Tyme

*looking on tech.lds.org*
Children can be sealed to natural parent (their mom) + stepparent (stepdad), assuming that the other natural parent (you) has given signed permission.  No adoption required, since they are being sealed to at least one natural parent.  
The specifics of this are found in Handbook 1, which her bishop can help with.  

When you say Love, I imagine you are talking about Romantic love (as opposed to Charity which is the pure love of Christ, or love such as between friends [comradeship/companionship], or that between family members such as mothers and children or siblings and such.  As such...
Depends on your definition of Love...Romantic Love has only existed for around 300 years in our understanding sooo......
 (or if you include not being able to love and/or not doing the dirty with someone you love)
Anyone married before 1600? 
Catholic Priests?
Arranged marriages?
Most Marriages in India?
Marriages between couples who are over 45 and who will eventually get divorced?
The list could go on and on...humorously so...
Time for a Hagar the Horrible joke???
PS: If you don't know who Hagar the Horrible is...it's a cartoon character who I used to read a few decades ago, haven't seen it in a while so unsure if it is still in print or if people are still aware of it even.

No. I give them permission to be sealed though.
 
When I resigned it absolved our sealing. They have a good family. That’s why I’m giving permission if needed.

The Lord commanding the Israelites to kill every man, woman, and child in Canaan???

Papadopoulus is sentenced to 14 days in jail because he denied talking to a Russian government agent.  He didn't realize Mifsud counts as a Russian government agent.
Russian internet trolls were charged with criminal offenses for spreading Fake News on social media.
I guarantee you that if you are a KGB agent and you talked to any big whig in the Trump campaign about the how you like to drink coca-cola over pepsi, your house will be strip searched in the middle of the night and you're gonna be hauled to a holding cell in your underwear.

I can’t speak for all aspects of the criminal justice system, but my personal experience in Utah includes the following observations:
—If a drug crime goes federal, it’s because the person was either dealing, or caught up in the same dragnet with someone who was dealing.  It’s not the kids getting caught with weed for the first time, who are getting the huge prison sentences.  
—In the state system—at least, Utah—barring dealing, weapons, massive quantities in possession, or other aggravating circumstances, in practice you probably aren’t going to “prison” on a first-time drug charge.  Here, your first offense will probably  be a plea-in-abeyance on a Class A misdemeanor.  Your second will be charged as a Class A, reduced to a Class B in exchange for a guilty plea, and you *may* do a month or two of jail—or maybe not.  Your third will be charged as an A, and they won’t reduce; but you won’t do more than a year in jail and probably a great deal less.  Your fourth will be counted as a third (since they don’t count the plea in abeyance) and then you’re likely to be charged with a felony because at that point you’re officially a “repeat offender”—and even then, the prosecutor may still wind up reducing it to an A and you will do less than a year, if you do any time at all.  (In Utah, you only go to “prison” if you’ll be incarcerated for a year or more; otherwise, you are housed at the “jail”.)  If you play your cards right, you’re very unlikely to go to “prison” on a drug charge until your fifth conviction at least.  I realize that different places do things differently; but at least as far as Utah goes:  a person who talks about all those poor drug offenders who are in prison for “one mistake”, or protests that they aren’t really “hardened criminals”, betrays a lot of unfamiliarity with the status quo.  
—As implied above, most incarceration of drug offenders comes from the following issues:
••Many, many repeat offenses
••Dealing
••Weapons
••Pimping
••Repeated failure to comply with the terms of probation (including, often, failing to get into or remain in treatment) after pleading to a lower charge than what the facts warranted.
—I generally agree with the idea of giving judges broad discretion in sentencing—the mandatory minimum matrices that have to be used in the federal system come off as very arbitrary.  But the flip side of that is that federal judges face less pressure to incarcerate dangerous prisoners, because they aren’t subject to re-election/retention votes.  That has its up sides and its down sides; but the matrices exist in the first place because some federal judges were perceived as being too soft on crime.  As long as you have lifetime appointments to the federal bench and literally thousands of prosecutable federal crimes on the books, there *will* be federal sentencing guidelines; and the harshness of those guidelines will wax and wane over time.  
—Rehab isn’t a panacea.  Graduates of a really good program will see a 40% sobriety rate after five years.
—I’m aware of the literature saying rehab is ultimately cheaper than incarceration, and I’m willing to go with it for now.  But I’ve been (visiting) in jail, and in state prison, and in rehab clinics; and if there’s *less* money going into those clinics and programs than there is at the detention facilities, then I want to know where in Sam Hades the Corrections Division is spending its money.  I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see us transition to a decriminaliztion/treatment regimen for drug offenders and, ten years down the road, find that we’re spending two or three times as much on rehab as we did on incarceration.

