Midwest LDS

Yeah well it's hard to intervene with you, you spend the whole time looking for the cameras.

I'm terribly sorry you and your family are dealing with this difficult time. I will be praying for you.

Absolutely! There are many times where a faith promoting story can add weight to someone's testimony of Jesus Christ, just as a bad or pointless story can detract from the meeting. Let me give you an example of a good faith promoting story and an example of a bad story told at a testimony meeting to illustrate my point. Good example: When I was in high school, I was driving myself, my sister, and our friend to Seminary. I was being an ignorant teen, and driving much too quickly despite the cold temperatures, and I spun out into the opposite lane of traffic at 60 mph at the top of a hill. I felt the Spirit wash over me, and under it's calming influence, help me turn the wheel correctly and bring the car to a safe stop facing in the opposite direction. I can think of numerous testimonies this story could help with (God watching over us despite our imperfections, the reality of the Holy Ghost, God's protection when we are on his business etc.) and it would be a good example (I hope☺) of a story entirely appropriate to share. Bad example: On my mission, a sister stood up and gave a 5 to 10 minute testimony (before the bishop asked her to sit down, the only time I've seen this happen) on a dream she had about a many headed dragon and what she believed that meant for the future. She gave incredibly specific information about what this dragon looked like. It was weird, upsetting, and I to this day hope to God there were no struggling members or investigators I was unaware of in the audience. This is a more obvious example of a bad story, but it hits the major reasons why a story should not be shared in Fast and Testimony. It was not an attempt to focus people on God but on herself, added nothing to anyone's testimony of Christ, and took valuable time from someone else who could have invited the Holy Ghost with their words.

100% agree

This is my point as well. I don't care, nor should I care, whether women wear pants, it's none of my business and it's trivial. I do care if someone brings a protest movement into church, and drags the spirit of contention in disrupting my worship to make a point. Church is for worship not protest.

You know what's sad to me. This is such a pointless hill to die on. Maybe it's because I'm in the Midwest, but this isn't even an issue in the church where I live. No one pays attention to the type of clothing someone wears out here, unless it's obvious they may need some help because they are new or struggling. You wear your Sunday best, and that's enough. It's just so hard for me to understand why anyone cares so much about whether a woman wears pants or a skirt. Every Saint I've ever met is happy to see someone at church, no matter their clothing (within reason obviously). Is there someone, somewhere who gave a sister a hard time for wearing pants? Undoubtedly, but those are certainly few and far between and this whole dumb issue seems like the poster child of making a mountain out of a molehill just so you can seem "woke". Now as a caveat, I think joining in any protest day at church is dumb and reeks of apostasy. Church is for worshipping the Lord, not pushing some agenda so please don't misunderstand this as a post supporting that pants movement.

I loved this story. It's not often I laugh out loud when I'm reading something from church history. Parley P. Pratt was awesome.

Best of luck to her. I love teaching, I get to help kids which is very fulfilling, but I can't even begin to calculate how many hours I work outside of my work schedule for which I am not paid. I teach online and it's 10 times worse if you work in a brick and mortar (as outlined in the article, so many unpaid hours of work that are "covered by your salary😑"). I'm pulling for her.

Nope they aren't, but the answer is different for each couple. For one the more righteous answer is to have more children, for another it's to use birth control, for a third it's to use birth control for a time and have a whole bunch of children later, for another to have just a few children now and stop trying for more. The church stays out of family planning specifically because there is no "one size fits all" answer to this question. God doesn't beat around the bush. If there was one answer that truly should be followed by all, you can bet he wouldn't have apostles telling us that it's between individual couples and the Lord, they would just lay it out for us.

This was a fairly decent article. While earlier statements from church leaders that contradict modern teachings have never bothered me (continuing revelation being a central belief of ours and all☺), I do appreciate how the author demonstrates how much wisdom is still contained even in revelations that have been superceded. I loved how she put a 1917 revelation from President Joseph F. Smith into the context of the time and demonstrated how much value was still contained in his prophetic words. When it comes to discussing family planning, unless the person you are talking too is a very close personal friend or family member and you know it's ok to talk to them, just don't ask. Whether they have a lot of kids or not, it's none of your business, it's between them and the Lord.

