I was first introduced to fry sauce on my homeymoon in SLC. I was raised outside the Corridor and grew up with Ketchup. My new wife wanted to expand my palate so she took me to Crown Burger and insisted that I taste the fry sauce. WOW. It was great on fries and onion rings.

Fast forward 10-15 years.

Fry sauce is all the rage in my house. Read more »

Imagine your Relief Society President was your Bishop. How do you think she would fare? Read more »

I recently read an article about a really expensive elaborate birthday party that P Diddy held for his son.

I personally think that P Diddy is an uncouth yahoo and his kid in in process to be the same but I offer up this extreme example to illustrate the point that the birthday culture has gotten out of hand. Read more »

Conversation in the Church hallway after picking my son up from nursery:

Me: How was nursery?
He: (enthusiastically) Great! One more meeting?
Me: (also enthusiastically) No.
He: Oh man!
Me: But now we can go home for lunch.
He: I want one more meeting!

Scene Read more »

Don’t forget to make your vote count!

I got two new students today. So far, I have only met one: he is a quiet fifth grader from Haiti. We hope his younger brother will join us in second grade next week. The family of five are here staying with a sister for a while. After the earthquake, they got out of Haiti by driving to the Dominican Republic, getting to Puerto Rico, and then to Miami, and finally up here. For some reason, the seven-year-old ended up in New York City, but they hope to drive down to retrieve him this weekend. Can you imagine? I couldn’t quite understand why or how or when they became separated from the seven-year-old (my Creole sucks), but they didn’t seem TOO worried about it, so I won’t be.

Can you imagine? Any of it? Having your country tumble down on you? Fleeing with about nothing and not being able to communicate with anyone at home to find out how your loved ones are? Rooming with your sister and her whole family and your whole family for an indefinite period? Arriving from the Caribbean in upstate New York in January?
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It took only two weeks for the Relief Society teacher in my ward to break out a Bruce R. McConkie quote from Mormon Doctrine (of course since I taught last week, this is the first week it could have happened). It made me laugh as some have noted that the McConkie quotes were removed for this new edition of Gospel Principles. Read more »

Just a little while ago I was sitting at my desk and happened to be chatting a little bit with an older man I had not met previously.  He seemed very nice and I was enjoying the conversation.  It was basically just small talk.  He asked me about where I had been employed previously and among other things I told him I had worked in Salt Lake City.  He then asked me if I was Mormon and I said yes.  He said he knew we had a beautiful chapel with a congregation for single people nearby (he was referring to our chapel in Inwood) – I asked him how he knew and he said he’s interested in religion.  Then he simply told me (I’m paraphrasing here): Read more »

Much to my disappointment, my current calling does not include any song picking. I would, quite frankly, be happy to select the songs sung at any and all of the Church meetings I attend. Ben Pratt apparently has that privilege and yet abuses it; look at his list of hymns that they did not sing even once in Sacrament Meetings in his ward last year. There are some shocking omissions. I am not sure if you qualify as an LDS congregation, for example, if you don’t sing “The Spirit of God.” Go look at his list if you like, but more importantly, consider your own musical worship.

What LDS hymn do you think is vital to our LDS-hood?

[By the way--thanks to Ben for being such a good sport about this--I would hate to post all of the things I should have done in my calling last year and did not!]

The Church’s newsroom blog just put up a post here to address this Idaho political candidate’s nutjobbery, which centers around the White Horse Prophecy of the constitution hanging by a thread, and the Elders of the Church (perhaps led by Mitt Romney or David Archuleta) somehow coming to the rescue of our constitutional system of government.

I would also point out that in Dallin H. Oaks’ landmark 1994 talk Our Strengths Can Become Our Downfall, Elder Oaks singled out people’s obsession with the U.S. Constitution as being an annoying, possibly dangerous, gospel hobby:

My first example [of a personal strength becoming a weakness] concerns Satan’s efforts to corrupt a person who has an unusual commitment to one particular doctrine or commandment of the gospel of Jesus Christ. This could be an unusual talent for family history work, an extraordinary commitment to constitutional government, a special talent in the acquisition of knowledge, or any other special talent or commitment.

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Is there an increasing trend of grandparents giving themselves weird nicknames?

I recently had a conversation with a friend who has a baby that is the first grandchild of his wife’s parents. He said the new grandparents were trying to decide what they’d like to be called. His brother-in-law had recommended “Poompa” (?!) for the grandpa. The grandpa didn’t like that option and instead wanted to be called “Misha” (??). My friend just wanted to call him grandpa. This has set off a rhetorical tug-of-war, with the grandpa referring to himself as “Misha,” and my friend insisting on “grandpa.” My question is why this grandpa feels compelled to have any nickname at all. What’s wrong with just being grandpa? Read more »

Tonight my wife and daughter were out of town and I found myself in traffic on a DC-area freeway.  Rather than seethe in traffic hell, I pulled off the freeway and went to a theater to see James Cameron’s new movie Avatar.  This is a film that has conservative-leaning people in a tizzy these days, as they try to reconcile the left-leaning messages of the movie with the indescribable awesomeness of its viewing experience.  What follows are my five reasons why conservatives and others should put aside ideology for a few hours and head to a really good theater (this is critical) to see Avatar:
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I am lucky enough to be the go-to substitute in my ward. In the last three weeks, I have substitute taught in Primary, Young Women’s, and Nursery. Next week it is the Relief Society’s turn to hear from me, and I can only hope some Sunday School teacher falls ill the week after. I think there are two major reasons I am such an attractive (if I do say so myself) substitute: 1–I have a stake calling and therefore am free for ward gigs most weeks, and 2–I never say “no.” Read more »

Mosiah 4:

16 And also, ye yourselves will succor those that stand in need of your succor; ye will administer of your substance unto him that standeth in need; and ye will not suffer that the beggar putteth up his petition to you in vain, and turn him out to perish.
 