Welp, I’m quitting again. I hope I can make it longer than last time.

Ah yes. Let's all be influenced by Disney's evil philosophies.

You can’t just change terms to support your position. I believe the term you’re looking for is representative democracy.

Welp, I’m quitting again. I hope I can make it longer than last time.

Saying there is an honest politician is an oxymoron. Trump definitely isn’t honest. The question is are the Mormon politicians better than the alternatives. Just the fact that they share our faith I say yes. It would also elevate the church into the spotlight again.
What did Harry Reid do that is so bad besides being a Democrat?

That makes sense.

1 Timothy 8-11
Romans 1:21-32
Jude 1:5-10
1 Corinthians 6:9-20
This is just the New Testament and those that specifically note about homosexuality (there are others that are not as blatant or forward as these).  It gets far worse in the Old Testament.
However, as some believe the New Testament did away with the Old Testament law and replaced it with a New Testament, thus I turn to the New Testament for it's statements on such.  Mainly it's Paul (as noted above in a prior post) who makes statements against it.
This is overall taken from the KJV translation (or I tried to do this, it was via bible gateway and tried to get the KJV each time), the NIV is far more forward typically in labeling it as homosexuality rather than how the KJV states it.
This is a partial list, but hopefully that gives you an idea of how hard it is to reconcile the Bible with the idea of acting upon homosexuality.  There are those who try to utilize the idea that this is only speaking about prostitutes (male prostitutes at the time) but in doing so they ignore the context of the words and the popular meaning (or how the word was used against how they erroneously feel it was used...sort of how we use the word Gay to denote those who are practicing homosexuality at times, but in theory it actually meant happy or something similar to that meaning in the past).
As I said, others may read it differently (KJV is one of the versions where it is probably easier to read differently than some other versions which are far more straight forward in their condemnation), and we may have different opinions on the matter.  I think currently it is hard for a reconciliation between the Bible and those who are involved with homosexual acts, but I also know there are those that try to do so.  The LDS church is not currently one of those that try to reconcile these things with homosexual actions and currently in modern times condemn it (and if anything, side more with a literal interpretation of the Bible and the verses above).

Here goes nothing... I’m giving it all up when I run out of cigs today.

