Therein lies the biggest change to our lives after joining the church...we started GOING to church. Not just on Sundays, either. Back when my parents joined the church, the meetings were split up throughout the week. Sacrament meeting on Sunday morning, Sunday school on Sunday afternoon. During the week was primary and Relief Society meetings. It was a week-long affair. My dad was called to be a ward missionary and my mom was called to work in the ward library. The bishopric knew what they were doing. They had a new family in the church and to help ensure that they were there each week, they gave them callings that required their presence. My dad always joked that he was called as a ward missionary because he was so resistant to the missionaries initially. Karma.
I also recall an instance when my mom was Relief Society President. The Relief Society is the female arm of the church. The Bouchers were in our ward and my mom had angered Brother Boucher because she was telling Sister Boucher that she needed to do better at completing her Visiting Teaching. I remember Brother Boucher well. He was short-tempered and arrogant. His daughter, Michelle, was my age and I would sometimes spend time at their home. Well, I have a clear image in my head of Brother Boucher standing on our front lawn, yelling at my mom as she stood on the porch behind my dad, telling her to leave his wife alone. Aaah...such Christ-like love. (In retrospect, I can ABSOLUTELY see my passive-aggressive mother giving Sister Boucher a hard time about her numbers...it was her way)
All of this to say, my parents took their 'callings' seriously and it kept them busy - not only on Sundays - they were away from home often. My older brother, Ken, has always been fairly open about his resentment toward the church for taking his parents away when he needed them the most. This is a fair argument. He was diagnosed with hyperactivity (this was the 80's - it was certainly ADHD) and was on Ritalin for most of his formative years. He needed his parents around. But the church needed them, too.
When I was a kid, sacrament meeting would sometimes start with a primary kid standing at the front of the chapel with their arms folded, being an example of reverence. When it was my turn, I was sure to record the experience in my journal (October 31, 1982):
"Today in church I was standing in the quire [choir] seats. I had to say this, 'Jesus taught that service for others is often done in small and quiet deeds. When he blessed the little children, healed the sick, he always did it quietly and often said 'Go and tell no one'".
I remember having to memorize that phrase and say it in front of the entire congregation. Thus, my illustrious career of giving talks in front of large groups of people was born.
My parents started going to the temple when they qualified for temple recommends, the 'pass' or 'card' required for entry. We lived in Spokane. The nearest temple was in Seattle, easily a 6-7 hour drive. So, in order to attend the temple, they would leave us three kids with people they knew. I stress 'people THEY knew', because they were often NOT people WE knew. We would be dropped off for a weekend and that was that. I suppose this was normal in the early '80's to just leave your children with another family of the same faith and not worry about whether there was a pedophile in the midst. I remember being left with a family that would not allow me to sleep in my undershirt, saying that qualified as underwear and 'we don't sleep in underwear'. So I put on my shirt to sleep. I remember being left with the Buchanan's, who I can only describe as a hippie Mormon family. They didn't believe in medicine, they slept on bare, dirty mattresses and had no lamp shades on their lamps. They grew their own food and they didn't 'believe in' sugar - so breakfast was rolled oats (from their food storage bins, no doubt) with no sugar. To say the least, I was never terribly excited when my parents announced that they were going to the temple and leaving us behind.
In addition to the frequent church and temple outings, some things changed at home as well. My parents both smoked when I was a child. They both quit before joining the church. My mom was a Dr. Pepper addict, and while there is no specific mention of caffeinated beverages being taboo in the Word of Wisdom (the Mormon health code), she interpreted it to be so. So she quit drinking Dr. Pepper. My mom also took up cross-stitch, a common Mormon woman past-time in the '80's. Within months, our house was adorned with "Families are Forever" and "I am a Child of God" cross-stitch pieces. These were joined by pictures of the temple, usually the Oakland temple. We were supposed to have Family Home Evening now, every Monday. We were new to this game, so one of our FHE nights was a double feature at the drive-in: The Attack of the Killer Tomatoes and Nude Bomb. Classic. Sometimes we went to see movies, which was a real treat for my family, and sometimes we would stay home and my dad would throw together a lesson of some sort and then he would make rice crispy treats. I never minded FHE, mostly because my parents kept it fun for us. Lessons were short and always followed by a treat.
We had home teachers now. I remember Brother Erickson - he was bald. I remember Brother Mainard. He took a liking to me and gave me a hymnal in Spanish. Here is an entry from my journal, dated October 27th, 1982:
"Tonight Brother Erickson came over and taught us a lesson about how to stay in the church. It was nice. He showed us a picture of George Albert Smith."
I remember some activities as a kid. A haunted house at Halloween - made up in the hallways of the church I was baptized in. A showing of "The Hobbit" (original cartoon) movie complete with popcorn and licorice ropes. And I remember a Daddy-Daughter luau.
I don't remember a lot of new rules being instituted in our home as a result of joining the church. Not as a child, anyway. Even though modesty was pushed onto me heavily as a teen, I did not adhere to any strict standards of dress as a kid. I had tank tops and tube tops that I wore with regularity, especially in the summer. I wore short shorts and short skirts. I guess I am really grateful that my parents did not push this modesty standard on me as a child, because I was just a kid, after all. I was allowed to dress as I pleased. I guess the main rule we adhered to was going to church. That wasn't really an option. We also didn't watch R-rated movies, but we didn't watch a lot of movies to begin with. Even Nude Bomb was PG back in the day.
Another big change in our house revolved around babies. Yes, babies. The LDS church had a social services arm that involved foster care. My parents signed up right away. We would get brand new babies - just days old - and they would stay with us while their (LDS) adoption was being arranged. Sometimes we had a baby for a day or two, and sometimes we had them for months. Either way, by the time my parents stopped participating in the program, they had fostered over 45 babies. It was a challenge having a newborn baby in the house. My mom would often task me to be with them overnight so she could get a full night's rest. I changed more diapers in my formative years than I ever did as a mother. One of our foster babies was a cute little baby from Umatilla, Oregon. A Native American baby boy. We fostered him for a while and eventually adopted him. It was harder to find permanent homes for the babies that weren't caucasian. That is how Tony became my brother. In high school, I got a message that the foster baby at our house at the time, Jonathan, never woke up. They said it was SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome). My parents didn't take any more babies after that.
One of the biggest changes after joining the church would be the size of our family. We were a family of five when my parents joined the church. By the time all was said and done, we would be a family of nine. Members of the church are encouraged to have large families and my parents took it to heart. My brother, Tony, was adopted in 1980, followed by the births of Ray Jr, Erin & Amy. I love them all to pieces. I will always be grateful that the influence of the church brought them into my life.
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