So . . .How Did It Go?

Is what my wife asked me when I got back from my meeting with my stake president on Tuesday 4/5.

I thought it would at least be interesting.

Turned out, not so much.

I basically sat there for about a half hour as my stake president kind of talked around the events I chronicled in my letter to him, and as sincerely as he could said “I/we sure do love you/your family” about 3 dozen times.

He said that (as I expected) my TBM EQ Pres. had “reported” me to him back in December after my EQ lesson.

He said he thought that perhaps I was having marital, financial or job issues, and wanted someone to check to make sure that wasn’t the case. (I call BS on this, as he met with my wife before calling her to the stake RS at the beginning of the year, and never mentioned any such concerns to her) He claimed that “we often find that members are suffering from excessive stress when they disagree with the brethren.” (Well, that or they actually think about what’s being said critically, rather than “trying to find the good” in what’s said, no matter how bad it is.)

Consequently, he says he assigned his counselor to “just check on” me and make sure I was doing OK.  But with the holidays, and February Stake Conference, the counselor just never got around to it.  So it was after Stake Conference when he followed up with his counselor, when the counselor “remembered” and then made the appointment.  Of course, it had been so long since the original assignment was given that the counselor had sort of forgotten the purpose of the meeting.

On reflection, this strikes me as one of the poorest excuses I’ve ever heard.  You believe that you are responsible for me, and suspect that I’m having SERIOUS marital, financial or job issues, but wait over 4 months before you actually do anything substantive about it? I know this man is NOT that poor of a “leader.”  I don’t want to think he’s lying.  But he’s clearly not making a full disclosure.

He then said some stuff about nuance, and how he sees the world, and the gospel, in very nuanced terms.  However, he knew TBM EQ pres definitely does not.  To him everything is black or white.  He then told me that in our old ward, when he was my bishop, and TBM EQ pres was his clerk, that he got madder at him than he’s ever been at anyone.  He didn’t say what the issue was, but he did say that he felt he HAD to bring his counselor in to his office with him when he talked to TBM EQ pres (and apparently set him straight).

He also made a point of saying that EQ secretary is a calling by the EQ pres and bishop, rather than the Stake, so if something changes with my calling, it’s not his doing.  And that I’ve been on “the short list” of  Dry  High Councilmen to call. (I warned him not to do it.)

Then out of the blue he says: “well, lets get down to it, do you sustain the prophet and quorum of the 12 as prophets seers and revelators?”

Since we’d JUST been discussing nuance, I told him yes, and that seemed to do it for him.  No questions to dig deeper into what that actually means, or how I could make such a claim at the same time publicly state that Neil Andersen was dead wrong.  Instead he talked about how he’d never been a fan of Tommy Monson, and wasn’t sure he’d be able to sustain him as a profit prophet, but when the time came, he was, and now does.  He said that he likes “the guys that just tell it like it is” (which I took to mean the “hard liners,” which is pretty much everybody in the Q15 except maybe Robert Hales and Dieter Uchtdorf.) I told him I had the same concern with Tommy Monson (though I’m sure for very different reasons) but that once it happened I’d had a change of heart too.

Then it was another 5 min of well, we sure do love you and your family, and I was on my way home, thinking why didn’t he just reply to my email to say there was nothing to worry about. Instead he dragged it out for almost another full month.  For what?

Maybe I’m Dence.