@Tyme I'm going to address the smoking. @MormonGator e-cigs or vaping is WORSE than smoking regular cigarettes.
Read why  https://www.webmd.com/lung-cancer/vaping-lung-cancer
@Tyme I smoked 1 to 1.5 packs of menthol cigarettes (menthol are the worst on the esophagus and lungs) for 29 years. Four times during those years I tried to stop by going cold turkey. Never lasted longer than about 18 hours. Finally, after losing 35 pounds and thinking that NOW I would be able to breathe better with that excess weight gone, imagine my shock and despair when after nearly falling to my knees after rushing up 22 stairs to get some products at work! Talking with a RN friend of mine about that, she suggested that I try one of the patch's for quitting smoking. I can't remember the brand name, only that it was the 3 patch program. Because I am so very susceptible to drugs, I started out with Patch 2. Was on that for the 6 weeks, then dropped down to Patch 3. Another girlfriend of mine had a partial pack of the Patch 3, it only had 6 patches instead of 7. By the time I used the last one, I realized that my craving for cigarettes was gone. Along with using the patches, I used carrot, celery and english cucumber sticks as substitutes for the cigarette holding hand to mouth habit.
I had learned the hard way to substitute a healthy habit when I quit drinking alcohol. I craved sugar then, and ate so much I gained 50 pounds in 5 months!
Also, I was told by the support group I joined through the Patch company that I would need to Clean Up my home of residual smoke/nicotine on the ceilings, walls, furniture & fabrics. Shortly after going on the patch, I spent two weeks scrubbing my 14' x 50' trailer house. From the ceilings to the floors. Didn't scrub the upholstered furniture or the carpets. Did take all the window coverings down and launder them as well as super scrubbing the windows. Also, the bathroom (where the washer & dryer were) was THE hardest to get clean of the nicotine. The tub/shower wall unit was so infused with the nicotine that it took a week of spraying pure bleach on the walls, closing the bathroom door with the exhaust fan on and stuffing a throw rug under the bottom door gap so that my cat and dog wouldn't get "gassed" to death! I would leave it on all day while I was at work. Then come home and rinse it all off. Then repeat & rinse for the full 7 days.
I scrubbed all the paneling, and the entire trailer was all that cheap paneling, with pine sol, TSP and HOT water. I could only do 8 foot wide section each day after work, and during the week ends I would do all of the cupboards and 1/4 of the wood furniture.
BUT once the smell of stale tobacco was gone when I entered a warm home (literally warm, as in 75-78 degrees), that trigger to smoke was eliminated.
The directions on the Patch said to spend less time in the rooms where you smoked the most, occupy the rooms where you didn't smoke more. Well for me, the only "room" I didn't smoke in was the clothes closet! I removed all of the ashtrays. Not just washed them up and put them in a cupboard - I removed them from the house. Gave them to the Salvation Army! When my then husband came home from working [he installed vinyl siding on homes and would be in another town/county for weeks at a time] I made him smoke out on the porch. He even turned the entertainment unit with the TV on it to face the window so he could still watch & hear the TV. He had to use cleaned out tuna cans for ashtrays since all of ours were gone.
Back then, the cost of the box of Patch 2 was the same as a carton of my cigarettes. By the end of the 6th week the cost of a carton of cigarettes had gone up $1.50, BUT the cost of the patch remained the same. For a year I kept tabs on the cost of the cigarettes - at on my one year anniversary of quitting, I had saved nearly $3,500.00!!! Of course I didn't subtract the cost of the patches - I wanted the saved dollar amount to be more.
It took me nearly 5 years to quit liking the smell of second hand smoke - the wafting coming from someone walking by, or who stood too close to the doorway of the store where I was a cashier at.
Now, after 19 years, that smell is repugnant and offensive to me. When a heavy smoker walks by me they stink so bad. Want to know what you smell like @Tyme? Dump your full of cigarette ashes and butts ashtray BUT don't wipe it out or wash it. Add a bit of HOT water then smell it. Yep, that is EXACTLY what you smell like. After smoking all day and NOT brushing your teeth & mouth after your lunch, then you talk to someone, THAT is EXACTLY what your breath smells like.
Had someone told me that around the second or third time I was trying to quit, believe me, I would have tried much, much harder to quit and stay smoke free. I have always detested smelling bad. Showered twice a day, used deodorant multiple times during the day. NEVER wore my work clothes twice in a row, etc., etc., etc.
Now @Tyme let's talk about the cessation of coffee. YES it is the caffeine that is a true addiction. Going off of it - all of it [soda drinks that are packed with caffeine, root beer that has caffeine in it, power drinks that are packed with caffeine AND high fructose content, tea,  even Hot Chocolate] not just coffee. To ease the intensity of the withdrawal headaches, drink half caffeinated coffee with half decaf. One large tin of each mixed into a much larger container. Then when that is empty, mix a small container of caffeinated coffee with a large container of decaff. By the time that is empty, your addiction should be ended. At least with me it was.
I had been drinking coffee since I was 5 years old. Half cup of coffee with half cup of milk. Every three years the amount of coffee increased by 1/4 of a cup until I was drinking black coffee. My entire family of 11 people were coffee drinkers. Us children had a coffee cup at every meal AFTER we drank our 8oz of milk. Us kids didn't even hear about the LDS church until my oldest brother was 15 (I was 7 and the middle of 7 children). ALL of us kids drank their first cup of half coffee half milk/cream at the age of 5.
We only drank tea in the form of iced tea and only during the summer. We drank hot coffee year round, and iced coffee in the summer also. LOVE iced coffee.
I am not fond of hot chocolate, never have been. I love quite a few of the herbal infusions, BUT one must be very careful of mixing them. I drink tepid coffee. My Stake Presidency and Branch Presidency know this and they sign my temple recommend. I also prefer Pero over all of the other "Coffee" substitutes. It took me several years to get the right amount per coffee mug - too much is nasty, too little is nearly as nasty. I drink them all black w/splenda.
One thing I learned from a dear friend who is a recovering alcoholic is, you MUST trade a bad habit with a good, healthy habit. Doesn't need to be a good, healthy food - just a good, healthy habit. Along with using carrot, celery and cucumber sticks as substitutes, I kept my hands busy with writing in a journal. Then super busy writing letters to my friends that 1st Husband tried to keep me from.
@Carborendum in 2006 I was diagnosed with Type II Diabetes. One of the things that my Dr wanted me to reduce was my drinking carbonated drinks (they dehydrate your body) and caffeine drinks (which also dehydrate your body). I complained about needing the Wake Me Up of caffeine and she told me that 8 oz of UN-sweetened Apple juice will do the same as three 6oz cups of coffee! Guess what? She was right.
After going off of carbonated drinks, and NOT quitting the caffeine- I got severe cramps in my feet and legs, then in the muscles of my lower back and abdomen. Often all at the same time, like around 2-3 am! The only thing to ease/stop the cramps was drinking electrolyte drink. Mix 1 quart water; 1/2 teaspoon baking soda; 1/2 teaspoon table salt; 3 to 4 tablespoons sugar [real sugar NOT any of the substitutes]. This does NOT store well for longer than 12 hours. I also add about 1 tablespoon or more of crystallized lemon or lime juice for flavor. BUT to know when you no longer need to drink it and to drink PLAIN water, don't add the flavoring. When you can taste the salty sweet, that is when you no longer need it.
I had come back into activity a year before I quit smoking, so that when I went on the patch, and felt I was getting close to buying another pack of cigs - I would call my HT and Branch President and request a blessing. They always came through, and those many, many blessing also came through. I never slid back into smoking. I also had the mindset of Not Setting Myself Up To Fail.
Like some of the others have said, if you back slide, pick yourself up and quit again!