17 Perhaps thou shalt say: The man has brought upon himself his misery; therefore I will stay my hand, and will not give unto him of my food, nor impart unto him of my substance that he may not suffer, for his punishments are just–

18 But I say unto you, O man, whosoever doeth this the same hath great cause to repent; and except he repenteth of that which he hath done he perisheth forever, and hath no interest in the kingdom of God.

19 For behold, are we not all beggars? Do we not all depend upon the same Being, even God, for all the substance which we have, for both food and raiment, and for gold, and for silver, and for all the riches which we have of every kind?

22 And if ye judge the man who putteth up his petition to you for your substance that he perish not, and condemn him, how much more just will be your condemnation for withholding your substance, which doth not belong to you but to God, to whom also your life belongeth; and yet ye put up no petition, nor repent of the thing which thou hast done.

Some people in Utah think that the area surrounding Temple Square is the panhandling capital of the world. I don’t know if that’s true — I’m not well traveled or well educated enough to say for sure. However, it it’s at least in the top twenty, I submit that Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, would crack the top five.
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Some time ago, I was a visitor in an Elders quorum meeting where the quorum president announced the calling of a new quorum secretary.  While making the announcement, the quorum president broke down crying as he talked about the quorum member’s willingness to accept the calling.  I was astonished at the quorum president’s emotionality over this calling, and I imagined he probably loses composure pretty often over things that I might consider routine.  In past years, I might have seen this quorum president’s crying as indicative of a level of sprituality far superior to mine; for example, in the MTC I saw guys crying all over the place, at the strangest times, and I felt strange and lacking in spirituality for my lack of tears.  Over time, though, I’ve come to believe that there are many other factors besides the Spirit that influence our responses to things we see and hear in Church contexts, and I have come to respect the role of chemistry in responses and behaviors that we often consider willed and voluntary. Read more »

Recently I attended a stake youth activity at a retirement home where the youth caroled for residents. I volunteered to prepare song books. It was interesting to notice how many of the handful of Christmas hymns in our book are not well-known to lay listeners: “With Wondering Awe” and “While Shepherds Watched their Flocks by Night,” for example, are fine songs, but they are not the ones that spring readily to mind when contemplating the season. Yet many more famous religious carols are not included: “O Holy Night,” “We Three Kings,” and “What Child is This,” to name a few. In our discussion last year of Christmas hymns, many favorite songs are not those included in our hymnbook. This can sometimes be remedied with special musical numbers and choir pieces; I organized a women’s group to sing “What Child is This?” several years ago, which was made a bit more amusing because most of the participants just happened to be extremely pregnant (I was a day past my due date myself). In fact, the seemingly arbitrary number of Christmas hymns in the hymnbook makes me a little suspicious that they included roughly enough to serve as opening and closing hymns through one December, but not quite enough to skip over some you may not particularly like.

If the Christmas section of the hymnbook were expanded, what would you wish to be added?

Recently, I heard my two-year-old belting out a song while in the bath. This is not too noteworthy, really, but it wasn’t the “A,B,C Song,” “Itsy Bitsy Spider,” or even “Wild Thing.” No, he splashed along as his cute little soprano sang:

Swing low,
Sweet Cheerios!
Coming for to carry me home.
Swi-ing low,
Sweet Cheerios,
Coming for to carry me home!
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I was thinking about a particular subject today while sitting in Sacrament Meeting listening to some great talks. My wife gave one of those great talks. After her talk a couple of members came up to talk to her and were very complimentary of her talk. One guy acted upset because he disagreed with the investment strategy she used as an example in her talk. He was older and thought he knew the perfect way to invest which was different from the way my wife’s company does it. Anyway this caused me to think about the “unorthodox” among us, including myself. Many times these members are set aside by all of us. I wondered how valuable these members could be if we actually gave them a chance and let them serve. I know of a few example of folks who were wonderful teachers and counselors once they were given the opportunity to serve when someone thought they had something to offer. In addition, I think that we are all a bit unorthodox in our own ways. When I use the term unorthodox it could be someone who is a little socially odd to someone who is doctrinally too left or too right…

Concerning wayward YM. When to intervene and get the bishop involved????
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So the Sunday School lesson on Official Declaration 2 was taught by a substitute teacher in my ward. She seemed really nervous, but I am not sure if that was about the act of teaching or the content of this lesson. She presented the extension of the Priesthood to all worthy males as a simple matter of correlation on par with the three-hour block, getting rid of the old ward budgets, and the (old) “new” Enrichment program.

Is this progress (that the fact that we once withheld the Priesthood from worthy males because of their race is such a thing of the past, it hardly warrants discussion) or regression (that we still just can’t talk about it)?

Discuss.