Connie

Hi. Welcome to the forum. It's a pleasure to meet you.

Hi. Nice to meet you. Welcome to the forum.

Croeso! It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance. :)

I love working on family history. It's been years since i've been able to work on it very seriously. Little kids and homeschool keep a girl busy. My parents do a great deal. They work in the local family history center once a week. And our stake has been encouraging and helping the youth to get more into it. So my oldest has worked quite a bit on indexing and has started going with the grandparents to the center every week to learn and work on family history.

For my part, again as an outsider looking in, I was really confused at times when this poster kept accusing others of rudeness and attacks. I didn’t read most of them that way at all, but I can appreciate that he felt that way about them and I’m sure there were some that maybe were (I wasn’t giving these threads the most careful of readings). That’s why I was concerned that maybe he was reading some things into it that weren’t really there. But, yes, it’s always a good idea to give people the benefit of the doubt and utilize that in responding. I just think we need to not only be more kind in posting but also more kind in reading and give others the benefit of the doubt when reading their comments.

Howdy. Welcome to the forum. :)

As an outsider of the recent conversations but one who has participated in similar ones in the past, my perspective may be a bit different. Can people give these guys the benefit of the doubt and be more careful in their wording when responding to these types of people—absolutely. And even when, like the recent poster, they chose only to reply to the slightly more aggressive or not so carefully worded responders and ignore everything else, things can be turned around. I had the great privilege of participating in a thread where that was able to happen. That being said, there is the other side of the equation. The person reading a post needs to also be very careful in how they read it. Are they themselves bringing in too much of their own emotion and reading it into what everyone else says? Are they assuming something about the poster based on a phrase or wording that rubbed them the wrong way? We have to be very careful in reading others posts that we are not bringing in such assumptions and sensitivities that we are “reading between the lines” things that are not there. I feel like I’m wording this very awkwardly, but I hope y’all understand what I’m trying to say. It’s a very fine line between poster and reader, and it’s not always clear where the fault lies. We can all do better in how we play each part.

Sounds good. Is the prequel written by the same author or was it by someone different?

Oh my heck, Vort! Don't do that! I nearly choked on my sandwich.

Not sure if you've searched this site yet but here ya go: http://freeldssheetmusic.org/Be_Still,_My_Soul I've never yet had to be in charge of music for a funeral but i have had to play the organ and help with musical numbers before. I have found the hymns listed under the topic "funeral" and related topics in the index to be helpful for prelude/postlude. Not sure if that helps at all with your difficult task. I wish you good luck.

One can hope.

I have been really hesitant to read anymore in the series after the first one. I guess i'll have to if i want to find out if there was a point to that dumb, pointless maze.

I like that. Don't just maybe amend it... Definitely amend it. :)

I love this topic. I’ve always had a great interest in gifts of the spirit. I’ve always loved that scriptural idea of seeking the best gifts. And as others have pointed out that is done through prayer and through practice. I love that idea of practice. In our gospel doctrine class last Sunday our teacher really emphasized that idea from the lesson (it was lesson 32) about practicing how we can recognize the promptings of the Spirit. It’s an idea I had never thought much about before, but it makes perfect sense to me. If you want to get good at something you practice it over and over. If you want to develop a specific gift of the Spirit you practice it over and over. Before you can practice, though, you need to learn how to practice that particular thing. One thing that has helped me is to study the topic. For example, I spent about a year just studying the topic of faith. Now I have a greater understanding in how to develop/cultivate/practice the gift of faith. So I would say pick one of the gifts you particularly wish for. Study it, ponder, pray about it, take notes on how you can practice it and then do it—practice it over and over until it feels right.

Alma 32:21 - And now as I said concerning faith--faith is not to have a perfect knowledge of things; therefore if ye have faith ye hope for things which are not seen, which are true. Therefore the gift of faith is not being able to say "I have a sure knowledge." Rather it's more like saying "I don't have a sure knowledge but will hope for it anyway." Hope that helps.

