Tarnished

I agree with Gwen on this one, when we are teens and we commit sexual sins we aren't actually causing harm to our parents. I committed sins when I was a teen and I repented by going through my bishop and he never asked me to confess to my parents. I think as a teen nears entering college they are beginning to enter the adult world, they travel away from their parents and live somewhere away from home. While away they have to start to learn to act as adults. Many college students are still supported by their parents though, but this does not mean that any time they sin that they have to tell their parents about it. This situation is difficult though because her bishop is her father. I suppose it really depends on what your Stake President is willing to do. If he is willing to work you through the repentance process himself then you may be able to take care of it through him and not your father. If not you may just have to work through the process with your father, seeing as he is your bishop.

There are plenty of guys out there who are good guys who are still looking for a wife or have gone through similar circumstances as you. I know of at least two guys who are in their 30s and are good men in the church and are single and looking. There are definitely guys out there that you could hook up with.

Make an appointment and meet with him at church. I have not been in your exact situation, but I have been in one that is vaguely similar. I confessed serious sexual sins to my bishop who was a man who had watched me grow up and is a good friend of my family. My sins resulted in a Disciplinary Counsel which included men who had also known me growing up. Then in the middle of my repentance process my bishop changed to the husband of my best friend and I had to go and talk to him all over about what I had done so that he knew where I was in the repentance process. It was difficult, it was painful and terrifying, but being forgiven after repenting was worth all of it. Pray for courage, plead with your Father in Heaven for the courage to do this, then go forward and meet with your father and speak to him about your sins. Then go forward in your repentance with all your will, be clean again, it is completely worth it. And once clean remember what you went through to get there and make sure that you never have to do that again for the same sins, keep yourself clean and wait for marriage, again it really is worth it.

Ok, let me give you my 2 cents, from one who has been there. And when I say that, I mean I have been on his side of the fence, not yours. A good way of getting a better idea of what happened in my marriage would be to read the entire thread by my husband http://www.lds.net/forums/advice-board/17111-blindsided-dumbstruck.html It was his first thread on these boards and it was on needing advice about finding out that his wife had an affair. In our situation I wanted to change, I wanted to repent and I wanted to make things better between my husband and I. I went to the bishop and confessed, I agreed to make certain changes, I agreed to have no further contact with the other man, I agreed to really make an effort to change. This is a place your husband needs to be at if he is to start along the road to repentance. He needs to be willing to give up his tendencies to look lustfully after other women. I say read the thread because in it my husband lays out the requirements he asked of me for our marriage to continue. I think this is important because when something like an affair happens it means that trust has been broken. And for the marriage to continue that trust has to be regained, and that is not an easy thing. It requires extreme work to regain trust lost. In my opinion, as someone who has been on the sinner's side of the fence, he really needs to prove to you that he is willing to change and willing to work on fixing the marriage with you. If he is not willing to do that then you may want to look at separation or possibly divorce. I say this because if he is not willing to give up the sin then he will continue to put you through the pain of his unfaithfulness, and no one deserves that. If you would like to private message me I would be happy to talk more with you on this matter.

My mother's Relief Society had a Relief Society Meeting on Make-overs, they had some of the Young Women come in and tell the adult Sisters what were modest outfits and what were not and how to put together a modest outfit out of something that started off immodest, like a tank top. What I found funny was that the girls then told the older women what style of jeans they could wear and at what age they could no longer wear "Skinny Jeans". It was quite amusing. I think it was good though because it made those Young Women really look at modesty and how to make what they wear more modest.

