Tarnished

Sorry to hear about your loss, it is hard to lose a dog because they become such a big part of the family. We have two Weimaraners, they are wonderful to have around. I love the pictures, he was such a cutie!

Yes, you should go back to your BP, and if you don't feel comfortable going to him go to your Stake President. Even if you have repented of a sin committing the same sin again negates what repentance you did before. It is like saying you are sorry for slapping someone and then turning around and slapping them again and saying "Just kidding", does your first apology count for the second slap? Of course not. When I was dating I had similar problems, I messed up a lot when it came to the law of chastity. I didn’t have sex but I did get close. And I learned that each time I messed up I had to start again. It can be difficult, but if you really want to repent then it must be done. If it were me I would also encourage my bf to go to his bishop and confess as well. Just because he received the priesthood does not make every thing better. It does not magically free him of his sins. Good luck with all of this, it is difficult but I can tell you that it is definitely worth it.

In regarding my comment about a slice of humanity I was meaning more of how they interact with each other rather than their age or physical fitness. But I do agree that it is quite focused on making money. Regarding the whole Ben and Jasmin and Ben and Jaison thing, I think Ben's reaction to Jasmin was probably just how he reacts to that kind of confrontation, however I think the way he reacted was a bit over the top. I think the confrontation between the two of them did not score any points for either of them. And I do think that it was part of the reason that Ben was voted off. As for Jaison's response to Ben, I think Jaison had gotten to a point where he really wanted Ben out, and I think the "rage" he got himself into at tribal counsel was his way of ensuring that Ben was out. He mentioned before that he would use the threat of quitting as a way to force Ben out, but I think instead he really used the confrontation as his way of ensuring that Ben was gone. Did it really have to do with race? I don't know, I don't really feel that it did, I think it was something that Jaison used as a manuver to get rid of Ben. However, that said, I do feel that Jaison was actually quite collected during his attack, that was interesting for me. I have to say that Russell's referal to his "Russell seeds" was a little bit weird for me. He strikes me as a very slimy guy. But then again he is trying to play this game from the get go. What I see as a problem for him is that at some point something is going to go wrong for him and then I could easily see him getting gotten rid of quick. It reminds me of playing Mafia in college, one person would be the mafia and would kill people off one by one, and one person would be the detective and try to find the mafia player. After each turn someone would be killed by the mafia player and someone would be voted out by the group. The goal was to catch the mafia player before they killed everyone. Russell reminds me of the person who is the mafia player, his goal is to kill (vote out) everyone else before he is found out. I just wonder how well it will work for him.

My name came from a poem that I wrote around the time I joined the forum. It was how I felt about myself at the time. I don't feel quite so tarnished now, but I don't want to change it as I want to remind myself of what happened in the past. As for its literal definition: tar·nish (tärnsh) v. tar·nished, tar·nish·ing, tar·nish·es v.tr. 1. To dull the luster of; discolor, especially by exposure to air or dirt. 2. a. To detract from or spoil; taint: a tragedy that tarnished our hopes. b. To cast aspersions on; sully: slander that tarnished the senator's image. v.intr. 1. To lose luster; become discolored. 2. To diminish or become tainted. n. 1. The condition of being tarnished. 2. Discoloration of a metal surface caused by corrosion or oxidation. 3. The condition of being sullied or tainted.

I have followed Survivor on previous years but this year I actually started watching because of this thread. I agree that Russell is definately playing the game, where other people are not as much, however he does make it very easy to dislike him. I cheered last night when the person who he worked so hard to keep in the tribe ended up going home. Puppets indeed! Though he is good at manipulating people he is not the mastermind he thinks he is. People will do what they are going to do no matter how good you are at manipulating them. Though he may see what he is doing as a good thing his actions are causing his team to dissapear around him, because they are so miserable and unhappy they are losing the challenges. I think the reason I find Survivor so interesting is that it is often like seeing a little slice of humanity. And watching the way people interact with each other can be quite interesting.

I just finished reading the transcript of her testimony against him. What a monster of a human being. It makes me ashamed to be of the same species as him. On the flip side what a brave strong woman, especially considering everything that she went through.

If they accept the truth they must wait for someone to do their work for them before they will be able to enter the celestial kingdom, this is why baptism, and other temple work for the dead is so important. Without their work done for them they can not move on even if they have accepted the gospel. If the spirit rejects the truth then they will not go to outer darkness. Instead I think they will be treated much like someone who has been given the chance here on earth but never believed. They will go to one of the lesser glories but not the celestial kingdom. For a spirit to be in outer darkness they would have to have learned of the gospel, accepted it, known it was true to the point where they had Christ appear to them personally, then after they have a complete witness of the truthfulness of the gospel they would have to deny the gospel and get to a point where they themselves would happily nail Christ to the cross if given the chance. There are few who actually fit into this category. I hope this explanation helps.

