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LDS bishops/branch presidents aren't paid a housing allowance as they aren't employees of the church. They aren't vocational bishops, as being a clergyman in the LDS church isn't a career. There are no formal educational requirements, no guaranteed positions after attaining said requirements, etc.

There are. It's different though. At least at one time (30+ years ago when I looked into it because it was offered at my institute) there was some training for full time teachers. I assume that is still the case. You went into it like a job, getting the training and were hired that way. So it was different than the sort of calling that happened with my mom. My sister-in-law was also called to teach her ward youth a couple of years ago, but I don't know if they had her apply like happened with my mom. Interestingly, the institute wouldn't allow me to do the training. I was newly married and had no children and the church didn't allow women to be full time teachers before their children were raised. Years later, that must have changed because my friend became a teacher while she still had children at home.

Yet he still would've gotten an Overseas Service Bar, a ribbon, and the deployment pay. His direct participation in combat missions is irrelevant. If the only people that counted were the people "outside the wire", then what's to stop the purity spiral from getting even more stringent? Sorry man, only those who actually got into firefights count. Sorry man, only those who got shot count. It's a pointless exercise in nitpickery based on willful ignorance. The statement "we have no paid clergy" is entirely true, as the idea is wholly based on the concept of clergy as a vocation. If you're a Catholic, Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, etc., you choose to become clergy. You choose to pursue the educational requirements just like any other profession, this education must take place at approved institutions, and you will attain a position as long as you pass these requirements. Upon attaining this position, you will in turn be paid for services rendered at a rate commensurate with market value (i.e. more experienced/educated clergy will get paid more, pay will be adjusted based on location, etc.). Such is not the case for the LDS church.

I am saying it is an authoritarian state and the laws are completely malleable to those in power and can be ignored or enforced depending on the whims of the powerful. Yes, there is. It is an irrational point. Absolutely incorrect. Everything going on there is being influenced by the conflict in Ukraine. When the law was created isn’t relevant. How it is being used is a choice by the people in power. Great replacement conspiracy nonsense. ????? No, I did not. Until this moment I thought Hitler personally did everything that involved the holocaust himself. My mind is blown. Who could have conceived that the holocaust involved more than one actor? Truly you are a genius. Why are you wasting your time here? With brilliance like this you should be curing cancer or revolutionizing physics or something. /s I am not downplaying persecution. I just won’t buy your simple-minded narrative of what is going on.

If I remember right, they were also formal employees of the Church Educational System.

No, we do not need to be careful at all when we say that we have no paid clergy. "Paid clergy" is a direct reference to someone doing this as a profession. They are receiving payment in return for services rendered. Trying to act as if this is equivalent is incredibly poor faith and this is essentially another "leak" about something that was never a secret.

This isn't me "telling them what they believe", this is looking at behavior. "Considering them to be Christian" is not equivalent to "not considering themselves the one true church". Again, why do these denominations exist at all? It's precisely because their founders believed that they were correct and that everyone else was wrong. There is no reason for them to exist otherwise. Why are those "independent denominations" "independent"? Gee, it's almost like they do not believe (be that belief expressed explicitly by statement or implicitly by behavior) that the larger, more organized groups are correct. Maybe "most do not view church and Christianity through that lens", but that seems to be more a product of cultural inertia than due to any appraisal of individual (by "individual", I mean each denomination) theology. Who said that this is "important" to me? Are you presuming that responses to a topic indicate some kind of importance? It seems to be an even weirder hill to die on that you have to attribute some kind of personal reason to my stance. Why is it so important to you that they don't believe themselves to be "the one true church", contrary to their actions and in many cases their own theology?

Russia is a nation of laws. Just because you don't agree with those laws does not make said laws non-existent. There's no such thing as being "self-evidently wrong". You can't respond to the point. No, most of the current political situation in Russia has little if anything to do with Ukraine. Again, the very law this dude got arrested under was passed BEFORE 2022. You're entire point falls to a calendar. Yes, this is like what is happening in the rest of Europe at a basic level. They're all jackboots trying to consolidate their power. One the one hand, you have some who are trying to remove foreign influence. On the other hand, you have some trying to remove their educated population by importing many thousands of people from other places in order to stamp out the culture of the former majority. Good job not understanding Godwin's law. You do understand that "the Holocaust" involved far more people than Hitler, yes? Imagine acting like calling me a "Nazi bootlicker" when you're the one downplaying persecution.

