annewandering

a moving life. it is an inspiration to me. thank you for posting and sharing this testimony. i cried too.

ldsliving mail is actually google mail. just under a domain name. it possibly can have different restrictions and the admins of that domain can see your mail.

oh my gosh. i would never want to be a male. i had five brothers and that is way too much testosterone in one household. no wonder when there is polygamy its one male and more females. much of what is so called male is just cultural mores. mechanical is not male. fun is not male and housecleaning is not female. on the other hand much of the so called male and female traits do seem to be from birth. my sons first words were ball and truck. i was shocked. my daughers first words were always daddy!! there has to be a meaning in there somewhere! and we did try to raise them gender neutral in tasks and play. it made no difference. the girls loved barbies and the boys loved pecking orders. although one boy did get highly offended when he couldnt put nice barrettes in his hair. no he isnt gay or crossdresser! he just liked them. lol. we have six girls THEN 2 boys which may explain a lot. anyway the point is that they all seemed to be born pretty much with gender identities in working order. it is very difficult to picture there ever being choice in it. in the preexistence or here. its too much a part of who we are.

absolutely.

of course we chose the Lord. and the Lord Himself said that blindness is not the fault of any one but the works of God be made manifest in him. . do we assume that it is ONLY blindess he meant or did he mean any adversity that rains down up on us? some people who are blonde are dyed blondes. therefore all blondes are dyed blondes. some blue eyed men are psychopathic killers. all blue eyed men are psychopathic killers. the logic is the same. some handicapped people are unvaliant in the preexistance. all handicapped people were unvaliant. does this follow? did President Lee say all were unvalient? and was he president when he said anything at all? as far as it being in general conference hmm. does that mean what ever the Primary President says is now gospel doctrine or is it only future Prophets?

i am curious why you call yourself a prophet? any real reason or did it look cool?

everything is a potential tool of satan. if you want to convince people of your 'program' and want an effective way to do it what would you do? consider that money and resources are unlimited. consider your will to do this is unbounded. now lets think. is satan trying to draw as many people to him as possible? is he strong willed about it? does he have endless resources? what do you think would be his plan? what are the most effective ways to get your message across to the max number of people? it would be hard to deny that movies etc are very good for this kind of thing.

they look incredibly fake. they better be lol.

"don't think waking up at a particular time without an alarm clock is a "spiritual" gift.... I do that too. It's because your body gets "programmed" when to wake up when you waken at the same time every morning."' two points quickly. one that wasnt really the point i was trying to make. sorry i didnt do a better job of it. two i dont wake up the same time. i meant when i have to wake up at a particular time i do. no matter when. now that might not be much of a gift but its one i like. the point was more that we all have gifts of one nature or another. simple ones like mine or more dramatic ones like seeing dead people. god says he gave us gifts. many are listed in the d&c. our spirits are capable of some pretty incredible things and they are sometimes very beautiful. my doubts usually come when money is involved. if a person has a gift it seems like it would not be given for profit. it also seems that there would be a purpose to the gift. to help in some way. other wise what is the point?

well i was there in the 50's and 60's, albeit young in the 50s, and it is different now. it isnt just in someones mind. sure you could find garbage then if you tried. thing is that now you have to try not to see it. hollywood, books, it has gone bad. we feel so surprised to see something that doesnt offend us. it is only going to get worse but i really try to imagine how and have a really hard time imagining it much worse.

wow nothing like settling in for the long haul before you have to do that much settling in. i kinda like the idea of growing my own fruit trees etc now on my own property for the coming hard times. or should i say the coming more hard times? on your own property you arent going to be booted because the homeowner went bankrupt. we did have that happen to us. it was very upsetting. the bad thing i see here is that if you only worry about tomorrow you dont enjoy and "reap the fullness" of today.

i am going to follow the statement by pres. harold b. lee with a few observations. five general authorities just off the top of my head were handicapped at one point. boyd. k packer, pres. hunter, and pres. kimball. not to meantion david o.mackay and pres. benson. Elder Packer was stricken with polio, Pres. Hunter was in a wheelchair for much of his presidency, Pres. Kimball has his larynx removed and Pres. Benson was completely incapacited for around 6 years of his time as prophet. Were these men not valiant in the preexistance? In the last general conference one of the general autjhorities, and i don'tremember which at the moment, gave a very spiritually uplifting talk and included some comments on his mentally challenged daughter. would you say that this lovely child was not valiant? i did not have the impression her dad did. what i am inclined to think is that harold b. lee was giving his opinion. was he even prophet then? in fact he may well have had a good point in that perhaps some of the less valiant spirits were born into situations less pleasant for this life time. that does not mean all or even most people who have disabilites of one sort or other are less valiant. one does not lead to the other. a thing i would be more concerned about is that we have been told that we will never be given more than we can handle. i would be wondering if those born into the gospel, given everything to them on a silver platter, as it were, might be more likely to be the less valiant spirits in heaven. after all God wouldnt give them anything that they couldnt deal with, would he? lets look to our own hearts and spirituality before condemning those, that love their handicapped family members, to being apostates to the gospel because they can not believe that these loved ones are less valiant.

