Fether

I find experiences are the best gifts for me and my wife. Things you cannot buy. for example, I will take the kids hiking for a day so she can have a day to herself. Or she will take the kids to see grandma and grandpa for a day so I can play video games with my siblings and high school friends.

Belittling maybe. But that is the unfortunate side of charity. You offer what you can. You shouldn’t be held at gun point to provide what someone wants.

You are sharing a lot of unique situations and I think we can execute on all these despite the kind of gifts we give. so just to clarify. Do you not give your kids toys for Christmas? Has it always just been necessary clothing to keep them from freezing to death, water bottles, dishes, toilet paper, milk jugs and underwear?

Maybe it’s a generational thing. I don’t ever remember opening a gift that was an “essential”. My Christmas gifts tend to be toys, new clothes, fancy socks, candy or things related to my hobbies.

This makes me a little sick to read. Are you suggesting people who are destitute should be limited in to life’s essentials when we offer gifts? I don’t know every situation but my family struggled hard the last half of this year and the bishop came to us asking what we would want for Christmas. It wasn’t something we requested of him. We were lucky enough to pull ourselves out of our situation, but had that luck not come, I absolutely would have asked for toys for our children. Not toilet paper and gallons of milk Aren’t Christmas gifts for children supposed to be non-essential luxuries? If I’m going to give a child a gift, it ain’t going to be underwear. If they need underwear, I’ll give them underwear on top of whatever gift I give them.

There are many types of PlayStations one could buy. Only the most recent one is that expensive. For example, if they were wanting a PlayStation 3, you can get that for $200. A PlayStation 2 for even less. I meant to ask @Backroads what specifically was being asked for, it may. It be as unreasonable as they think. Maybe just miscommunication.

I’m not a fan of epics that end up as prequels to biblical events

I remember one year my family didn’t have money for Christmas and we got surprised Christmas morning with a ton of presents from the ward. Truly a blessing of which I am extremely grateful and have done many times for others since. As grateful as I was for the experience, I would lie if I said there was anything in That care package that I wanted. In fact, I felt that because they were surprise gifts, I had to use them. There was this bright glow in the dark alarm clock that I struggled sleeping with because of how bright it was. The other things were gifts I had little to no interest in. I would avoid complaining about the price of gifts kids want. They are simply stating what they want for Christmas. I would also avoid giving off the “Because I am gifting this, you must enjoy it or you are being ungrateful”

I would argue that the wicked are not those that fall to sin, who struggle with weakness or reject Christianity. but rather those that choose to do evil and harm others. Those that choose to lead others away from Christ. Alma is speaking to his son Coritanton. We don’t know the full story, but what we do know is that Corianton was chosen to be a missionary, but chose to do wicked instead and his actions lead many from the church (Alma 39:1-11).

Congrats! What specifically was it that lead you back?

I have a hunch as to who you are talking about, but I’m new enough to not know everyone’s history Good on you for that promise though!

Which one is this?

Dialogue has a lot of mixed. You will definitely come across people who are not faithful

Midnight Mormons and StoneXVI are YouTube channels. Midnight Mormons is the superior of the two, and Stone XVI seems to have been eaten by it (as two of Stone XVI members are pretty much co-running it) Jim Bennett may have volunteered at the family history center. He seems like the kind of guy that would be there.

You will absolutely get some antis and skeptics commenting. They tend to be faster, but you will get a good range or responses. Look up Midnight Mormons and StoneXVI. They are aimed more at millennials and gen Z age people, but they are great sources for in depth faithful discussions on some of these topics. They are relatively new but they will be around for a while You can also look up a few of the articles or YT interviews with Jim Bennett. I love his commentary on the gospel!

I’m on MormonDialogue. It’s extremely active. Most posts hit 2 pages within a day. You can’t really keep up with the entire conversation without quitting your job haha. There is a large variety of members. Active and inactive, orthodox and unorthodox, faithful and anti, Latter-day Saints and Christians. They also do a great job of moderating it all. I like it.

Ive never fully understood this . is this a generic “my ancestors actions dont affect my salvation”? Or is this just referring to the fact that the fall of man does not damn me? What are the differences between my “own sins” and “Adam’s transgression”? Today we have a definitive difference between sin and transgression, but did Joseph have the definitive separation when he wrote this? Or were these intended to simply be synonyms?