Why?

I had a cassette tape for one.

Don’t know don’t care , totally honestly.

Hmm yea I have no idea where he was dug up at. Looks like he lived in Nevada at the time. I wonder how someone crossed paths with him? I know my dad had no idea who he was until just a week or two before the conference and he was the one who organized the conference. He told me because he thought I’d be excited to hear him speak which I was. I was and still am a military aficionado. Had to be someone in Utah though. My dad and bk packer knew each other pretty well and he stopped by the house from time to time when in the valley. Probably someone packer recommended.

My Brother In Christ Jesus D. Charles Pyle and I met Carl Mosser many years ago, from memory he was Christlike and Charitable while visiting with us.

Interesting. I hadn't heard of the adventure ones, but that sounds like it was inbetween the time I would have gone and when my kids would have.

The CD I am talking about didn't come out till after I could have gone as well. They were ones I had for my kids. John Bytheway, Hank Smith. Those kind of CDs. Your speaker likely didn't come from Salt Lake. The speakers for my kid's activities and the RS activities I went to were always found by our stake leaders. But yes, Bo Gritz is a interesting choice for a youth conference.

I'm from a small town in Arizona (Mohave County) and I always wanted to go to EFY growing up and that is the 80s/90s. I did get to attend the younger "World of Adventure" which was only for pre-teen boys. There was also a "World of Adventure" for pre-teen girls. Similar to EFY/FSY but for younger ages. I think they merged those in with EFY in 1999 - https://universe.byu.edu/1999/04/12/lds-church-educational-system-makes-changes-to-youth-program

We had a youth conference here. It was a regional thing and one day long with a dance at the end. I dont remember anything about it except we had a really cool speaker. Vietnam vet. All kinds of inspiring war stories even better than Paul Dunn ( lol). Whole uniform except Garments got burned off in a bomb attack, using a vial of consecrated oil to lube weapons during an all night battle on a fire base somewhere in nam..the event was a success I suppose. No worship bands or live music. Several years later he ran for president. Learned he wasn’t even Mormon till 1984. boy what a let down it was to learn it was all lies. Can’t believe Salt lake sent us this dude. Interestingly it was 85/86 within a year give or take of the salamander letter bombings. Turns out none of our leaders had their discernment meters turned on back then. speakers name was Bo Gritz…

Yea my time I could have gone I suppose was before CDs existed…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Especially_for_Youth I was pretty sure it was going on at BYU when I first attended, which was the summer of 76. I was annoyed by the non students wandering around campus. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/4577/ John Bytheway’s master’s thesis on EFY. Has lists of teachers, classes, activities, etc.

I'm in Mesa as well. It was definitely a thing for people to go to EFY at BYU and later in Tempe and Flagstaff and maybe other places. I'm trying to remember if my daughter went to one of the local ones, that came later, here or if it was in Salt Lake. I really didn't hear about it at church till the church changed from it being a special, separate thing to an everyone does it. I don't know if that is still going or not as it has been years since my kids were that age. I heard about it more from friends, talk CDs for teens and Education Week so I could see why you might not heard about it much.

We had youth conferences when I was a kid (70s, Northern California). Had different classes with popular speakers to attend. Went to some resort in the mountains in California. Church rented a bus to get there iirc, but maybe we carpooled. Took a couple of hours. It was three or four days. Lived in dorms. There was a dance. Only speaker I remember was Keith Merrill, film guy. Had just won an Academy Award.

Everyone please remember we do t allow personal attacks. Please be above that and attack the criticism not the critic.

