askandanswer

I would kill a VT rooster - then serve it with gravy, roast potatoes and peas. 

Religious fanatics come in two stripes:
Anyone who adheres to their religion more strictly than I do Anyone whose religion is too different from mine

"New Jersey has the best hot dogs," Tom stated frankly.
"I believe the tree is some sort of Irish conifer," Tom opined.
"An orca!" Tom wailed*.
*Doesn't actually work for me, since I pronounce the animal as a /ˈhwāl/.

"I have a split personality," said Tom, being frank.
"Oh no, I dropped the toothpaste again," said Tom, crestfallen.
"I punched him right on the nose," said Tom, bashfully.

Thank you

My sister bet me a thousand pounds I couldn't build a car out of spaghetti...
....You should have seen her face as I drove pasta!

"Who's in line for the New Year's Honours?" wondered Tom as he peered at the list. "Don't waste our time with your fairy tales!" his brothers warned him grimly.

My son and I were texting Tom Swifties to each other yesterday. Here are a few:
"I hate bananas," Tom cried dolefully. "Fan the flames!" Tom bellowed. "There's no room on the Place de la Concorde," Tom said ruefully. "I prefer pumpernickel," Tom said wryly. "You cut me off at the ankles," said Tom, defeated. "I'm too passive" was said by Tom. "I'm a raven!" Tom crowed. "It's on the other side of the road," Tom said crossly.

No, you can block anyone on FB you want.

My vacuum cleaner sucks

Him being a democrat or  having amazing moral values? j/k
He was a Democrat in the Utah House of Representatives. This is well-known (you can google it) but here a reference in the Deseret News:
http://www.deseretnews.com/top/1914/7/James-E-Faust-Prominent-Mormons-in-politics-and-government.html
 

Grumpy Old News Reporter: "And now to our young attractive weather girl, Florence.  Tell us Florence, is it going to rain much on Saturday?"
Florence: "Not enough to come in out of."
Grumpy Old News Reporter: "Do you realize you just ended a sentence with three prepositions?"
Florence: "Gee - I wish I could end a Saturday that way!"

Link for revelations in context https://history.lds.org/section/revelations?lang=eng
link to 'why a stone was used' in translation https://knowhy.bookofmormoncentral.org/content/why-was-a-stone-used-as-an-aid-in-translating-the-book-of-mormon
Interesting discussion of lesson 6 (and a lot of other stuff. Warning! Long!) includes some speculation on translation methods
 