That’s good to hear 👍

Maybe your family is different, but I don’t see my extended family very often. I would be very upset if someone planned an elaborate activity that got in the way of catching up with my cousins. My ideal thanksgiving is a game of football in the morning in 10 degree weather, then to home and do absolutely nothing except chat and do whatever we decide to do till 4:00 when we start thanksgiving dinner. Eat till I’m in a coma, then hangout the rest of the evening.

The reality of the situation is that a large portion of students will end up resorting to whatever is default. There is going to be a large population of children whose parents dump them off wherever is easiest. I served my mission in KY and the amount of strip clubs, drive through liquor stores, and smoke shops was terrible… but even worst was the amount of daycares. I swear there was a daycare on every street corner. As for career teachers. I can see that become a realistic part time job for many people. I picture a community center or school with non-specific class rooms. A person that is familiar with a certain difficult topic can reserve a class room Three days a week and have kids come over to learn the topic. No mandatory curriculum, no paperwork you have to fill out, you just offer to teach a subject you are familiar with (of course they would have to advertise what the topic is and how it will help them get a good grade on GED, ACT/SAT, or prepare for college) and parents who can’t teach it well send there kids to you. I picture it like a buffet high school. Throughout the week there are classes on various topics being offered and you can pay $10-20 or so to send your kid to whatever class you want. That money goes to the teacher and maintenance of the “school”. The better teacher you are, the more students you attract. There could even be classes on taxes, communication, critical thinking, work ethic, how to study better, how to start a business, developing social skills and confidence, leadership, finances, etc. none of these would have to be year long either. Some of the more soft skill ones could simply be a single class once a month or something. just enough time to teach the topics so the kids can learn. They can retake them if they needed too.

I see homeschooling becoming big before private schools. And I’m not talking about traditional homeschool long where the parents teach everything, but homeschooling with co-ops and community run classes, even using a few public school classes where needed. parents take care of the basic classes that they can teach, but Sarah Baker offers to teach geometry twice a week to some kids for X amount of money. Kyle Jones teaches an advanced English course once a week for x amount of money, you send your kid to high school every other day for 3 months to learn Chemistry, and so on. My wife and I have a 3 year old and we just started looking into homeschooling. We are extremely impressed with the homeschooling group activities and classes that are offered in our small town. I can only see that growing.

There is beauty all around… when there’s love at [ThirdHour]

I have 3 siblings. One dead their name removed, one is trans, and the other gay. My parents and I are all extremely faithful. Family gatherings are incredible, I can definitively say that I feel most happy when I am with my siblings and we are just goofing off. We all have different views on life, and we disagree on a lot of things, but there is no animosity at all. Though we have talked about it, I have not once felt that my siblings want me to leave the church in some show of acceptance. Nor have I ever felt that leaving the church would provide that “acceptance”. I accept them by the way I treat them and the interest I show in their lives. I find that leaving the church for them would only cause them to see me as a push over, someone who doesn’t stand by what they believe. It seems, from my view at least, that they value family relations over the church. This may come from never being truly converted to the church. I can quote the scriptures that state that we should always pick God over family… but those seem to have become zealot platitudes by most the world. Now… as for applicable advice. Their biggest concern is Keri g a good relationship with their children. I would focus the entire conversation on that. Do not address the “leaving the church” bit until you fully understand how they feel, and more importantly, they can feel that you understand how they feel. Try to offer counsel on how to build that relationship. Perhaps find others in the ward or drake who are in similar situations and connect with them. If I were there, I would love to be a resource to show how you can have both the church and family: When you do start address the issue of leaving the church, my approach would be to just ask what they believe and value. If someone can verbally acknowledge that they are just scared to lose their kids, value familial relationship over God, or they don’t believe the church is true, that may make or break the whole situation. A lot of times we don’t want to acknowledge something we think because it is too hard to rationalize or we dont want to deal with the domino affect, so instead we act without acknowledging. Once that conversation is done, I would ask point blank “do you want to leave the church?” Now you know their familial situation, what thought process took them to decide to leave the church, and whether they want to leave the church or not. From there you can do a lot of good

@NeuroTypical Better solution. Move your shipping container into your house. There is plenty of room

We understand it the same. I agree with this completely. My qualm was that when we talk about charity, the vast majority of the time it is done by talking about epic acts of service, that somehow those acts are what we need to focus on. I find that those epic acts of service are, often times, far easier to do than the little ones. I think, rather than focusing on those acts, we should focus more on the small day to day acts. Our opinions of others, gossip, developing empathy. The things we do when no one is watching, or when we are surrounded by like minded people, is a better sign of our level of charity.