WillowTheWhisp

You may find out that it's easier than you think.

"teaching by The Spirit" is not the same as teaching by outside opinions. I think it should be possible to understand the difference. If someone brings in a personal account to illustrate the point being taught surely that is not going off topic. The RS lessons in the manual are so compact that it seems to encourage us to do so. That's not the same as bringing the philosophies of Freud to the lesson as one of our teachers did a few weeks ago. I think that is what we are being told not to do.

OK I think we agree on this - for me living within my means is buying the tickets but not the refreshments and I figure that me doing that is far better from the cinema owner's point of view than me not going at all. It still costs them the same to show the film if the theatre is full or half empty. If I was the owner I would rather have it full and make a small profit from those ticket sales than make no profit at all because people like me stayed home because of the high prices of the popcorn and hotdogs.

If he's suffering from depression as a result of all that has happened, and it sounds like he may well be, telling him to snap out of it could be counter productive. It isn't possible to just snap out of it or pull yourself together from what is actually a clinical illness and he could end up feeling guilty for not being able to, especially if others around him seem to be coping and he isn't. He may already be feeling guilty because of that. It can turn into a destructive downward spiral. I know when I was suffering from depression (several deaths of close friends and family, house move, lost job, lost baby, husband seriously ill) and at one point I didn't even know how to have a conversation with someone, (It was as if part of me had just decided to shut down.) a well meaning friend gave me a tape entitled "Bounce Back" and I felt even worse wracked with guilt because the prospect of bouncing at all seemed totally impossible to me.

Not quite so bad as friends of ours who once apologised for the lack of desert due to the fact that they had forgotten to thaw out the frozen prawns!

I think now might be a good time to bring up this link The Bible | Mormon Beliefs

Had you ever been to the temple before? It can take longer if you have but the only person really in a position to guide you on this is your Bishop. You will feel so much better about it when you know you are on your way to temple worthyness.

OK maybe I have just misunderstood the posts saying that the refreshment profits are part of the budget of the theatre and we should not deprive them of those profits. I was mainly going off what Ripplecutbuddha just said about the theater itself only getting a small part of the ticket money and the rest of the employee's income having to come from concession sales, plus the cost of running the facility, paying taxes, and all other expenses associated with running any business. Then saying if you can't afford the prices stay home. I took that to mean that we shouldn't go if we don't also buy refreshments along with our ticket.

Didn't President Uchtdorf say something along the lines of he would rather have someone come to church in jeans than not have them come?

But Anatess I am between those two points of view. Sometimes we wait and settle for watching the DVD later at home which is cheaper but there are times when we can afford the cinema and enjoy watching something on the big screen but not with the added munch. Some of the people here seemed to be saying it is not fair on the cinema owners not to buy the refreshments. When we do go to the cinema we often go with an 'Orange Wednesdays' discount voucher because we are on a limited budget but I assume the difference is made up by Orange.

So, are you actually claiming that Nephi was not written at the time the BOM claims it to have been written?

But there is absolutely no reason why anyone should feel obliged to buy food at the cinema. Surely by your reasoning it is even worse for the cinema owner/manager to have people stay away from seeing the film because they cannot afford the food. The food should be an optional extra. Yes going to the cinema is a luxury and so few people go these days that there have been times when the place is more than half empty. If I was the cinema manager I wouldn't want to turn more people away. I'd be glad of them spending money to watch the film even if they didn't buy refreshments.

I think I'd have been wondering why they didn't do their shopping on the Saturday.

I think one really good reason for finding out about our birth parents is for medical reasons like if you have any possible inherited illneses. I'm always being asked questions about family medical history which I don't know the answers to.

It used to be like that here too in the olden days. Please can I emphasise once again that I have never 'sneaked' food into a cinema or anywhere else if the rules forbid you taking in your own food. For example I know of places to eat where there are shared outdoor tables. You can buy food and drink from any outlet and then sit and enjoy it. No rules against eating something you have brought with you. I also know of a shop which has an attached restaurant. When the restaurant ran out of lemonade one day it would not permit someone to drink lemonade there, which they had bought in the shop, along with their meal which seemed a bit harsh to me as it was still the same shop's lemonade. I had to smile at: Our cinema doesn't even have a ticket counter! We have to buy the tickets from the refreshment counter!