I suppose for me the idea of taking multiple wives is a bit too much for me. It always seems that when the subject comes up that the wives are spoken of much like items. As a woman I hate being viewed as a thing and not a person. Too often in history women have been viewed as things. We are not things though we are people, with our own thoughts our own feelings and our own sins and needs for repentance. The discussion could almost be about televisions. What are your thoughts about desiring multiple televisions? Is it good or bad to desire multiple televisions? Do you have enough time to watch or use multiple televisions? As I think it was Beefche that mentioned earlier in this thread. This is not a law that we currently have to live (thank goodness) and since it is not why put so much worry and discussion into it. Focus on the laws we currently have to live and stop spending energy on those that we don't.

I wrote a post about forgiveness a year or so ago in my personal blog. I am going to post below some of the things I wrote about forgiveness and trust. "In life people sometimes hurt us, they sometimes do it accidentally, and sometimes they do it on purpose. Sometimes people apologize and sometimes they don't. Sometimes they don't even know they have caused a hurt. Forgiveness is something that can be hard to do. It is hard when someone has hurt us not to feel bitter, not to feel angry and betrayed. The idea of forgiveness seems not applicable or not worthy of some situations. And yet, by refusing to forgive we often cause ourselves more pain. Problems do not go away on their own, they grow and grow, especially if we cling to them and brood on them. Forgiveness is a type of release, for ourselves as well as for the person we are forgiving. Recently I forgave someone for something, because it had been on my mind, I talked to my husband about it. Something he said really hit me. "Forgiveness is a selfish thing. If I carry a grudge against someone I can feel it build and grow and eat away at me. It makes me dislike the person I am holding it against more, and makes that person feel worse as well. But by forgiving them I make myself feel better." It is true, forgiveness is a step in letting go of the pain, it is a step in allowing ourselves to become free of bitterness and anger at others. It is a step in making ourselves feel better, and thus it can be referred to as selfish. Now by speaking of forgiveness I am not saying that we need to go about things foolishly. We should not set ourselves up to be hurt again and again. It is much like what I have said about trust. I can love someone greatly and not trust them, and often when someone has hurt me I will not trust them any longer though I may forgive them. For me it is trust that matters, trust is a fragile thing and it is so hard to gain it and so easy to ruin it. But lack of trust only makes me wary in situations, it does not lead me to no longer love people, it just causes me to be wary about certain situations with them. Forgiveness is a choice. We can choose to cling to despair and pain, blaming those around us, much like we can cling to a grudge or a hurt and blame and grow to hate those who have hurt us. Or we can make a different choice. We can choose to see things differently, we can choose to forgive. It is up to us." In the repentance process you learn that to be forgiven one must forgive, however forgiveness is not the same as trust. Forgive the person, but allow them to know that they have lost your trust and to regain it they will need to work hard.

Jesus would probably be my first choice, but after that I would want to meet Moroni, either one, and Mormon. I think all three of those people are amazing.

I actually have a friend who came from one of the polygamous communities in Utah, she was abused, and she was raped while she was there. She grew up there but when she became an adult she eventually got out and now is living in Salt Lake with her current husband. I think she is currently pagan. I can't guarantee that all of the polygamous families in Utah are like that. But it is true that you do hear about a lot of abuse going on in those communities. And yes it is spoken of on the news and in the news papers. I no longer live in Utah, but I do remember talking to those that lived in those communities and hearing about the communities when I did live there.

It is neat to find someone else who has a dream city, so far everyone I have told about my dream cities have said, "Wow, sounds like you have really vivid dreams." I have dreams about real life as well, which can be very confusing when I dream about getting ready in the morning and then when I wake up I can't remember what I have already done and what was actually just a dream.

I will be getting the vaccine, just as I will probably get the regular flu vaccine as well, the years that I get the flu vaccine I usually go the whole winter without getting sick. The years that I don't get the vaccine I usually end up getting at least a cold if not the cold and the flu. As I currently have bronchitis I really don't want to follow it up with the flu so I am getting the vaccine as soon as I feel well again. As for pandemics of any sort they usually pass over an area three times before they are done. This has been seen in all of the pandemics that have happened so far, so it is not surprising that the swine flu is coming back. As for calling it a pandemic, I am not sure I would go that far considering that the intensity of this flu is not as great as that of the normal flu. Anyway, wanted to throw in my vote.