I love the initial trilogy created by his son (House Atreides, House Harkonnen, and House Corrino). It does a great job of exploring how the characters end up in the positions they are in at the start of Dune, and explores a lot of areas of interest including what it means to be a swordmaster, the events that lead to the Atreides takeover of Arrakis, the Fremen effort to terraform Dune, and a lot of other fascinating storylines. They aren't perfect but they are a really enjoyable read. I liked the Butlerian Jihad books as well. Some thought the conflict was too on the nose, but I like man vs. robot stories, and I think he does a great job demonstrating why mankind is terrified of computers. You may get some dissenting opinions on this as the prequels do seem to be divisive with fans, but I really enjoyed them.

I agree, I feel like it's still pretty dangerous (potentially addicting) to use as a medicine, but I feel the same way about opioids, and there are occasions we use them. I liked the compotent physician phrase too lol.

I thought it was an interesting clarification. Many of these things I've been doing for years so I wasn't too suprised by most of it (avoiding green and iced tea, anything with coffee in it etc.) I was interested to see it clarified that Marijuana can be used if prescribed by a doctor. I think that has been policy for a while but this is the first time I've seen it spelled out in an official notice.

I love Dune and enjoyed Dune Messiah and Children of Dune (I still want my own personal crysknife just so I can say cool things about it needing to taste blood to be sheathed😃). I am fascinated by the idea of a society having hyper advanced technology, but an archaic fedual governing system. Herbert does a great job of creating a fascinating universe, and it's one of my all time favorite Sci-fi settings. However, I stopped enjoying the series at God Emperor of Dune. That book, for me, was a long frustrating slog through Herbert's philosophy and became less about the characters and more about his random musings on human nature. I tried to read Sisterhood of Dune, and I will get to it, I'm just worried about it being more of the same so I haven't mustered up the courage to try my hand at the series again. Maybe that's why (a bit of Dune heresy coming beware) I actually love the prequel series created by his son. He gives me more of the conflicts between the great houses and the weird feudal, advanced but technophobic society that always attracted me to Dune in the first place. Anyways, I thought I'd chime in, given that I don't run into to many Dune fans on a regular basis. Remember, fear is the mindkiller.

I never played WOW but I was thinking about trying classic when it becomes available (I love classic RPG's and played Everquest when it was fairly new). Let us know what you think when you get a chance to explore the server a bit.

That is awesome, but it does not surprise me. He came and visited my mission not long after he was called into the apostleship. He spent three hours letting us, 60 or 70 missionaries, ask him any question that came to mind, and then insisted on shaking all of our hands individually. I was so excited as it was the first of only two times I've met one of the brethren personally. I'm glad you guys had such a great experience.

Yes they would have been. We took investigators to the Liberty and Independence visitor's centers. Far West was in our mission boundaries, but it's not really close to anything and, at least at the time, Adam-ondi-Ahman was a seperate little mission of it's own with a few senior missionaries who take care of it (our closing testimony meeting was just my Mission President and those of us who were going home).

I served in MIM, the Missouri Independence Mission from Feb. 2005 to Feb. 2007. We used to joke that it's the "only mission with a future" what with it being the future site of New Jerusalem. I loved being able to take investigators to all of the church history sites for lessons, and our farewell testimony meeting at Adam-ondi-Ahman was incredible. It was also fun teaching all the members of the various churches who broke off from us that live there. You'd start your door approach, and they'd say something like "we love the Book of Mormon! We are in Ether right now." We had to learn to quickly transition to bearing testimony of Brigham Young, which was actually kind of fun.

I voted for the first one, but I also believe the second one is a possibility as well.

I'm so sorry this happened to your sister. I will be praying for a speedy recovery for her, and that you guys will be able to receive the justice you are seeking. Just remember that he deceived most of the people who knew him, and we only knew what you said about him here. The comments were made in good faith, and most were an attempt to help you.

