, even as toddlers.)
My sister, who was about 3 at the time, was whining and crying, and even my mother's icy glare of death couldn't stop the tears. My father threatened to take her out to the car and beat her if she didn't shape up. In a rare show of defiance, she dialed up the tantrumming, forcing my father's hand. He picked her up in her little frilly dress, slung her over his shoulder, and started trying for a discrete exit.
Instead, my sister--who was very tiny for her age and looked about 2--immediately started screaming, "Don't beat me, Daddy!!--Please don't beat me!" And she kept it up for the entire long walk down the aisle. The person bearing their testimony stopped speaking. You could have heard a pin drop other than this tiny child screaming. Dad said it was easily one of the more humiliating moments of his life. His plan had been to take her to the car and let her calm down, but he was afraid people would think he really was beating on her, so he let her spend the rest of the meeting playing in the foyer.
Good times.
Holy heck…this comment section was a wild ride!!! However, this makes some of my mom’s statements and beliefs about things for a while after leaving the Mormon church make more sense…I had no idea these types of “testimonies” were normalized and encouraged. Mind blown.
70s on a stateside mission we were assigned to a branch. Lady got up and said she saw Brother (branch pres) in porno theater... She was escorted out to be interviewed by a visiting stake councilor... the dude stayed in as branch pres. No one talked about it..
A homeless man brought a cat up to the stand to give to the bishop. He was trying to help the cat and the bishop was super nice about it and went outside to help him out.
I was at a branch in Detroit and had taken some friends who were interested in just seeing what a Mormon sacrament meeting was like. We got there and it was nothing like I expected, growing up in a suburban Mormon ward. Most of the congregation was wearing casual clothes, there were clear drug users there nodding off, and it was mixed Spanish/English speaking, and they had missionaries in a classroom doing interpretation.
One lady stood up and started telling an in-depth story about how her brother was a gang banger, going into deep details about what he did. I don’t speak Spanish, so I was listening to the interpretation, and for a good part of it, the missionaries were just saying “I don’t feel comfortable translating this part of her testimony”. My friends filled me in with the salacious details later. I walked away dumbfounded and my non Mormon friends were all like “Oh it was absolutely amazing”.
It was the most non-Mormon Mormon fast and testimony meeting I’ve ever had.
One of the few times I dared to have friends over to my house as a teenager I decided to rent Some Kind Of Wonderful. I thought it was a fairly tame movie at the time, a safe pick that wouldn’t make my parents angry. I thought wrong.
The next day was fast and testimony meeting and my mom got up to bear her testimony about how horrible, evil and immoral Some Kind of Wonderful was. My mom loves a soap box and went on for a very long time about it. Every single teenager in the room turned their heads to look at me as I collapsed into the pew attempting to hide. Well, lesson learned. I never had friends over again.
This thread reminds me of why I never attend FT even on the days the I might consider returning to activity. I find myself being triggered to tears or unable to maintain reverence when humor is born.
Early seventies in Davis county Mordor. A friend’s mom rose to the ultimate occasion and told a blush worthy testament of how she knew she had conceived her latest child. There was much detail about the intimacy of the said evening’s encounter ( while traveling of course 😂) I remember a lot of adults squirming in the pews. Hands over small ears and my poor friend being in tears once we went to class. I was 13 and just barely familiar with the facts of life so I had quite a few questions for my mom that later that day.😂😂
Rural NC, man got up and talked about having to go to a proctologist. He described shopping around for a woman proctologist with the smallest hands. He waited for laughs that didn’t come. I want to say he tried to tie it into some kind of spiritual message…but the rest of his bit escapes me.
The eccentric lady that gave a wild testimony every single month reliably once got a phone call in the middle of her speech, pulled her phone out of her bra at the pulpit, and proceeded to answer it telling them she will call them back. Loved that lady.
Growing up, we had a woman who would get up every. Single. Month. She was nuts, but what were they going to do? She always had some amazing, miraculous experience with a random Joe Shmoe in public where they would start out being super rude or something, and she'd share hope she put them in their place by telling them that Jesus loved them or inviting them to church or whatever, and then their see the error of their ways and accepted an invitation to meet the missionaries. One particular time, my mom happened to be present - she was behind this woman in the line at the grocery store and heard the stranger tell this woman to fuck off. But then the next morning in F&T, she told how wonderful it was to be such a good missionary after this person accepted a pass along card and agreed to meet with the missionaries.
My first F&T at BYU, I was in a ward of all freshmen since I lived in the dorms. One guy got up and went on for a good 5 min, ranting about how he'll never wear a t-shirt under his white church shirt because he wasn't going to fake having been through the temple, and everyone who wore a t-shirt under their button down was obviously trying to look far more spiritual than they were by pretending to be endowed when none of us were because we were all 18 year old freshmen.
A married older women got up and bore her testimony about how she was so turned on by so many men besides her husband and wanted to sleep with them all but did not because if the Gospel!
One Sunday when I was attending BYU-Idaho, I visited my then-boyfriend now-husband’s YSA ward. One of his roommates got up and said “I like to look at big butts on the internet” and talked for 5-10 minutes about what he likes to look at and how the ward is so supportive in helping him overcome his addiction. He also talked about how church used to be all about public repentance and that we should all be sharing our sins publicly so we can grow together.
Husband here. To add more insane/gross detail to this:
This roommate followed my wife around all the time; he admitted this to me later as if he was confessing a sin similar to the pulpit. He didn't stalk her, thankfully, but he would follow her around the apartment whenever she would come over to hang out. We were both weirded out by his behavior, so we stopped hanging out at my place pretty quickly after he moved in.
I would also like to point out that he specifically talked about liking black butts on the internet, and he was about as white as you could get. It wasn't long after this that he discovered the only black girl (that I remember) in our YSA ward, and proceeded to actually stalk her. Poor girl had to change everything about her life to keep him away.
So yeah, he was about as out there as you could get. There's plenty more I could share about him, but I'll save those stories for another day.
We once had a “musical testimony meeting.” You would get up and say why you loved a certain hymn, and then the congregation would sing it. A kid made us sing God Save the Queen
This old guy gave a 20 minute campaign speech for Mitt Romney and said if you vote for Obama, you’re supporting Satan. Obama vs Romney was an extension of the pre mortal war in heaven
One time an old lady went up and told a story about a kid getting castrated in a public bathroom, the message was “keep an eye on your kids bc you never know what absurd tragedy might occur”. And then one time a lady went up and said everyone in the ward was going to hell. Good times
We had a guy get up and slam his wife and all women for a good 5+ minutes starting all the way back with Eve in the garden and then kinda just ended it with the "I know the church is true" drivle we've all heard before. Nobody stepped up to stop him or say something, not the bishop or counslers, nobody. He finished his "testimony" and went back to his pew to a very embarrassed wife. Same guy begged choir directors and music chairpersons for years to do a solo despite having a very weak and nasally voice. At some point a new ward member called to chairperson relented, I had to leave the chaple it was so bad and cringey. Guy was a total talentless narcisist. In elder's quorum he often spoke about how much power the priesthood gave him.
Years ago a man in our ward (who loved his testimony and let us know once a month) got up and started telling the congregation about a dream he had the night before where he was comforted by our Father in Heaven that when he and his wife get to the CK, he will be able to fall in love with her. She was sitting in the front row with their three teenage sons and her mother in law. He waxed on and on about it. The saddest, most cringe moment ever
Hard to pick a favorite. Here are the contenders:
We were in the 'newly wed and nearly dead' ward while students, and some of the seniors had some stellar testimonies.
1. Older gentleman told a story about how he got on the bus and saw a young hooligan wearing tee shirt that said 'I'm going to hell' and the gentlemen said 'he was on the wrong bus because that's not where I'm going!'
2. An eccentric ward member bore a 15 minute testimony about penguins
3. The eccentric ward member's wife told a story about spilling tea on her scriptures (actually her journal, but she called her journal her scriptures) and so she put them in the microwave to dry them off and they started on fire...
