We went to a Congregational church, which didn't appear to adhere to any particular agenda, more of a "la-la, we're at church" type of thing, and while that's probably oversimplifying the matter a bit, that's about all I remember (1) when I bothered to go, which my folks gave me the choice when I became a sullen teenager and they'd rather not want me around in public to taint their image in our small town, and (2) when I bothered to stay awake through the sermons when I did go.
As a grown young adult, once I moved out-of-state and away from my parents, Sundays were the big sleep-it-off day from the excesses of the weekend. But when I met my wife, she was raised Mormon, but not really big practicing Mormon. More of a go to church on holidays and every great once in a while Mormon. And she had fallen away from it quite some time earlier, and no longer went even every great once in a while. Her family understood and was fine with that; though not particularly active, there was the strong Mormon focus on the family as the building block of society, and they were always tight. So when we got married, we chose a church near her folks house (there was no way we could have gotten married in a temple ceremony), and it was your standard Christian wedding ceremony. We made an attempt to continue to go to that church, but I frequently had to work Sundays, so we fell away from that as well.
We started having children right away, and when our second daughter was 13 months old, she was diagnosed with neuroblastoma, a childhood cancer. It turned out to be pretty severe, and she had to go in for emergency surgery to remove a large tumor. I had never given the Mormon church serious thought beyond a fleeting wish to just check it out, but her grandparents, who were more heavily involved with the church, brought in their bishop and assorted people and gave our daughter a pre-surgery blessing.
I felt at peace. I don't really know any other way to put it. As if whatever happened after that would be fine, whether it was because He was going to take her (though I fervently wished that if He was, please don't put her through a lot of pain and misery first) or whether she would pull through. And while the surgery continued and my wife and I paced the floor, I began to feel that not only would she pull through, but she would conquer every obstacle set before her. The odds were against her pretty significantly due to the severity and placement of the tumor. And sure enough, after a brief stay in the hospital and arrangements for chemotherapy, she kicked the cancer's ass, being declared cancer-free a week before her second birthday. Today, at age 18, she graduates from high school in two weeks, and her long-term assessment for cancer is about the same as yours and mine. I can't ascribe how I felt positively about her chances for overcoming all of this to any logical and rational thought, for the medical odds were not in her favor, but somehow I had faith that it would all work out just fine for her. And it has. I started asking for and receiving visits from church members, and at some point before she came out of chemotherapy, I was baptized a Mormon.
We started attending the Mormon church every Sunday (by then, I worked at a bank so had weekends off) and became involved with our ward. It felt great to be part of something larger than myself, larger than my immediate family. But it didn't last.
In the Mormon church, you are given callings. There are many jobs to do in the organization, of varying importance and power, and frequently not enough people to do them all, so it's not uncommon to hold two or three callings. One of my callings, as given to me after "much prayerful thought" by my bishop, was as secretary-treasurer of our ward-sponsored Boy Scout troop. I was fine with that; working for a bank, I made arrangements with the outgoing sec-treas for him to close the account at the existing bank and draft a check for those funds that I would deposit at the bank where I worked, that I could easily monitor the account and do what needed to be done, killing two birds with one stone. As it turned out, the amount he gave me was about two thousand dollars less than the amount that was supposed to be in there, and his records showed the account had about seven hundred dollars when in reality it was supposed to be about three grand. Not having a child in Scouts and not knowing the amount was different, I continued on in that calling for a few months, then one day received a call from a parent, inquiring if there was enough in the account to do a particular field trip. He was angry to find out about the loss, and that's when I discovered there was supposed to be a helluva lot more in the account than there was. I called the bishop and met with him and his counselors, turned over all of my records (including the check stub from the previous bank), and we brought in the angry parent. Soon it was revealed that the previous secretary-treasurer skimmed off over two thousand dollars right before the turnover, ostensibly to help his sister through a divorce with legal fees. But this guy was well-liked throughout the ward, and had been there much longer than I was, and was more well-to-do than my poor self eking out a modest living as a customer service rep at the bank. So word was spread around the ward that I was the one skimming off the till, even though the bishop, et al had all of the evidence to exonerate me of any suspicions. They assured me that once they had gotten to the bottom of this, they would clear my good name in a church service, and while I had felt taken advantage of by my predecessor, I had faith that the good men administering our ward would keep their word in full.