I’d like to see a Mormon Republican run against Trump in the primary. The only one who stands a chance is Romney. It could get ugly. I think Trump would attack the church.
would you like to see that? Do you think Romney has a chance?

I’m in a pit of despair. I lasted a whopping twenty hours without cigs. The blessings are too great not to quit. I have a pretty good understanding of the blessings. That really begs the question why I can’t quit. I hope one day I can quit so I can get baptized.

It seems every time I pray for a personal improvement I get a trial that improves me. I’m sorta scared to pray for personal improvement. It ends up being worth it, though. That’s kinda good you don’t get a trial thrown at you every time you pray for personal improvement. 

Don't you know, only white people can be racist?

Just trying to add some levity to the forums. I thought it was getting a little too heated.
 

Um, just so you know, the entire first world is looking at you like this.

#ItsDifferentWhenAGroupILikeDoesIt

I want to be baptized the right way this time. That means I need to be as pure as possible.
I need to quit the following before I get baptized:
cigs, coffee, porn
Any advice or inspiration to help me quit all those things?

I want to be baptized the right way this time. That means I need to be as pure as possible.
I need to quit the following before I get baptized:
cigs, coffee, porn
Any advice or inspiration to help me quit all those things?

Lectures are the best. I’m one class away from getting my Master’s online. I sorely miss lectures. Just not learning as much as when I attended lectures in undergrad.