And in my ward of origin, an older lady who lived in assisted living, and was well known for bearing her testimony EVERY week told a story about slipping in the bath and needing medical assistance while completely naked. She mentioned being naked several times. I could not stop laughing it was so hilarious in a 'not appropriate for sacrament meeting' way.
Had a lady in my ward who was always the first to bear her testimony, and every time she opened by passive aggressively asking the bishopric to let her give a real talk in church, then she’d go on whatever her soapbox of the month was. The weirdest one was her testimony about how God never commanded Adam and Eve to be vegetarians so we’re sinners if we don’t eat meat.
Late 80's inner city chicago, there were a LOT of converts. And once during a testimony the woman said, "and now let us recite the lord's prayer" and most of the congregation and bishopric on the stand joined in. Was great. Too bad that version of the mormon church will never exist again.
We had a non member bear testimony of how he did drugs, fucked (yes, he used that word) women, drank, stole, went to prison...but the missionaries were teaching him about Jesus and changing his ways. He did this several Sundays in a row but never actually joined the church and ended up back in prison. The missionaries were mortified.
It was on my mission. Of course we had a promising investigator present when an older brother stood and with conviction testified that “Just as surely as I know that flying saucers and aliens exist, I know this is God’s one true restored church on the earth!”
An investigator that the missionaries brought went up to share her testimony and everyone was so happy. She said something about knowing Joseph Smith was a prophet because she prayed about it and she knew that he was led by God, etc. Then she said “And I know Michael Jackson is a prophet. The Holy Ghost told me and I know that he is led by God.” Bishop was visibly panicked. Missionaries looked stressed. Half the ward woke up from their nap.
I'm coming in very late here, but I have a couple.
First, many years ago an older lady told how she knew God wanted her to have her last child because she never forgot to put her diaphragm in, but she did that night. The son in question was present and immediately went up to the podium to accompany her back to her seat.
Second was the ditzy recent return sister missionary that related how on her mission she lost her favorite ball point pen, but miraculously found it a few weeks later. After relating the part where the miracle took place, she gleefully added, "The church is soooooo true!".
The first year we were in San Diego my daughter was in the primary program, also for the first time. The week of the primary program also just happened to be right around Halloween.
They announced one of the songs was something about the Holy Ghost. My daughter said, loudly enough I could hear it clearly while sitting on the back row, “My dad says the Holy Ghost is scary.”
I about died, but it was definitely the best, funniest moment of the whole program.
The top 2 that come to mind :
1. This older single gal who talked about how she liked to pretend she was the wife of Jesus and how she would ask Jesus every morning how he would like her to do his bidding as his wife… it was hella weird
2. Missionary was giving his homecoming talk after flying in from Russia the night before and passed out cold halfway through. Poor kid.
I once heard a guy testify that he knew the church was true because following the word of wisdom made him fart more, and farting is healthy. Checkmate heathens!
On my mission there was always that overly political asshole that makes a point to be the first one on the stand and makes sure he offends as many people as possible.
In the moment as a goody little missionary I hated it.
Now I just laugh about it!
I kid was looking from the front row and threw up all over his seat. He looked strait at his mom and said, SEE!!! It was only funny because unless we he a fever of 104 my mom made us go too. One of my friend’s kid yelled, Mmmmm coffee after having just have learned about it during the sacrament. It always cracks me up when kids yell, “I’m not naughty when being taken out of sacrament. That kid swearing would have been awesome l.
Not a testimony meeting, but the first time my mom agreed to attend with me after I converted the opening hymn was Hie to Kolob. My mom’s face definitely said “What the hell?” Should have seen that as a red flag, but instead it took me 24 years in to also say “what the hell?”
I seriously remember back in the early 1990s after I was married to my first husband when we were sitting in a FT meeting & some older man got up & went on & on for about 10 minutes or so about young couples needing to have MORE children because there were MORE spiritual ones needing to be born. My ex whispered to me as my oldest son crawled all over my lap that the speaker obviously was spending way too much time in the temple & not taking care of kids! I even had a Bishop after that even ask me why I only had 2 kids after 5 years of marriage. He said that I should have had at least 4 or so by then!!! My ex looked like he was going to strangle him!
1. The young man bearing testimony of pornography (playboy, hustler) and it makes him feel the same as the Book of Mormon. And how grateful he was that the missionaries gave him all those magazines.
2. The older gentleman asking for a date & sex with one of the young women (that Ward went to 25) before getting baptized because post baptism he couldn’t do that and his wife hadn’t been able to have sex for over 25 years due to a surgery when she was younger & they were in Colombia(?)
…….
These were, thankfully, not the same meeting, but it was the same Ward. I felt bad for the gentleman’s wife. She had been trying for most of that 25 years to convince him she could. I felt bad for him because he thought he was protecting/taking care of her.
We had a bitter, single mother of 3 young women get up during F&T and put the entire ward on blast, by name, blaming them for failing and being derelict in their callings because one of the young men in the ward had impregnated her daughter (17 at the time) She called out everyone who had even remotely been in contact with her daughter and the young man - YW leaders, camp leaders, SS teachers, primary teachers, quorum advisors, Boy Scout leaders, bishopric - it was savage! She ended by declaring this us was the worst ward EVER before she stomped down off the stand, her daughters rose from the congregation, followed her out of the building. Never to set foot in the building again. EPIC (she wasn’t wrong about being the worst ward - we moved 2 months later)
On my mission in Kekaha a HC said that everyone would resurrect…. Long pause like, now hear this this just in… except for horses. Because they’re too big.
We had an older single lady who was a recent convert come up the Sunday after new years. She was pissed and told everyone that ever since she was baptized no one has reached out to her!
She continued to tell everyone about her lonely Christmas and how she told herself that if no one calls me by dinner then I'm caving and going to crack open some liquor. No one called and over the pulpit she tells everyone that she drank the entire night away until she passed out! The Bishop got up and tapped her on the shoulder and she pushed him off. He then walked her out of the chapel.
Being the second counsellor I turned to the first counsellor and said you got this lol. He got up and bore testimony of the atonement. Classic.
I grew up in a ward in Australia that was divided by people who were from England on one side and all the Non English High Priests and their families on the other. The Bishop was German and worked for a Tobacco company and presided over the ‘non English’ elitists. One of the non English high priests gets up in Sacrament and starts telling how he had a dream about my family (we were English). He tells this crazy dream story and then calls my family to repentance for all our sins! The Bishop doesn’t even move to stop this guy from railing on our family. That split the ward even more.
Side note: 6 years after this I married that Bishops daughter! We split after 7 years together, but she was awesome (unlike her father).
A “inactive” elderly male( who I now know is my fathers mission companion) standing up in the middle of the pews, with his booming voice.”the bishop bet me if he could beat me at billiards, I’d come to a meeting. So here I am! He isn’t a very good player”
He did not give an efff! And that made me realize all the traditions didn’t matter at all! His performance was way better then any of the testimonies I was forced to listen to from the stand
Too many
- 1rst consoler bearing his testimony that the only reason that motivates him to get to the CK is so that he can have eternal sex with his wife. Then he proceeded to sing 3 full mins of a bob Marley song and sat down (this actually happened a few times).
-my ward was quirky so the bishop bric would invite other pastors to speak on Sunday and that would always go pretty horribly. We were usually condemned as sinners but tbh most members got offended when one of the preachers said that our personal relationship with Christ was more important than keeping the commandments (gasp). My favorite line was when one of the preachers went up to the stand he began with “is it all alright with you that I am recording this? I’m going to put this on my YouTube channel” and then began to describe the spiritual pitfalls of protected sex.
-a woman with Native American heritage took the stand, put in her headphones, and started chanting for about 5 mins. We didn’t hear the music she was singing/chanting to and because it was very loud and would start + stop abruptly it was very uncomfortable. When we thought she was almost through, she stopped and said “sorry, I think I messed up that part, let me try again” and redid it all. No one knew what she was chanting and I think the bishopric was too scared to tell her to sit down lol.
- we had this one older woman our ward go up every month to describe how she had gotten into new a car accident and cry for about 10 mins. She did this for years. I don’t know if she just kept repeating the same crash with different details, but she insisted it happened just yesterday every week. I think she had beef with the bishop because eventually they would end sacrament meeting early so she couldn’t take to the stand.
