Two Funny Rumors About Marshall (The Lighter Side of Marshall) Why do Mormons believe this stuff? Just ‘cause they want to.
View PDF Tract / The Older The Bolder – Marshall Almarode
Story #1 – Stake President Embellishes Story and Accuses Me of Not Remembering!
I was asked to help rescue a couple that were about my age. One of our long-time members called to ask if I would help one of his neighbors and her husband get out of the Mormon Church. He had counseled them not to join about four years ago. They joined anyway. One of her co-workers started witnessing to her at work a couple of years ago and now she wanted to get out, but the Mormons would not leave them alone. Imagine that! The bishop and the stake president showed up for a couple of hours. A new rumor about me was told to us that night. About seven years ago, I held signs outside of the church building that the stake president goes to. He had talked to me in the rain, and said he remembered our conversations. He said that we had discussed many issues in the 20 to 30 minutes that we talked. I told him that I didn’t specifically remember him personally. He said that we have met a couple of times and complained that I never remember his name or the topics that we have already discussed. After all these years he was upset that I “had chain sawed, or hand sawed in two, my original 1830 First Edition Book of Mormon. He was very upset about what he called “my disrespect of old books.” I told him that I had NO IDEA what he was talking about, since I have never done that. I told him that an original 1830 First Edition Book of Mormon is worth somewhere between seventy five thousand and one hundred thousand dollars if it is in decent shape.
He said, “Well, you used to have an original 1830 Book of Mormon.”
I said, “No. I never have owned one.”
He said, “Well, that’s what you told me.”
I said, “No. The oldest Book of Mormon original that I have is very thin 1869 leather spined ‘I Nephi’ printed in Brigham’s Phonetic Alphabet.”
The oldest complete Book of Mormon is an 1882 leather edition with gold gilded edges. Later he mentioned the dust falling out of the book, and I told him that this was the first and only thing that he had stated correctly, and I now finally knew the story that he was referring to. The story that I told him seven years ago went like this. In my attempt to collect a copy of each edition of the book of Mormon, I discovered an ex-RLDS person in Salt Lake City who had an enormous library of original Mormon scriptures. He let me make photocopies of each of them. I now have a complete library of all seven versions of the Book of Mormon (the oldest ones are photocopies). When I was copying his original 1837 second edition, I kept noticing that there would appear a line of dust on the photocopy window right in line with the center where the spine was. I kept having to blow it off of the glass. Eventually, I realized that this must have been prairie dust from coming across the prairie in a wagon train or a handcart. When I was about to the center of the book we came to a page that wasn’t cut on the top. It somehow slipped down enough that it didn’t get the fold cut off on the top connecting the two pages. Inside this fold lay two pages that had never been opened since it was originally published in 1837! We needed to copy those two pages, so I was going to have to cut the fold at the top and disconnect the two pages. I told the Stake President that I have a picture of me cutting the top of that page with a pair of scissors. No chain saw, no hand saw or destroyed book. In seven years, his story sure got warped. I need to ask, “Who has the memory problem?”
Why do rumors like this happen? I think it is because it is hard for Mormons to accept that the evidence proves that Mormonism is wrong. Mormons can’t be Mormons if they don’t believe Mormonism. With this presumption, Mormons continually look for faults with the person witnessing to them. They find them, even if they are just rumors. A rumor probably starts with something that I say that is factual. After it is restated over and over for years, it gets changed slightly every time it is repeated, until I finally hear about what I have supposedly done years ago. Sometimes it is so different from what truly happened I can’t even recognize the source of the story.
Story #2 – Adultery, Excommunication and My Third Wife?
I was grocery shopping one Sunday afternoon in Pasco with my wife and saw two Mormon Missionaries in the vegetable department. I said, “Hi guys, I am Marshall Almarode, Missionary to the Mormon People!”
They said, “Who?”
I repeated and they said, “Oh yah, we know aaallll about yoou.”
I said, “Tell me about me.”
So they did. They said, “You have been ex-communicated from the Mormon Church for adultery and you are on your third wife.” I chuckled because I had never heard this one yet and this was going to be fun.
I asked, “Don’t you have to be a member before you can get excommunicated?” I knew the answer and so did they.
They answered, “Absolutely.”
I answered, “You can check all the church records all you want but you will never find my name on any Mormon Church phone directory because I have never been a Mormon.” Then I asked, “Do you trust your leaders who tell you lies about Marshall to teach you the truth about God?”
At this point, they decided to leave the vegetable area and headed right toward my wife.
I called out, “Honey, guess who these guys are.”
They were in their black and whites, so it was obvious. She just smirked and I said to her, “They told me that I have been excommunicated from the Mormon Church for adultery and you are my third wife!”
She frowned, made a firm “Humph” noise and took a right down an aisle. I started laughing hysterically. I told the Mormon missionaries that she didn’t have as good of a sense of humor as I did, and she was highly offended. I told them that I wasn’t offended at all.
“As a matter of fact, I married her when I was 20 years and 13 days old. If she was really my third wife, I was an awfully busy teenager!”
At this point they decided to split up and ditch me. I followed the boldest one all the way through the store and right up to the exit talking to him about the virtues of telling the truth both secularly and spiritually. I have often wondered if these guys ever thought about how they believed a lie and how embarrassing it is to tell it to the very person who can convincingly prove it to be a lie. I wonder if they will see that the Mormon Church has lied to them about salvation, and this is much more important than what they believe about Marshall. I don’t think they were anxious to see me any time soon. I wonder what kind of stories they told their Bishop, Stake President, and Mission President. I wonder what they wrote down in their missionary diary. I went home and got out my marriage certificate and framed it along side of our wedding picture just inside the front door for all to see.