Midwest LDS

It's killing me to do this, but Imma close the thread.  
(Can we have a thirdhour-debate forum?)
 

Remember folks, we don't do politics at Thirdhour any more.  
 

Vort, one protestor was shot by a cop, another trampled to death in the Rotunda, and two more suffered heart attacks/strokes and died.  Two or three cops were also hospitalized and one later died.  The congresscritters were sent scurrying for cover and proceedings were shut down for several hours until the Capitol building could be cleared.
Jedi, it would of course be foolish to say there were *no* antifa-types there.  But the lady who was shot trying to break into the House chamber was a known Trump supporter, as is the infamous Buffalo/shaman dude.  Andy Ngo, who covered much of Anrifa’s antics during the Portland/Seattle/Minnesota kerfluffles, is on-record saying he doesn’t think this was antifa-led.  I had an old elementary school pal who was on-site (solid conservative, ex/Coast Guard and currently living in northern VA awaiting his next overseas assignment with the State Department) and wrote the following on Facebook:

A couple reasons:
— @Godless is right, to some degree.  Local police blotters often do report the denouement of some of these cases, and it just never goes national the way the news of the arrest/arraignment did.
— @Vort is also right.  There is propaganda at play here.  I was absolutely shocked, for example, at the lengths the Salt Lake Tribune went to to conceal pertinent details of the Madi Barney story. And of course, much of the riots that ensued regarding folks like Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, Jacob Blake, etc., could have been avoided if media had openly acknowledged the weakness of the various cases against the shooters from the get-go.
— Quite bluntly, it’s hard to track a bunch of court cases to see how they end; as reporter, you’ve got to be pretty on-the-ball to be able to gather and report the resolution of high-profile cases in a timely way.  Over 90% of criminal cases plea out.  Often a criminal case will have 3-5 pretrial conferences over several months before a plea is entered; and if you aren’t privy to the correspondence between prosecution and defense, you ever know if *this* next hearing will be the one where the case settles.  It would be a huge waste of resources for a reporter to attend each and every hearing for a given case—let alone a few dozen (formerly) high-profile ones.  Even if you’re just checking the court minute entry orders after every hearing to see if anything has changed—in Utah it often takes a couple days to get everything updated in the system; so by the time the docket includes the terms of the disposition, it’s old news.  

Oh, Jack Chick stuff is complete garbage, full of nothing by loaded "gotcha" questions based on bad foundations (much like the Pharisees questions).
Shall we both avoid such "gotcha" questions and instead strive to fully and honestly understand each other's faiths? 

The Marian docterines at least have a Ex Cathedra backing.  And current Pope Francis can be ... different than others.  But during the Middle Ages esspecailly there was some VERY .... colorful... behavior Roman leadership.  
Rather than be negative and drag out other people's dirty laundry, I'll ask things this way: is everything a Pope or Cardinal says is automatically infallible, what is the purpose of Ex Cathedra or Apostolic Councils?  

"God" is not simply the Father's "position or job". "God" describes who and what he is in the deepest and most intimate sense.
FWIW, I was not seeking to criticize you. I was seeking to express my distaste for the idea, distressingly common among Latter-day Saints, that the Father is "a God", as if "God" is merely a descriptive title like "President" or "prime minister", and that there are perhaps dozens or hundreds of them running around.

My definition of God is based entirely on my understanding of what the prophets and the scriptures have taught about him. Their preaching of devotion toward God and fear of Him is that such devotions are paid to a divine Individual, a Being Whom we worship as Father. When we speak of God (in the capital-G sense), we are talking about an All-Powerful Creator, and not about President So-and-so.
In my view, we dismiss the majesty of God and expose others, Latter-day Saints and non-Latter-day Saints alike, to confusion when we make unfounded, ascriptural statements such as "God is a title".

Snark from the interwebs: Anyone else notice the Land-O-Lakes logo got rid of the Indian but kept the land?

