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She actually had to live at a gym? The poor woman.

Yes, by all means, this is no time to be soft. The decisions made during the divorce may last a life time. It is not about being punitive, it is about protecting your interest and the interest of the children. You may love her and feel compassion, but the law (her lawyer) isn't going to measure that when it strips you to the bone because they know just exactly what I said; what happens now may last a lifetime and they want the most. I hate that my own tone had to change from "please try to make it work" to "don't give an inch". It is only from watching others go through this process that I know you'll get the short end of the stick unless you hold tight. You can be compassionate later - literally, you can always choose to help more later.

Nonsense. There are plenty of fish inside the church. Try a different pond.

Possibly, but I'm still amazed at what mathematicians can prove these days. There is something called Graham's Number, which for a while was listed in the Guiness Book of World Records as the largest known number of interest to mathematicians. If you could write digits as small as electrons, just writing Graham's Number would fill up the known universe. Actually, if you could write digits as small as a Planck Volume, Graham's Number would still fill up the known universe, according to Wikipedia. The last 500 or digits of Graham's Number are known, but the first digit will probably never be known. There's a YouTube video out there where someone asks Professor Graham himself what the first digit of his famous number is, and he laughed, "Well, in binary it would be a 1." ROFL

So I did finally have a meeting with my Bishop - he is still fairly new, only in the position for about two months. And it turns out he knows my dad, they served in the same mission. He was wonderfully warm and kind, asked me how I believe I came to be inactive, we talked about that for a bit. And he said that he wants to meet with me regularly for a while, and that for a recommend it is required that he sees "a pattern of faithfulness" and that we will talk more as we go. I was so nervous before the meeting, of course I had no reason to be. Phew.

Mirkwood's images ... need I say more!

I think I've quoted this on these forums before, but it seems apropos here:

I was dealing with the concept that how is it that I have to deal with the consequences of others agency that was the catalyst for the horrible decisions I made. After talking to my Bishop and looking up this, and other stuff, I came to the following conclusions: 1) I don't know the mind of God, nor are His ways my ways. 2) To be stuck thinking about my future with my lifetime of consequences only allows one course of action that God must take, and that is to lift the consequences which is very, very, very unlikely to happen. 3) Faith and hope is accepting that God will work in ways that I cannot foresee. So while I still have to deal with the consequences of my acts, God has a plan and a path that is unknown to me but will unfold as I exercise and stretch my faith, endure and progress. 4) It all boils down to "be still and know that I am God." He's done wonders with me thus far so there's no need to think that He's done with me yet.

I would address this post specifically. As a scientist I am well aware that nothing will happen without incentive. Water will not even flow downhill without the incentive that gravity gives it to do so. The simple fact is that the human species will cease to exist in one generation is there is no incentive to reproduce. I also believe that the best environment for children to learn and continue to preserve the human species for generations is a family setting with incentive of a loving relationship existing with the biological parents of the children caring for them. I see good reason for society to add incentive for such families with strong support of marriage between a man and a woman for the purpose of preserving our species. I cannot see any logical reason for society to give equal incentive to any other relationship and think that there will be no impact to the Darwinian concept of survival of our species.

Women have a very difficult time turning down a date. Instead, they will make up excuses. I know men want an honest rejection such as, "I'm not interested in dating you." or "No, thank you." But, women find that very rude and uncomfortable. So, instead they will say things such as, "Oh, I can't. I'm going to my sister's that night." or "I can't make our date tonight...something has come up (sick, unexpected plans)." If a woman is interested in dating you, she will usually offer something else such as, "I can't that night, but what about the next night?" or "I can't bowl, but I would love to go miniature golfing."

Either that or she was watching a really boring show on the television in her bedroom. Doesn't matter... I always give people the benefit of the doubt. Always. It avoids so much needless friction in life.

A long time ago a lady I was dating called me and left a message claiming she was so sick she couldn't get out of bed. In the background I clearly heard clinking sounds from weight machines at a gym.

