WillowTheWhisp

Relationships? Do you mean friendships? It's great to have friendships with people of other faiths and to find the things we have in common. If you mean boyfriend/girlfriend type thing then most LDS would look for that kind of realtionship within the LDS church due to our belief in the eternal nature of families and desire to be sealed in the temple marriage ceremony. AS an LDS woman married to a non-LDS man I can also tell you that we miss out on a lot of things like priesthood blessings too. I have a lot of non-LDS friends and some of them are non-Christian.

At one time all our stores here in England would be closed on a Sunday too, but now it's like any other day. In fact it seems to be busier if anything in some stores on Sundays, the DIY ones in particular. I think things began to change when we had a large immigrant population for whom Sunday was not their Sabbath. They were permitted by law to close their shops on their Sabbath and open them on Sunday - then it evolved into everybody being allowed to open 7 days a week if they so wished.

Where would we be without Snopes?

I'm a convert. Hello, and welcome to the forum.

Yes I agree with that statement. Confusion may very well arise though when the statement is expanded by the question - "What is scripture?" because of course as LDS we regard many more things as scripture than the Authorised version of the Bible. Sounds like a great class.

Hello Hybrid and welcome to the forum and welcome to the Church. That's a wonderful feeling isn't it?

This leaves me with an interesting question - was the earth made for man or was man made for the earth?

I don't think they could be trying to hide anything as the handbook is available online on the church website isn't it? Perhaps a link to that rather than a copyright violation would have been the correct way to go.

Has that actually been proven though? This is what I am not clear on.

Of course not Moksha but this is making the assumption that the religion equals child abuse.

Yes if they have married their wives in a Muslim country they will be recognised as legally married to up to 4 wives which is permitted in Islam.

Here in England we're about the same as the USA I think regarding weight problems. We have the same sort of junk food and we have the same sort of additives in our processed foods. I think the latter accounts for a lot of the problems too. As a nation we don't do a lot of meal creating from scratch. We open a lot of tins and packets and call it cooking.

But his comment was in response to people who may have drawn that conclusion and pointing out that it was an erroneous one.

I used to say I would have a large family. I always wanted lots of children. I ended up having just two, not by choice. Life doesn't always work out how we plan for it to. I would like to change one thing about me but it's a constant struggle no matter how hard I try - I am trying to lose weight. I do all the right things as far as I am able but my body refuses to co-operate. One thing I may have more control over is how I react to things which other people do. So I am going to work on that one.

Actually I found it to be quite the opposite. I have fond memories of Elder McConkie and his own admission that he could occasionally be wrong shows strength of character in my opinion.

rameumptom I can deal with that now through experience and I will struggle against the opposition from within but way back at the beginning it left me doubting that I should be there, whether God himself actually wanted me to be there. In fact I felt that he didn't. Now I can see the difference between what Heavenly Father desires and the way other people behave, but it takes time and experience to learn something like that.

Who the heck is Eckhart Tolle? Must be an American thing.

I have already explained why I left. I felt that I couldn't live up to the demands of doing everything. There weren't enough hours in the day and I couldn't get by on less than 8 hours sleep. I felt I didn't belong and would never make it. I felt I hadn't been chosen by Heavenly Father to receive the Gospel and I had gone looking for it as opposed to missionaries seeking me out. I felt alien. I didn't dispute the doctrine or disbelieve it. I just didn't believe in me, us because it applied to my husband too. This was emphasised many times when we were shunned by the church members such as being sent off to the temple on our own for the first time with no escort. To my mind it was yet further confirmation that we we trying to be part of something where we didn't belong. We'd been in the church a little over a year so we didn't give up at the first hurdle. It was about the hundredth, but we were still fairly new.

I know of the principle of confession to a Catholic priest - I don't believe it but I know of it. Does that make me wrong for not practicing it? If someone believed a principle to be false why on earth would they follow it just because other people told them it was right? I have plenty of people tell me that Islam is the only true religion but I don't follow it because they tell me it's true. I don't believe it. I follow what I believe. I can fully understand someone leaving the church if they came to believe it wasn't true. We expect people to leave the churches they were born into and brought up to believe are true and join ours. Then when they find something which leads them to believe our church isn't true there are people who cannot accept that they choose to leave for that reason. We claim the privilege of worshipping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience and allow all men the same privilege, let them worshop how, where or what they may (unless they are ex-Mormon?)

Wouldn't 'pop psychology' come under the heading of self help? We are always being told to try to help ourselves first before seeking outside assistance. Or perhaps there is more to it than I'm aware of from here.

Welcome back MormonGirl. It may take a while to get back to where you were but it will be worth it.

The letter sounds great. I hope it won't be too long before you hear from someone in the Ward\and can find a way of getting to church there.

Nice to hear from you. I will keep you in my prayers.

Elder McConkie didn't say 'sin' he said 'lusts of the flesh' which does rather create a different impression to the idea of non-lusting type sins. I do however thank skalenfehl for pointing out that he said 'basic' and not 'all'

False. Proverbs 13:24 says "He that spareth his rod hateth his son."