carlimac

I appreciate these answers but it still remains nebulous to me. In the church a pretty big deal is made of the fact that the godhead is made up of three distinct individuals and yet when it comes to receiving revelation they are kind of meshed together in a way that is hard for me to get my head around. I personally don't communicate with Jesus and I don't receive revelation from Him. I am eternally grateful to Him and want to follow his example as taught to us in the scriptures, but I don't hear Him. I feel like that would take some mental gymnastics to pray to and communicate with Father in Heaven but get personal revelation from Jesus Christ- as President Nelson says. Maybe I'm autistic-like in that I see this in a literal sense. If they are literally separate beings, I want to know which one is communicating with me. I have felt a nearness to Jesus on occasion, but never actual personal revelation from Him. Only from my Father-in-Heaven. I feel poked and prodded by the Holy Ghost with an occasional almost verbal (ish) nudge in my mind. And the warm blanket feeling now and then. But after being in this Church my entire life, I can't say I've ever heard from Jesus. I don't mean to be disrespectful. I just want to know if I'm doing this wrong and how, in a very practical sense, to change if I am.

For some reason, this has been something I haven't really understood my whole life. But I didn't realize I wasn't comprehending till maybe the last few years. I have merrily gone along in my life believing one thing but now I'm confused. I have yet to get an answer that is clear and definitive and sticks with me. This is my current understanding. Show me where I am wrong: Who do we pray to? - God the Father, Elohim through Jesus Christ as the conduit. So all communication goes through Jesus Christ to the Father. Who answers us?- God the Father through the Holy Ghost When President Nelson says " Hear Him", who are we to be hearing? God the Father? Jesus Christ? The Holy Ghost? Does it matter? Would they all answer us in the same way anyway? When we are encouraged to "have a relationship" with God, are we to develop three different relationships with three different beings? Here's why I ask- In my logical mind I have a very different relationship with a father than I would a brother. And almost no " relationship" at all with the Holy Ghost in that I don't pray or speak to that entity, only listen. There is no back and forth with the Holy Ghost. With a father I come to him to express love and thanks for all he does for me. ( He is the giver of all earthly blessings, right?) I come to him for help and advise and for a hug and comfort when I'm feeling lousy. With a brother who has been (as I understand it) the creative engineer of this earth and all that's in it and who came to earth to become half mortal so he could take on my sins, I'm ovewhelmingly humbled and grateful to him. What an amazing brother. But am I supposed to ask Him for help and advise...if I don't really pray to Him? This confusion struck me again yesterday as I listened to a BYU Education week talk and the speaker pointed out this quote by President Nelson from last April's conference "Our Father knows that when we are surrounded by uncertainty and fear, what wil help us the very most is to hear His Son... Because when we seek to hear- truly hear- His Son we will be guided to kow what to do in any circumstance." Someone help me out. How does this work?

It is being reported if it's the virus that actually killed the person. The FDA would shut it down in a nanosecond. My husband works in the industry. Also we have close friends who are researchers. They have a list of friends who won't take the vaccine till they do. They offered to put me on their list. I declined. ☺️

So you prefer no vaccine at all? Let's just let this thing kill as many as possible. Sound good?

So he is acting as guinea pig for the Church?? That's preposterous. He's a physician! And a prophet!

No why? the schools are listed in the top 10 conservative colleges in the country. they do still exist.

This was in Meridian magazine today. (Is it OK to repost here? There is an acknowlegement of where the article came from. ) I only read about half of it before I felt compelled to send it to my daughter with five kids. Is this where we're going as a nation? I'm so uncomfortable with this! Luckily my two youngest kids are 11th and 12th grade and moving on to conservative colleges. But I fear for the education my grandchildren will face. The oldest of eight of them (from three families so far, with hopefully many more to come) is in 5th grade. Their mom is homeschooling this year since their district is closed, then open then closed about every three weeks. Looks like the rest coming up the ranks are going to face some "re-programming" if they attend public schools. This makes me sick!! (Katie Couric, I used to like you. ) I see the only alternatives to public school as being home school, private Christian school- depending on their curriculum or finding the rare charter school that is grounded in conservative values. We sent our youngest to a charter school in Idaho that was fantastic but then we had to move. Is there any way to stop this? https://latterdaysaintmag.com/ultra-woke-illinois-mandates-are-top-threat-to-u-s-education/?utm_source=iContact&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=scot-maurine-proctor&utm_content=Thursday+21+January

I fail to see anything wrong with his metaphor. How is it damaging to congregations?