The following is MERELY my opinion  in regards to your LAST question in your post.
On translation between the texts...there were differences, and it varies depending on what your source is.  I am, of profession, a historian (though not really employed right now, so suddenly I have tons of time to spend on forums and other locations). 
In translating the Book of Mormon, there are various sources on how it was done.  Some sources say he used a seer stone (and I think this is actually mentioned in the Church Essays on the official Church site these days) in part of it.  Others say that he used the Urim and Thummim.  I am partial to the Urim and Thummim process of thought, as that was what was given to him of the Lord to help with the translation of the Book of Mormon, and as we find in the book of Mosiah, what was used previously in translation.  It is what I've read as per his own thoughts on how it was done.  Other sources, normally not a primary or even a secondary source are attributed to the seer stone idea, rather than a primary source (aka...someone heard that Whitmer told them this was how it was done in translating). 
Either way it was done, both say that he still had to study it out in his mind, and utilizing faith and prayer, that it was through this method that the words of the Book of Mormon were translated.
Many use the idea that there are several chapters that seem to be copied from the King James Version of the Bible in the book of Mormon.  To me, this actually seems to validate the translation of the Book of Mormon.  For those who adhere to the Seer Stone theory, those scribing the plates had full view of what Joseph was doing during the translation process.  That means Joseph had to have those entire passages from the King James memorized nearly by heart.  I have very rarely seen anyone know the Bible that accurately, and though there are those that do, they are few and far between.  You would have to say Joseph memorized the Bible by heart in order to give those out in full view of someone else who was scribing.
With the Urim and Thummim, with a small divider between them, some could say that it would also be possible for Joseph to have the Bible there, but that means he would be seen getting it and then gathering it to read it straight up.  I think it's possible he used a Bible in that instance, but if he did, it was in comparison to what he found already in the Book of Mormon and utilizing it as a tool after he realized how similar they were.  Either that, or we are back at him having memorized the entire Biblical passages again.  I find it highly unlikely, and instead think that those scribing the Book of Mormon would have realized that pretty easily.
Thus, I actually find the chapters found in the Bible and quoted in the Book of Mormon actually more assuring of the validity of the Book of Mormon and how it was translated, than anything else.
This is also a difference between the Book of Mormon and the other translations.  The bible wasn't really utilized in the translation of the Book of Mormon.  it was a straight translation of the words in the plates via revelation through the tools given by the Lord, faith, prayer, and study...just as it states it should be done in the D&C.
This differs from the Bible Translation and the Pearl of Great Price's Book of Abraham.  Once again, let me stress, these are my OPINIONS...not facts.
In regards to the Bible, I feel it was more a matter of prayer and revelation, far more than what one finds in regards to the Book of Mormon translation.  Whereas the Book of Mormon was a more literal translation of what was found on the Gold Plates and the original writings of the actual authors/prophets, the Bible was not (in fact, we don't have any original documents of the original writings if I recall, most of them are copies, even if they are very old copies and some close to the actual dates).
In the instance of the Bible, it was reading what is there, and then having revelation on what the original intent and writing actually was.  This is a very drastic difference than what and how the Book of Mormon was translated, but still something that a Seer and revelator is able to do.
Once again in my opinion.
Finally, the book of Abraham is an odd case.  It is a funerary text, and one that I feel Joseph knew was a funerary text.  I'd have to do background research, but I think he was aware at the time, of the supposed whereabouts of the remains of Joseph and the other patriarchs (there are other places in the world where those remains are purported to reside, and have for over a millennia).  Since I believe he knew this, the question is why he stated these texts were the book of Abraham from his own hand?
IN MY OPINION (as if I haven't said that enough here) I think it is in the same way when we read the Book of Mormon and claim it was written by Mormon.  Is the book in your living room or in your scripture case the actual book written by Mormon?
I feel the Book of Abraham was something similar to a parable, though slightly different.  It is like some books which have an initial outer meaning, but have a different and deeper meaning within.  Many times, that real meaning is something hidden from those who are not initiated into the actual meaning of the text, so those who are not initiated will have a completely different story or idea than those who are initiated.
With the Book of Abraham we can see the way Joseph Translated it.  First, he tried to reason out in his mind what these symbols could mean.  If you look on the Joseph Smith Papers, I believe they have copies of his attempt.  He tried to put symbols with words.  However, those words, in the order he put them down in, don't really make all that much sense, and in the order that they are put in, do not correlate to comprehensible sentences.  They ALSO do not correlate with the Pearl of Great Price's Book of Abraham that we have.  There are no sentences (that I have seen,  could be mistaken) that actually are there that are directly found in our Pearl of Great Price.
How did we get the Book of Abraham then?
So, here we have Joseph trying to study it out in his mind, and this is where the power of the Lord comes in.  After studying it, having faith, and prayer, he gets an answer in the form of revelation, which is finally where we actually get the Book of Abraham.  The best way to put it, is if it is on the actual scroll, it is a hidden meaning or hidden story/idea behind the actual stories.  Either way, AFTER study and prayer, it is basically almost a pure revelation and inspiration to Joseph Smith on the Book of Abraham.  It is basically revelation that he received after intense prayer and study on the subject.
So, in essence the differences of the three types of translation would be
1. Book of Mormon - Literal translation of the original writings from the Gold Plates
2. Revelation on the original intent or writings of the Bible
3. Revelation after study and prayer on a specific subject.
All are things a prophet, seer and revelator can do, but different in how they were accomplished.
And finally, just so if you didn't realize it before, this is ALL in my opinion, not anything strictly doctrinal or fact.