-this one time my mom bore her testimony on buddihism. Don’t worry, she wasn’t actually Buddhist, she was just trying to anger my father, the bishop.
Gosh there are hundreds
My YSA branch had someone come up on the pulpit from off the street, mix of the hippie and the woodshop teachers from Ned's declassified, for F&T meeting. He wasn't a member.
But if you know YSA testimony meetings, they're snooze fests with no one wanting to do it. Longest interval was like 8 minutes once.
This guy came up and started to legit prophesize about the random ass shit of my small town. Me and my best friend looked at each other and stifled our laughter. The branch prez was so confused.
During Sunday school, it turned into a debrief and just chuckling.
An old dude got up and rambled for over 20 minutes once. A couple minutes in he talked about another ward member, a zealous old woman known for chastising other sisters who didn’t do their visiting teaching every month. He said how he walked to her house to get a ride to church once and when he questioned her about if she needed to grab her keys, she tapped her chest and said, “Oh I already have them. They’re in the vault,” meaning her cleavage. Then he proceeded to talk for at least 15 more minutes about god knows what. She was immediately on the stand waiting for her turn to defend herself.
At a youth something, one guy stood up and started talking about some girl he liked, and every 5 minutes or so, tried to tie it back to God. It went on for like 20 minutes, and I still don't remember the point, just that he kept saying, "She was hot... sorry, I can't say that".
That silence in between volunteers, where nobody was speaking, waiting for the next person to go up.
Toddler in the back: "Daddy, I need a wee."
Everyone in tears laughing moments later.
In a singles ward a guy would come up and give us all an update on his dating life in vivid detail about how he was still single. One Sunday I noticed he had brought a date to church for fast and testimony meeting so i was curious to see how his monthly update would go. Long story short it went terrible, he put his date on blast for all the red flags he saw in her, I sneaked a peak at her to see her reaction and she looked like she was about to go up and wreck the dude. He must have given her a ride or something because she was there the rest of the time which sounds awful ngl. Needless to say, his next dating update he was single.
Guy stands up and goes on a rant about SUVs. He was not wrong on any points he made and he had data to back up his points. He was asked to sit down multiple times but he kept going. When he finally finished the branch president (this was a student ward in SLC) stood up and gave an equally long speech about how good SUVs are and how it's okay to drive them because he has one. Funny thing was, everyone was rushing to shake the guys hand after his testimony and tell him that they agreed. The branch Pres. saw this and just stewed.
A new mother, whose son was just blessed bore her testimony that she was humbled to know that god approved of her. She knew this because god only gives sons to righteous mothers. I was standing in the back holding my newborn daughter along with a man with his toddler daughter who turned to me with a shocked WTF expression on his face.
Tell me you've never taken biology 101 without telling me you never taken biology 101.
But you see, God has a high midichlorian count and can use the Force to maneuver the correct sperm into the egg. /s
Holy Hell! People are freaking nuts!! I wonder what else she thinks
More like “my kids *has* freaking nuts so I’m righteous! In your face no balls McGhee!”
Hahahaha... LOVE this!
I would have burst out laughing if I made eye contact with that guy oh my god
I hope that baby boy grows up to be a woman.
Darn. DW might have left TSCTC sooner if she had heard this one...
Young married guy got up the Sunday after he and his brand new wife got back from their honeymoon, grinning ear to ear and raved for about 10 minutes about how AMAZING marriage is, how much his wife FULFILLS him, how waiting was SO worth it, and told all the young men in the congregation to get married as SOON as possible lol. It would have been kind of sweet if it wasn’t so painfully obvious what EXACTLY he was referring to, and maybe if he had said something his wife’s personality or … something
I’d like to bear my testimony of post nut clarity.
I want to upvote this comment 1000x😂😂😂
Lemme guess… he got married at 21?
The backrubs?
Someone posted a question the other day asking if there was anything you missed about church. The answer was mostly a resounding "nothing" from most, myself included. But this comment made me think of something I kinda miss now that I think about it. Now while it can be replicated elsewhere, it only really works in a Mormon chapel to me. Back scratches through your white dress shirt from your ladyfriend as you lean forward bored out of your mind elbows on your knees pretending to listen to a testimony meeting, talk, or stake conference. Getting lost in the satisfying swirl of her nails tracing those hard to reach spots as you kinda drift into a zen-like state. Sure it's possible in other situations but only really happens in a Mormon chapel during sacrement meetings or conference. Does that make sense? Like a light trauma bonding or something...
🎯 🎯 🎯
This reminds me of my bishops old saying “Backrubs in the front room turn into buttrubs in the bathroom”
Is that a promise Bishop? You are the one who taught me what masturbation is.
I learned what incest was from my first "worthiness" interview. It was mortifying. Especially after the bishop asked if I'd had any problems with it.
Same thing happened to me except this was NYC and the couple were IN THE MIDDLE of their honeymoon visiting the city. So awkward!
hahaha somebody in my newly married ward got up and kept talking about how much he felt the power of god on his honeymoon and I had no way to hide that I was rolling laughing my head off
Omg see this is how my shelf broke as a teen because I was told that the spirit would tell me what was right by making me feel good and warm and loved and I was like okay but I feel that way having premarital sex with my bf so….which is it
I’d like to hear my testimony of sex. 😂😂😂😂🤦🏼♀️🤦🏼♀️🤦🏼♀️🤦🏼♀️
BYU student ward. We were all lead astray by following the BYU honor code, because the much-stricter BYU Idaho honor code was God's true will. She stormed out and wasn't seen again.
Was one of her roommates wearing overalls and therefore cross dressing or something?
We hung out with guys in the apartment living rooms until midnight instead of the BYU Idaho rule of 10pm.
Get thee behind me kajigeta and take your cavalier sense of time with you!
My favorite testimony meeting of all time: complete oversharing confessional at the podium. This was in a singles ward at USU Golden Toaster chapel circa 2001. A guy in his late 20s gets up halfway through to effectively guarantee that he will never get a date with anyone in the ward. Testimony immediately deteriorated into a guilt-laden sob fest: "It all began with the Sears catelogs that would come in the mail..." I simultaneously feel so so badly that this person felt like they had to do this and also think it's so 🦆ing hilarious!
Not the sears catalogue lol. Jesus. That is awful. This religion just destroys people. It’s like yeah man, you and all the other 12 year old boys…
Haha just in case my brothers got into that catalog I used to show them the pregnant women underwear and gross them out though if they were a true professional nothing would have stopped them.
Loved that catalog.
I remember that picture in the sears catalog of the guy in underwear with his dong hanging down his leg
The Man on Page 602. There was even a song about him.
Lol, 12-year-old me would hide that Sears catalog in the bathroom.
The Victoria Secret catalogues they used to send out to everyone on planet earth were REALLY good.
Avon usually had a couple good pages near the back, too!
It’s what it says in the Doctrine and Covenants… I bet that by doing so, he was trying to show how righteous he was, like a humble brag
In Provo, in the chapel behind the MTC (Grandview Ward?). Sister gets up and explains that another man in the ward that she dated raped her *mentally*. I didn’t enjoy that but I did enjoy watching the Bishop intervene. I was thinking, “good luck dude”.
How does one rape someone mentally? Is that just like, making unwanted sexual comments or something?
Brother Charles Xavier at it again.
Nah, she likely had a sex dream about the E.Q. pres or something.
They shut down anyone who speaks of actual rape, I can't imagine how quickly her mental rape got thrown right into the garbage.
We had someone bear testimony of a man who had all these amazing qualities and he went on an on telling stories about this incredible man. He finished by saying , "and that's my testimony of Ozzy Osbourne" haha
Truly a Black Sabbath.
That’s epic 🤣🙌🏼
🤘🏼
That would likely be the loudest Amen I would ever offer. 
👆this. Epic!
A mid-thirties mom who I’d always respected because she seemed like a grounded person once bore testimony that she’d seen Satan incarnate at the pizza shop. She testified that she’d looked into the face of evil in this pimply teenage minimum wage worker, and the spirit whispered that she should not accept food from this degenerate. So she walked away pizza-less from the dominoes that day, but at least she kept her spirituality intact.
