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So I've been studying Russian off and on since high school. I'm already fluent in Spanish and wanted to branch out. I mean, I've heard of people who know a dozen languages, so getting into a third can't be so bad, right? So I have been feeling pretty confident and decided to look online for a pen pal in Russia. I did find one, and she is also studying English. She suggested a live chat on the phone. And this afternoon, I discovered just how awful my Russian still is. *sigh* Ah well. Could have been worse, I suppose. I guess I need to spend more time with Duolingo than I have been..

The earth is pretty cool. I never thought the weather channel could be cool, but I was wrong. https://weather.com/news/trending/video/amazing-before-and-after-images-of-ridgecrest-earthquake-area

This... Note that when the Church was driven out and then resettled near people (Like Clay County) they asked for and received permission first. There is a huge difference between settling a place where no one is and having to build up infrastructure... (That is called Pioneering) And settling in a place were people already live and you are not welcome. (That is called invasion) Now one might say the pioneers invaded the place of the Native Americans... That could be a fair comparison... But then you have to convince me that experience the Native Americans had with people taking their lands is something I should want or should just let happen.

If modern illegal immigrants are like the Anglo-European pioneers, that makes us like the Utes and the Navajo and the Piutes—no? ‘Cause as I recall, things didn’t end up well for them. The Church, as a transnational organization, naturally has to take a broader view. And of course, from a prophecy standpoint—I think one can extrapolate that there *will* be bad relations (bloodshed?) between Latin Americans (seed of Manasseh/Lamanites) and euro-Americans (seed of Ephraim). So the Church’s best course of action is neutrality. But I am an American as well as a Mormon; so if I can’t fight the invasion and cultural subversion of my country outright—I at least reserve the right to lament it.

This is an idiotic argument. ILLEGAL is a term that denotes the existence of an immigration LAW that somebody broke. Settlers, colonizers, pioneers et. al., did not break any law to claim a piece of property. Now, Conquerors did not break laws they were bound to - they broke somebody else's laws and defeated those who made the laws - by conquest - so they can supersede the law with their own version of it. Illegal immigrants have more in common with Conquerors than Pioneers.

I'm impressed. I think Russian is hard for English-speaking people. I know whole books have been written on its verbs of motion and when to use its perfective and imperfective aspects. The hardest part for me was memorizing the stress on syllables, which was utterly unpredictable and which often bounced around like crazy when you conjugated verbs and declined nouns. I finally gave up, although I did go to Moscow with a friend a few years ago and was thrilled to recognize some words on buildings, even though the most common word seemed to be "casino." I once heard a story that German linguists in the 19th century started to think that Latin and Greek were hoaxes, because it was inconceivable to them that people could memorize so many declensions and conjugations, let alone blurt them out in rapid speech But then they found peasants in Russia who were rapidly speaking a grammatically complex language that was at least as inflected as Latin and Greek, it not more so. Who knows if that's a true story, but it rings true to me. But I think you should keep studying. Being bilingual is good for your brain and by some reports may even slow dementia... if the grammar doesn't give you dementia first.

Scott, I guess the notion I have, that you seem to not have, is that stuff wasn't settled back in the day. Nations were vying for things, and just because one nation considered something "theirs" didn't make it so. So yes, Mexico thought of it as Mexico, and yes, maps called it either Mexico or the Mexican territories, but it was hardly settled. "We're gonna go settle in Mexico" - said lots of people in the 1800's "You can't, we claim that land and you're not Mexicans" - said the people running Mexico "We can't - we're not Mexicans!" - said nobody, ever, back in the 1800's. Humans disagreeing with each other over who gets what bit of ground makes up quite a bit of our history, and no small amount of our reasons for killing each other. Again, different state of affairs than Venezuelan refugees wanting into the US in the 21st century.

Heck no. Murder is murder. That said, I wouldn't want to be the deciding vote on a jury if it had been something like meth. I mean, cocaine is bad, but the horror of meth addiction cannot be overstated.

An internet search found a couple of Wikipedia pages (These obviously aren't the same sources that Scott is alluding to, but they should provide some reading material): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Mexico https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Colonization_Law The general colonization law is particularly interesting. It specifically mentions US colonists in Texas as being illegally there, but that, of course, would kind of be the start of the whole Mexican/American conflict until the mid 19th century. The article talks about New Spain/Mexico's concerns with the lack of Mexican colonization of these lands and whether they should allow or encourage foreign settlement. It appears that, as they decided to allow (with restrictions) foreign settlement, the hope was that these foreigners would assimilate into Mexico. It appears that many did not. The Mormon migration occurred late in the period (in the middle of the Mexican American war). At the time, the question of legality is probably as much about who you think will win the war as what laws are technically on the books.