Carb, I don't think he's trying to draw a full, complete, mirror-image-style parallel, but rather, point out a general pattern:
1) Noah: People were wicked, God used a natural disaster to punish them for their wickedness
2) Now: People are wicked, perhaps God is using natural disasters to punish them for their wickedness (or to encourage repentance for those who are not too far gone)
Abstraction of similar circumstances into a basic pattern, that's all.

Carb are you trying to ring a bell?
 
 

I thought you were that threat, with your plans for world domination?

Thank you

In the Summer between when I finished Year 10 and started Year 11, I made a plan for my life for the next ten years. It was pretty straight forward. I would take two years to finish high school, do a year of uni, work for a year to save money for a mission, serve a mission for two years and then spend the next four years getting a degree – ten years. What I deliberately left out of my plan was when I would get married and what I would study after my mission. I left marriage out of my plan because I didn’t think it was the kind of thing I could plan for, I mean, who knows when it will happen? I deliberately left my study plans vague because I’d known too many returned missionaries who returned from their missions with completely different perspective and goals than what they had before their mission.
I followed my ten year plan fairly closely – took a year longer to save the mission money than planned but made up that year my completing my course a year sooner than planned, so I still ended up where and when I planned to be.
I served my mission in a land of beautiful people and I soon came to love these people. Whilst on my mission, some women made some sort of impression on me and I filed them away in the back of my mind under the heading “might be worth getting to know better at a more appropriate time.” By the end of my mission there were perhaps 8 or so people on this list. Once I had finished my mission and was back home most of the people on this list faded further into the back of my mind, but there was one person who did not fade. In fact, for no reason that I can properly explain, she became more prominent. I began to include her in the several letters that I was sending each month to former mission friends and although the letters I was sending to her were not substantially different from the letters I was sending to other friends, and her replies were not substantially different, the feeling became stronger. After I had been home for 11 months, and exchanging occasional letters with her and several other male and female mission friends, while walking to the train station to catch the train to school the Spirit prompted me very strongly that she was the one. I decided to accept this revelation. At this point, she was about 6 or 8 weeks away from finishing her mission. I thought that I should wait until she had been home from her mission for about two months and then I would write to her and tell her how I felt. I thought she needed two months to adjust to post-mission life because I felt that in that transition between mission and post-mission life, a person’s decision making processes are not the same as they usually are. But then the Spirit prompted me again, saying that I needed to act immediately. So I prepared a voice tape in which I told her of my experience and my desire to talk with her about marriage and then I mailed the tape to the Philippines timed to arrive so that it would be waiting for her when she got home from her mission. Due to some flooding in her home town the mail service was delayed for a few days, so she ended up arriving home before the tape did. Its good that I acted when I did because, unbeknown to me, she’d had a boyfriend for a year or two before her mission, and before she went on her mission they had already made post-mission plans.
This is getting long, and perhaps not entirely relevant, so I’m going to cut a lot of stuff out. She got home in late October, I finished the first year of my degree at about the same time. I went to the Philippines in January with the intention of getting to know her better and starting preparations for a marriage in the semester break the following June-July. We ended up deciding to get married there and then, which we did. I had not gone to the Philippines to get married, and was not mentally or financially prepared for it, but that’s what we did. After a two week honeymoon, during which we visited all but one of our former mission areas together (her last companion was still in the same area in which they had served together) I had to leave her and come back home to Australia to start second year uni. I did not see her again for almost another 6 months while we worked through the immigration process.
When she arrived, I was in the second semester of my second year, with another year to go. I had no job and no car and only the day before, had moved out of my parent’s place, into our tiny one bedroom apartment, furnished with borrowed and second hand furniture. Six weeks after she arrived I was down to my last $80 when she found a job, and I found a part time job shortly after.
That’s how it was for me.
So, to address a few of your points:
I married because it is a commandment to do so. If it was not, I don’t know if I would have got married. However, having shown my willingness to obey this commandment, the Lord did most of the rest of the work by bringing my wife and I together. She married me because after praying about it several times in the Temple, she finally accepted the answer she had been fighting against. We were married in February. It wasn’t until the following October that she told me for the first time that she loved me. It was a marriage based on faith, not love.
We hadn’t dated before we decided to get married and hardly knew each other. Nevertheless, because of the guidance of the Spirit and the answers we had received to prayer, we knew that it was the right thing to marry each other.
I hadn’t finished my education and had no idea what career I would pursue when I got married.
The timing of our decision when to get married was very heavily influenced by the counsel of Spencer W Kimball who counselled that marriage should not be delayed. When I went to the Philippines in mid January, I had no plan, no intention, no idea, that I would be married a month later.
Today is our 28th wedding anniversary.
You sound keen to pursue a career. I imagine the satisfaction and enjoyment you would gain from that would only be increased if you have someone to share it with. I also imagine that if you marry the right person, you will be even more motivated to study harder and to try harder to find the career you would like, and, more importantly, you will be more likely to succeed.  In all likelihood, she will help you succeed in what it is you want to do. If your education and career goals are important to you, they will become even more important and more joy filled, when you are married.
My son is in a similar situation to you. He turns 24 in about ten days, and has been home from his mission for about 2 ½ years. He dates out of a sense of duty with no real hope or belief that he will find anyone of eternal interest in our stake. He’s favourably disposed towards the idea of marriage and says if the right person comes along, he will make an effort, but right now he doesn’t seem to be too willing to try too hard to do anything about it. He knows what is right so we leave it to him.

