Tender Mercies

I have to say that my hearts breaks over and over and over when I see this videos that portrait the church so involved with the disable.

I will like to share my experience.

It all started with having a child with autism. He is about to turn eleven years-old in two weeks, and we have had to stop attending our ward because three mayor reason, but one being the most important.

Because our child IS autistic my life has been dedicated to make of him a positive, productive, and semi neurotypical individual. But with the emphasis in still preserving his individuality and expecting each neurotypical individual in his and our lives be moral responsible to accommodate his needs. After all it is within our constitution to treat everyone equal. I not only believe in the church but also in the law of the lad.

Five years ago we made a conscious decision to move to a house that will meet not only my son's needs but that of my elderly mother, but most importantly the needs of my child.
We bought our house as it because it met our criteria of no swimming pool, a large backyard, in a court with very little traffic, and one level floor. Our previous house was in a semi busy street, had two floors, and multileveled. Our child had escape from our house twice where the police had to called because we could find him anywhere in the neighborhood, and had climb to the railing and fallen half a floor down to our family room. The bruises of this fall eventually provoque the then preschool teacher to file child abuses charges. We had to move, our house was not suitable for our child.

We bought our house and had to wait almost two months until all the renovation was done to meet the safety environment for our child. We leveled the backyard and got rid off of anything we thought it constituted a danger for our child. We protected the fences and removed all the medium size boulder rocks afraid he might used them as weapons in one of his then very explosive behavior.

Three days after we moved in, and still finishing the adaptation of our house, and as I was driving in in late evening, realized that the grapefruit tree that is in our narrow front yard was to bushy and one could not frankly see if a child, specially mine that loved playing hide and seek and very unpredictable pop out of nowhere, could be hiding behind the tree.

The next day and when the gardeners came I had the tree trimmed and some branches cut. The tree happens to be on a city side walk, but it is our responsibility to maintain it. I too cut several of the floor touching branches only to have the next door neighbor come yelling at me asking me not to cut the tree. After I quickly explained to her my reasons, she proceeded to say "I like this tree the way it is." to which I responded, "How about I cut my side and you cut yours." A week and a half passed and she did not rimmed the tree, in lieu that accordingly with the city the truck of the tree is within in our property line, I cut the tree and waited for her to do the right thing and help me protect my child, since she did not, and the life of my child is more important than a tree, I finished trimming in a way that satisfy on a 80 percent my vision of protecting my child.

This trimming of the tree resulting in a catastrophic rampaged gossip and lies that have been circulating among the neighbors including a Mormon family that has lived in the court for over 35 years.
Later on I heard from our gardeners, our painters, and my own husband that the same lady had opposed to the painting of my house blue, the color of autism awareness, she had complained to my husband about the removing of the "new-old owners" carpet, changing th kitchen red color to blue, and ultimately complained about us building a fence to protect our child from running into their property.

Because of the amount of gossip she generated, she got all the neighbors against us, so much that one neighbor came at 9:45 p.m as our kids were running a little bit in our front yard after we had arrived from a birthday party, this neighbor came and told us "you are unfit parents because the children in this court got to bed a 8 p.m." Needless to say I did not take well his intrusion and 20 minutes later after my kids were inside let him know he was out of line, and that an apology was expected.

To make the story short, we continued since then to have major difficulties with our neighbors, until finally the last drop was all of them getting together and filed a restraining order against me, for defending myself against publicly loud verbalized insults from another neighbor, friends with the first one, and because they were accusing my Adrián of braking into an RV and a sprinkler, and all sort off complete lies. The judge was speechless in court about the restraining order, and never went through, we reached an agreement of never speak to each other again. The Mormon family signed that petition order, signed as witness of things that had not proof at all because they are, and were not true.

Within the same time the bishop was asking my husband to be the only and sole instructor of our child at church, and they started sending me inappropriate public invitations to go against Gay voting, and because I publicly declined mainly because I know what it is to have your child socially rejected from whom he is, to received and participate in this Gay Rights battle, as it is my freedom right, they drop us from church completely and we dropped them.

Now my three children are growing up without church, the church that I sacrificed to go on mission for it, the church that I waited for so long to be married in the temple, the church that was going to make my family forever. That same church has destroyed my innocence.

Lately my two non disable children have been invited to attend church, but not us, and the bishop for about two years now has never ask us or stop to our house to say how are you...tell me what happened?

This Mormon family across the street has destroyed our religion. They still attend, they are visited by the missionaries, the members, the bishop, and all...the members do not even say hi to us. ...and of course the neighbors, catholic, evangelicals, could not be happier.

There is more to this story, like a basketball hoop that we have had to endure for the last three years as our neighbor still refuses to understand that posses a potential danger for our autistic child, and a very false accusation of wanting to steal a red parrot that flew into our house, and that my mother rescued, but bottom line my own church, and the church of my husband's ancestors that crossed the USA has abandoned us, all because I have protected with nails and teeth, like we say in my home country, because I have protected my autistic child.

I am sure you will not post this message, our pain will continue to be as no responsible authority really cares about our family being bullied by those that self-proclaimed themselves servers of the Lord Jesus.

Aida Crosby, San Jose, California

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