I wanted to be as supportive as possible, but understand you face the day-to-day reality and only you could know what is best for your family. Nobody wants to tell you to throw in the towel. In terms of custody, I found what works well is one week on, one week off. That keeps kids in a routine they can grasp. That may be more applicable to school age children. It sounds like your wife is obsessed with anti-church without supplimenting it with anything faith based. I would suggest you show your children a balanced approach at life and not try to give as much focus on church as your wife is giving as anti. Just be a good active member and find lots of other healthy physical and mental activities outside of church. That is hard for LDS to do, but I think to be fully church focused will cause a polarity in their lives and at some point they will feel to be draw to one extreme over the other. Generally, it is that anti that will win that battle. Satan is very powerful. Best wishes

Oh, you certainly mean this (let me, to make it more understandable for you, use Donald Knuth's up-arrow notation): Wait... ...wait a minute... just calculating it, and it seems to me to be a really large number, and I'm not at the end yet... puuuh, even greater than... than... ...it fills out the... how can I describe it... can you still hear me?... much greater than the number of all popcorn sub-particles in the XXL bag that Jimmi Popcorn is holding in his hands... ...and be sure he won't share even a single popcorn with you, 'cause he wants to eat all sub-particles alone!

17.3.16 Handbook 1 Surrogate Motherhood The Church strongly discourages surrogate motherhood. No discipline involved just that it is strongly discouraged

What I mean by incapacitated is that the Progressive/Elitist/Radical thought process combines moral equivalency with the "End Justifies the Means". Rape, Murder and Slavery is not wrong or right per se, it just is. That is why you see a marked difference in a President who is moved to put his own life at risk in an effort pursue justice for his murdered pilot while our President can shoot a few rounds of golf and sip a few brews with a clean conscience after Americans are publicly be-headed. Eph. 4:17-19 17 This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind,18 Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart:19 Who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.

We have come to a point where the American people have chosen a President who is so morally and intellectually incapacitated that he is unable to simply outright condemn rape, murder and slavery and those who perpetrate it.

Yeah the reasons are quite simple... After we are endowed we are instructed to wear the garments. This instruction remains in effect until a person goes through a Church disciplinary council and are instructed to no longer wear them (excommunicated) Some members who are struggling choose the stop wearing them... That is their choice and not what they should be doing. Other members who are struggling (like yourself) try to continue obeying in the areas they are not struggling with. The church encourages this (clearly) therefore all someone needs to do is show that they are a current member that has been endowed at some time in the past. Therefore there is no requirement that you be a 'Current' recommend holder to buy replacement garments.

hang in there dude! I know that feeling but have not yet gone that far and never hope to go that far as getting a divorce, everyday is a struggle.

After my husband's divorce, there was no co-parenting. It was more like parallel-parenting. He did his thing, she did her thing. My husband had custody of his kids, so he had the greater influence. His ex had been excommunicated. Both of my step-children ended up going on missions and are still very active in the church today.

I can tell my husband feels so good/honored when someone asks him for a blessing. He isn't one of the leaders of our ward, just an average, doing his duty, sort of fellow. I think of him as being the salt-of-the-earth type. I appreciate that in him, and I'm so appreciative that he is worthy to give priesthood blessings. I agree with what has been said. Ask any worthy priesthood holder you know. Most of them will be honored that you asked and happy to serve.

Reminds me of a 2002 conference I attended, put on by our local school district. This was about six months after 9/11, and the District Superintendent says to us, "I can't see the difference between Al Quaida and the Christian Coalition." Now, I know what he meant--that both want to establish theocracies. Nevertheless, I was dumbfounded--so shocked, I did not immediately react. Strangely, over the next three days no one at the conference mentioned it. So, here we are 13 years later...

Do I win something?

Courageous. Great Christian movie about the importance of fatherhood.