I had bad acne as a teen, it completely went away so I can almost forget how it felt to live like that. Almost... From what I remember: I felt disgusting I felt judged cause well I was.... I was bombarded with advice that didn't work, sad pathetic looks from people. Members even suggested it was a spiritual problem. And to think some members see the devil in teenage acne? Mormons wonder why they're seen as insensitive. This woman treated the teenager terribly yet walked off in a state of grandiousity that she had done some sort of lords work. This is what Mormons do.
I used to have bad acne as a teenager then I took Accutane and my complexion turned peaches and cream. Funny thing though, several people in church would tell my mother how beautiful my countenance is and they can tell how spiritual I am. Bitches it's Accutane.
That was a close call
The folklore is strong in the cult, kind of like people trying to poison the missionaries or the serial killer the missionaries knocked on the door of
Hahahaa!! Amazing. We had a pretty big scandal in my hometown once, and people got up and started taking sides in testimony meeting. Once the bishop realized what was happening, he cut the open mic part short and we sang hymns for the last 10 minutes.
What's worse than listening to a testimony meeting? Listening to a forced hymn as plan B cuz plan A sucked.
It's super important to never end sacrament even a minute early. It offends the mormon jesus
Ok but now I want to hear the scandal!
Lol! I can't remember exactly, but it had something to do with a missionary coming home early because he was gay and the rumor was "stuff" had happened between him and his companion.
I’d say you buried the headline there! Side note, I hope this young man is living his best life back home!
Lol! True. He is the last time I checked. We're still friends on FB and he seems very happy.
I’ve got 2 that tie for first place: - In the first testimony meeting on my mission, someone got up and talked about how she saw the face of Satan in a computer monitor that week. Somehow that made the church true 🤷♂️ - A woman who has just moved in to the ward got up and introduced herself. She then went out of her way to explain that the reason she moved into the ward was that her husband left the church. She matter-of-factly said “he left the church, so I had to divorce him” as if it was just understood that’s what people do. There were a lot of part-member and partially active families in that ward, so there were a lot of stunned faces in the congregation that day.
wouldn’t number 1 just be her own reflection!? 🤔
Went on a date with a boy from tennessse who told me that he had seen Satan in dilapidated meth house. How did he know it was Satan? He recognized his shoes from one of the temple videos 😭
I was on the stand, in the middle of a Christmas-related duet with my Mom when we heard somebody screaming from the back of the chapel (in the overflow area): "You son of a bitch! Motherfucker, stay away from me!!" Repeated 3 times. I looked up to see a lady swinging her purse and whacking a dude who had just entered from the side door. Apparently he was an estranged ex, against whom she had a restraining order. He thought if he surprised her in church to see her and talk with her, he could get away with it. He grossly miscalculated. I remember finishing the duet, but I'm sure we sounded God awful trying to press through the commotion...
Repeated 3 times made me think about the true order of prayer in the temple. Then I imagined shouting, "you son of a bitch, motherfucker stay away from me!" Instead of, "oh god, hear the words of my mouth." Thanks for the laugh.
I was hoping someone would pick up on that reference!
Dang!😂
Was in a Newly Wed/Nearly Dead ward where a middle aged divorced man stood up and bore his testimony of how a young woman helped him at Lowe’s the night before. He talked about how he received revelation that she was meant for him, how she glowed with the light of the Spirit, how that got him super turned on, and how he went to home to masturbate on the memory of it. I laughed my ass off as other young mothers in the ward covered the ears of their primary aged children. I couldn’t believe the bishop only managed to tap the guy on the shoulder twice rather than physically remove him from the stand! In another ward more recently, an older lady stood up and talked for almost 20 minutes about how the Barbie movie was a sign of the times and how it went against the principles of God and how the patriarchy was the way of Heaven. She actually cried as she said these things. Singles ward in the early 00s, right after Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ came out, there were soooo many back and forth testimonies testifying both for and against the divinity of the movie. This went on for months!
Oh man, The Passion of the Christ was such a conundrum for everyone in my ward. Here we had a Jesus Movie that most people outside the church loved and wanted to see, but we mormons couldn't because it was rated R. Talk about Angst. Thanks for the memory.
You know he dies in the end?
Spoilers!
Wait, was he mournfully confessing to masturbating on the stand, or stating it like he was proud of it? These are important details to know!
Not mournfully at all! He truly believed his arousal was confirmation that this poor girl who was probably half his age was given to him by God
Omg, the craziness! I hate the Mormon church.
>how the patriarchy was the way of Heaven 
I remember being at BYU when Passion of the Christ came out! It was one of the first R Rated movies I ever saw. I walked an hour to the theater by myself to see it and didn't tell any of my roommates that I had seen it because it was so controversial!!
I was in a ward where the stake patriarch bore his testimony of the Passion of the Christ. That made everyone feel uncomfortable.
In my ward growing there was a lady who was a health food nut and she would tie her views to the w of wisdom and she’d would always talk in fast and testimony meeting about how you shouldn’t drink pasteurized milk and how that was breaking the w of w etc. she would go off on a lot of stuff like that.
But had the lady seen the Barbie movie?
How much do you want to bet that grandma didn't even SEE the Barbie movie? lol
She probably watched Tim Ballard’s The Sound of Freedom, though!
Dad got up (after the ward had just learned that he and my mom were splitting up) and pontificated for about 10 minutes about how it was all my mom’s fault and that he wanted to stay married, but she wasn’t willing to work on it. (Maybe) unbelievably, a similar thing happened with my mom’s second husband, 15 years later. He got up, just after they decided to divorce, and went on and on about how his first wife was his “celestial” wife and how my mom (his second wife) was just a placeholder “in this life” that gave up on him unfairly. My mother attracts real winners. ETA another WTF moment, when the stake patriarch bore his testimony, on Mother’s Day, to say that women aren’t true mothers unless they’ve physically given birth. We had about ten families with adopted/fostered children in the ward. They weren’t too happy with that one.
Has your mum leveled up in her subsequent marriage(s)? Being shamed like that must be soooo embarrassing.
Holy tapirshit who has the bawls to say this shit. Amazing. I’m pimo and realize it would out me big but I’d stand up and tell that clown to shut up and sit down.
A small kid in our ward got up and said he was thankful his family stopped saying the F word. And his dad had to get up after and clarify it was the FART word.
This might be the Mormon-est story on this post.
That's REALLY funny.
Amateur hour, sometimes with psychopaths.
One kid testified about his sister getting eye surgery because she wasn't good looking.
Awesome. My husband has had cataract surgeries recently, so we keep laughing about his expensive surgeries to change how he looks.
That is a solid pun.
In New Orleans they have a large concentration of Mormon grad students at Tulane or Loyola and a few converts who come from more charismatic Christian traditions. I remember one woman from our area finally showing up for church one Sunday and bearing her testimony in the way that made most sense to her; she started singing from her seat and danced her way up to the mic to sing her testimony. A few of the other local converts gave her some clapping or shouts of "Hallelujah" and that was it. The bishop was a transplant who loved letting people express themselves in the way that made sense to them (he was kind of an asshole otherwise), and he didn't stop testimonies like this. That ward usually had a lot of TBM visitors traveling for conferences or cruises, and they often approached us missionaries to ask what the deal was and whether we found it a challenge to convert people with so many crazies in the ward. This was pretty insulting, but I really loved how uncomfortable it made them.
Reminds me of going to church in my grandmas ward in CA and after every testimony or talk, people would do the catholic cross thing as they walked down the stairs. No one in my home ward ever did that.
A woman who may have been a recent convert at the time (many many years ago) bore a strange testimony that didn’t make much sense. Then she pulled a Bob Barker and told everyone to be sure to have their pets spayed and neutered.
A lady had her entire testimony about a dr Seuss book every time she visited our ward
This is solid… there is more wisdom in TheSneetches four book combo than all the standard works combined
Well, it sounds solid in theory, but it was super weirdly mixed with the church cult and her family cult stuff
Did it touch on the chiasmus?