Everything I said is in our Church History. I don't know much about the Mexican war, and I'd like to know more. You're speaking authoritatively @Scott, and you sound like you've got a few brain cells to rub together. But underlining the word "everything" does not a cited source make. I second Mores' call for sources. Reading his now. Ok, you're sounding less and less like you know what you're talking about. The word "edict" doesn't appear in the US Constitution...

Yes. No. Yes.

In our day and age there appears to be a lot of people seeking to justify/rationalize a paradigm rather than seeking to find truth. The Pioneers were not illegal immigrants. The only way you could liken this thought to illegal immigration is the Pioneers who traveled from Europe and other countries to travel to "Zion." Did these Pioneers come over illegally? No. They went through proper channels to come to the US, and then traveled to where they could worship their God according to the dictates of their conscience. The link being drawn is a false link, a justification to rationalize a paradigm. If you want to start a new life in America, go through proper channels. Should there be compassion, mercy, justice? Yes, all three are important. If I want to start a new life in Europe, to create a better life for my family (or to find asylum) then I need to go through the proper channels. In times of war, I have two choices -- fight or flee. If I flee, and I am fleeing to another country that has established laws then I am at the mercy and compassion of the country I am fleeing to. The Book of Mormon even teaches this principle with the people of Ammon. They do not come over to the land of Nephi and expect the Nephites to take them in. They at first say the following when thinking of going to the land of the Nephites, "Yea, if the Lord saith unto us go, we will go down unto our brethren, and we will be their slaves..." They also discuss their willingness to perish in the land if the Nephites or the Lord did not say "go" or allow them to come into their land. Part of life is to draw proper comparisons, not comparisons that further justify and rationalize a paradigm.

Joseph Smith is alleged to have said something about finding the kernel of truth in the midst of outlandish allegations against. Along those kinds of "devil's advocate" lines, might there be some truth (especially if we allow presentism to inform our view of history) to the allegations? The Mormon migration began right in the midst of the Mexican American war and the furor of Manifest Destiny. Our pioneers even sent a battalion to serve in the Mexican American war, though they never participated in any actual conflict. My impression has been that the early LDS pioneers were a mostly pro-US bunch who, I expect, would have celebrated that Utah came under US jurisdiction at the end of the Mexican American war. It seems that with the Oregon territory, the US's strategy was to send as many colonizers as they could to legitimize its claim to the territory. While the Mormons were probably thinking more about getting away from persecution rather than helping the US stake a claim to the Great Basin desert, that feels like a partial outgrowth of settling the Salt Lake Valley. Though, this sort of strategy towards a "hostile takeover" feels a bit different from illegal immigration. Perhaps the kernel of truth lies in understanding how the US colonization of Oregon, California, and Utah was part of Mexico agreeing to cede much of the western/southwestern US to the US at the end of the Mexican American war. Again, I think it would be important to avoid presentism, but try to understand it in the midst of 19th century US and Mexican and British politics and ideologies.

This one is from Japan:

Ah, yes. The nonviolent, peace-loving American Indian native aborigines opened their arms to the white settlers, only to be cruelly conquered. If we teach that to our children for enough generations, eventually they'll believe it. Do you suppose that the ancestors of the modern so-called Native Americans arrived here, that they found a virgin land, wholly unoccupied by any other human beings? Or do you think that maybe they, you know, fought and killed and raped and pillaged and otherwise conquered their way to supremacy? Where, exactly, is the moral superiority the Left claims against the descendants of those white settlers? Because I don't see it.

Yep. The whole of human history is an endless cycle of groups of humans conquering each other's groups and plundering each other's resources. Native Americans in the plains in the 1700-1800s were on the more nomadic end of things. Pioneers would have had a different story if they were moving into, say, the Incan empire at the height of it's power. I wish the 'open borders' brigade would crack a few history books. Because in terms of defending our way of life against newcomers, we're moving further away from the Mayans, and closer to the Navajo.

This kind of thing is not about finding a way for it to be legal. This kind of thing would be about justifying capital punishment to be worth it.

Native American tribes conquered each other's tribes and plundered each other's resources.

LOL. Yes, in the second half of my original post when I wondered whether Liberace's first misbehavin' girlfriend was not a woman, I meant "she" was probably a man, not an underage girl or something else. But I probably shouldn't laugh. I read a biography of Liberace some years ago, and the only thing I remember (besides Ms. Haven) is that I would not want to live his life.

Well, locally, we've got a jeweler named Swindle and an accountant named Cheatham.

Again: Part of loving and respecting a person is wanting to see their emotional and spiritual needs be met. Even if it involved that person not being at your side 24/7 or any activity that's not your favorite. My husband and I have different faiths, but he wants me to go to my church because he knows me, and vise versa. When you truly love & respect your spouse, you want to see their needs met.