Silence is golden...

Sound like a failure of your imagination then

I remember that one. You might enjoy Interstellar if you haven't seen it. The "blight" was a stupid premise, but the rest of the show was very well done, I think. Watching documentaries on cosmology, theoretical physics, quantum mechanics, etc with Hawking, Krauss, Tyson, etc made a difference in understanding the plot. I found it ironic that the movie attempted to solve "gravity" relative to singularities. Probably was just a way to poke fun at Sandra Bullock's movie, Gravity.

I think you are right, Vort, I've overseen that point. ... das Mädchen, das Fräulein, das Frauchen, das Hündchen (little dog), das Jüngelchen (little boy), das Bengelein (a naughty little boy, from der Bengel), das Händchen (little hand), das Kindchen (but das Kind is neutrum, anyway), das Männchen (little, fragile man) etc. "Das Mädchen", indeed, is maybe a diminutive of "die Maid" ("das Maidchen...?"), an Old German word. On the other hand I can't see any rule or logic in general for assigning an article to a noun. Maybe there are some rules (sometimes depending on the ending of the noun, i.e. nouns ending with an "e" very often have the feminine article, but what about "der Riese"...? Yea, "der RIESE" (the giant) is BIG and STRONG, so, of course, it can't be feminine... On the other hand there exists the word "Riesin", a female Riese... Leave me alone. If you questioned me I would certainly know the correct article for 99.9 % of all German nouns, without any problem, spontanically, and without thinking about it. We simply know it. Anyway, for any mysterious reason this knowledge seems to be very important for us, as it's apparently very important for a hamster to run pointlessly miles and miles only in his traversing wheel... sorry, in its traversing wheel.

It's hard to want to remain active when one has been hurt by other active members. The greater the hurt, the greater the social standing, the greater the difficulty. My wife has overcome tremendous odds to remain active. The battle was won, and her "I care what other's think" was left dead on the battlefield to rot. These days, she sums it up like this: "I trust God to act like God, and I trust man to act like man."

It depends on the base, as Vort says. And why does a circle have 360 degrees? It results from the Babylonians with their arithmetic system based on 60. So it's pure chance, and nine is not a mysterious number, purely appearing accidentally by some algorithms shown by the "circle mystery" here in this thread. Like the so-called "Bible code" (leave me alone with that!). There is no mystery or supernatural power behind any number. It may sound ignorantly, but the nine, as any other number, is only a result of assumptions and abstractions based on human thinking, and mathematics don't substitute the cognitive knowledge. Maybe the zero is an exception: but if there is zero money in your pockets, even the zero won't tell you where your money has gone, and, as it happens so often, the answer is blowin' in the wind. PS... However, maybe I'm only jealous of those people who are good at mathematics, since I'm a rivet on this field.

American Sniper. First movie Ive seen in the theater in a long time. It was very good.

Spices are good but can be troublesome to stupid chefs. A while back I read that cinnamon has great health benefits. One web site pretty much claimed that cinnamon can cure anything except death. Late one night I was in bed eating a big bowl of oatmeal. It was probably my dinner that night. I suddenly realized that I had forgotten to put cinnamon on the oatmeal, so I sneaked back into the darkened kitchen, opened the cupboard, and took out the little plastic jar of brown powder. I put a lot on the oatmeal, maybe 2 tablespoons. Brought it back to bed and put a big spoonful into my mouth. I immediately gagged so hard that oatmeal started dribbling down my chin and falling onto my pajamas and my blanket. That "brown powder" I thought was cinnamon was not. It was turmeric. All the labels in my kitchen face forward now.

Oh, be still my math loving heart! I recently taught these divisibility rules to my students this year. The number 3 is pretty similar too, in base 10. The difference being that the sum of the digits is a multiple of 3.