@A&A - wow and Happy Anniversary to you and your wife!

In the Summer between when I finished Year 10 and started Year 11, I made a plan for my life for the next ten years. It was pretty straight forward. I would take two years to finish high school, do a year of uni, work for a year to save money for a mission, serve a mission for two years and then spend the next four years getting a degree – ten years. What I deliberately left out of my plan was when I would get married and what I would study after my mission. I left marriage out of my plan because I didn’t think it was the kind of thing I could plan for, I mean, who knows when it will happen? I deliberately left my study plans vague because I’d known too many returned missionaries who returned from their missions with completely different perspective and goals than what they had before their mission.
I followed my ten year plan fairly closely – took a year longer to save the mission money than planned but made up that year my completing my course a year sooner than planned, so I still ended up where and when I planned to be.
I served my mission in a land of beautiful people and I soon came to love these people. Whilst on my mission, some women made some sort of impression on me and I filed them away in the back of my mind under the heading “might be worth getting to know better at a more appropriate time.” By the end of my mission there were perhaps 8 or so people on this list. Once I had finished my mission and was back home most of the people on this list faded further into the back of my mind, but there was one person who did not fade. In fact, for no reason that I can properly explain, she became more prominent. I began to include her in the several letters that I was sending each month to former mission friends and although the letters I was sending to her were not substantially different from the letters I was sending to other friends, and her replies were not substantially different, the feeling became stronger. After I had been home for 11 months, and exchanging occasional letters with her and several other male and female mission friends, while walking to the train station to catch the train to school the Spirit prompted me very strongly that she was the one. I decided to accept this revelation. At this point, she was about 6 or 8 weeks away from finishing her mission. I thought that I should wait until she had been home from her mission for about two months and then I would write to her and tell her how I felt. I thought she needed two months to adjust to post-mission life because I felt that in that transition between mission and post-mission life, a person’s decision making processes are not the same as they usually are. But then the Spirit prompted me again, saying that I needed to act immediately. So I prepared a voice tape in which I told her of my experience and my desire to talk with her about marriage and then I mailed the tape to the Philippines timed to arrive so that it would be waiting for her when she got home from her mission. Due to some flooding in her home town the mail service was delayed for a few days, so she ended up arriving home before the tape did. Its good that I acted when I did because, unbeknown to me, she’d had a boyfriend for a year or two before her mission, and before she went on her mission they had already made post-mission plans.
This is getting long, and perhaps not entirely relevant, so I’m going to cut a lot of stuff out. She got home in late October, I finished the first year of my degree at about the same time. I went to the Philippines in January with the intention of getting to know her better and starting preparations for a marriage in the semester break the following June-July. We ended up deciding to get married there and then, which we did. I had not gone to the Philippines to get married, and was not mentally or financially prepared for it, but that’s what we did. After a two week honeymoon, during which we visited all but one of our former mission areas together (her last companion was still in the same area in which they had served together) I had to leave her and come back home to Australia to start second year uni. I did not see her again for almost another 6 months while we worked through the immigration process.
