dahlia

One of my early questions to the missionaries was, could I still drink diet Pepsi? I might have to go less active if I couldn't have this one bright light in my life. I think people should be able to choose if they want soda. I don't think states, cities, or the Church should make that decision for people - though I do think if the government is paying for your food, a la food stamps, then you give up your choices and you take what the government says you can get. I know that there have been Church leaders that have come out in favor of vegetarianism. I don't know why there hasn't been more support for this line of thinking, especially since we do have a WOW and aren't talking about creating one from scratch. I'd be in favor of changing the WOW to emphasize not eating meat. I think we should be more like the Seventh Day Adventist in this regard - that it is expected that you'd be vegetarian and those who aren't are in the minority (I'm not sure I'd have people lose their recommend for eating a burger, but I would like to see more veg food at ward functions). I'm sure somene will say, "You want to keep your diet Pepsi, but you want others to stop eating meat. Isn't that hypocritical?" I dunno. Maybe. I know I haven't killed a pig or cow to get that soda. And I know that I grow in compassion (or at least that's the hope) when I think of other sentient beings and their right to life and decide not to eat them.

I'm a convert. I got the feeling my missionaries were pushing me to a date, but I had to push back and asked for a few weeks off. I had 'end of semester' business as a professor and also had some health issues and just needed a break. When the break was over, I was ready to renew my investigation. If you need the down time, take it. The Church isn't going anywhere.

Oh boy - it wasn't that long ago that I was in your shoes. I was just planning on learning some Mormon history from the missionaries and it kind of went out of control from there. : ) Seriously, I agree with another poster that you should try both; reading is one thing, participating in a service and meeting people is another. For me, I felt really blessed that I didn't have to be baptized to take the Sacrament. From the beginning, I felt that I needed the Sacrament to help me during the week as I thought about everything. I would also suggest that you read some of the Conference talks to get a feeling of how the leadership speaks to the Church and what feels is important to know. I think converting is the best thing I've ever done (short of becoming a parent). I'm very glad I did it - and that I found this board, which was very supportive of me as I sought answers.

A couple of thoughts: 1. Where are you located? Are there a lot of LDS there and fewer converts? Maybe the stake counselor was one of these born Mormons who has a hard time recognizing that when you are a proselytizing church, you will get a lot of folks who are different from you. If you don't like it, don't go looking for them. 2. We sometimes get black converts or investigators who get up and truly testify on Fast Sunday. I was raised Catholic, but being black, I know black Baptist preaching when I hear it. Many of these people bring that style of testifying, which is very different from what you're likely to hear from the 'regular' Mormons. Once again, if you don't like it, don't let people you deem to be 'too different' speak to the congregation. 3. I'm the first to admit that when I give a talk, I don't bring in a lot of the Scriptures. I may cite from a Conference talk, and I'll cite Scripture if something pops up, but it's not where my mind goes first. I gave a talk in RS and used MLK's 'Letter from Birmingham Jail.' I don't know what the sisters thought, but it's where I went mentally when prepping for the lesson. btw - I almost always prep while listening to hymns, so I like to think that the Holy Spirit is sneaking in there somewhere. I know my talks frequently differ from others'. Tough. Don't ask me to talk if you don't want to hear what I have to say.

Depending on the topic, sometimes you can ask the sisters to sit in a circle, which should facilitate discussion. It has also come up that we should remember that sometimes it is all a sister can do to make it to RS meetings. She might not want to talk and we should respect that. Personally, when I get to that point, I just go home after Sacrament Meeting. No reason to be an anti-social ..... around a bunch of people who are just trying to be nice. You have to be careful about including other people's personal stuff in a lesson. I frequently had international students in the grad school classes I taught. When I thought they might have something interesting to share with the class about experiences in their home country. I would always email or talk to them in person and ask if they minded if I called on them to address the topic. You do not want to call on someone like that out of the blue. It's the same as calling on the lone black student and asking him to provide the 'black opinion' on a topic. It's considered bad teaching form.