One belief that we share is that God sometimes heals by divine intervention. This one even the doctors are calling a miracle: http://l.facebook.com/l/8AQFTXfcU/www.usatoday.com/media/cinematic/video/22895679/mom-prays-dead-son-comes-back-to-life/

No I do not plan my vacations around church

Well, I'll say one thing for him; he's got more people praying than any President I can remember. Granted, a lot are praying that he'll go away and take Biden with him, but still.

Handbook 2 simply states: Similar wording is used for Artificial Insemination and In Vitro Fertilization when it involves sperm not from the husband, also with regards to Sperm Donation and Surgical Sterilization (including Vasectomy) as an elective birth control. Contrast that with the entry on abortion, which includes:

Welcome to the site !!!

There is a couple in my ward celebrating 12 yrs of marriage after meeting on and LDS site (in different countries). My son married after meeting on an LDS site (also different countries). Although not ideal and maybe the matches are not ideal, neither were the circumstances. I think you being in Scotland, also is not the ideal circumstance, so you have to expect some hiccups. Personally, I'd avoid any guy in a heavy LDS community like Utah or parts of other western USA states. It may offend many on this site for me saying that, but fact is women outnumber men by far. A guy still searching there isn't looking.

Wow. Chat rooms are a magnet for all kinds of trouble. I once worked with a guy (not LDS) who spent a lot of time in chat rooms. He struck up a conversation with a woman who claimed she was 21, and he very stupidly began asking her questions about her body. They flirted online for a few days and then drifted apart. But she wasn't a 21-year-old woman. She was a 14-year-old girl, and copies of all her chats were saved as transcripts on her computer. Three years later, the girl's parents found these chat transcripts with my co-worker's juicy comments and online name. The parents called the police, who called in specialists who tracked down my co-worker. He came home one night from work and found his house sealed off with yellow tape. His wife and kids were hysterical as the cops carted off every computer in the house and then arrested him. This co-worker didn't go to jail, but he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to 3 months in some strange halfway house thing where he could leave only to go to work. He told his kids he was on a 3-month business trip so they wouldn't find out. The halfway house itself sounded charming... one of the house rules was "Do not murder other residents" (or so he claimed). He got through it, but now he has a criminal record. I found out about all this because he used me as a reference for a new job and he figured I should know the whole story. But a criminal record is a big deal, even in California. When I met this guy, he was a high-tech software puke pulling down $100K+ a year. The last I heard he was peddling water heaters. All from a few unwise minutes in a chat room.

Oh no... the polar bear in my profile picture is not wearing a shirt. Or pants.

Committed, believing Catholics tend to be great people, so yes, they make great Mormons. In my experience as a missionary in Italy, most baptized members tended to be inactive, and a fairly high percentage more or less went back to the Catholic Church, at least ritually speaking. But faithful Italian members are as wonderful as any other faithful members. And as an added bonus, they speak Italian fluently.

I'm telling you, convert the Pope, and the problems will go away. Go big or go home.

Very nice

Peace!

What I am about to say sounds astounding, but I've heard it several times from people I trust, so I assume it's accurate. When people visit a church for the first time, research shows that they make a decision about that church within something like 90 seconds. Before the service even begins, they have sized up the other people, pawed through the hymnal, sniffed around, and categorized the church as either "dump" or "keep." Obviously some people change their minds with time, but the point is that first impressions are really, really powerful and can be extremely deceptive. Even after repeated visits, the echoes of first impressions can still ring loudly in your ears. Why don't you feel welcomed? Is it because someone has treated you in some unfavorable way, or because of an absence of favorable treatment that you were expecting? In either case, unless you know with total certainty that other people are intentionally making you feel unwelcome, it might make sense to give them the benefit of the doubt and keep trying until you get some traction in the ward. Nobody feels welcome in a congregation of strangers. But the solution is to turn some of the strangers into friends, not to dump the congregation, and certainly not to wait until someone else notices you. Hope your daughter is doing well. She will learn from the examples you set, so act wisely.