Well, that was a shocker to read. I had no idea. I wish The Book of Mormon Movie had used animated maps to segue between scenes... maybe then I'd have been clued in. Your reasoning seems sound to me, but I'm always nervous about smearing the Sabbath across lots of time zones. A few years ago Samoa decided to bend the International Date Line the other way around so it would share the same day with Australia, New Zealand, and other neighboring nations. Samoans went to sleep on December 29th and woke up on December 31st. (I have an uncle who did the same thing once, but under different circumstances.) The loss of one day wasn't too painful, but the Seventh-day Adventists in Samoa had a real dilemma, since the next Sabbath would be only 6 days away from the previous Sabbath, not the usual 7. On the surface, this seems like a silly thing to worry about, but if you dig down you'd find that the real debate was whether they should follow the Eastern order or the Western order for defining the Sabbath. I'm too lazy to Google for the details, but I seem to recall that it actually split the church. I doubt this would have been an issue for the Nephites, because they didn't go all the way around the world (I guess) and probably didn't notice the shorter days as they sailed east. But I think Magellan's crew returned to Spain after the first circumnavigation and found that one more day had passed than their own shipboard reckoning had claimed. The same thing did happen in Around the World in 80 Days, but in reverse of course.

Jerusalem is +7 to +10 of Americas time. Therefore, Jesus dying on the 9th hour would be somewhere around the 1st hour Americas time. But that's assuming hours and days were counted the same in both continents. Darkness started on the 4th day of the 1st month.

As an aside... This thread reminded me of a conversation my mother and I had a few weeks ago. My mother is an OCD clean freak. She was visiting me for a few weeks and every time she comes into my house she starts cleaning because she can't stand my "dirty house". My house is not really dirty. It's a mess and can be unkempt with laundry piling up and things like that which drives my mother bonkers. Anyway, we were talking and she mentions that ever since we were little kids, I've been the clean person while my sister was the not so clean person but now my sister's house is the clean house and my house is the dirty house. She says it's because I didn't teach my husband how to clean. And so I told her, I'm not my husband's mother and I don't want to be and neither does my husband want me to be his mother. I married him knowing his clean standards so if I wasn't prepared to live in a house that is not as clean as I want it to be without doing all the work myself, I shouldn't have married him. Anyway, yes, I get frustrated at times to the point that I start yelling at my husband, especially when I go to my siblings' houses that are my standard of clean and then my siblings come to my house and they notice the messiness. I sometimes yell at my husband to clean... he does... and it's still not clean according to my standards (e.g. when I clean a room, there wouldn't be a thick layer of dust on the ceiling fan blades)... so I end up cleaning behind him. But I can't really blame my husband for that. He is pretty good with other things - like surviving a zombie apocalypse. So, this is may not sound related to the OP but it's related in this way - I don't look at what I want my husband to do for me as the measuring stick of his love for me. Rather, I make it a point to notice everything he does to show his love for me even if it's things that can get irritating - like when he used to call me every hour on the hour when I travel without him or his penchant for surprising me. He loves telling me he has a gift for me and when I ask what it is, he'll tell me I have to wait because it's a surprise. Grrr - I can't stand surprises and he knows it but he can't help it because he loves surprises and he likes watching me be on pins and needles begging him to just tell me! But I learned to just let him be with his surprises because that's one of the ways he shows me he loves me.

What would I do if my kid got hooked on drugs? Love her. What if she ended up in jail? I'd love her. What if she failed college and came home with a student loan and a host of people not to ask job references from? I'd love her. We understand that we love our kids no matter what. Sometimes it's tough love (no you won't be moving in for the 4th time, while addicted. I'll help you get into treatment though). However, we never stop loving them. It's what parents do--especially parents influenced by God. So...spouse isn't pulling fair share, and seems to ignore the pleas to help more and engage more. What to do? Withhold love? Use marital privileges as a bargaining tool? Of course not. Ask the Spirit to empower, and you will find the love for him you need. I suspect he will respond in kind--and perhaps even with a measure of humility (I am an optimistic sort).

I figure he was one of the ninety and nine. Walked righteously, did his part. Back when people were choosing sides and there was drama, he was stalwart and true. It is odd, that, well,

I've always liked Helen Hunt, and I've absolutely loved it when she's got a job like admin or post office package retriever or some such. Because when people ask me where their package is, I get to tell them to go to Helen Hunt for it.

It's only a fair and honest vote if your side wins. Otherwise it's obviously a fake, manipulated, mistake that doesn't represent true democracy and you have to vote on it over and over again until you overturn the false result.