There is an article in the July issue of the Ensign magazine about this as well. It also mentions the Romney story and the D&C scripture but also has some others with references at the end. You may want to check it out. Here's a link: https://www.lds.org/ensign/2015/07/young-adults/filled-with-life-and-energy?lang=eng

My mother.

Well, there’s speaking in different wards once a month. There’s stake meetings but I wouldn’t know how often they have those. And there’s disciplinary councils. Our ward has a high councilman over us. I don’t know how common that is. I had never heard of it until I became a member of this ward. He comes to our sacrament meeting and sits with the bishopric on the stand, not all the time but quite often. And he is involved in our ward bishopric and council meetings, not sure how often. I know there’s a high councilor over the stake primary. I imagine he has meetings with the stake primary presidency. He is more often than not at stake baptisms and helping to direct things there. The high councilman who spoke in our ward today talked about one of his assignments being the guy over the buildings, whatever that entails. I guess making sure everything works and they are well supplied—not sure. He counseled us to treat our building well because it needs to last a long time. I’m sure you could be given a myriad of different assignments. My knowledge is probably even more general than yours, and I’ve probably not told you anything you don’t already know. But good luck in your new calling.

In a sense I have had to “meet them where they are.” I have had to find books that would hold their interest. I worried for a long time about my oldest boy and how uninterested he seemed to be with reading. This was in large part because I was comparing him to his older sister who is an avid reader. I had to stop doing that—step back a bit and give him space to find it on his own. He reads slower, and I think that has frustrated him a bit. But he has become a really good reader in his own way. I’ve worked really hard to find good books that would hold his interest. We have read some books with “gross out” type stuff but on a minimal level—that is never the purpose or focus of the book. We have never read books where gross out is the main purpose. It seems those were the type of book this particular article was speaking of and since we have never read any of them I really couldn’t say whether that is accurate or not. And if that is the case I would agree that that is taking it a bit too far. But the idea of “meet them where they are” as I have used it is to meet them where they are and then take them higher and farther at their own pace. I also agree with the idea that you have to have books in the home—good books available for kids to read. And you have to read to them when they are little. They have to see you reading and you have to talk about what you’re reading. “Wow, I read this cool book. Let me tell you a bit about it.” Or, “You really have to read this book! It is awesome and I know you would love it.” Sometimes, even now, my son will hit a snag in a book. “It’s just soooo boooring.” And I will have to encourage him to continue. “Come on, try another chapter and see if it gets any better.” More often than not he ends up finishing the book and loving it. I enjoyed the articles commentary on education.

From what i understand only Stake Presidents and Bishops (and their wives hopefully?) are invited to the site. But it's being transmitted to local stake centers which i imagine will be bursting at the seams on Saturday. It's been a while since i drove by. Last time i did it was just a big lot full of juniper trees.

Yay for Southern Utah! It's gonna be a beaut! Groundbreaking ceremony this Saturday. https://www.lds.org/church/news/church-sets-date-for-cedar-city-utah-temple-groundbreaking?lang=eng

If you're interested in a more philosophical approach to Mormonism, i'm told that Wrestling the Angel by Terryl Givens is quite a good one.

:shrug: I prefer sewing them. That probably makes me weird, but reminds me i need to go get a merit badge sash. Thank you for the information. It is very helpful. I will definitely talk to his new leaders. I hope they are as great as his Webelos leaders were. They were awesome--best leaders he's had so far.

Thanks. So i got the world crest badge, religious knot, arrow of light, council badge and am working on the troop numbers. From what i can tell, the only thing i am missing at this point is the green shoulder epaulets. Does that sound right? I've been flipping around in the scout book and reading here and there. From what i'm understanding, parent involvement seems to be a bit less with the boy scouts than it was with the cubs. Requirements need to be signed off by a leader or merit badge counselor. Parents cannot sign off on requirements. Is this correct? So do Blazers just jump right into things and start working on Tenderfoot and Second and First Class requirements?

What Cub Scout badges can be transferred to the Boy Scout uniform?