Churchhoney

Well, who knows? But as I sit here enjoying my dry toast, I'll just say that not only pregnant people like it. (crunchy, not limp and greasy is my preference) I'd also add that the Duggar girls are trained to be very weight conscious (all for the sake of the headship or the future headship, don't you know?). So I don't think it'd be surprising if Jill eats carefully when it comes to calories. They'd kinda have to do that for breakfast, too, since dinner tends to be stuff like chickenetti. ..... I remember Jessa saying that she ate just yogurt for breakfast, I think.

Well, I guess I was right. They are just stupid.

Me, too. ALthough I tend to retch first. Can't stand the sight of him. And the sound of his voice is even worse. I envision Derick, Ben and Anna, some night maybe five years down the line, all crying into their pillows while they wail, "Why did I marry one of Jim Bob Duggar's children? Why why why???!!!!"

That's not necessarily the case with Derick, though. He went after a primarily HIndu country (with a strong side of Buddhists). And I'm not sure, but I've certainly never heard that Nepal has already been overrun with Seventh Day Adventists and Mormons and Catholics that he could convert, the way a bunch of African countries have been. I'm sure he did go there in part because it's so beautiful and interesting. But I do think that the choice marks him out as having been a bit different from the Duggars, at least before he allowed himself to be swallowed whole by Jim Bob's ego.

A lack of beaches and the romance of the Himalayas might have something to do with that. Or the heavy weaponry.

Yeah, me neither. But they truly don't seem able to talk for half a minute without mentioning Jesus. You'd think they'd forget from time to time but they never seem to. It seems to me that that level of obsession could only come from something that made you so happy that you were literally high with it all the time, and I guess that that is sort of what they claim. But they don't seem to be all that happy and inspired. Heck, Ben and Jessa usually seem downright furious and miserable and they keep on doing it. It's baffling to me, too. Nevertheless, it's right there in front of our eyes. I also wonder about their apparent continued confidence that telling people about this stuff actually changes those people. How much evidence of that have they seen? I guess they do have at least a couple of leghumpers and leghumper families who've come over, perhaps because of the conversion talk -- Sierra, and maybe Marjorie Jackson's family? But they've been "sharing their message" with all and sundry for years and years now, and I wonder whether they feel they've seen success. They haven't brought Famy over to their side really, for example (seems to me, anyway). It's quite strange. Although I guess not that uncommon. I'm not sure I've seen anybody keep it up for as many years or in as large a group as the Duggs have, though.

Of course, I'm not sure you could get Derick to shut up about Jesus or stop trying to talk-convert anybody he knew wasn't a Baptist. So since that's what the mission boards clearly want in people who go over there, I don't really think he scammed anybody. Since the churches clearly define missionarying as yakyakyacking to people about Jesus, I'm sure Derick missionaried up a storm in Nepal.

It'd be nice to think of JB getting taken, but I'm not sure he minds a gold duggar (see what my subconscious did there?) as long as it's somebody who'll bend to his agenda. After all, he's likely to be the real force behind neither Derick nor Ben having a real job now. He understands and approves of grifting and drifting. What he doesn't understand is somebody wanting to actually do something, especially something that might take them and his spawn out of his sphere of influence. I think he might be more uneasy with somebody who actually was a determined missionary (or determined anything). They might fight him eventually.

I think it probably relates to the fact that Gothard only supports playing the most boring dumbed-down Mozart pieces you can find and the like, so his followers would go orchestral mainly. Although I guess he doesn't actually ban any instrument except drums. On the bright side, they'd undoubtedly sound a lot worse if they were sucking away on wind instruments.

That's the Duggar approach, I think. Keep throwing the kids at the wall and see what sticks. ETA: Well, now we know another thing that's not gonna work. Well , we don't actually know the state of JIm Bob's continence.

Ya think? I was thinking that this is mostly just my irresponsible speculation ... but I guess that's just the Derick stuff. The mission board quotes are real ....

She's somehow always the answer, isn't she? Wonder if she has a dedicated phone just for tabloid "reporters."

Imagine being deemed more boring than Jill and Jessa. The mind reels.

Who knew, indeed? But I do think you're right that that's how they see it. ...the Derick-as-dreamer idea makes a lot of sense, too, I think. I read up on all this "creative access" stuff quite a while ago -- when all the questions about Derick in Nepal started coming out, so I'm just disgorging that old stuff now. I remain amazed that some of what's said is so extremely blatant -- like the Methodist stuff about how they keep all this sort of thing secret. But I guess it doesn't surprise me a bit that this is done. There've got to be way over a hundred countries that these churches probably want to put missionaries in (maybe way more, considering that they want to put them into countries that already are Christian, albeit Catholic ... and I wonder whether they may not want to put them into countries that are trending "none" these days as well...) So there's no way that an individual denomination could put a tremendous number -- maybe a few hundred? -- into any one country, even if national laws didn't limit the number of missionary visas they'll pass out. .... But almost all countries today have populations in the millions. And there's no way a few hundred people will make much headway with numbers like that. So since they seem to take this conversion thing really seriously -- and actually seem to believe that it can be accomplished by jawing people and handing them bibles and tracts -- it's not surprising that they'll use any means necessary. At the same time there seem to be plenty of enthusiastic people like Derick running around who want to talk about Jesus, so why not enlist them? But they have to do it on the qt or risk getting their whole enterprise tossed out of a lot of countries. So if you believed in talking conversion, you'd come up with stealthy ways to send a bunch of Dericks around the world to help you do it, I guess. ETA: Should add that there's some strong disagreement with my conjecture about what Derick was doing! So, I think I've got evidence, but who really knows.

