[JJ]

Anyone who denies that marriages arranged by the elders is not a common practice in the LC is lying. I witnessed or was told about them by those whose marriages were arranged many times from 1985-2015. In fact it was expected that at the least one seek the elders' blessing, if not arrangement.

My own marriage was not arranged, because I had met my wife-to-be before coming into TLR, and we came in together while we were dating. An elder got involved within a few months to warn us to stop dating or get married. So, we stopped dating, but got married 5 years later after we both had finished college. Our marriage has been great by the way. And, the warning was a good thing at the time because of our young age and temptation.

One of the last things I saw before I left in 2015 was that a long-time and faithful Chinese brother from Anaheim had a big shot elder from Taipai arrange a marriage for his daughter to a brother he didn't know from Taipai. Then when she moved to Taipai to marry the brother they kept her contact information secret from him, so he didn't know how to talk to her in spite of repeated pleas for information.

Evangelical can defend this TLR practice all he wants. It stinks and has done a tremendous amount of damage to unsuspecting dear saints like Awareness and Bradley.

This is another thing that shouts "cult, cult, cult!" to me.