OK, so we seem to have a small consensus of opinion here that it is OK to reloan a hired video or show it to friends and you are not depriving the company of potential income from those other people possibly hiring it from the shop for thenselves - so would you agree that by not buying expensive popcorn and cola in a cinema you are not depriving the cinema of a potential sale which they expect from you by simple virtue of the fact that you are in their theatre?

Well Jimmie you defeat me with your knowledge of the different types of criticism. I'm sorry if I appear to have double standards. I don't understand where. Perhaps I'm just too dense to realise it. All I can say is that we do not know what the original accounts were because we do not have them. Therefore how can we claim any percentage of accuracy? If everything we have emanates from one near original source who is to say that source is reliable? It may be the only account which survived but it may not be accurate. Any subsequent accounts/translations may be accurate in relation to that one - but if that 'near original' account is not accurate where does that leave us?

But by doing that Pam are you not depriving the video hire shop of potential income that they have budgetted for if your friends had each independantly hired that film?

It is economical suicide to budget for snack sales alongside of ticket sales. Because the prices are so high I choose not to purchase them or to share one drink between 3. If this upsets their budgeting then tough. They cannot force me to pay their exhorbitant price of I prefer to do without. Food and drink purchasing is not a requirement when going to the cinema. I'm not sure it is that simple here. How about lending it to a friend before returning it? In both cases are you not depriving the video hire shop of income they would have had from the other people hiring the film?

First of all let me explain that I do not advocate doing something which the rules of the theatre say are not permitted. If the particular theatre says eating your own snacks on their premises is forbidden then it's their place and their rules so we should accept those rules or go elsewhere. However, if the theatre has no specific rule then I don't see the problem. If the people who sneak food in would buy the highly priced food on sale in the foyer then you might have a point - but I suspect that it would be more likely that they would choose not to eat anything. After all it is perfectly possible to sit through a film without dying of starvation. It is not a commandment in any cinema that in order to watch a film there you must also buy food and drink. If people choose not to buy any they are not depriving the cinema.If sales are low it is the cinema itself cutting off its own nose to spite its face by charging such exhorbitant prices. It is nothing like shoplifting. A shoplifter is depriving the shop of something. We are not talking about people who steal popcorn and hotdogs from the cinema and don't pay - that would be like shoplifting. Not buying cinema snacks is more akin to window shopping around dress shops then going home and making something yourself from material you already have. Along similar lines I was just wondering how many people you can legally invite round to your home to watch a film you have purchased without the requirement for performing rights licence? If you hire a DVD you cannot legally lend it to a friend to watch before taking it back to the store - but what if the friend comes to your house and watches it there after you have seen it? If you have a pay to view TVchannel who is allowed to view it?

I know exactly what you mean when you say that you believe God has seriously misjudged your ability to handle all that has been handed to you. I have had times when I've felt like that too.Then I have learned a few things. One thing I learned was that I was misjudging God. He is our Heavenly Father and he loves us - when I put it into the perspective of myself as a parent I can see that not everything that happens to me is down to Heavenly Father any more than everything that happens to my children being down to me. What he has promised us is that he will not ask us to do anything that we are not capable of doing, just as I would not ask my daughter to do something if I knew she couldn't do it. I use modern 'parables' of my own to illustrate this to the children by saying I wouldn't ask my 15 year old to pilot a plane but I would ask her to ride a bike. Other things that happen to us in our lives are not things which Heavenly Father gives us but consequences of our actions and choices or the actions and choices of others. These are the things which are often hardest to get through but he does promise that he will not leave us alone. It is impossible to know what was going through your brother in law's head at the time or what has been going on between him and your sister or why she acted the way she did. It isn't something you can improve by trying to analyse or lay blame or look for "if onlys" I know, I've done far too much of that myself and it took me a while to realise. If your husband is struggling spiritually and emotionally right now then he won't be able to be strong enough to fulfil the role you expect of him. Your family needs some strong support to help you through this time. Do you have home teachers? Do they know what you've all been going through? In our Relief Society we have 'compassionate service' leaders who would be trying to help you through this time too. They are only human and can't always work miracles but they try. I'm not clear from what you've written if you are a member of a church or not. You say you believe ou and your husband are meant to be together for eternity and yet you have different religions. According to LDS theology being together for eternity is only possible for people who are sealed by temple marriage. I don't know if your brother in law'sdeath may have had an impact on your husband showing him how he could lose you forever. I would think t's an excellent idea to talk to your husband's bishop but not with a "how can I make him be the family leader I want hm to be?" but more "how can I help him to help us both get through this tough time?" Heavenly Father doesn't give us these consequences but what he does do is promise to help us get through them if we trust him and do as he asks. I'm not sure if any of that is any help to you. I would give you a hug if you were here.

