Jenamarie

I remember being told this about a set of doors at the Oakland Temple as well.

Ah. Ya. That'll screw him over.

And what's the whole receipt thing??

Ya, deffinately need to be cautious with family as well. My first exposure to porn was while sleeping over at my cousins' home (large family, lots of kids). An almost teenaged boy showing porn to a 5 year old. And it ended with me being shoved into his closet while he sat on his bed and "enjoyed" it some more. The images are still burned into my head. I'm still not 100% opposed to sleepovers, but I want to know the adults *really* well, and also want to know how late they'll be staying up to supervise the kids.

Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother ARE our pre-mortal parents. That's who the member was refering to. Heavenly Father and Mother are the parents of our sprits, and our Earthly mom and dad are the parents of our physical bodies.

Ever seen "Other Side of Heaven"? The missionary is from Idaho, but close enough. And what's the Ether Bunny??

I completely admit that this may just be a result of "conditioning" (or, in other words, what I'm used to) but for me, I would have a hard time trusting the "Spirit" I felt in that kind of setting. Not that it's a bad Spirit, but I would question if it's the Holy Spirit. When I'm in a high-energy atmosphere like that, it's difficult not to feel my blood start pumping and my hands start clapping, and to start feeling warm fuzzy feelings about what's going on around me. Motivational events are often carried out this way, even when they're not religious, because they create this kind of effect. I would question if I wasn't just caught up in the spirit of the atmosphere, rather than the Spirit of the Lord. But I admit to having never been exposed to that kind of high-energy atmosphere in a church setting, so, who knows how I would really react. :)

It's met with "Awwwwww's" and offers of services. ("I'll make your cake!" "Oooh, I'm your VT, I'll plan your shower!" and the like. )

Well, we're not talking about silence in the BUILDING though. Someone announcing an engagement during church isn't typically doing it during the actual service, but perhaps out in the hall between classes, or in the classroom before the Sunday School/Relief Society/whichever has actually started. You can clap in the building during more casual times, but during the actual religious service it's considered irreverent. And my dad got to perform during Sacrament meeting playing on his guitar (about 20 years ago or so). Most Bishops won't allow that, but his Bishop just asked to listen to the song first, and approved it for playing in Sacrament meeting, since it didn't have a "rock" sound to it at all. And both my mom and dad played a duet on their Recorders (way back in the 70's! I wonder if anybody still plays those )

I'm born-and-raised LDS and have never heard clapping during a church service. Even during more casual church functions, like an Enrichment Night (Relief Society activity) if part of the program is of a spiritual nature (like a song with a strong religious theme) usually there will be no applause afterward. I've always heard/believed that it was to maintain reverence during something that's meant to cultivate the Spirit within those in attendance. It seems that within the LDS church reverence = silence so that people are not distracted from the message. I kind of prefer it too, since sometimes applause can get rather raucus, or drawn out, and also when you're talking about performances or talks, given that it's untrained members of the congregation doing them, I could see some negative feelings coming from someone getting a louder and/or longer applause than someone else. Just my opinion though.

We had a sister missionary from Mongolia a few years ago, and one from New Zealand. But most of them do seem to come from Utah.

Ya, they're Episcopalian now.

I've been thinking about this, and I think this is a great idea. I'm also currently in search of a strong Testimony of the church, and I have to say that reading Jesus the Christ by James E. Talmage helped me enormously. It's a bit of a long read, but it really spells out exactly how the LDS faith defines Christ. Who, What, and Why He is, according to LDS interpretation of scripture. It has a lot of helpful insights into the scriptures as well. Might be something to look into. :)

Those who were married in life, but not Sealed in the Temple, can be Sealed by Proxy in the Temple (Sealing is different from marriage. Marrige is an earthly ordiance, Sealings carry over into the Eternities). I have never heard of any unmarried deceased people being "married" to someone in the Temple.

Hello Rekhyt! I'm sorry you had such a negative experience with your ward disolving. Changes like that can be especially difficult, especially as a youth. I'm curious about how you said the Trinity is what you've always been taught. Is your family new in the church, or were you born-and-raised LDS? ETA: And I agree with starting the BoM after 2nd Nephi, maybe start in Mosiah, and try to read a few chapters at a time so that you can get the flow of the story. I find my Scripture reading (both Bible and BoM) is much more enriching when I give myself time to become immersed in a particular story-line, such as Alma and Amuleck, or Elijah and the Priests of Baal.

