Seanette

I've been known to fall behind on these plans and have to do a catching-up marathon. Hopefully, this challenge will keep me accountable enough that I don't do that, and develop better habits.

Don't remember about Gandhi, but MLK was assassinated.

There's also a concept called "fair use".

I'm already planning to do the Old Testament next year, starting January 1 (I do like to focus on whichever Standard Work is the Gospel Doctrine course), plus of course keep cycling through the Book of Mormon. I'm thinking the New Testament in 40 days at some point this year, if anyone else would like to join me (this will, of course, come AFTER the Triple in 40 days challenge). Keith, I'm sure around here somewhere, I can find several "Bible in a year" plans. Were you thinking reading the OT and NT concurrently or consecutively? I did once actually manage the entire quad in a year, which was a big task for me (I really bog down around Leviticus and Numbers).

Wingnut, I don't see where "raised up to the Jewish nation" means that they're Jewish, just that they are ministering to that people. Am I just dense today?

Well, the New Testament in 40 days could be done (260 chapters yields 6.5 chapters/day, which for me is entirely doable, being just a little more than what we're reading in the Book of Mormon daily for the challenge, and I've done the BoM in 40 days before). The OT is 929 chapters. My plan for next year is to do that over the course of 365 days.

I really don't think those are doable in 40 days , but I plan to read the entire OT at least once next year. Hmmm, need to start figuring...... :)

I don't make a life out of E!, TMZ, etc., so really don't get having my life so focused on celebrity "news" that I lose sight of the fact that these people are in fact strangers to me. For the most part, I only know about celebrities the carefully managed media facade (or the more venomous gossip I can't manage to avoid hearing/seeing). I have no clue who that person really is off-camera, in day-to-day life, or what that person is really like. That celebrity very likely has no clue I even exist, and probably wouldn't care even if he/she knew of me. Hard for me to get that emotional about someone that distant.President Monson and his predecessors are a different matter. No, I have never met any of them in person (wish I could have that opportunity), but since they are the Lord's spokesmen, they would be aware of my needs if that were necessary, and we know they care about us (they keep telling us that, and I believe them). Someone who represents God and who does care about my existence, I can get attached to. Not that I was terribly upset when President Hinckley passed, since I knew he was going to a better world and being reunited with the wife he loved and missed, so for him it was not a sad thing to leave this life.

They should at least consider the harm they're doing the faithful, by making us feel stupid, blind, etc.Of course, the pride it takes to assume you know more than God's authorized spokesman wouldn't allow for considering the damage they may be doing to the faithful.

Not yet, anyway. You'll get there someday, I hope. :)My picture is my two very real pets currently in my household (the picture is probably six years old or so, but they haven't changed much. We've moved since then, so the apartment is about two addresses ago). In fact, the cat is right now plastered against my leg watching me type this, the bird is hanging out on her nest.

So do several of you mean to say those of us who aren't devastated to the point of falling apart over a stranger's demise are cold, unfeeling, callous, etc.? Some (such as me) tend to be depressive and need to exercise some care with our emotions in self-defense. I can't afford to be utterly heartbroken by a stranger's passing, in the interests of my mental health. If I were to be as shattered as some (not any poster here, talking about people on the news) make a great show of every time a well-known stranger dies, I'd be completely unable to function and meet my daily needs and obligations. (I don't think of the President of the Church as a stranger, since I'm sure he cares about my existence, even if I've never had the privilege of meeting him in person).

Personally, as I commented in an early post on my blog, unless the two special witnesses spoken of in Revelation show up very soon in Jerusalem (to have time for that 42 months of preaching), I'm not buying the 2012 thing.

I keep telling my husband he's the priesthood holder, he needs to do something about the weather. He just looks at me funny.

Sounds like you can (and very likely will) do MUCH better than this bozo.

Please don't rub it in! It's nearly 7pm and still over 100 here! I would LOVE to be somewhere rainy or at least cool!

Well said, and about how I feel. Yeah, it's sad, especially when the person was relatively young, but not all that traumatic to me. I only get really upset about deaths of people I actually had some sort of relationship with, in realspace or online friends.I've heard there are people who've attempted suicide over Michael Jackson's death. Is it just me, or is that a MAJOR overreaction?

I'm the "what you see is what you get" type, online and in realspace. I hope my postings accurately reflect my personality, beliefs, etc., since any bio info I've posted is correct (might be a little vague, for obvious reasons, but any details given are true). I'm a full-time homemaker at present, so have plenty of time and in fact find a majority of my social life online. Aside from the odd schedule we live on in my household, due to my husband's work schedule, and transportation issues, in summer here it's hot enough that I don't cope very well with being outside, so hole up indoors (and our car's AC doesn't currently work).I do try to, as they say, "keep it real" as far as how I present myself online, simply because that's the honest way to go, and I don't see any point in going to the time and hassle to create and maintain a false persona.

Like a lot of the ones I've attended (see prior remarks for descriptions of what I normally have to sit through).

For me, the problem comes when that's ALL that happens in F&T, when a five-minute ramble has maybe one or two references to anything spiritual (and that in a very perfunctory way), and this is what everyone in the meeting does. Feels more like the speakers are focusing on themselves and less on what their listeners might need to hear.

Hey, you can send some here to Sacramento! We're looking at triple-digit temps this weekend (and our car's AC doesn't work. So not looking forward to the trip to church Sunday, for afternoon meetings).

I generally don't get emotionally invested in people I've never interacted with. For both MJ and FF, I can't help thinking they're better off. She's out of her physical pain, and he's out of the mental pain he had to be in, based on his behavior. As for the "jokers", well, different people have different ways of handling these things.

I've tried doing a testimony focused on the spiritual, with just enough about me that the listener understands why whatever I focus on that day is on my mind. Doesn't help, everyone else goes to the travelogue/"thankimony" style (where you blubber your way through bragging about all the goodies in your life, then append a sentence or two expressing gratitude to God for said goodies).

I've been a member fifteen years, and can probably count the number of actually spiritual F&T meetings I've attended in that time, and stay well in two digits. In every ward I've been in, roughly 99% of "testimonies" consist of people spending at least five minutes each blubbering their way through rambling stories about their lives, then maybe, if the listener is lucky, throwing on one or two sentences referring to the Gospel (said sentences clearly being a pro forma afterthought). This really doesn't inspire me. Yeah, yeah, I know, I'm horribly spiritually deficient not finding listening to your sobbed-out autobiography with little to no mention of anything having to do with the Gospel profoundly uplifting and inspirational.

I'd give this one a "laugh" if I could for the phrasing.I have immediate family who seem to think that my faith in God means I've switched off my brain. I really don't care. I have no doubt that the Church is true, and led by inspired authorities, especially President Monson, who is first among fifteen prophets, seers, and revelators. Human "wisdom" is inherently flawed, God's is not.

Anorexia? Where are you getting that?