Dec 8, 2011
Advice
I was 9 or 10 that summer. I lived to swim, ride my bike, play with my dolls and cars, read and daydream. The future seemed far away and church was just something I went to. We were at a ward campout when the bishop pulled me aside to ask how I was doing. My dad was living in LA that year, going to school, and the rest of us had stayed behind. My mom was working crazy hours as a dance instructor and choreographer and I am sure the people around us worried about her, all alone with six kids under 11 years old, and about us. Bishop was my dad’s climbing buddy, an English professor at the local college and a great guy, the first bishop to stick in my brain. I remember the conversation. We sat on a couple of big rocks surrounded by pine trees, people from the ward coming and going around us and he told me I should always remember this advice:
Only I forgot.
Twenty-eight years later and it still bothers me. Bishop Peterson gave me his life’s wisdom and I only had the sense to remember that he told me, not what.
Of course, it is possible that what he told me was not entirely worth remembering.
I have heard a lot of counsel from bishops and stake presidents and mission presidents and others since then. Some of it has been good. And some has been awful. I once made something of a hobby of collecting the bad advice passed by visiting authorities at stake conferences. Bad advice that was, inevitably, taken to heart and put into practice by the good souls who sat and listened and didn’t question — like the stake who quit passing the sacrament outside of the chapel (no matter what) because if people wanted to partake of the sacrament they would have been to church on time and in their seats and nothing (NOTHING) would have taken them out of those seats before the sacrament was passed — or, the stake in which all snacks or liquids of any kind (other than the sacrament, of course) were outlawed from the chapel — or the stake in which it was suggested that the only reason why it was acceptable to miss church was (maybe) if you were actually in labor.
Happily, some of the advice I have received personally has been very good. But not all of it.
So here, in the spirit of sharing, is the best and worst advice I have received from LDS church leaders:
Worst:
3: The stake president who welcomed me home from my mission (my parents moved from one place I had never lived to another while I was away, so I didn’t know this man at all) was kind enough to dispense a great deal of advice during my exit interview and report to the high counsel. I’m counting it all as one pile of bad advice. He said: mothers who work don’t send their children on missions (my mother worked at the time and had three missionaries out at once); men with beards don’t understand the gospel (said in front of my bearded father); and, best of all, that you can tell who has not been a good missionary by who chooses to come home and where something other than a white shirt and tie to church.
2: The bishop didn’t even have the guts to give this to me himself, but, when I was a teenager, suffering from terrible acne, he had the audacity to give my mother a book on proper hygiene to pass along to me. Such a help! Both solved my acne problem (because, certainly, it had never occurred to me to wash my face) and made me feel real good about myself.
1: From my mission president (who was really a good man in many, many ways – see below): Stay on your mission! Even though I was in the midst of a major depression and breakdown and asked to be sent home just two months early . . . He said I would regret going home. 
I regret staying.
Best
3: It was hard to walk into the bishop’s office and tell him that I just didn’t believe the church was true. Imagine my relief when his reply was that “everyone has to follow their own path”. He bore his testimony and told me he loved me and let me go.
2: When my husband and I got engaged, our branch president and the stake president were both very, very pointed in making sure we understood one thing: It was (and is) nobody’s business what we did in the bedroom or when or if we chose to use birth control AND if anyone told us otherwise, they were WRONG. (their emphasis).
1: ”You are trying way too hard.” From my mission president. On my mission. To me and my companion. His advice: Chill out and let the work be more a joy than a labor. I may be working for a different team now, but it is still good advice.