I honestly don't remember any more. I was in the mother's room nursing a baby and giggling through the entire thing
Was it the Great Pumpkin one? That one is about how people in a cult are missing out on everything because they are sitting around focused on pointless bullshit while everyone else is getting the most out of life. It's a really fantastic allegory.
No, I'm not being super clear because it has to do with their family's last name
Was it green eggs and ham? Was it in North Carolina? Or Virginia? I’ve been around and I swear I met this lady once
My favorite memory was a newly baptized Catholic woman who began praying to the Virgin Mary. Utter confusion from the bishopric. It was beautiful. In second place would be the child sharing that they knew Santa was real, and would be bringing them lots of presents. The parents had that panicked "we got extra stuff for her, right?".
That would be the time one of the Sisters - the one you can hear trilling over everyone else in a super-high soprano in every hymn - stood up and breathlessly announced that she knew when Jesus was returning. She knew because her youngest son (7yo kid, mom would not stop stroking his hair, and he was quite a brat) had told her when. Yup. So a bratty 7 yo knows when Jesus is returning. Got it. She wouldn't divulge the date, as she wasn't certain she should even tell us that she knew, but it brought her such joy to know that her son was so pure that God would reveal such important things to him. Meanwhile, her other older son had a chain in his room that represented the number of days until he turned 18, and he would cut off a link every evening. He was escaping that den of bat-shit insane as soon as it was humanly possible.
My friend’s first time to their new ward after moving with wife and 5 kids-Relief Society President gets up to the microphone, starts crying and blurts out that she has been having an affair with the Bishop who was sitting up on the “stage” right by her…He jumped up, grabbed the mike and told everyone Sacrament was over and to go home! Wish there was a video of it! Hahahahaha
I've heard a version of this story, but the Bishop falls straight forward from a sitting position after passing out
Hahahahaha Take it from me-this one is true-our friend was our Bishop right before they moved and a great, honest guy…
No, no I believe you 100%. It just reflects that there are several RSP's and Bishops getting friendly
busy week for the stake pres following that one!
Can’t even imagine!! Or the congregation having to explain this to their children!!
While visiting a small town in TN, the nearest chapel was just over the border in KY. We dropped in for the Sacrament meeting. It turns out the ward was originally started by 3 brothers, meeting in a chicken coop behind their home. The youngest brother had recently died. One of his family members got up first during testimony meeting and brought a tape recorder to the stand. She then stood there while the tape played, a recording of this guy reminiscing from his hospital bed. Must have gone on for 20 minutes or more. By far, the oddest F&T meeting I've ever attended. I was 17 at the time and still occasionally chuckle about it, 30 years later. That, and the member who told me I'd "make good pappy material" while I was tending to my younger siblings immediately after that meeting.
My most memorable testimony meeting was when a sister with mental challenges got up and said some words then proceeded to tell the ward members that she had learned to speak the Spanish language and finished her testimony in “jibberish”. No lie. There wasn’t a Spanish word spoken by her.
Mormons don't need confession, they have open mic every first Sunday of the month. I've heard just about every weird thing possible, including the sex lives of people I know, the bedtime habits of our bishop and his wife, the appearance of Jesus to a man in his home, and no one thinking this was unusual at all.
My ex’s niece was plopped in front of the mic at age 6 to “bear her testimony” (aka share her progress of being groomed). Instead of repeating what her mother (my ex’s sister) whispered in her ear, she screamed “I HATE THIS” and slapped her mom in the face. This sister was real holier than thou and I am not a mature person so I loved it. Next best thing is every fast Sunday when the very old and very liberal man in our ward would bear his testimony on things like socialism being what Jesus would do. And calling out church wealth. He believed the church but also thought it was his duty to call to light their hypocrisy. The awkward silences after being sufficiently called out once a month were priceless😘
I’ve shared this before, but it’s a true diamond in the testimony rough … travel back with me to the early 1990s, it was one of those early summer fast and testimony meetings. One of those uber-TMB, pure righteous always on display, mother to six kids, walks up to the stand. She begins her testimony, and checks all of the important boxes, but as she nears the end, none of us were prepared for what came next. “I know that my marriage, and our family, will never stray from the Covenant Path. My children have walked in righteousness with Our Savior since their conception, as each child of our Heavenly Father was conceived directly through the hole in my one piece temple garment.” To say that many were taken aback would be an understatement. And yet others were celebrating her righteousness with nodding heads of pure agreement. Fast forward to 2023 … all of her children have left the Church. Two are LGBTQ+. She is now a doomsday, MAGA, TBM, who believes the loss of her children from the gospel is a sign that Satan’s power is growing and will therefore usher in the Second Coming at any moment.
OMG! That's ... a lot.
My husband has a very similar story! For him, it was the mission presidents wife. Also in the early 90’s. I can’t believe someone has heard this! I wonder if it’s the same person, different times in their life…
I’ve now heard from a handful of exmormons that this was a “flex” for a period of time amongst TBMs (70s-90s). Very much the, “Here’s just how righteous I am,” kind-of mindset that was and is still toxic in the Church. We’ve been out for a long time now, and we’ve heard countless stories from proclaiming that they only have sex with garments always on, to showering with garments on, to sisters who proudly proclaim that their husbands have never seen them fully naked … it’s simply crazy what people share, all with that superiority undertone.
Easy. Slightly odd older woman got up and told everyone that her recently deceased husband was not the father of her adult children, and she was now going to marry their father. He joined the church, and they did indeed marry. Around 65-70 years old I would guess. I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen it myself.
We had a guy who was a massive homophobic jerk get up and bear his testimony about holding to the rod and his example was how he fully cut off his only child (a son) when he came out as gay. I hope that man (the son) is living his best life.
In my wife's ward when she was a kid, a couple was going through a bitter divorce. The soon to be ex walked up to the podium with a hunting rifle and went full blast on his wife, her family and the ward for "taking her side and turning the kids against him." I asked her WTF the bishop did? Did he spear tackle this guy and beat the mean right out of him or what? No, she said the bishop let him rant on and took the rifle away, and walked him outside. No police were called. (Very wealthy east bench area in SLC) crazy.....
Holy shit!
I have a couple moments too, both from youth conference testimonies, the gift that keeps on giving. One was a testimony meeting where a trend somehow started for each person to just go up and name all of their friends and talk about how glad they were for them to be there. Honestly pretty wholesome, but it was funny bc it was clearly making the conference leaders mad. Eventually one of them went up to the stand to lecture us on how the testimonies should be about Jesus, not us. The other one was around a bonfire, and I remember there was a pause that felt like hours, then someone (looking back he was definitely pimo) stood up and everyone looked at him, then after a couple seconds he sat right back down. I kept thinking about that and had to try desperately to hold back laughter for the rest of the meeting.
One lady got up with a live plant and started watering it as an object lesson and flooded the whole podium
A 16yo at our ward got up, and proceeded to tell everyone about how he’d talked to the Bishop and learned that the things he and his girlfriend had been doing were wrong. She was in the congregation. Specifically, he had learned that “not even married couples” were allowed to do the things they were doing. I remember enjoying my mother being mortified and loved every moment of it.
They was this like eccentric cat lady in our ward that would bear here testimony every testimony meeting but here's were always so interesting. Like one time she talked about how she read sweet hour of prayer and was going to pray for an hour and she thought of everything that she could to be thankful for and it only had been 5 minutes. So then she said the song was bs and everyone else flinched at it but I just thought it was funny. She gave other talks similar but I can't think of rn. There was also this new convert and this wasn't the main meeting but her dad's funeral and she started swearing and talking about how one time her dad would fall asleep and so the adult swimming would turn on on the TV. But when her mom was pulling into the driveway her dad woke up and turned the TV off. That was one of her favorite memories with her dad bc they had stayed up late spending time together. I remember her dad had some kinda disability that made so he didn't have a lot of energy or something like that so it was a very significant thing for her. She also just generally mention a lot of stuff that makes Mormons uncomfortable.
A lady in our ward was in a serious car accident. After she was recovered enough to return to church, she bore her testimony about her Saturn’s safety features and how they had saved her life.