I had to send an email to someone at church and once again came face to face with somekind of family email address. Is this a Mormon thing? Why on earth would I want to share my email address with my spouse? 1. Newsflash - if either if us were up to no good on line, we certainly wouldn't send love notes thru the family email, so this doesn't serve as much of a control on anyone's behavior. 2. If I'm a man, I wouldn't want to be inundated with a bunch of emails from the RS about who's baking what. 3. If I'm a woman, I'm not interested in what's happening with the priesthood. 4. For either party, why would I want to read emails from my in-laws which are clearly for my spouse? 5. What happened to the women's movement? It would seem that having one's own email is the smallest part of having one's own life. I just find this strange.

Gosh. It just amazes me sometimes, the stuff that people come up with. This is a pretty good history of the Freemasons from the History Channel. Freemasonry Not everything you don't understand or don't know about comes from Satan. Why are some LDS so worried about Satan and not with the gifts and blessings that come from God?

Thanks for all of the responses. I would hate to be someone's 'project.' I was upfront with my RS president and the bishop about not wanting to do VT or get VT for awhile. I enjoy meeting my VTs at church and one of them is so good about emailing me a lesson and keeping up with me. That's fine. I just can't handle the visiting now. I told the bishop that I hadn't lost my testimony, but I needed a break. If I hadn't said something, I could see turning into a project and then getting upset with people constantly bothering me. This way, they know where I stand and seemingly are OK with it. Not sure I like that investigators, etc. are part of someone's quota. Yeah, don't like that at all.

Let's just say that the whole garment thing kinda freaks out the people I have in mind. Think of that what you will.

Huh? No limit on what? The number of times the bishop can bug you about not going to the temple?

I realize that one of our goals as LDS is to go to the temple. But what if, at least for now, you don't want to become endowed? Can you still get baptized? Should you get baptized? And, if you shouldn't get baptized, how long will wards let you go to church and attend activities if you aren't a baptized member? In most religions, no one would care what you did after baptism, but you and I both know that the missionaries, your HT, your VT, and the bishop will not stop asking why you aren't pursuing becoming temple worthy, so there seems to be no escape from having to be up front with this at some point after baptism. I could be wrong. Thoughts?

Did you ask your librarian to help you search? As an undergrad, your search skills are probably less than stellar. The librarian - the professional librarian, not a student staffer - can help you. I hate to sound like the professor I was, but next time, don't wait so long to start researching, so that if you run into a problem, you have time to deal with it. Probably not what you wanted to hear, but if you continue on this path, you will not do well in school. There's no way to sugarcoat this. I am not against using the web to get an overview, but then you should use the source materials cited on the web page (if there are no source documents, move on) to begin your research.

Well, maybe I'm not as Mormon as I thought. I read, "Sister Oscarson" and wondered why a bunch of Mormons were talking about a nun. 12 yrs of Catholic school, guys, it dies hard. It dies hard.

So, the BoM musical is playing at the new campus theater (the old one was flood ravaged in 2008. Can you believe it has taken them until this year to finish a new theater? Anyway...) Today there was a big university-wide email from the LDS student group (didn't know we had one) " You've seen the musical, now you can read the book! " They offered to take people to church on Sunday and provided 2 links to learn about the Church and get their own BoM. Very upbeat and happy (well, they're Mormon, what else would they be?) It was good to see.

I'm a big fan of South Park, and language doesn't bother me, unless they have the Elders using it, then I'd probably be bothered. I just wondered if the co-worker, after seeing it, would think I am weird for being Mormon, as opposed to being weird for being me. I guess I have to keep in mind that according to Matt and Trey, only Mormons go to heaven. So we've got that going for us... 'Mormons' is the correct answer.

I went to the Univ of Washington for my PhD. I never saw coffee stands in class buildings before. Class buildings, bus transfer centers, parking structures, all over the place. What an addiction! And what money people spend! Someone told me coffee is so popular there because of the weather. Personally, I found the gray and the chill invigorating. But then, I would.