When she arrived, I was in the second semester of my second year, with another year to go. I had no job and no car and only the day before, had moved out of my parent’s place, into our tiny one bedroom apartment, furnished with borrowed and second hand furniture. Six weeks after she arrived I was down to my last $80 when she found a job, and I found a part time job shortly after.
That’s how it was for me.
So, to address a few of your points:
I married because it is a commandment to do so. If it was not, I don’t know if I would have got married. However, having shown my willingness to obey this commandment, the Lord did most of the rest of the work by bringing my wife and I together. She married me because after praying about it several times in the Temple, she finally accepted the answer she had been fighting against. We were married in February. It wasn’t until the following October that she told me for the first time that she loved me. It was a marriage based on faith, not love.
We hadn’t dated before we decided to get married and hardly knew each other. Nevertheless, because of the guidance of the Spirit and the answers we had received to prayer, we knew that it was the right thing to marry each other.
I hadn’t finished my education and had no idea what career I would pursue when I got married.
The timing of our decision when to get married was very heavily influenced by the counsel of Spencer W Kimball who counselled that marriage should not be delayed. When I went to the Philippines in mid January, I had no plan, no intention, no idea, that I would be married a month later.
Today is our 28th wedding anniversary.
You sound keen to pursue a career. I imagine the satisfaction and enjoyment you would gain from that would only be increased if you have someone to share it with. I also imagine that if you marry the right person, you will be even more motivated to study harder and to try harder to find the career you would like, and, more importantly, you will be more likely to succeed.  In all likelihood, she will help you succeed in what it is you want to do. If your education and career goals are important to you, they will become even more important and more joy filled, when you are married.
My son is in a similar situation to you. He turns 24 in about ten days, and has been home from his mission for about 2 ½ years. He dates out of a sense of duty with no real hope or belief that he will find anyone of eternal interest in our stake. He’s favourably disposed towards the idea of marriage and says if the right person comes along, he will make an effort, but right now he doesn’t seem to be too willing to try too hard to do anything about it. He knows what is right so we leave it to him.

Hi Mirk, I've corrected your typo
Black Sabbath is a legendary influence in the metal underworld.

 

And you're married already?

It sounds like you have two incomes and only one dependent child. Where I come from, that would leave enough money left over to afford to hire a housekeeper/cook for a few hours a week. This approach would hide but not solve the problem. It might even be cheaper than counselling. And then you would both be faced with a clear choice - live in a tidy house and pay someone to keep it clean or keep the money and live in a tidier house. Sometimes it can help to have the issues clarified.

It sounds like you have two incomes and only one dependent child. Where I come from, that would leave enough money left over to afford to hire a housekeeper/cook for a few hours a week. This approach would hide but not solve the problem. It might even be cheaper than counselling. And then you would both be faced with a clear choice - live in a tidy house and pay someone to keep it clean or keep the money and live in a tidier house. Sometimes it can help to have the issues clarified.