I pushed the points of the fallibility of man and we discussed how Moses, after 40 years of keeping his people alive in the desert, was barred by God from the Promised Land and why this happened and why Aaron took over instead. We discussed the fallibility of other Old Testament prophets as well. I wanted them to be wary of this and see for themselves that even if someone starts out bad and turns good or starts out good, they can turn bad. Everyone.
They agreed.
I brought up the point that one's relationship with God is highly personal and that no man can tell you what God's plan for your life would be. We discussed examples. They also agreed. Then I brought up that it is not up to Man to say where God will appear and how and tell God what to do. My example was innocent enough and easy for them to agree, but it brought something else to their minds which they did not discuss with me. I think it hit some chord with them and caused some cognitive dissonance, but I don't know enough about their religion to know what I hit.
They call themselves elders because that's the level of their special
priesthood powers - various degrees authorize the holder to heal, protect, bless the sacraments, dedicate buildings and graves, drive away evil, curse, prophesy the future, etc. Every man with this has the ability to communicate straight with God and potentially give Him directions - and their prayer often sounds like that's exactly what they're doing. Men only, of course - profound sexism is baked into their beliefs.
In general, I think I had some degree of success with them. They will be wary of supposedly good men or men who start out good leading their church who order illegal, abusive or other abusive things. They see that there are good people in the world who are not Mormons, too, and I put some seeds of doubts there about things they took for granted as absolute truths and helped them to see things differently.
Exmo of many years here - you definitely did, and probably triggered their cogdis on a current issue too. They don't have to have gay friends, or be gay themselves, to be torn by the
most recent example of the so-called church's fallibility of revelation. People are leaving over this in droves, entire families at once, so many that the authorities are giving public talks like
this. (LDS source)
There are many, many more problems on top of that, though. The process of mission prep does it for plenty of kids - they get taught how they're supposed to defend against
contradictions and issues in their beliefs and history that they've never even
heard of before. That, plus getting outside of their Mormon bubble, seeing that 'gentiles' are people too, and meeting people like you who are kind but make points they aren't trained to refute starts more of them questioning than the senile old men and their enablers who run the whole thing will ever admit. They catch a phenomenal amount of shit out there, too, and that makes them question giving up two years of their lives for it. They are only allowed to call home twice a year in most areas, and other communications are severely restricted. They don't even get to go home for the funeral if a parent or sibling dies!
I left at 18 in January, 1978 just a few months before that decade's old farts had a
conveniently timed 'revelation' that God had changed his mind and black members could now be 'given' the priesthood. Cited that in my excommunication hearing - at the time, you couldn't just resign and leave. Someone had to sue to get them to change that!
ETA:
On its web site, the church states that "the standard doctrine of the church is monogamy" and that polygamy was a temporary exception to the rule. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormonism_and_polygamy
This is actually backwards - not surprising, as faithful Mormons patrol Wikipedia the way Scientology used to be able to do. This lands squarely under what Mormon culture calls '
lying for the Lord.'
Expressed in Mormonese, plural marriage has only been suspended in the present dispensation and will be practiced again on earth when God gives the appropriate revelation (presumably when the theocracy Brigham Young went west to build is established.) And it most definitely continues to this day to be absolutely OK in heaven, and practiced in the temples. Temple marriage, or celestial marriage for time and all eternity, is an absolute requirement to reach the highest degree of glory in the LDS plan of salvation; in the current dispensation, widowed men can be (and are, quite commonly) sealed in the temple for time and all eternity to additional wives. Widowed women, however, can only be sealed to one husband, to whom they will belong (yep, like property, bearing children eternally) in the celestial kingdom. Another reason I got out!
!
El Ron was enamored with the fact that Hisself published millions upon millions of words. However, according to those words, there is NO flexibility and plurality is a "High Crime" against Scn and Source and is "SP".
Thanks for catching that. FLDS is what I meant as the one that has not changed that the other Mormon church is blamed for their actions, including a recent news article about child abuse. It turned out to be FLDS. 
I can't believe people do this, but plenty do. It's ridiculous.