I know that rules are rules but I also have been dismayed at the wide gap between the opinions and perceptions of members of the Church who you would think are looking at these events from the same place. I wish there really were a place where we could talk about political events ( are these not events of the Last Days?) and figure out how even members of the Church got so polarized. It's like we're living on alternate planets. It's really disturbing and to have these discussions continually shut down feels counter productive to figuring out how to meet in the middle with our fellow saints. Any ideas how to help? I feel like we're pretty evenly divided politically here, yet our discussions seem civil and educational to me. I know there is potential for things to get out of hand but so far this thread has remained mostly even tempered. Even our Church leaders have encouraged us to get involved in the political process. Seems like this forum would be a good place to learn and look at things from a gospel perspective.

I just deleted Twitter for good. I never did like it. Also took Facebook off my phone so I'm not tempted to spend too much time there. I also put a moratoreum on myself for posting or commenting there. ( which is probably why I showed up here again. got to get this stuff off my mind! 😁) I only broke my rule once yesterday when I read a really good post by a conservative commentator from my old stomping grounds out west. I was reading the comments and one woman said this: "I don't know if I should say amen or a-women so I'll just say well written!" I burst out laughing and had to " like " that. Unfortunately, Facebook has also got the monopoly on groups for information like our ward RS info page, a community info page and another local group against virtual school (which is STILL going on where I live. So-long fun senior year for my daughter!)

Then Maxine Waters and AOC should be thought of as a gay wedding cake, too. Why are their inciting violence videos allowed to stay up? This is the problem that is painfully obvious. Facebook and Twitters rules aren't applied evenly or fairly. It's plain as day.

Then the government ought to cover the cost of medical school (says the mother of a soon to be med school graduate. Whoa baby- those student loans!! 😵)

I hope you can see I'm condemning violence and hypocrisy on any side. Also asking a question about personal threshholds for "this is a bad thing that happened". And what makes one thing bad but not the other. I'm genuinely confused.

Yup, those exact words just in the last day or so by our new "Uniter in Chief". Suddenly and for no apparent logical reason this rally and subsequent assault on the Capitol (which I am not condoning in any way. that was wrong wrong wrong!!) became about race.

Exactly what? That there would be a huge rally in support of Trump after a very shady election and about .05% of the ralliers would cause a ruckus in the Capitol? Of course it's outrageous but why are you not spreading your outrage more evenly? Lots of outrageous things have happened in the last year including MUCH more destrucion and lives and property lost- all encouraged by the "other side." Shamelessly encouraging it. And videos not even banned from social media platforms. I'm curious why you're not outraged and horrified by all that? Or did I just miss that day when you expressed outrage. If you did, my apologies.

Enough of what? Why didn't those who were aspiring to power on the left say ENOUGH last summer during the riots? And I would bet more than 5 died during all that. Much more was lost! "Some of these people act like they are part of a cult, a dangerous cult saying the President is the Chosen One, the Messiah. He has become their religion." And lest we forget the videos that came out after Mr Obama took office of groups of children dancing and chanting his name. It happens. 💁‍♀️

That video of the police opening the barriers doesn't look like rumor to me. That is one hot piece of evidence. But then YIKES! maybe they thought they were letting Trump supporters in. Either way, some of those cops need to find a different job- soon!! Edit. Now the video is gone. And Facebook wouldn't let me post it. 🤔

It's that phenomenon of people seeming to exist in "alternate universes". Where are you getting your info? Did you not see or hear about the huge rally again FOR Trump last weekend in DC? Are you not aware of the polls that have been taken on this? At least 70% of Republicans and even some Democrats believe there was wide spread fraud. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/09/republicans-free-fair-elections-435488 Might be time to step outside your own bubble to see what other people really think.

So how do we feel about the Church officially congratulating " President- elect Biden and Vice-President elect Harris? I'm feeling very ...something but it isn't warm or happy. Am I the only one? Now I have to leave to pick up my daughter from the airport ( carrying all those COVID-19 germs with her from BYU) so I won't be able to check back for many hours.

What was the experience like? We went back for the first time today and it was surreal, depressing and I didn't feel anything because of the distraction of it being so different. Our ward is so divided up (Northeast Area directives) that we only had 18 people there for our session ( granted a couple families were missing). I sat there the whole time wondering what church really is for me. I definitely have felt the spirit more at our home meetings than I did today. I should have felt the spirit at the building today. Everything went ok. But the few families that were there aren't the ones I'm closest to and it made me wonder if the feeling of the spirit has more to do with the emotional warmth of being with people we have a bond with than the "mechanics and structure" how the meeting is carried out.