these are his own words on the subject. if he said this then i would have to assume he meant it exactly this way.

you might think twice about splicing christmas tree lights. that is the one place i would hesitate to save money on. i loved making decorations for christmas. egg cartons cut up and made into little creches,kind of like fabrage eggs? gluing two holders of the eggs together to make a 'ball', painted and hung with pipecleaners. emptied egg shells painted look really pretty. pipe cleaners can make so many things. add a little glitter and glue and you can make marvelous things!

transgender issues are very difficult to understand. there are birth defects, obviously. how extensive those birth defects go is the real puzzle. can it be that a person is born into a body that the hormones messed up the sex on? if so how do we really know the original sex of the person? when there was confusion of sex at birth they used to make physical changes to that the babyso the baby was one obvious sex. unfortunately they didnt always pick the right one. often now, i understand, they wait till the child shows preference in the same way a child picks the right or left hand. if there can be a birth defect not making the sex obvious then is it possible to totally mess up so the wrong sex is apparent? i dont understand this issue at all but it makes it hard to be dogmatic on the subject. one thing for sure life can be a trial and that is a rough trial to endure.

arg! what a horrible disease for anyone to have. and to have us lose future terry pratchett books makes it ..... arg. one thing about his books is you can go back and read them over and over and still laugh each time. i am dreading having to tell my kids. we will miss your writing, terry pratchett.

hmm sounds interesting. i was taught in my western civ class at college that the muslims were all that stood between eternal darkness and enlightenment. the teacher was very conviincing but i have to admit i had some doubts as to his unbiasedness. (he sure was good at teaching war and weapon stratagy in history though!) it would be interesting to read a book with almost exactly the opposite bias.

my daughter game me the books to read since she knows i like fantasy novels and will read vampire ones. i was intriqued with not having to jump huge sections of the books to avoid graphic sex scenes. it apparently started out directed to a teen audience but was readable in a similar way to the harry potter series. i agree with the idea that it must have started as one book but was expanded to a series. i doubt you could have put it in one book but it played out that way in plot. i liked the first three books. my daughter bought the fourth and then didnt like it. still she let me borrow it and after stalling a few months because of her review of it i read it and thought the 4th was way and above the best of the series. it was also more mature in my opinion. i also read her other book. hmm forgot the name. still it was very unusual and that is always interesting to find. i do like science fiction a lot and this was almost like going back to the classics which i loved. her writing also seemed more matured in that book. i am not sure what the rl order of writing was though. i really recommend the dunes books. the movie gave me a headache and seemed to focus on the negative or dark sides of the books more than i tend to enjoy. in fact it seemed to be filmed in a dark room arg. still it was pretty good. i will wait to see the movie of twilight.

i really never thought about the 'benefits' my children bring me because they are not gay.. for some reason that sounds just wrong and awfully selfish.

ouch! now you are going to have to fix that title! it's bound to bug us all now.

who is disabled? is it someone who is less smart or someone who is less kind? someone who will never be a great scientist or someone who cant seem to understand the law of chastity? maybe we need to relook at who is the one who is given the 'lesser' challenge here. is it a challenge for a valiant spirit to be given the chance to teach people service and love or is it more of a challenge have to learn to be faithful and honest for an unvaliant spirit? nevertheless dont ever think the mentally challenged dont have their own spiritual challenges. they are just as much in need of proving their faith as anyone else. i do believe that some people are put in situations that test other people. i know i am a constant test of patience for a lot of people. :) that does not preclude mentally disabled people from their own tests, which God will help them to pass, just as He helps us, all, with the things, in which we are spiritually disabled, to do successfully.

some people have gifts. i have a couple of odd ones. like being able to wake up at a particular time without an alarm clock. i would think there are a number of gifts of this order that are real and not bunk or evil. seeing others who are not here now is no more unlikely is it? talk to any family history researcher. they can tell you a lot of stories they have experienced. which brings up the idea that if you do see something like that, it has to have a purpose. and i doubt getting a few dollars for it is good enough reason for it to happen.

i can not imagine that we ever were anything different than what we are. it is my opinion, with nothing more than feeling to base it on, that there wasnt any choosing. we just were and are.

thank you all for your welcomes.

just on the grounds of common sense it seems ill-advised to invest in anything when the price is very high. make more sense to sell gold if you have any stored away!