I have a lot of dreams and I remember many of my dreams. I remember dreams from when I was a child as well. Over the years my dreams have turned into a dream world. For example I will have a dream where I am doing something different but the place I am dreaming in will be somewhere I have dreamed before. At this point I can actually draw a map of my dream world and tell you what dreams I have had in the different areas. I do not have many nightmares, but when I do I sometimes end up lucid dreaming where I take control of the dream and make it do what I want it to do. It is sometimes the only way I can escape my nightmares. As for naughty dreams, I used to have a lot of them, which I did sometimes feel bad about. However they have lately gone away, thankfully.

How terrible!! This hits very close to home for me as my husband and I will probably be doing IVF within the next few months. If something like this happened it would be very difficult for us to handle.

When I was 16 I fed a baby squirrel, he had been found in a tree that had fallen down in a thunderstorm. The person who had him worked at the same place my grandmother worked and was going away for awhile and needed someone to look after him. I loved feeding that little guy. He eventually grew up and lived in the stump of the tree that he was originally found in. He would take nuts from the hand of the man who found him. Baby squirrels are so cute!

I remember seeing a documentary on children who had AIDs, they spoke about how they had to deal with people who had many misconceptions about their disease. It seems that AIDs has about as many misconceptions about it as say...the LDS church. That being said, I know I would be very careful around someone I knew had AIDs. That is a disease I would not want to catch.

I have no tats, but my husband has four tattoos, all four of them are medical tattoos needed to line up the machine for radiation.

We got each other presents, I got him a battle axe and he got me a war hammer. For us those were awesome gifts! We have expanded our weapon collection since then. I think we had dinner together, I am sure he got me flowers, he always does. And I am certain that we had a great night together.

Growing up my dad told me that when I turned 19 that I was out of the house. As I got closer to that age he clarified it with, as long as you are in school and working you can stay, but if you are no longer in school then you should find your own place. It was clear to me, it was not shunning but the rules of the house. In the circumstance of this article, we don't know the full story, we don't know what happened before and we only know the story from the side of the young adult. However, even as we only have our side of the story I still feel that she should have given him some time, a date at which he must be moved out. Telling him that he can not come home that night would be a very scary thing to have happen as a 19 year old. Different families deal with things differently, however I will never feel that kicking a "new" adult out of the house with no notice to be a good thing.

Truthfully, if we can now, as a unperfect society impregnate a woman through scientific means (example: invetro fertilization) then what makes you think that a perfect God could not do something likewise? I completely go with the virgin conception.

From the female side of things it really depends on your girl. Ask her opinion about the stone. With my husband and myself we wanted to go with something non traditional. So we went with a blue diamond and a filagreed white gold band designed by a custom jeweler. It was exactly what we wanted but it is not what other women would like. Some women want their stone to be crystal clear, some don't mind if there are flaws but prefer size. At the time we got married I wanted a smaller stone, but now I think I wouldn't have minded a bigger stone. We discussed what we wanted to do regarding a ring in quite a lot of detail so when it came down to it we got just what we wanted. I am big on communication in marriage and I figure what better time to start than to discuss a ring. Shop around, visit a few jewelers, look at many rings, get an idea of what she likes and does not like. Remember this is something she is going to wear for the rest of her life, make sure it is something she wants to wear. My husband was the one that found my ring for me, but it was after we had gone shopping at many ring stores, and he had a good idea of what I wanted in a ring that he was able to surprise me by finding just the ring that I wanted.

I do know what you are going through. I had an affair about this time last year and at the beginning of this year I told my husband about it. After commiting the sin it weighed on my mind and my heart until finally I knew I needed to tell my husband. It was difficult and it was painful, but it was nessisary. Since then things have gotten much better between the two of us. I have gone to the bishop and am currently in the process of obtaining forgiveness. Tell your husband what you did, you need to repent and I can guarantee that if you go to the Bishop he will tell you that you need to tell your husband. In my case I told my husband first and then I went to the bishop. It was easier that way for me. In your case you must decide, but I will tell you that your bishop will have you tell your husband. It is one of the parts of having committed such a sin, there are very uncomfortable things you have to do to repent. But it is worth it to obtain forgiveness.