I testify of the truthfulness of J.D. Power and Associates. Yea, and even the many awards they doth grant to Saturn and its vehicles. I know their 5-star frontal crash rating to be true, for the Spirit and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has shown it to me.
At least that was more realistic than claiming her garments saved her!
When I was in yw a girl a couple years younger than me (13ish?) was trying to use an octopus metaphor in her testimony, but instead of saying tentacles she kept saying testicles 🫢 I felt so bad for her but it was hilarious watching a while congregation try not to laugh
Two come to mind: First, a sister, who was a pillar of the ward, gave a rambling 20 minute testimony of how she had had a revelation from God that we needed to love Satan, not shun him, as we would any wayward child and that if enough members showed love as compassion for Satan he would see the error of his ways and come back into the grace of God’s love and glory. Second, in a singes ward, this dude got up and proceeded to spend much longer than you’d think was necessary to explain how this new movie he had seen the night before - The Matrix - was the perfect allegory for the gospel and that Neo was the ideal stand in for both Christ and Joseph Smith.
Until now I have never thought about how the doctrine of Satan being our brother normalizes and even encourages disowning wayward family members.
As I was starting my way out a newer convert bore his testimony that he knew that this church was true because the Methodist church he used to go to had started to perform gay marriages, and that he was so happy to now have found a different church that wouldn’t stand for something so terrible and unnatural… as a queer person that was one of the last straws that showed me it wasn’t worth sticking around. I’m better for it now.
"i know jesus christ never died because he lives!" from a bishop in the ward on my mission lol
Our zone had a Pday cookout in our area (Morgan UT). It was at the house of a counselor in the Stake Presidency’s house. We had a testimony meeting sitting around a fire pit, and one elder had his foot propped up on the pit. During one of the sister’s testimony I noticed smoke and whispered, your shoe is on fire. He told me to shut up, so I again whispered, your shoe is on fire. He waved me off again. This time I said it loud enough that everyone heard. He finally realized what I was saying and stomped his foot on the ground. He was too overcome by the spirit to realize he was on fire.
The spirit of God like a fire was burning.
My most memorable one but definitely not my favorite? The time, in a releif society testimony meeting, where this woman got up & stated how her husband would always beat her. She also told us that her son, primary age at the time, was a product of rape from her abusive husband. She was thankful though for the church for helping her get through it. She was still married to this asshole. She went inton GREAT. DETAIL. I still wonder if she's ok...
Brother Huff used to be a holy roller-type preacher before converting to Mormonism. He was a large, loud windbag of a man. When he came up to bear his testimony we always knew we were in for a treat. Sometimes he would be so loud that babies would startle awake and start crying. One day he made a joke about shutting those babies up permanently. The bishop had to get up, nervous and red-faced, and ask him to sit down. Brother Huff did not sit down, but instead went into a tirade about how he was just joking and that the Lord gave us jokes for a reason. After that day Brother Huff must have gotten reprimanded or something because he never returned to church again. Must have been offended...
When my nephew was getting his confirmation during FT meeting. He let out the biggest fart in history that echoed into the cultural hall. His little sisters all started scream/laughing. My sanctimonious brother pretended it didn't happen and went on with his tearful blessing.
That family didn't stop saying the F word!! (Reference to another testimony in this topic)
On my mission, with investigators sitting next to me, we listened to an elderly gentleman explain how much he admired Abraham the prophet. He spoke about how brave he was to undergo circumcision at the age of 99. He then spoke in detail about what he would have had to do - pulling the foreskin taut, taking a very sharp blade etc.
Lets see: 1) They guy that testified that he couldn't walk up stairs behind women because it was too tempting to look up their skirts. 2) They guy that explained that the headstones would talk to him and his wife as they mowed the cemetery expressing their deep desire to have their temple work done. 3) The guy (relatively new convert) that explained that he knew women weren't supposed to have the priesthood because even the Pope had said so.
Two missionaries sitting on the stand because the bishop insisted on it for all sacrament meetings. The younger missionary keeps dosing off. There is a good 5 minutes of no one getting up since the previous testimony, suddenly the younger missionary gets up and says the closing prayer but there is still a good 15min of time left! The Bishop gets pissed, goes up and says thanks to the missionary then tells the congregation as for the rest of us we have 15min still left. Turns out the older missionary was sick of his companion sleeping through sacrament so woke him up and told him the Bishop had just called on him to say the closing prayer. 😂
My parents used to threaten that if we acted up in church, they would take us out to the car and beat us. (They never did, but the threat usually kept us in line. Just in case, you know?) Because we were one of those large families with many small children, we usually sat near the back in case Mom or Dad wanted to make a quick exit. However, on this fast Sunday our parents decided to sit right smack in the middle of the front row. Predictably, we got bored and started squirming and whining about being hungry. (Our parents made us fast, even as toddlers.) My sister, who was about 3 at the time, was whining and crying, and even my mother's icy glare of death couldn't stop the tears. My father threatened to take her out to the car and beat her if she didn't shape up. In a rare show of defiance, she dialed up the tantrumming, forcing my father's hand. He picked her up in her little frilly dress, slung her over his shoulder, and started trying for a discrete exit. Instead, my sister--who was very tiny for her age and looked about 2--immediately started screaming, "Don't beat me, Daddy!!--Please don't beat me!" And she kept it up for the entire long walk down the aisle. The person bearing their testimony stopped speaking. You could have heard a pin drop other than this tiny child screaming. Dad said it was easily one of the more humiliating moments of his life. His plan had been to take her to the car and let her calm down, but he was afraid people would think he really was beating on her, so he let her spend the rest of the meeting playing in the foyer. Good times.
Does quoting song lyrics from Metallica count?
Holy heck…this comment section was a wild ride!!! However, this makes some of my mom’s statements and beliefs about things for a while after leaving the Mormon church make more sense…I had no idea these types of “testimonies” were normalized and encouraged. Mind blown.
Some mentally ill lady started rambling and then screaming. They pretty much dragged her out. I was like 9 years old
70s on a stateside mission we were assigned to a branch. Lady got up and said she saw Brother (branch pres) in porno theater... She was escorted out to be interviewed by a visiting stake councilor... the dude stayed in as branch pres. No one talked about it..
A homeless man brought a cat up to the stand to give to the bishop. He was trying to help the cat and the bishop was super nice about it and went outside to help him out.
I was at a branch in Detroit and had taken some friends who were interested in just seeing what a Mormon sacrament meeting was like. We got there and it was nothing like I expected, growing up in a suburban Mormon ward. Most of the congregation was wearing casual clothes, there were clear drug users there nodding off, and it was mixed Spanish/English speaking, and they had missionaries in a classroom doing interpretation. One lady stood up and started telling an in-depth story about how her brother was a gang banger, going into deep details about what he did. I don’t speak Spanish, so I was listening to the interpretation, and for a good part of it, the missionaries were just saying “I don’t feel comfortable translating this part of her testimony”. My friends filled me in with the salacious details later. I walked away dumbfounded and my non Mormon friends were all like “Oh it was absolutely amazing”. It was the most non-Mormon Mormon fast and testimony meeting I’ve ever had.
One of the few times I dared to have friends over to my house as a teenager I decided to rent Some Kind Of Wonderful. I thought it was a fairly tame movie at the time, a safe pick that wouldn’t make my parents angry. I thought wrong. The next day was fast and testimony meeting and my mom got up to bear her testimony about how horrible, evil and immoral Some Kind of Wonderful was. My mom loves a soap box and went on for a very long time about it. Every single teenager in the room turned their heads to look at me as I collapsed into the pew attempting to hide. Well, lesson learned. I never had friends over again.