Have any of you seen this? A co-worker told me she saw it over the weekend and then I think she realized who she was talking to and didn't say more about it. I don't plan to ask about it, but I'm wondering, if any of you have seen it, what do you think people think of Mormons after seeing it? Does it show us as being really crazy? Is it like watching an Oliver Stone movie - the uninitiated can't tell what is real and what is artistic license (or 'lying about history' as I like to call it)?

We just all get a big candy bar. Probably safer. : )

Rice for the win! My stepfather's people were from Eleuthera, a small island in the Caribbean. We had rice all the time, even if we also had potatoes. If he didn't have rice, he felt like he hadn't eaten.

Gee, this sounded like the intro speak Van Alden gave to the new agents. I can just hear Michael Shannon's cadence in my head.

This is a great story, Spamlds. Where are you in OK? I lived in Norman for a year.

We've never been big bread eaters (don't know why I keep saying 'we,' the son and heir has moved out, mostly). What do people do with wheat besides bread and bread-like products? I'm trying to do lower carb for my diabetes. That said, if stuff went haywire, I guess I'd rather have carbs than nothing. But I'd rather have rice than bread. Am I missing some necessary foodstuff here by storing rice and not wheat?

I am aware of this and understand how it is a problem. As an aside, I met a Chinese girl who was married to a German. They were both here attending school. She wanted to stay because she said she would never be accepted as German, whereas she could be an American over here. So, yes, when you marginalize and gheto-ize people, they aren't likely to disseminate. That said, assimilation or not, there is much in Islam that is against American/Western culture. Therein lies the problem.

There are hungry, depressed vets. Vets commit suicide at the rate of 22 per day. As the widow of a vet who saw combat in Vietnam, I'd rather help them. At least they fought for their country. I don't really want to help males who won't fight for thier country, while expecting others to fight for them.

I grew up Catholic with Episcopalian (like Anglican Episcopalian, Queen's birthday celebrating, Charles I for sainthood, Episcopalian) parents. I had Catholic and Baptist relatives. I did 12 yrs in Catholic school and at one time considered being a nun - as in asking my parents to let me enter a novitiate when I was in high school. Long story short, over time I developed issues with the role of women in the Church and Original Sin. When my son was born, there was no way I could accept that he had Original Sin. So, I looked around for something else. If you know anything about pre-Vatican II Catholics, we were raised to distrust and pretty much dislike Protestantism. I couldn't see myself as a Protestant and entered Reform Judaism because I felt it was a direct connection to Catholicism. I found a congregation with a female rabbi and lived as a secular Jew for years. When my husband died, not one person in the synagogue came to visit me or call me, not even the Rabbi, though I had been converted in that congregation, attended faithfully for years and my son went to Hebrew School for a year. It was easy to drift away from attending, tho I still felt Jewish in my head. OK, so this sounds really superficial, but fast forward years later and I find myself in Iowa, living close to 'Mormon Trek Blvd.' and the Handcart Park. One summer I decided to learn about Mormons and began reading and visiting the Park. The more I read, the more I found appealing - no Original Sin, respect for women (sending women back east to become doctors, etc.), respect for the family and males (I had a son, after all), no Trinity, and living a clean life. I wanted something that was more than just church on Sunday. I learned about Conference, and, a little fearfully, watched one. I always pictured Protestants as full of fire and brimstone and telling people they were going to hell. I was so surprised to find Conference open and warm and loving. It was a great introduction to the Church. About a week after, missionaries knocked on my door! I just wanted to learn more about Mormons, but those missionaries thought they were giving me lessons. : ) No one is more surprised than I am that I got baptized. You've seen my posts over the years. You can trace my thoughts and struggles with it all here on the site. If tomorrow Joseph Smith was proved to be a fake, I'd still want to belong to the Church. I don't think I will ever be a Utah perfect Mormon, but they've trusted me to teach RS and give talks. I have an article on information transfer by lay people in the Church that has been downloaded around 500 times. I want to be a Sister missionary when I retire. I'm very happy with the way things went. even tho I complain here a lot and will probably never be considered a 'sweet spirit.' I'm not a big pray-er, my first thoughts are not to run to the bishop with problems, but I hope I'm Mormon enough. My mother is fine with all this. She's just happy I'm going to church, she doesn't care which one.