Mormons run into trouble in Mexico

I thought something was a little strange here and this LA Times story explains a lot. I live in a gated compound which holds 6 houses. My neighbors across and down the street are Mormon officials. The Mormons are big in Oaxaca. I know of 4 churches in the city with the main church being closest to my home. My neighbors are Mexican from Mexico City, originally.

This couple is the nicest you would want to find. They gave my kids a beautifully illustrated book of the Bible for Christmas. It is really quite nice and does not contain anything that would set my wife's Roman Catholic hair on fire. They also gave us The Book of Mormon (in Spanish) which we thanked them for and then put away. Out of sight, out of mind.

They told us two weeks ago that the church had purchased some land a little closer to the church and was building its own gated and guarded compound. The "guarded" description got my attention a bit because, while we do not employ guards, the entire compound is ringed with a 5-strand electric fence all around the tops of the walls which completely encircle the houses and is connected to an alarm. Every two or three weeks an unlucky or careless cat will get zapped and someone has to go outside and reset the blaring alarm.

Why would these nice people think they would need to hire guards? We've never had a spot of trouble in the compound. Also, the land that the church bought is commercial property and outrageously expensive by US standards. The property that they will be building on is surrounded by 4 autombile dealerships, an Office Depot, a KFC and a Burger King. Not exactly prime residential space. Very strange.

After reading the LAT article, I see that they are anticipating trouble. I'll skip all the details, read the article, but I think the Mormons may be anticipating possible violence against them by people who feel betrayed. I've always thought it was a sad spectacle that a people with brown skin should aspire to be "saved" so that, when they travel to that great beyond, their skin might be made white.

And I also have always itched to debate a Mormon on the Fancher Party massacre at Mountain Meadows, Utah, in 1857 and the role in it of John D. Lee, adopted son of Brigham Young. For me, until the Mormon church admits responsibility for the massacre of 120 mostly women and children pioneers and the role of Brigham Young in ordering the massacre and of John D. Lee's leading the Mormon killers, I have little use for the faithful.

Until, like, 1999, the Mormon church insisted that Indians had done the dirty deed, in spite of the fact that Lee was tried and hung for the massacre some 20 years after the fact. In 1999, excavations at the massacre site showed that skeletons unearthed there demonstrated massive evidence of gunshot wounds, not hatchet or club wounds as would have been inflicted by Indians. There was no evidence found of any arrowhead or spear point wounds, either.

The last I heard, the Mormon church has admitted only to the possible involvement of some Mormons "acting independently" along with the Indians. The worst thing that I've heard is that Brigham Young ordered the massacre and then blamed the Indians as a demonstration to the federal government that only he could control the Indians. Young was trying to set up and control a theocracy independent of the federal government. Don't rely upon Wikipedia on this. It's been thoroughly whitewashed.

TAGS: Mormons, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Mexico, Central America, South America, Polynesia, Brigham Young, John D. Lee, Mountain Meadows Massacre