But when Nathan (a Prophet) came to chastize King David for having Bathsheba's husband killed, he didn't say "How dare you have so many wives!" he said, in essence: "If you wanted another wife, all you had to do was ask, and the Lord would have given one to you." His having multiple wives wasn't an issue. It was how he obtained that last one. Just like King Solomon having a thousand wives. It wasn't the number, it was the false idols they worshiped, and convinced Solomon to worship, that angered the Lord.

When I think of a social club, I think of a "clique". I take it as meaning we shouldn't limit our associations to only those who are members of the church. We should have close friends outside of the church, as well as in the church. And we shouldn't fear our kids having close friends that aren't in the church either. Also, I take it to mean to treat the church with due respect, and not just as any other social organization. I had a Stake President once say in Stake Conference that Temple Recommends were NOT "special event passes". He'd had several people who hadn't been to church in years, and had no interest in really returning, try to get new recommends when a family member got engaged, so they could attend the wedding. They had little appreciation for the Sacred nature of the Temple. My two cents on what it means. :)

Some will say that FARMS and FAIR are already doing this, but I agree with you that an OFFICIAL church entity doing just this would be absolutely wonderful. I especially like the website idea!

Niether has ours. Infact, our June one only arrived a week and a half ago. For some reason ours has been really slow at getting to us.

I would recommend reading Rough Stone Rolling if you haven't already.

Mine didn't come today either.

I don't have cable MDS. I guess looking at the community around me, I see a lot of people who aren't waiting to be spoon fed, just genuinely ignorant of what's out there. The Anti's leave flyers on cars. FARMS and FAIR don't advertize. I live in a community of mill workers, most of whom never went to college, and never had it instilled in them tha they could gain an education entirely on their own. It's a product of their upbringing, not something they willfully brought upon themselves. Many of them are barely scraping by to put food on the table. Buying books is out of the question. The vast majority of the mill workers still ask for paper paychecks to carry to the bank themselves, they don't trust "direct deposit". That's the kind of community this is. I don't really know where I'm going with this, just trying to defend, I guess, those who don't know how to access the answers to the difficult questions. Don't dismiss them as being "lazy" or "waiting to be spoonfed". Maybe if the church just advertized a bit more about where answers to these questions can be found (even just a simple FARMS flyer to tack on the bullitein board) that would be a step towards helping these people know where they can go.

Cheap books still cost money. I've read some FARMS and FAIR articles that have literally made me roll my eyes (please don't ask me to reference which ones, this was well over a year ago and I honestly don't remember). Sometimes the language was down right condesending to the "detractors" they were addressing, and they glossed over things or dismissed things on "heresay" then in their next breath refered to a "heresay" that was in their favor as "evidence". This wasn't true of all of the articles, but enough that it made me take the other articles with a grain of salt. But I guess we'll have to agree to disagree that some people are "waiting to be spoon fed". I think some people just genuinely don't know it's "out there" for the taking, because it's not talked about in church. (I have *never* heard FARMS or FAIR mentioned in a Sunday meeting when a controversial topic came up)

I'm not waiting to be spoon fed. I live in a part of the country where access to LDS scholarship stuff islimited, except for FARMS and FAIR, which I also perused, although I took their stuff with a grain of salt, since they're not "officially" a church entity. I'm an hour away from the closest Deseret Book, and major university. Other than "Time Out for Women" I haven't heard any "symposiums" announced in my area, and I don't have cable. I guess I just wish they had a way for a person to study in-depth the history of the church without it costing a bunch of money to buy these scholarly books, go to these symposiums, or watch these cable shows. Not everyone has the funds for that kind of thing, even if they have the genuine desire.

I was searching LDS.org as *one source* to the answer for my questions, because I wanted to hear "their" side of it. And I don't think the church would need to divert much effort from gospel-preaching efforts to address these things. My ward is having a six-week "family relations" class, for six couples at a time, for the next year or so, during Sunday School hour. The church has all sorts of these "mini programs" that it does in wards that show an interest in it. Why not one that goes deeper into church history? Or an Institute class, with a manual, that goes into it? Why can't the church preach the gospel AND talk about it's history? It does lots of not-quiet-gospel stuff all the time.