Ward clerk asked to over-count attendance each week so bishop can get ward split

REXBURG- A bishop of the Rexburg 63rd ward has been caught in a bit of an embarrassing situation. It turns out he had asked his ward clerk to inflate sacrament meeting attendance numbers in order to get his congregation split. Apparently there were a few families that the bishop just didn't want to deal with anymore.

We were able to speak with Jeff Wigand, the former clerk of the 63rd ward and whistle blower on Bishop Tom Sandefur. According to Bro. Wigand he felt like he had no choice but to speak out:

"This is important to me. The LaDaSa church is the only church in the world that still organizes geographically. What that means is you don't live in one part of town but go to church in another part of town. The gospel net is cast wide on purpose. You are meant to go to church with all the 'fishes'".

Bro. Wigand first knew something wasn't right when Bishop Sandefur began regularly complaining about the same three families during PEC meetings:

"It started gradually, with little things here and there, like someone mentioning one of the families and the bishop coughing into his hands while saying 'losers!' Or him intentionally losing their tithing checks so they'd have to write out a new one. It was just ticky-tack stuff like that." 

Then things got worse.

"I remember one week, during sacrament meeting, the bishop excused himself to go to the restroom. When he gets back his hands were kind of grimy. When church ended guess who had flat tires? That's right, all three of the families. The bishop tried to blame it on teenagers but we all knew."

The straw that broke the camel's back came next.

"The bishop pulls me aside after church and he says 'Look Jeff, I think your attendance counting has been on the low side lately. I think you've been missing the people that sit out in the foyers during sacrament. Why don't you just add on, oh, I don't know, 150 each week?' I couldn't believe it. I know how to count. I went to Ricks for crying out loud! He just wanted me to inflate the numbers so we could get the ward split and he could be rid of those families. I couldn't stomach it any longer."

That's when Jeff called us. He's hoping that this story will prompt the right people to take action.

"We can't just sit on our hands and let this type of thing happen. We need to take action", said Bro. Wigand.

Our calls to LaDaSa church spokesman Bruce McDunnough were not returned.

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