I'm not sure how it's set up, but our ward uses Zoom to broadcast to Youtube. That way participants can't talk and interrupt the meeting.  Every week, the ward clerk sends an email with the link and the meeting information.  It's worked very well for us.

The biggest tech issue we have in our ward is people, especially the older members, forgetting to turn off their mic's. It doesn't seem to matter how much we tell them to double check, there are a few who just seem to never remember to do that and then they accidentally broadcast their complaints, personal discussions, eating habits to everyone. 

The Book of Esther does not mention God either, yet in the scriptures it remains. This reminds me of a current controversy over the song "The Reckless Love of God." God cannot be "reckless" so the song is said to be heresy. I'd argue that the vastness of God's love for us is indescribable--so we use feeble human words like "reckless." I guess that makes me a heretic. Hope I can keep my job here. 😮

If she found out that the original words from Elder Whitney were not "fearless bands of indians" but "savage bands of indians". 😳 Yes, I welcome that change.

Since it is a zoom link, you really could watch any ward if provided their link.
I heard @NeuroTypical will give out the link for $5 without drama OR $15 a session with sister whatsername screaming at the seasoned couple for sharing their intimate moment.
 

I have my zoom meeting to no video and auto mute, but some folks still figure it's necessary to try to unmute and share video.  It's the biggest buttons on the zoom toolbar, and some folks just figure it's something they have to click to 'make it work'.  
I've personally heard poor sister whatsername screaming at her kids.  And the Stake has kept everyone uptight about it since around April, when apparently one of the seasoned couples in our stake were off mute, and broadcast some sort of intimate moment to their entire sunday school class. 

Why doesn't the meeting moderator mute everyone's mic?

The biggest tech issue we have in our ward is people, especially the older members, forgetting to turn off their mic's. It doesn't seem to matter how much we tell them to double check, there are a few who just seem to never remember to do that and then they accidentally broadcast their complaints, personal discussions, eating habits to everyone. 

On Dec 11th, all the US/Canada folks got a letter stating wards can request a zoom license if any free options aren't meeting the local unit needs.  I just got my ward's info from our stake tech, and will start broadcasting next week. 
Anyone else?  Anyone else fighting the good fight to get our less-technology-savvy members on board?  Anyone having weekly conversations with a few people to explain how to check their email, so they can click a link?
I'm finding many people just haven't wanted much to do with computers and internet.  Now they're coming up to me, asking how to use the

This confuses me as well. For example I'm not a fan of "In our Lovely Deseret". Its tune is the same as a beautiful and sad Civil War song about prisoners in Andersonville prison that I love, so it already doesn't quite live up to my expectations. Plus the lyrics in "Deseret" make me laugh (probably an indictment against me if anything, it just sounds so hokey to me). But I will not be leading a protest movement to have it removed from the hymnbook. If someone gets something spiritual out of it, then by all means sing it. 

There are also a surprising number of Church members who seem to have some sort of vendetta against Utah.
I get that modern Utah life is not everyone’s cup of tea, and that’s fine.  But when you can’t abide the idea of the LDS hymn book containing *any* hymn celebrating/giving thanks for the safety and freedom and prosperity that the early Saints found in the mountains (which is ultimately what #37 builds up to) . . . that frankly baffles me.
And I don’t understand this rage to drop stuff from the hymnal.  If you don’t like a hymn, don’t sing it!  Don’t insist that the rest of the Church throw it down the memory hole.  Other churches have hymnals that are far thicker than our own . . .

As someone who grew up on Utah, the only place this song was ever song was in a ward in Kentucky who made it a point to sing through every hymn in a year.

Ever since I've read Psalms I've felt that our hymnal is woefully lacking songs about raining vengeance on our enemies.

I looked at Jupiter and Saturn with an eight power telescope.  It looked great.  That made a little difference but not much considering Jupiter is roughly presently about 400 million miles away from us.