Cause Gothard says that one of his fetis.... I mean, a woman's biblical glory is a bunch of curly hair hanging down?

Well, it appears that these programs have numerous options and the mission boards work in a sort of informal way with various people who want to come into countries to convert but whose presence would swell the official "missionary" population way beyond what most countries would ever allow -- and who also don't have the full credentials that the mission boards require for their "official" missionaries. You can see from the Methodist statement that if you're going to be a tourist or a student or a Christian businessperson who's going to a country where you'd like to convert you can call them up and they'll work with you at arms' length. The Methodist statement also makes clear that they totally lie about it -- that they certainly don't name the countries in which they have these "creative access" things going on. However, they also make pretty clear that they do work with these folks -- they just don't admit it. The IMB -- which Derick was rumored to be involved with and which is Southern Baptist, like his church -- has a bunch of stuff about programs like this on their website, much more than the little bit I quoted here. For example, they note that students can contact them and they'll kinda sorta but not exactly officially work with those students to help them basically get on campus and then spend a lot of time proselytizing to their fellow students, nationals in the country they're in. Those students aren't officially "missionaries" -- they certainly wouldn't go in with that kind of visa. But they are kind of sort of IMB emissaries to the country under what IMB calls in some places a two-year, kinda sorta apprentice program. Then they have thhis other thing that they ofFIcially call "creative access" -- and it involves an IMB employee who helps foreign nationals set up and expand their businesses -- and then apparently offers some kind of tacit assistance to American I-want-to-convert-people Baptists to go and work in country for those businesses. These are the people that the paragraph I quoted above calls "field workers," which seems to mean that they're "field workers" for IMB -- although they aren't officially missionaries, and they go in on a work visa or a student visa. Notice that it says these businesses that IMB helps people set up are "a legitimate means for field workers to live in a country." That pretty clearly says to me that thse IMB "field workers" need legal cover to be in the country -- but what they're there for in fact is to hang around the workers in the business that IMB helped somebody build and try to convert those workers. If you look at the sum total of Derick's tweets and at his linkedin and so on, what you see is that he was there on a two-year student visa (clearly one of the ways that IMB -- in passages I didn't quote -- names as a possibility for would-be student missionaries to go as kind of missionary apprentices) and that he als worked for a trekking company that was apparently operated by Nepali nationals. And that he spent A LOT of his time -- maybe most of it -- just hanging out with all the people he worked with and studied with in Nepal. He not only worked with them and studied with them but he socialized with them, seeing movies and eating out and such. and that was his work as a stealth missionary. To hang around with some Nepalese up and comers -- students and business owners -- and stick to them like glue, undoubtedly talking to them about the Bible and Jesus and Baptist belief all the time. (Other things on the IMB site make a big point of talking about how you can be a wonderful tool for conversion by just talk talk talking to people.) The IMB site suggests that people can apply to them as students and that there'll be arms'-length contact between IMB and the students, which seems to suggest that IMB may point them toward some opportunities and maybe give them materials and such. If you go and work -- under that "creative access" business thing as descrbied by IMB, you clearly at some point have contact with their "creative access coordinator" who likely suggests a business for you to work in and probably helps you hook up with that business. The website doesn't say anything about exactly how that happens, but they wouldn't have the "coordinators" and call the Americans working in the business "field workers" if at some point they hadn't had contact with the IMB. .... And, Derick being a Cross Church member since childhood who wanted to be a missionary, I'm sure he did contact IMB when he got out of college -- and then they surely worked with him in this arms'-length way to help him get established in Nepal. Everything he says fits perfectly with the various IMB descriptions of how their non-missionary missionaries are to operate. .... And while I haven't seen any place where IMB flat-out says that they lie about all of this, as you can see the Methodist board does flat-out say it in the passage above. And they strongly imply that all the mission boards lie in this way. That being the case, they pretty clearly expect the people involved in these programs to lie about it also, and say they're there only as students, tourists, trekking-company employees, etc. If the individuals told the truth, the governments would be alerted to the fact that there are a lot more missionaries -- albeit not fully educated ones -- loose in their countries than they want. The churches also don't make at all clear online how they communicate with the half-missionaries about how to convert and so on. But since they consider these people part of their mission (albeit a secret part) they clearly must communicate with them at least a bit about this. I also think that the fact that Cross Church's minister -- president of the SBC -- did sort of bless the ongoing missionary work of Derick surely means that he knows that Derick did have this kind of semi-formal relationship with IMB. He surely knows that the IMB does use people in this way. And, from things that both the mission boards I quoted say, it looks to me as if they use quite a few people in this way. So it's not at all unheard of in these circles. In Central America, the Dullards aren't there under a mission board, and I don't know that S.O.S. has any relationship with an actual church mission board either. Maybe S.O.S. officially registers as a voluntourism organization or something. Or maybe, since Latin America has been Catholic for so long, they have less restrictive laws about how many Christian missionaries they'll take than countries elsewhere do. I don't know.