I appreciate that and I don't think anyone here thinks you would be disrespectful about this subject, you've been here for a little while now. The key to understanding this revelation, is that it's for members of the church, not neccessarily for the world at large. From President Nelson: "The rest of the world may or may not follow our lead in calling us by the correct name. But it is disingenuous for us to be frustrated if most of the world calls the Church and its members by the wrong names if we do the same." Sure it would be great if the world at large followed our lead and called us by our preferred name, but that wasn't the point the Lord was trying to make with us. He wants us (members of the church) to use the full name of the church and respect the reasons why Jesus Christ put his name in the name of the church. I watched the initial revelation and the explanation of it provided by President Nelson in Conference, and it was fairly clear to me that the Lord wanted us to take the name more seriously, and that this was not directed at the world, which will do what it wants. We were taking sacred things lightly, and allowing others to dictate how we refer to ourselves, and in the process inadvertently taking Christ's name in vain. Now we are trying to do better about that amongst ourselves, including sharing with others the proper way of addressing us. It would be silly to be offended at a non member refering to us as Mormons, and I'm not offended by that anymore than when I see a nonmember drinking coffee. This revelation was for the Latter-day Saints. In addition, we aren't going to "force" anyone to do anything for several reasons. 1. We can't. We aren't exactly the most powerful organization on Earth. And, as an aside, even if we were we still wouldn't due to our beliefs in mankinds agency. 2. It isn't forcing people to do anything to ask them to refer to us by our proper name anymore than you would be forcing anyone to do anything, for example, if your name was John and you asked people to stop refering to you as Johhny bo Bonny boy. Polite people will try to honor our request, we will always forgive slips of the tongue, and people who don't like us will be jerks like they always have been and then it's on us not to be offended.

I'm enjoying reading this discussion, but I just wanted to chime in. There are exactly 2 man made objects that can kill millions of people quickly (we've got lots of things that can do it over time). The largest nuclear weapons and weaponized plagues/chemical agents (and even those are iffy for casulties on that scale due to dozens of variables in the weather and local conditions). You cannot make either from the stuff in a Walmart. You can make large bombs and, given the right circumstances such as a successful attack on a large skyskraper in New York on a Monday, kill thousands, or tens of thousands if you get insanely lucky with multiple bombs in multiple skyscrapers, but that really is the limit. Not saying that wouldn't be horrible, of course it would, but it wouldn't be millions.

Agreed. I have a strong testimony that we are the correct church (why else would I go to a building full of extroverted, morning people every week if I didn't😃?) But I knocked on other people's doors for two years preaching the gospel to them. It's only fair (and interesting for me) to listen to other's sharing their faith.

Lol I don't know. Obviously we are just accomplished at wasting time😃

According to me, I speak from personal experience. I can't even begin to tell you how many frustrating times on my mission would have been made easier if I had known a little more about the faith of the person I was engaged with and could hear what I was saying through their understanding. Of course they had a knowledge of paganism. I point you to Paul's speech on the unknown god and their ability to defuse the situation where the locals wanted to worship Paul and Baranabus as Jupiter and Mercury. They recognized the popular myth about those two gods stopping by occasionaly, and used that knowledge to fix a situation quickly. If you are going to preach to someone it helps to understand where they are coming from and build upon the knowledge they already have however slight. Which is also what Ammon did. He didn't need to be an expert on the religion of the Lamanites, but he obviously understood enough about it to turn a conversation that was fruitless (Lamoni not even knowing who God was) into a magnificant conversion experience. I'm not trying to "move the goal posts". I was trying to have a discussion about some of the objections you brought up, and I was conceeding that knowing a little about something to pass an online quiz isn't that important. I know this may come as a shock but I'm not trying to attack you or your position☺. I strongly feel that learning about other's religious beliefs can be helpful to missionary work. I study more because I find religious beliefs fascinating, but I feel like encouraging more worthwhile conversations with others is a solid goal for us to reach for.