Imagine my chagrin when they did not.
A mention was made a month later during a church service that "a shortage of funding in the Boy Scout account had been dealt with", which meant the church wrote a check for the difference and restored the account to its proper balance. No mention made of who was responsible, or more directly, who was NOT responsible for the shortage. Because the previous sec-treas was one of the boys and I was a newcomer, I was expendable as was, by extension, my young family. I was told to not bring it up again, so as not to undermine faith of the ward members that the higher-ups knew what they were doing with the money. I was told that they were "disciplining" the previous sec-treas. I was told that as easily as word spread that they thought I had done it, word would as easily spread that I was innocent. I was told to turn over my calling as secretary-treasurer to another person, and I would receive a new calling "soon", which only exacerbated my presumed guilt when relieved of the Boy Scout calling. I was told to trust the bishop and his counselors, because they had prayed and pondered on how best to resolve this situation to everyone's mutual satisfaction. I was told to have faith.
Well, a short time thereafter, after a lengthy process begun well before I took that calling, I took another job that paid significantly better than the bank did, but required my family and I to relocate elsewhere in the state. And while we tried to continue to attend church, it just wasn't the same after that incident, and we gradually quit going. I am on-call 24/7 and am frequently working on weekends, which also made it difficult to adhere to a church schedule, as well as accept a calling. And so it looked like we just took off out of town, and no longer attend, because I "got caught".
We have since moved back to town several years ago, but live in a different ward; my old home teaching companion from our old ward told me a few years back that there was never any public accounting of what happened, that yes, we indeed were perceived to have left under a cloud, and that there are still ward members who believed I was responsible for the theft. And the previous secretary-treasurer was a bishop's counselor, last I heard.
So I no longer attend the Mormon church. But I have faith. I have faith in my family. I have an unshakable faith in the Lord...but I have no faith whatsoever in "His" servants here. It has been said that we are imperfect saints, that we will not be perfect until we pass over into His presence. But I thought we were supposed to try our best, to challenge ourselves. That we were supposed to treat each other, not just in the Church but outside it, with respect and dignity, with fairness and responsibility to the truth. I am far from perfect; I have a potty mouth, a somewhat bizarre and sick sense of humor, have a few beers every great once in a while and am frequently irreverent at the worst of times. I have no faith that the truth will ever come out in our old ward. But I have absolute faith that the truth will be revealed in His realm, and that there will be a reckoning with those who pollute and distort the truth, with those who attempt to deceive others with lies disguised as fact. I try not to be self-righteous about that belief, and wonder it to be a character flaw in myself, but I have to admit it sustains me every time I hear about similar (and worse) abuses within my church, as well with the general hypocrisy we are seeing in many churches these days.
If there is a lesson that I'm trying to impart while blathering on ad nauseum, which I'm sorry to do but I've never been good at keeping a story short, is that you should have faith in Heavenly Father, however you perceive him to be, no matter your faith or denomination...but you should probably reserve that faith just for Him, and not give it to people who claim to do His will. "I am the way", said Jesus Christ. And he was right. Not through anyone on Earth who claims to have revelations through Him, not through anyone who attempts to speak for Him, and certainly not through anyone whose interests are self-serving or merely further the bureaucracy of any church, Mormon or otherwise, that their church is more "true" than any other church, which I see as the height of hypocrisy and self-delusion. I don't ask my bishop to pray on my behalf, and while I am grateful for the prayers offered many years ago on behalf of my infant daughter, I now pray to the Lord myself, whether on bended knee in a quiet and private place, or in my car on the way to or from work. He doesn't care where and when you do, just that you do.
And while sometimes the answer doesn't always take the form of what I thought it would, the answer always is.
).
) have the promises God made to us to go by. Few people have come back from heaven and given us a map 