A lot of people are there as sort-of missionaries, though. It's called "creative access." Few countries want to admit as many people officially as missionaries as the church mission boards want. And the church mission boards aren't going to financially support people who don't have the full credentials to be missionaries anyway. So the mission boards quietly work with and advise about country entry numerous people who aren't "officially" missionaries. It's clearly a way to get lots more Christians-with-an-interest-in-conversion into countries than could be done if they all declared themselves to be missionaries. It looks to me to be pretty common, and since it's done by stealth people don't officially proclaim themselves connected to the mission groups either when they're there or when they return. Legal repercussions on the mission boards could follow if they did. A lot of crap has been talked about Derick being some kind of special liar because he was working and studying in Nepal. But it's quite clear to me from reading all these descriptions of "creative access" that it's a very common thing worldwide and that his working part-time with a trekking company and also studying language were part of such a program. He was one of THE "field workers" mentioned below, and also a student. Here's some Southern Baptist IMB commentary on it: Creative Access Coordinator The Creative Access Coordinator will assist in identifying and creating new business entities for the purpose of providing a legitimate means for field workers to live in a country. This will include developing new business plans, training field personnel on how to run a business and reviewing ways to improve an existing business’s methods of operations. Business background and experience in numerous fields is needed. http://www.imb.org/go/projects.aspx Here's Methodist description of it: "While fulfilling the Great Commission in those countries can be challenging, it is not impossible. Closed to missionaries does not mean closed to the gospel. That's where the use of the phrase "creative access" comes in. Because the Good News spreads most easily through relationships, there are opportunities for evangelism in even the most difficult of circumstances. Relationships in which the gospel can be shared can be developed by: Students from those countries who go to study in another country Christian business people whose job has taken them to those countries Teachers whose particular specialty is in demand in those countries Christian students who go to those countries to study Tourists who are able to develop contacts during brief trips to those countries Internet contacts Literature Christian workers imported from third-world countries to do menial jobs Christian radio and television broadcasting from nearby countries Some years ago we talked about various places as "closed" countries. On the surface, it did look like those places were unreached by missionaries. Today's mission strategists use phrases like limited access, restricted access, or creative access areas since, as has been noted, no country is really closed. Even though a country may be on someone's list of "closed countries," the gospel can get in through a variety of ways. It's hard to come up with a firm list or number of closed or creative access countries. One reason is that any listing of limited access countries by a mission board raises that mission board's visibility to the power structures of those particular countries. As a result, most mission boards working in such countries never talk about them by name nor do they even publish lists of those countries they consider to be creative access areas (whether they are working in them" https://home.snu.edu/~hculbert/access.htm

Well, this is a family in which, when a young kid says he'd like to be a mechanic, his parents put out word that he intends to be a "preacher mechanic." .... They're just so godly that every breath they let out emerges in the form of a "ministry" or a "mission" apparently.

Duggar always > NotDuggar

If I were Dan, seeing that post would make me want to do quite a few things that Jillymuffin would hate. I'd probably do them, too.

"Santa" is an anagram of "Satan." Just sayin.

Thanks. ... Doesn't say anything very flattering about us as a species, though, if it's even partly true. lol

One assumes. But to my eye, the response over time both from the family and from the public and media has been to carry on much much more about the Ashley Madison nonsense. My interpretation is that most people -- and certainly the media and the Duggars and probably the leg humpers -- don't really want to mess with the child molestation thing, because it's messy and confusing and horrendous and not at all titillating, while the Ashley Madison stuff is just the usual kind of fun people like to gossip about and involves "betraying poor Anna!!!" who, one must admit, at least claims to have been totally down with marrying and bearing children to the serial unpunished/untreated child molester. Etc. Seems to me that the child molestation has been swept under the rug, comparatively, by everyone involved because the other's just a much easier story for everybody to know how to react to. I think this is a pretty common thing. The more complicated -- and serious -- something is, the less attention it gets from the media. And, I think, the less attention it gets from the people directly involved and the general public as well, very often.

Well, that certainly does mean "Josh"! .... It may be more likely now than before the Ashley Madison thing, I'm thinking, too. Before, he was the face of serial child molestation. Now, he's a guy who had sex with a sex worker and liked porn. Much much easier to dismiss as no biggie.

No kidding. And they probably feel quite uncomfortable in any space that doesn't have echoes coming from several directions. In videos, at least, the house sounds like some sort of canyon with a middle school field trip going through it. And given that it's basically an auditorium, I think that's probably an accurate impression.