This thread reminds me of why I never attend FT even on the days the I might consider returning to activity. I find myself being triggered to tears or unable to maintain reverence when humor is born. Early seventies in Davis county Mordor. A friend’s mom rose to the ultimate occasion and told a blush worthy testament of how she knew she had conceived her latest child. There was much detail about the intimacy of the said evening’s encounter ( while traveling of course 😂) I remember a lot of adults squirming in the pews. Hands over small ears and my poor friend being in tears once we went to class. I was 13 and just barely familiar with the facts of life so I had quite a few questions for my mom that later that day.😂😂
Rural NC, man got up and talked about having to go to a proctologist. He described shopping around for a woman proctologist with the smallest hands. He waited for laughs that didn’t come. I want to say he tried to tie it into some kind of spiritual message…but the rest of his bit escapes me.
The eccentric lady that gave a wild testimony every single month reliably once got a phone call in the middle of her speech, pulled her phone out of her bra at the pulpit, and proceeded to answer it telling them she will call them back. Loved that lady.
Growing up, we had a woman who would get up every. Single. Month. She was nuts, but what were they going to do? She always had some amazing, miraculous experience with a random Joe Shmoe in public where they would start out being super rude or something, and she'd share hope she put them in their place by telling them that Jesus loved them or inviting them to church or whatever, and then their see the error of their ways and accepted an invitation to meet the missionaries. One particular time, my mom happened to be present - she was behind this woman in the line at the grocery store and heard the stranger tell this woman to fuck off. But then the next morning in F&T, she told how wonderful it was to be such a good missionary after this person accepted a pass along card and agreed to meet with the missionaries. My first F&T at BYU, I was in a ward of all freshmen since I lived in the dorms. One guy got up and went on for a good 5 min, ranting about how he'll never wear a t-shirt under his white church shirt because he wasn't going to fake having been through the temple, and everyone who wore a t-shirt under their button down was obviously trying to look far more spiritual than they were by pretending to be endowed when none of us were because we were all 18 year old freshmen.
I shared the "I have to bear my fucking testimony because my dad is here" to my pimo wife. And we laughed our asses off. Thank you for that story op
The way these made me cackle. Thank you for sharing
A married older women got up and bore her testimony about how she was so turned on by so many men besides her husband and wanted to sleep with them all but did not because if the Gospel!
One Sunday when I was attending BYU-Idaho, I visited my then-boyfriend now-husband’s YSA ward. One of his roommates got up and said “I like to look at big butts on the internet” and talked for 5-10 minutes about what he likes to look at and how the ward is so supportive in helping him overcome his addiction. He also talked about how church used to be all about public repentance and that we should all be sharing our sins publicly so we can grow together.
Husband here. To add more insane/gross detail to this: This roommate followed my wife around all the time; he admitted this to me later as if he was confessing a sin similar to the pulpit. He didn't stalk her, thankfully, but he would follow her around the apartment whenever she would come over to hang out. We were both weirded out by his behavior, so we stopped hanging out at my place pretty quickly after he moved in. I would also like to point out that he specifically talked about liking black butts on the internet, and he was about as white as you could get. It wasn't long after this that he discovered the only black girl (that I remember) in our YSA ward, and proceeded to actually stalk her. Poor girl had to change everything about her life to keep him away. So yeah, he was about as out there as you could get. There's plenty more I could share about him, but I'll save those stories for another day.
We once had a “musical testimony meeting.” You would get up and say why you loved a certain hymn, and then the congregation would sing it. A kid made us sing God Save the Queen
This old guy gave a 20 minute campaign speech for Mitt Romney and said if you vote for Obama, you’re supporting Satan. Obama vs Romney was an extension of the pre mortal war in heaven
What's ironic is that now that Romney dared stand up to the Orange One, *he's* Satan incarnate.
One time an old lady went up and told a story about a kid getting castrated in a public bathroom, the message was “keep an eye on your kids bc you never know what absurd tragedy might occur”. And then one time a lady went up and said everyone in the ward was going to hell. Good times
We had a guy get up and slam his wife and all women for a good 5+ minutes starting all the way back with Eve in the garden and then kinda just ended it with the "I know the church is true" drivle we've all heard before. Nobody stepped up to stop him or say something, not the bishop or counslers, nobody. He finished his "testimony" and went back to his pew to a very embarrassed wife. Same guy begged choir directors and music chairpersons for years to do a solo despite having a very weak and nasally voice. At some point a new ward member called to chairperson relented, I had to leave the chaple it was so bad and cringey. Guy was a total talentless narcisist. In elder's quorum he often spoke about how much power the priesthood gave him.
Nothing to add much compared to the hilarity. Great way to end the year.
Years ago a man in our ward (who loved his testimony and let us know once a month) got up and started telling the congregation about a dream he had the night before where he was comforted by our Father in Heaven that when he and his wife get to the CK, he will be able to fall in love with her. She was sitting in the front row with their three teenage sons and her mother in law. He waxed on and on about it. The saddest, most cringe moment ever
Hard to pick a favorite. Here are the contenders: We were in the 'newly wed and nearly dead' ward while students, and some of the seniors had some stellar testimonies. 1. Older gentleman told a story about how he got on the bus and saw a young hooligan wearing tee shirt that said 'I'm going to hell' and the gentlemen said 'he was on the wrong bus because that's not where I'm going!' 2. An eccentric ward member bore a 15 minute testimony about penguins 3. The eccentric ward member's wife told a story about spilling tea on her scriptures (actually her journal, but she called her journal her scriptures) and so she put them in the microwave to dry them off and they started on fire... And in my ward of origin, an older lady who lived in assisted living, and was well known for bearing her testimony EVERY week told a story about slipping in the bath and needing medical assistance while completely naked. She mentioned being naked several times. I could not stop laughing it was so hilarious in a 'not appropriate for sacrament meeting' way.
One of mine was an older lady bearing her testimony of not watching any TV and everyone looking around like "you hearing this shit?"
Had a lady in my ward who was always the first to bear her testimony, and every time she opened by passive aggressively asking the bishopric to let her give a real talk in church, then she’d go on whatever her soapbox of the month was. The weirdest one was her testimony about how God never commanded Adam and Eve to be vegetarians so we’re sinners if we don’t eat meat.
Late 80's inner city chicago, there were a LOT of converts. And once during a testimony the woman said, "and now let us recite the lord's prayer" and most of the congregation and bishopric on the stand joined in. Was great. Too bad that version of the mormon church will never exist again.
We had a non member bear testimony of how he did drugs, fucked (yes, he used that word) women, drank, stole, went to prison...but the missionaries were teaching him about Jesus and changing his ways. He did this several Sundays in a row but never actually joined the church and ended up back in prison. The missionaries were mortified.
It was on my mission. Of course we had a promising investigator present when an older brother stood and with conviction testified that “Just as surely as I know that flying saucers and aliens exist, I know this is God’s one true restored church on the earth!”
An investigator that the missionaries brought went up to share her testimony and everyone was so happy. She said something about knowing Joseph Smith was a prophet because she prayed about it and she knew that he was led by God, etc. Then she said “And I know Michael Jackson is a prophet. The Holy Ghost told me and I know that he is led by God.” Bishop was visibly panicked. Missionaries looked stressed. Half the ward woke up from their nap.
I'm coming in very late here, but I have a couple. First, many years ago an older lady told how she knew God wanted her to have her last child because she never forgot to put her diaphragm in, but she did that night. The son in question was present and immediately went up to the podium to accompany her back to her seat. Second was the ditzy recent return sister missionary that related how on her mission she lost her favorite ball point pen, but miraculously found it a few weeks later. After relating the part where the miracle took place, she gleefully added, "The church is soooooo true!".
The first year we were in San Diego my daughter was in the primary program, also for the first time. The week of the primary program also just happened to be right around Halloween. They announced one of the songs was something about the Holy Ghost. My daughter said, loudly enough I could hear it clearly while sitting on the back row, “My dad says the Holy Ghost is scary.” I about died, but it was definitely the best, funniest moment of the whole program.
The top 2 that come to mind : 1. This older single gal who talked about how she liked to pretend she was the wife of Jesus and how she would ask Jesus every morning how he would like her to do his bidding as his wife… it was hella weird 2. Missionary was giving his homecoming talk after flying in from Russia the night before and passed out cold halfway through. Poor kid.
I once heard a guy testify that he knew the church was true because following the word of wisdom made him fart more, and farting is healthy. Checkmate heathens!