I actually like Orson Scott Card's books as well, and I have read most of the Ender series, I just haven't gotten extremely deep into the Bean spinoffs. Card is an unusual writer though and some of his books are a bit out there, but definately not the worst reads I have ever had. P.C. Cast and Kristen Cast's book "Marked" was awful, and from what I have heard the other books in the series are awful as well. Basically it is a vampire based series geared toward teen to young adult readers. The whole thing is riddled with bad writing, sexual encounters and blatant anti-Christian allusions. It was one of those books where you read it hoping it will get better at some point. A close second is "The Sword of Shanarra" which though I am sure it is a fairly decent Fantasy book, it was basically "The Lord of the Rings" except with a Sword instead of a ring. The whole thing smacked so deeply of the author basically copying someone else's story that I had a very difficult time reading it much less enjoying it. Because of that book I have pretty much stayed away from the rest of the series. Also pretty much anything Angela Carter writes I stay away from. After randomly opening one of her books (that I had for a class I took) and randomly reading a passage to a group of friends, I decided that I would probably never read her stuff again. The random passage by the way described infant sexual abuse. From my experiences with her work from that class (which after the first book I never read any of the others) I have come to the conclusion that the author was obsessed with sex and filled her books with sickening descriptions of it.

Well then I guess you can believe what you are going to believe. It is not my fault that BYU does not give a more descriptive explaination of that course. By the way, I am a bit curious why you constantly refer to Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) as UF, which I am guessing stands for Ultimate Fighting. In this sport Ultimate Fighting really only applies to the name of one organization, the Ultimate Fighting Championship, or UFC. The UFC is just one of quite a few organizations that holds championship matches where practioners of MMA can compete. There is also Strikeforce, Bellator Fighting Championships, WEC, XFC, King of the Cage, as well as many more. I am just curious about your semantics choice.

I agree with Beefche here, just because you have had promptings that he is the one for you, doesn't mean that you are the one for him. When I was in my late teen years (right before leaving for college) a boy that I knew prayed about me and got the answer that I was the one for him. I already knew that he was not the one for me. I ended up going to college and marrying a guy I met out there. So remember that both sides has to have the same answer before it really works out right. Good luck with it all, and take it slow.

Depending on the habit I may or may not change it. Some habits I have are ones that I don't much want to get rid of, others are habits that I wouldn't mind getting rid of. Recently I got a camcorder that I plan to use to take videos of family events. Last weekend my dad recorded both my husband and I. I noticed from it that I tend to run my words together. I would like to change it but I am not completely sure how, as I do not notice when I am talking that I am running my words together. However other habits I might not get rid of, like for example I tend to shake my feet when sitting or sometimes bounce my leg, it is a little habit I picked up from my mom. It sometimes bothers people but it helps to calm me and often helps to make me feel at peace, so even if someone asked me to change that habit I probably would not. I am not much the type of person who tells people about habits or things they may want to change. For example my brother in law had some very bad body odor, but neither myself or my husband told him about it because we figured it would be rude. He was finally told by a complete stranger and later asked us about it. When we told him the truth he changed his deoderant and changed the way/frequency he uses cologne and deoderant. Another example is a lady I work with, she has awful teeth and very bad breath, however I can not bring myself to tell her about this and ask her if there is something she can do about it because I am afraid of offending her.

This is very true, when I was going through In Vetro Fertilization they put me on the pill at the beginning so that I would not ovulate. I did not take the menstration pills because they did not want me to ovulate until they told me to. After I got off the pill they had me take other drugs to cause me to ovulate and ovulate with increased production of eggs. I found it very interesting how the medical society uses different drugs to get the results they want out of the human body.

Aspergers is a type of Autism. I would have to say that the best thing I have found to help me understand Autistic people has been the movie Temple Grandin. You can find it at Redbox or at your local store. The movie is about a woman named Temple Grandin who is autistic, it follows her life and how she sees the world. It follows her through high school, and college and finally to where she earns her Doctorite and finds her own place in the world. As I have a niece who is autistic (I think she also has Aspergers) it helped me to understand her better and understand some of the difficulties that autistic people go through. For some autistic people the sensation of being touched is painful. For some, hugs are painful or are too much stimulus. People with autism often process their observations of the world differently than people who do not have autism. Watch the movie, I think it will be helpful for you.

