This was Stake Conference weekend for me, and aside from the plastic seats 3/4ths of the way back in the gym, a good time was had. I am a personal fan of unorthodoxy in relatively unimportant issues, so this was a good conference for me. Read more »

Someone sent me this link last week; apparently the Church is putting Personal Progress online. Young Women will be able to read, journal, and keep track of their progress at this site. I think it is a fine innovation. For some Young Women who spend significant time online, this will be an attractive idea, for others it might help them keep track of their accomplishments, and for some, it will not affect them one way or another.

On the whole, I’d say it is a step forward. Maybe not a very important step, but it is a step.

It is New Beginnings season and since I have a Stake Calling, I get invited to attend 9 of them. Lucky me. This year, most New Beginnings programs have included (whether featured or mentioned) an introduction to the “new” Personal Progress program. They are not talking about the previously mentioned website. They are talking about the new book, journal, theme cards, pendants and rubies, posters, stickers (yes, stickers), and ribbons. Whew. It’s a lot of stuff. Read more »

Why does the Salt Lake Tribune report the news the way it does?

I have been reading newspapers since I was about 10 years old. A story like the this one would rarely even be covered in my experience. It takes a sensational murder or other really heinous crime to make the news.

If it was covered in an article the religious affiliation of the alleged suspect would never be mentioned.

Why is the Salt Lake Tribune so biased?

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 »

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?
Read more »

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 »

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!]

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 »

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!
Read more »

Concerning wayward YM. When to intervene and get the bishop involved????
Read more »

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.

OK, so the stores have looked like Christmas since about September, and the weather here in upstate New York hasn’t been very Christmasy (what a blessing!), but it seems that Christmas will happen, whether I am ready or not. What do you do to prepare for Christmas? Read more »

This is my great-grandmother Cossette and her dog, Rover.

Cossette was from Provo and grew up in the Church. Do you notice anything about her, though, that would not fit in to a modern Church setting? Read more »

The regular Gospel Doctrine teacher totally outed my friend on Sunday. My friend is the regular substitute teacher for that class and, by all appearances, totally orthodox and more of a sitting down than a rocking the boat kind of sister. Read more »

Mom, who is the tallest person?

My daughters’ tone indicates that she is not seeking an answer this time, but testing me to see if I know the answer.

Trying to figure out the parameters of the question, I ask:

In the car?

No.

In the family?

No. Who is the tallest person outside?

(Looking around but not seeing any pedestrians) I don’t know, hon. I don’t see anyone. Who is the tallest person?

God! Read more »

Lots of parents and as a consequence some PH leaders are frustrated by families arriving late for church. My family has its own issues but one of them is not being late for church. Our Church starts at 8:30 and we have 5 boys ranging from 9 to 11 months. Here is our strategy. Read more »