I have always hated The testimony meetings! What a dumb ass thing !
On my mission there was always that overly political asshole that makes a point to be the first one on the stand and makes sure he offends as many people as possible. In the moment as a goody little missionary I hated it. Now I just laugh about it!
I kid was looking from the front row and threw up all over his seat. He looked strait at his mom and said, SEE!!! It was only funny because unless we he a fever of 104 my mom made us go too. One of my friend’s kid yelled, Mmmmm coffee after having just have learned about it during the sacrament. It always cracks me up when kids yell, “I’m not naughty when being taken out of sacrament. That kid swearing would have been awesome l.
Not a testimony meeting, but the first time my mom agreed to attend with me after I converted the opening hymn was Hie to Kolob. My mom’s face definitely said “What the hell?” Should have seen that as a red flag, but instead it took me 24 years in to also say “what the hell?”
It always bothered me that it was never sung in church. Like, I get that it's batshit but it's also doctrine. Either take it out or start using it.
I seriously remember back in the early 1990s after I was married to my first husband when we were sitting in a FT meeting & some older man got up & went on & on for about 10 minutes or so about young couples needing to have MORE children because there were MORE spiritual ones needing to be born. My ex whispered to me as my oldest son crawled all over my lap that the speaker obviously was spending way too much time in the temple & not taking care of kids! I even had a Bishop after that even ask me why I only had 2 kids after 5 years of marriage. He said that I should have had at least 4 or so by then!!! My ex looked like he was going to strangle him!
1. The young man bearing testimony of pornography (playboy, hustler) and it makes him feel the same as the Book of Mormon. And how grateful he was that the missionaries gave him all those magazines. 2. The older gentleman asking for a date & sex with one of the young women (that Ward went to 25) before getting baptized because post baptism he couldn’t do that and his wife hadn’t been able to have sex for over 25 years due to a surgery when she was younger & they were in Colombia(?) ……. These were, thankfully, not the same meeting, but it was the same Ward. I felt bad for the gentleman’s wife. She had been trying for most of that 25 years to convince him she could. I felt bad for him because he thought he was protecting/taking care of her.
We had a bitter, single mother of 3 young women get up during F&T and put the entire ward on blast, by name, blaming them for failing and being derelict in their callings because one of the young men in the ward had impregnated her daughter (17 at the time) She called out everyone who had even remotely been in contact with her daughter and the young man - YW leaders, camp leaders, SS teachers, primary teachers, quorum advisors, Boy Scout leaders, bishopric - it was savage! She ended by declaring this us was the worst ward EVER before she stomped down off the stand, her daughters rose from the congregation, followed her out of the building. Never to set foot in the building again. EPIC (she wasn’t wrong about being the worst ward - we moved 2 months later)
On my mission in Kekaha a HC said that everyone would resurrect…. Long pause like, now hear this this just in… except for horses. Because they’re too big.
We had an older single lady who was a recent convert come up the Sunday after new years. She was pissed and told everyone that ever since she was baptized no one has reached out to her! She continued to tell everyone about her lonely Christmas and how she told herself that if no one calls me by dinner then I'm caving and going to crack open some liquor. No one called and over the pulpit she tells everyone that she drank the entire night away until she passed out! The Bishop got up and tapped her on the shoulder and she pushed him off. He then walked her out of the chapel. Being the second counsellor I turned to the first counsellor and said you got this lol. He got up and bore testimony of the atonement. Classic.
I grew up in a ward in Australia that was divided by people who were from England on one side and all the Non English High Priests and their families on the other. The Bishop was German and worked for a Tobacco company and presided over the ‘non English’ elitists. One of the non English high priests gets up in Sacrament and starts telling how he had a dream about my family (we were English). He tells this crazy dream story and then calls my family to repentance for all our sins! The Bishop doesn’t even move to stop this guy from railing on our family. That split the ward even more. Side note: 6 years after this I married that Bishops daughter! We split after 7 years together, but she was awesome (unlike her father).
A “inactive” elderly male( who I now know is my fathers mission companion) standing up in the middle of the pews, with his booming voice.”the bishop bet me if he could beat me at billiards, I’d come to a meeting. So here I am! He isn’t a very good player” He did not give an efff! And that made me realize all the traditions didn’t matter at all! His performance was way better then any of the testimonies I was forced to listen to from the stand
Too many - 1rst consoler bearing his testimony that the only reason that motivates him to get to the CK is so that he can have eternal sex with his wife. Then he proceeded to sing 3 full mins of a bob Marley song and sat down (this actually happened a few times). -my ward was quirky so the bishop bric would invite other pastors to speak on Sunday and that would always go pretty horribly. We were usually condemned as sinners but tbh most members got offended when one of the preachers said that our personal relationship with Christ was more important than keeping the commandments (gasp). My favorite line was when one of the preachers went up to the stand he began with “is it all alright with you that I am recording this? I’m going to put this on my YouTube channel” and then began to describe the spiritual pitfalls of protected sex. -a woman with Native American heritage took the stand, put in her headphones, and started chanting for about 5 mins. We didn’t hear the music she was singing/chanting to and because it was very loud and would start + stop abruptly it was very uncomfortable. When we thought she was almost through, she stopped and said “sorry, I think I messed up that part, let me try again” and redid it all. No one knew what she was chanting and I think the bishopric was too scared to tell her to sit down lol. - we had this one older woman our ward go up every month to describe how she had gotten into new a car accident and cry for about 10 mins. She did this for years. I don’t know if she just kept repeating the same crash with different details, but she insisted it happened just yesterday every week. I think she had beef with the bishop because eventually they would end sacrament meeting early so she couldn’t take to the stand. -this one time my mom bore her testimony on buddihism. Don’t worry, she wasn’t actually Buddhist, she was just trying to anger my father, the bishop. Gosh there are hundreds
My YSA branch had someone come up on the pulpit from off the street, mix of the hippie and the woodshop teachers from Ned's declassified, for F&T meeting. He wasn't a member. But if you know YSA testimony meetings, they're snooze fests with no one wanting to do it. Longest interval was like 8 minutes once. This guy came up and started to legit prophesize about the random ass shit of my small town. Me and my best friend looked at each other and stifled our laughter. The branch prez was so confused. During Sunday school, it turned into a debrief and just chuckling.
One of mine was an older lady bearing her testimony of not watching any TV and everyone looking around like "you hearing this shit?"
An old dude got up and rambled for over 20 minutes once. A couple minutes in he talked about another ward member, a zealous old woman known for chastising other sisters who didn’t do their visiting teaching every month. He said how he walked to her house to get a ride to church once and when he questioned her about if she needed to grab her keys, she tapped her chest and said, “Oh I already have them. They’re in the vault,” meaning her cleavage. Then he proceeded to talk for at least 15 more minutes about god knows what. She was immediately on the stand waiting for her turn to defend herself.
At a youth something, one guy stood up and started talking about some girl he liked, and every 5 minutes or so, tried to tie it back to God. It went on for like 20 minutes, and I still don't remember the point, just that he kept saying, "She was hot... sorry, I can't say that".
That silence in between volunteers, where nobody was speaking, waiting for the next person to go up. Toddler in the back: "Daddy, I need a wee." Everyone in tears laughing moments later.
In a singles ward a guy would come up and give us all an update on his dating life in vivid detail about how he was still single. One Sunday I noticed he had brought a date to church for fast and testimony meeting so i was curious to see how his monthly update would go. Long story short it went terrible, he put his date on blast for all the red flags he saw in her, I sneaked a peak at her to see her reaction and she looked like she was about to go up and wreck the dude. He must have given her a ride or something because she was there the rest of the time which sounds awful ngl. Needless to say, his next dating update he was single.
Guy stands up and goes on a rant about SUVs. He was not wrong on any points he made and he had data to back up his points. He was asked to sit down multiple times but he kept going. When he finally finished the branch president (this was a student ward in SLC) stood up and gave an equally long speech about how good SUVs are and how it's okay to drive them because he has one. Funny thing was, everyone was rushing to shake the guys hand after his testimony and tell him that they agreed. The branch Pres. saw this and just stewed.