I am pretty sure I am understanding what you want here, you want a link to the course, but that last sentence still boggles my mind as to how to understand it. I went to the BYU website and found Martial Arts listed under the Exercise Science courses 2010 - 2011 Undergraduate Catalog | Exercise Science (ExSc) Courses As I said in my previous post, my brother took the course, not me, so I only know what he described the course as. He said that they learned different styles of martial arts and then trained by sparring against each other and against punching bags and so forth. From what he described it sounded very much like what you would learn at a Mixed Martial Arts studio. If you click on the link for the Martial Arts course it doesn't give you much info about it, it just tells you when it is taught. I have pulled up a PDF version of the catalog and even that gives the same amount of info on the class. So either you accept the fact that what my brother told me is true, and that BYU has a Martial Arts course, or you don't. I have given you all the proof I can find on the subject. I do wish though that the catalog gave more information on the course, I know as a student it would be something I would have wanted to know. Edit: Just in case you are having trouble finding it on the page it is listed as this: EXSC 141 : Martial Arts. (.5:0:2)(Credit Hours:Lecture Hours:Lab Hours)

From my research on the matter, which I did before my husband and I went through artificial insemination and in vetro to get pregnant, I found that the church strongly discourages use of a surrogate mother and strongly discourages being a surrogate mother. They also strongly discourage use of donor eggs or donor sperm. They are ok with artificial insemination as long as the egg and sperm are from the married couple, they are also ok with in vetro as long as the egg and sperm are from the married couple. They currently have no standing on use, destruction, or donation of remaining embryos, except when it comes to donation of embryos to another couple, donation to science though I don't think they currently have a stance on. Because of their standing on use of donor eggs and sperm I would guess that they would advise on destruction of remaining frozen sperm and eggs.

Congrats!! Our little kicker is a boy which will be interesting. I like the names you picked for her, way cute!

Actually BYU does indeed have a MMA class and they do have their students fight each other. My brother has taken this course. When learning this style of fighting is a course that is provided by BYU and is being taught by a BYU employeed trainer then I don't think you can claim that the Church is going to be against it. If they are encouraging people to learn this form of fighting I don't see them condemning it anytime soon.

The question really comes down to this, “Can you control your dreams? Can you control what you dream about?” Chances are you probably can’t, even those people who lucid dream (where you are able to control your dreams to a point) often can not control what they dream about. I would not consider wet dreams as sinful as you can not control what you dream about. But I wouldn’t dwell on them after you wake up. I have known people who have been given blessings to have respite from wet dreams. And with those people I know it has worked, as long as they were following the gospel and doing what they should they did not have wet dreams. For the most part though I would not view wet dreams as a sin.

I second Anatess's suggestion of finding something else to do. For a long time my husband and I were addicted to WoW, we played all the time. Then we started working on getting our house ready to sell. Suddenly we had more important things to do and we had to get them done. It has been over a year since we last played and it has been pretty good for us. We just keep ourselves busy with other things. Hobbies are a great idea, keeping the house clean is another. Find something that is more important than the gaming that you have to do, and when that is done find another. Fill your day with things that keep you busy, and make sure some of them are hobbies that allow you to escape from your workday and allow you to destress. Very often video games are used as a way to get downtime from work, so find something else to get that downtime with. Exercise is another great idea, if you make a goal with your exercise then use it as your hobby then not only are you improving your physical fitness but you are making something else more important than the game.

I will probably not participate as I have not for years, though I have wanted to. I just don't have the time currently to focus on writing a novel. I also don't tend to participate in Napowrimo National Poetry Writing Month, as again I often don't have time or end up having writer's block and am not able to write a poem a day during that month.

It is nice and all but it is mostly about boxing, MMA is different from boxing in many ways. Look at the part of the article you posted that talks about deaths from boxing. 140 deaths from boxing since 1990. And according to the article, 1 death from MMA since 1993 when it started with the UFC. Do you see a difference there? 140 deaths compared to 1 death. And the reason behind only 1 death? The safety standards that are used. In boxing a fighter is given a count of 10 to get up and continue fighting. In an MMA fight the fight would be stopped. If the fighter is bleeding too much, if the fighter is unable to focus their eyes, if the fighter can not defend themselves, if the fighter is hit in such a way where they could be injured, the fight stops. The list of things that can stop an MMA fight goes on and on. By the way, one of the references sited by the article for the MMA portion was from a study done in 1984, before the UFC was ever founded.

