The LDS church is famous for knocking on your door at 9 AM on a Saturday morning, telling you all about Jesus Christ and Joseph Smith and won't leave until they've taken up 5 minutes of your time and handed you a copy of their "Ensign" magazine. For me, a non-believer, to walk into their church, I expected them to have their sales pitch ready and fill my pockets with all of their written materials. Instead, I got nothing. I shook hands with the young door greeter, but beyond that, I didn't say a word to anyone. There were no materials to learn more about this church. There was no bulletin to let me know the order of worship or the lesson topics. For a group that is known for not being shy about getting their message out, these people were shy to this visitor.
The first thing I notice is the kids. Lots and lots of kids. Every adult couple that walked in the door had at least one small child. I estimate that 40% of those in attendance were under the age of 15. There were probably just over 100 people total, but that's tough to tell with all the little kids. A guy was giving some announcements and then asked everyone to raise their right hand as if some sort of vote was taking place. He was talking so fast that I don't know what they were voting on. There were several songs at this service, and nearly all were patriotic American songs. Maybe it was part of a theme considering that Independence Day is coming up.
The service contained three lectures from different members of the congregation. The first was a young boy who spent 15 minutes reading a letter that someone else wrote about a troubled youth who's life was changed after meeting a member of the the LDS church. The boy read in a monotone voice. I saw several yawns and heads began to nod off and several children were fussy. After he read the letter, he sat back down. I don't think anyone was paying attention to him because they were trying to quiet their own children. It was a very noisy service.
The second lecture was the most revealing about the LDS church. The lecturer was a woman who spent some time working at "The Temple," (I think in Arizona). Her talk was all about how service to the temple is the most important service we can give. We must all strive to work at the temple and being allowed inside the temple requires much preparation. "Curiosity and interest are not qualifications for being allowed inside the temple," she warned us, which ruled me out immediately. You must be interviewed by a bishop and a president before qualifying to enter the temple. You are only allowed to wear a white robe inside the temple. You must pray before entering the temple. As she is going over all of these archaic rules for being allowed inside the temple, I begin to think that this sounds cultish. She told us about how our acts of service might be used to represent us in the afterlife, or our acts could be used to represent someone who has already died. She told us that one day while at the temple, she did some service for her afterlife and then she did some service to help an anonymous deceased person's afterlife. She hopes to meet this anonymous deceased person when she gets to heaven. That was just a little creepy.
The third lecture was about the holy trinity based on Joseph Smith's "revelations". The lecturer didn't cite from The Bible and only briefly mentioned The Book of Mormon, but it was common to site conference proceedings. I'm getting the impression that divine revelation isn't enough to support this religion. That does make sense: "divine revelation" isn't enough to support any religion. Every religion has commentary to make sense of the revelation.
The service ended and I waited around afterward to see if anyone would greet me. No one did, so I left.
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