1. How was the book of mormon begin? and what importance does it have to the LDS church? Would you say you learn more from the book of mormon or the bible? You do read both right? The Book of Mormon is a record of a group of people who left Jerusalem and sailed to the Americas, it is an account of their history, it is mostly focused on the religious aspect of their history but does focus on some of their wars and so forth. It is an inspired work, like the Bible. Bytebear answers a good amount with his answer. We use both the Bible and the Book of Mormon as well as some additional inspired works which are The Pearl of Great Price and the Doctrine and Covenants. I would say that I learn more from the Book of Mormon, but truly that is personal preference, I find that I can relate to the people in the Book of Mormon more than I can to the people in the Bible. 2.Joseph Smith had a vision. Could you tell me more about it? How is it supported? Bytebear answers this quite well. 3.How does your religon inpact your everyday life? Do you read scriptures in the morning with all of your family? Maybe pray more than the average joe? what is unique to your religon when it comes to your average day? It depends on the family, and on the person. If you have a family with children or have developed a schedule with your family then yes you may read scriptures in the morning. It really is personal preference. We are encouraged to read our scriptures, and say our prayers everyday. We are encouraged to fast once a month (usually on the first Sunday of each month), and to pay tithing (10% of our income), and pay a fast offering (generally the cost of the meals you fasted for each month though it can be more). We are encouraged to attend church functions, which can range from Youth Group, Scouts, youth activities, church camp outs, church picnics, conferences both Stake and General (Stake being your regional conference and General being world wide), there are also activities for the men and for the women, although thinking about it now I think the women get together to do things more often than the men do. I am sure I am missing stuff but it is late for me. 4.Why are missions so important? What does the missionary get out of it? Have you served a mission? If you have a story about it please share. Not only do missions help us to share the Gospel with others but a mission allows the missionary to experience a special spiritual experience. It allows them to go and serve others and teach the gospel. I have not gone on a mission myself, I got married before I could, however both my husband and my brother have gone and both often talk about how much they loved it. 5. The families are so close, what does your religion have to do with this? What advice would you have for other families? Our church focuses on the family. We encourage each family to have a Family Home Evening, which is a small meeting of the family where they often have a lesson an activity and maybe a treat. Many of our church lessons are about families. This does not mean that we have problem free families, but we do encourage people to be family focused. 6. Why are children not aloud in the temple if they have never sinned? The temple is not a place you go to worship, the temple is a place you go to make certain covenants with the Lord. Because of this it is not a place you would generally take children because they are not going to be making those covenants yet. Going through the years, a person is baptized at the chapel when they are 8 and becomes a member of the church, when a person reaches the age of 12 they can go to the temple to do baptisms for the dead. The endowment is a covenant that is made once you are an adult, generally it is done before marriage. The sealing is a binding of a family together, as in a marriage, because of this if a family has not been sealed then the children can come to the temple to be sealed to their parents. So you see it is not about sinning that children don't come to the temple, it is about the covenants you make at different ages. 7.What do you feel is the hardest perception to shake? From my experience it is the idea that we are polygamous, our church stopped that practice many years ago. 8. What is the purpose of the full body suit? Is there a name? The garment as Bytebear said, is to remind us of the covenants we make in the temple. Because of this it is only worn by adults who have had their endowment. 9. If you had to define being mormon....what would you say? We are a peculiar people, we tend to live our lives differently because of our beliefs, we are a Christian people and we work to be charitable to all. We do have our faults but then again we are human and humans will have their faults. We are in general a loving people. 10. What do you want people to know about your relgion before judging it? That everything you hear about us is not always true, and as bytebear said, every other religion has had just as many if not more problems as we have. Be a little open minded. 11. How do you respond when people consider your church a "cult?" So far when people have brought the cult idea up I have taken them to a dictionary which defines a cult in such a way that their church could be classified as a cult as well. That usually shuts them up.

I feel that way quite a lot. I find that when I am at work I have to explain myself to others. "So why don't you drink? Why don't you drink coffee? Why don't you swear? Why don't you watch certain movies?" Mostly the coffee gets them. And then explaining things to them. If you walk up to someone who is not LDS and say, "So my parents are in my Stake and so they decided to visit my ward the other Sunday, and well since I kind of grew up there my mom was welcomed into Relief Society like she went there every Sunday." You really have to explain yourself and what you mean. I find I have to translate into non-LDS speech, which means that sometimes my stories are a bit halting as I find the right words for things, take the above sentence, for me it would probably go something like this: "So my parents are in my Sta...err umm Church's group, and so they decided to visit my war...err Church congregation, and well since I kind of grew up there my mom was welcomed into the Relief...umm I mean Woman's group like she went there every Sunday." It kind of loses something in translation. But since I grew up out away from Utah and the Mormon Corridor I am used to it. Truthfully when I lived out in Utah it was more of a culture shock than living out here ever has been.