My husband is of the same mindset, when our kids get to an age that they can learn we will probably enroll them in some form of martial arts. Faded's favorite video out there is one where you see the interior of an elevator (taken from the security camera that in the elevator) a girl walks in (she looks to be high school to early college age) and a guy walks in after her, when the elevator doors close the guy goes to attack the girl. The girl suplexes the guy smashing him to the ground. When the elevator doors open again the guy goes running out followed by the girl who looks like she is going to kick his butt. Anatess, I did not see that fight, but I believe it. There are a lot of religious fighters. Many of them have crosses or scriptures tattooed onto their bodies. Many of them wear clothing that is very religious. There is one line of clothing out there, "Jesus didn't tap."

I think he had to deal with the consequences of his actions. He chose to tweet something, and accidentally tweeted to the wrong place, but accident or not I can see any large company firing someone over that. People really need to learn that when it comes to the internet your privacy is no longer your own. And companies are using things that people post about themselves to determine whether they want to hire or sometimes even fire someone.

This reminds me a bit of my dog. She goes behind the couches to find things but then sometimes gets stuck and has trouble finding her way out.

Muay Thai has caught on, it is used in MMA. When MMA first started out the original UFC fights were funded by the Gracie family, they wanted to show the world that their style of martial arts was the best in the world. And they succeeded. Royce Gracie (6ft 3in, 170 lbs) won the championship that year and many years that followed. The Gracie's style of fighting was Brazilian Jiu Jitzu. Since then MMA has evolved becoming something where you can really learn the best ways of defending yourself. Without the sport this would have never happened. In times past each martial art style was learned separately and students were discouraged from learning more than one style. With the onset of MMA martial arts students now learn many different styles of fighting and these styles often work together to make them better fighters. When it comes down to it, the MMA sport has given martial arts a better understanding of what really works when it comes down to a real fight. Which as Anatess has related, can really happen anywhere. Some of the moves used in MMA because they come from different styles of fighting can be very pretty, especially the throws. One of my favorite fighters is Jon "Bones" Jones, he uses Greco Roman wrestleing techniques, Judo, Muay-Thai, and Brazilian Jiu Jitzu. I like Jones so much because of the throws that he implements in his fights. The focus of this whole discussion has been many people pointing out the good points of the sport against an argument about the violence. Always the violence. But you are failing to note the safety measures that are put in place for this sport. It should be telling that not one person has died in a professional MMA fight since it started with the UFC. Yes there are injuries that happen, but injuries happen in most contact sports (football, hockey, rugby, soccer, etc.). And as for the AMA and CMA requesting a ban, almost every article I have found on the matter has mentioned the fact that they called for this ban without doing any research on the sport. In fact from what I read, there has been very little research done on the sport and the medical impacts of it. So though they are a medical association I don't really see their request for a ban based on any concrete research of the sport. As for how it relates to the gospel, it really depends on how each person interprets what they read. We see this in many different religions and all over this forum board. Many of the fighters are religious, and there are quite a few who are LDS. There is a large following of MMA in Utah. Though one person may interpret the gospel doctrine in one way another person may interpret it differently.

Oooh, I bet my flex spending plan would cover one! I was despairing of being able to afford one, but your comment on insurance got me thinking. Thanks! Congrats on your new little one! And thank you for the advice!!

It sounds like you are dealing with an addiction, and when it comes to addictions you aren't over them for good after being good for a few months or so. An addiction never really leaves you, you have to constantly be on guard against it. I would suggest looking into addiction recovery and see what your stake has to offer. Talk to your Bishop about the option and see if he knows if the stake has something set up for it, if not look and see if your community or a nearby community has something you could attend.