I doubt the two are related at all. The timing isn't right, nor is the motive for producing the film. Epstein was arrested in July of 2019. Cuties was shown at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2020. It was probably already filmed and edited before Epstein was even arrested. I believe the producer had an important and critical message she was trying to portray about culture clashes and women's rights. She just had poor judgement in how she went about that. The FACT that she used actual 11 year old girls as the actresses in the movie was just so tone deaf. And she deserves all the criticism she's getting for doing that. I doubt she had a smidgeon of the motive of feeding pedophelia when she produced the film, though.. I haven't seen any more than the trailer so I don't really know but from what I understand the theme is very much about the young girl's father not being present in her life and him being gone to Senegal to bring home a second polygamous wife. And all the crazy abuses and neglect of women in the Muslim culture and what happens to this poor little girl as she gets lost in the shuffle in France and the group of fun little friends she gets involved with to fill an emotional cavern in her life. If there is a hint of pedophelia in it, I haven't heard about it. Truthfully, child actors have been used in horrible films for a very long time. This isn't the first one. If a man has that tendency, there are plenty of other films they probably shouldn't watch. In fact it probably doesn't even have to have sexual overtones for a man with that problem to be affected. ( My guess.)

I agree with this. Though my daughters showed promise in dance ( pop music) , I took them out early ( after a year) or had them do clogging instead. Thankfully, they all eventually opted for soccer or track without me having to fight them on it, much. This was 25-26 years ago for my first daughter. Granted I came from a family where I was the youngest and my mother had me at 42 so I was probably a generation behind in my social acceptance of pop culture of the times. But I was appalled!! This was a pretty conservative community and the dance club included lots of little LDS girls. The high school age dancers were very suggestive in their dance. During practices for the big end of year show I watched some of the watchers- high school boys! and I saw it through their eyes. That's when I decided my girls weren't going to be dancers. A decade later when my youngest girls had friends that invited them to take ballroom dance with them, I agreed to let them. And it was cute in the way you think miniature farm animals are cute or a tiny house is cute. Someone small dancing like adults do in a formal and very chaste manner. Cute! Until I watched a performance at a competition including some 14 year old girls salsa dancing. Then I about puked. And after that I told the girls "sorry" but competetive ballroom dancing wasn't anything I would support if it included dancing like that (much to the dismay of my girls and their friends and their friends' mother who despite being one of the most conservative LDS moms I've ever known, had no problem with her young teenage girls dancing with so much sexual overtone. There was a disconnect there that I still don't understand. ) It would have made me sick to see my own girls in that role. My daughters got over it and, as I said, hopped right into cross country and track without missing a beat. I have one sweet friend with a tiny 10 year old who has won competitions in dance and she posts lots of pictures of her on social media. I just pray that little girl isn't found by a pedophile. She's an easy target and even very suggestive in, like, first day of school pictures. I take it that her mom thinks it's funny but I worry for them.

Seriously?? I missed that.

Some parts of Idaho are very conservative, cheap and pretty. Central Utah has cheap land, Northern Utah up around Bear Lake has nice properties but the winters are brutal. How about Woodruff Utah? Plenty of places to go but only need to stop watching the news to find the peace you need.

Update: Reunion was cancelled. But the organizer said she is still using the condo and anyone else who wants to come is still invited to come. So... Really just a faux cancellation. Hence, EVERYONE except my family are staying in the condo. 26 people. My family would have made the numbers 48 plus a couple more nephews who either don't want to or can't go would have made 55 people. - all together in this condo. An ill conceived idea even without COVID. My own kids ages 32 and down are much more concerned about this than even my husband and I. My 28 yr old son in medical school has practically begged his Grandma not to go. He hasn't seen her since last Labor Day and would be devastated if she got it! Only one of my daughters lives in Utah and she works in an Assisted Living center so she feels very strongly about being extremely careful. All the rest of us live on either the east or west coast or in Texas- areas of devastation by this virus. The rest of the extended family live in the Salt Lake or Utah County areas. Frankly, it's disturbing to watch the cognitive dissonance going on with them. Despite the Governor and Church leaders pleading for mask use and social distancing, nieces and nephews are forever posting stuff on social media of them with about 30 of their closest friends in different activities- not social distancing, no masks. Here are the comments or justifications I've heard-" All the positive cases are within the Hispanic communities (of which the family isn't), only 4 people in my ward have gotten it, it's just a political conspiracy, I don't know anyone who has died, well we're all seeing each other outside ( and jamming in close for photos with arms around each other), masks are just so ugly (said by 22 year old golden boy nephew), we can't cancel it because all my work reward trips were cancelled and this is my only vacation ( said in a whiney voice by a 30 year old who has already spent time at Bear Lake this summer) and the best...Everyone is having family reunions!" When my family says, "I'm sorry we just feel like we need to take it seriously". Or "we feel the responsibility to stay away" they get defensive and insist THEY ARE being responsible and taking it seriously. 😵 I hate to say this but from the outside looking in, it has the optics of a very entitled group of people unwilling to sacrifice their fun for the greater good. My own group of 20 may sound self righteous and pompous. I admit we may be. But we just don't get their attitude at all! Also, Grandma who has FOMO herself is still going to "sneak up there". As if you sneak, it doesn't make it real.