You did. You cited it's ordinance. I have not said that. The efforts to distract from the topic and personalize this thread are continuing. I hope you can get past this. Trans issues are ubiquitous these days. What was previously a rare and private (or else not overtly publicize) set of behaviors and preferences are now trumpeted to the skies 24/7. And social media did not exist back then, so all of us have fairly limited and provincial outlooks. Nah. Trans folks get a lot of attention these days because no small number of them go out of their way to attract and invite it. I would have much preferred to let drag queens do their thing in adult venues. We live in a pluralistic society, after all. But then came the use of these shows to sexualize and groom children. Well, that's quite problematic. I think it is very much your side of the debate that is moving heaven and earth to make trans issues a source for daily discussion and debate and news. And then there's Lili Tino. And Lia Thomas. And Imane Khelif, Laurel Hubbard, Fallon Fox, etc. The whole "men in women's sports" thing. And Dylan Mulvaney and his grotesque caricature of womanhood. And Jessica Yaniv (Jonathan Yaniv) and his various efforts to use the power of the State to coerce estheticians to wax his genitals. And the lawsuits. United States v. Skrmetti (2025) — Upheld Tennessee’s ban on puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries for minors with gender dysphoria. 6–3 decision; Court applied rational-basis review and rejected heightened scrutiny arguments. West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox (June 2026) — Upheld state laws (West Virginia and Idaho) barring transgender-identifying males from girls’/women’s school sports teams. Court held the bans do not violate the Equal Protection Clause or Title IX. Trans folks are going out of their way to attract attention in one way or another, and the media and social media accentuate and amplify it, and now people are paying attention and finding some things about the trans movement to be problematic: Tavistock GIDS (UK): The Gender Identity Development Service was shut down after the Cass Review found weak evidence for puberty blockers/hormones, poor data collection, and a rushed affirmative model. Multiple clinicians and whistleblowers raised concerns about inadequate assessment and social contagion factors. WPATH Files / internal documents: Leaked files and the “WPATH Files” (and later SOC8-related materials) showed members acknowledging weak evidence, high rates of comorbidities (autism, trauma, mental illness), inability of many minors to consent, and pressure to affirm rather than explore underlying issues. Critics describe this as institutional capture and suppression of dissent. Medicalization of minors: Rapid rise in youth referrals (especially adolescent females), use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries with limited long-term evidence of net benefit and known risks (infertility, sexual dysfunction, bone density loss, cardiovascular effects). European countries (Sweden, Finland, Norway, England) sharply restricted these interventions after systematic reviews. Desistance and detransition: Historical data showed most childhood gender dysphoria resolved by adulthood without transition; modern “affirmative” approaches and social transition may lock in identity. Growing numbers of detransitioners report inadequate exploration of trauma, autism, or same-sex attraction, plus medical regret. Social contagion / rapid-onset gender dysphoria (ROGD): Hypothesis (Lisa Littman and others) that peer groups, social media, and online communities drive sudden-onset cases in adolescents, particularly girls. Heavily contested but supported by referral pattern shifts and parent reports. Sports, prisons, and single-sex spaces: Biological males identifying as women competing in female categories, accessing women’s shelters/prisons, and using female facilities — raising fairness, safety, and privacy concerns. Multiple high-profile cases and policy reversals. Suppression of debate and research: Clinicians, researchers, and journalists (e.g., SEGM, Genspect, Cass-associated figures) facing professional retaliation, deplatforming, or loss of funding for questioning the affirmative model. Some journals and medical bodies accused of prioritizing activism over evidence. And on and on. The claim that “nothing is new, wrong, or dangerous” and that this is merely about “letting people choose their own toilets” misstates both the history and the stakes. What is new is the formal demand that sex is irrelevant and that self-declared identity must override it. For decades, restrooms were sex-segregated by near-universal social norm and expectation. People who presented ambiguously or who quietly used the facility that matched their appearance were rarely the subject of a political campaign to redefine the categories themselves. The shift came when activists and institutions began insisting that biological males who identify as women must be treated as women for access purposes, and that any sex-based boundary is illegitimate. That change is not neutral. Single-sex spaces exist because of material differences between the sexes—privacy, safety, and the documented pattern of male-pattern criminality and voyeurism. Removing the sex criterion and replacing it with an unverifiable internal state eliminates the limiting principle. Once access is based on self-identification, any male can claim entry. Evidence from prisons, shelters, sports, and multiple documented incidents shows this is not a theoretical concern. Calling enforcement of longstanding sex-based rules “the heavy hand of government” inverts the situation. The government (and institutions) is being asked to compel people to share intimate spaces on the basis of identity rather than sex. Defending the original organizing principle—sex—is not novel interference; abandoning it is the novelty. Edge cases and polite individual exceptions never required rewriting the rule for everyone. Thanks, -Smac

Oh so are you telling me this isn’t a thing? as for you thinking I’m just being judgmental… ok . Does this make anything I said not true?

Yea my pops was the stake pres in the 80s. Never heard of trips to byzoo. Must not have been a thing here and this is mesa az area