How can anyone make any claim at all about the accuracy of the Bible when none of us have access to the original when many are/were oral traditions? We can only go back so far. We do not have first hand accounts. Suppose you had a documented history of a specific event - even written by someone who was there at the time - how accurate is it? It will only be as accurate as the writer was able to make it and anyone who has heard eyewitness statements at a trial will know that for every person who saw a black car there will be another person who saw a dark blue one. If the eye-witness wrote their account later then we also have the problem of how accurate their memory is. My husband will swear blind he has filed a receipt for something he bought but then I later find it in the glove compartment of the car - and yet he can remember filing it with the accounts. We are all subject to these unintentional errors. Also, history is written by people who have an agenda. When I was a child English history taught that Richard III was an evil hunchbacked cripple who murdered most of his family in order to gain the throne and that he was a tyrant king. I had a teacher who taught me not to believe everything you are taught and to question traditional 'evidence' - I chose to investigate Richard III and discovered contemporary accountswhich described him as athletic and a skilled swordsman - hardly the twisted hunchbacked cripple of popular myth. He was also highly respected and encouraged education, hardly the tyrant ruler. So where does the popular image come from? Mainly from Shakespeare who was an Elizabethan playwrite - Elizabeth a Tudor queen, descended from Henry Tudor who defeated Richard III at Bosworth. Currying favour with the monarch of the day? Did Richard kill the two ypung princes? I have no idea because the evidence is inconclusive but to me it seems far more likely that he didn't. In judging the accuracy of the Bible we can only go back as far as the earliest known evidence - we cannot go back to the actual source. However, despite that we still claim it to be the word of God and yet have to make allowances for human error whether intentional or not. Someone may havemade a 100% accurate translation of the earliest known document but that will only be asaccurate as that document which itself could have contained errors. We can debate about this till the cows come home but not even the most worthy scholar can actually prove anything. Look how mangled a simple translation can become.Take this sentence: "In judging the accuracy of the Bible we can only go back as far as the earliest known evidence - we cannot go back to the actual source." Now let's translate that into French: "En jugeant l'exactitude de la bible nous pouvons seulement retourner jusque l'évidence connue la plus tôt - nous ne pouvons pas retourner au source." Sound reasonable? How about we now translate that French into English: " By judging the exactitude of the bible we can only turn over until the known obviousness earliest - we cannot turn over to the source." It sort of means the same but not quite - now if that can happen in such a simple sentence with a currently living pair of languages how much confusion can we get when translating ancient manuscripts? This is why I put my faith in diving revelation and why Nephi wrote in a language which had not been corrupted.

But you don't have to drink when you go to play pool do you? Is it wrong of me not to want to pay the extortionate prices for cinema refreshments? Is it wrong of me to share one drink with my daughters?

It's not exacty the same. You go to a restaurant in order to eat. You go to the cinema in order to watch a film. The food is an optional extra and the prices are ludicrous. I actually think they would make more profit if they charged less and had a greater turnover. We just tend to buy one drink and share it between 3 or 4.

What you have in mind sounds like a great idea. Your young woman says she believes she is where Heavenly Father wants her to be and it may well be that Heavenly Father wants the family there so that these 15-17 year old girls you speak about will come to know the restored gospel.