Mondo Cool, or Walt Cowart, is my Father in Law. He is a great man, with a great lineage. Anyway, I asked him, on a whim, if he had a post he’d like to put forth. He did.

My father is an old man. I do not say that disrespectfully, but matter-of-factly. He recently retired after 50+ years of practicing medicine. Truly, he is a unique example of service to his fellow beings. He converted to the Church over 40 years ago and has also been an exemplar of service to God. He was a child of the Depression; an onlooker of WWII, Korea, and Viet Nam; and a concerned observer of the societal change of most of the past eight decades. Genetics, however, has been his toughest challenge. His health has been mainly determined by a predisposition towards hypercholesterolemia which has affected his heart, and now his brain. The father I have known as a Lion of the Lord is now, because of health conditions, feeble – physically, mentally, and emotionally.

This, of course, is hard on me. And, it has intensified my thoughts about the purpose of aging. I, after all, am not getting any younger. I think we all wish we, and our loved ones, could be vibrant until the very end of our mortal probations, much like Pres. Faust. But for many, that is not the option.

What are your thoughts on the lessons to be learned by these final years? We all have challenges throughout our lives, but what, in particular, is the “purpose” of old age; or, what does old age teach us that the rest of life does not? Is it just part of the package or does it have special significance in our earthly sojourn? How does this phase of life, in particular, relate to our salvation? How should we prepare to care for our elder families and church members? What are the things we are doing to prepare ourselves for the “twilight years?”

I recently asked Nitsav at FPR about the correlation between Gen 3:16 and Gen 3:7. This is my own answer to the question. (more…)

Yesterday, I bore my testimony at Church about Geoff, of all people. (The worst is, I couldn’t even keep the facts straight…) Anyway, I was also thinking of a question Geoff asked. This is my attempt to answer.

I love to go to church. I mean I really enjoy it. Yesterday, for example, I got to substitute teach CTR-5, and I enjoyed church so much I was horse from screaming in the classroom and every member of the bishopric, several concerned parents, and the 2nd Councilor of the Primary presidency all peeked in to make sure no one was seriously injured. (You’d think no one else ever let five age five boys reenact Helamen’s stripling warriors vs. The chairs in the room. What can I say? Lessons were learned, chairs were slain, children screamed.) But I digress.

The Point is, I love going to church, and I want everyone else to love going to church too. I am all about getting the rears in the pews, as it were. But why? Why should we all go to church?

Some common reasons I hear are to take the Sacrament, to hear the words of the prophets, and to commune with Christ. I think these are incomplete. First, I have the priesthood, I can take the sacrament in my own home. Second, It is currently 2007. The book has been in existence for millennia now, and add to that television, radio, mp3, the internet, etc, and I have plenty of means of hearing the words of the prophets. Finally, the words of the prophets have taught me to create a sacred space in my own home, to pray in my closet, as it were, and that I can commune with the Almighty anywhere and at anytime. So these reasons, while all good, I think are insufficient.

I think the purpose of Church is to create the proper order so that we can establish and practice the correct type of interdependent society to come unto exaltation. Call it “building up Zion” if you like. I believe the Gospel teaches that we are all in this together, and that we are all weak alone, and much stronger together. It is only when we come together that Christ is with us. Finally, I believe that it is through the order and organization of the church and our communing with one another that we will “all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.”

For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things.

-2 Nephi 2:11

When I was young, there was this comic book “What If?” which answered all sorts of brilliant questions, such as “What if Mary Jane were Spider-man and not Peter Parker?” Or “What if Captain America were the Incredible Hulk?” In order to get at and understand the question of LFW versus CFW. I would like to ask a “What if” question myself.
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UPDATE Ok, I have gotten a sample set of 23 different wards at this point, so I thought I’d give you a bit of info which can be gathered from what I have. The Average size of a Ward, with all the data I have, is about 165 people attending church on Any given sunday. This means that if we take the 13M members of the church and divide them into there 27.5k congregations, 165 on average of the 473 average members are at church any given sunday. This is about 35%, or 4.5M mormons attending church on any given sunday. END UPDATE

I am trying to figure out what the average sized congregation is in the church. If you would please post whether you are in a ward or branch, where you are at, and the average sacrament meeting attendance.

Here’s my Ward, for Example.

Ward
San Antonio, Texas
145

One of the conundrums for me has been in resolving how the effects of the atonement were efficacious before the cause of those effects had even occurred.
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Mary Sturlaugson Eyer was the first African American woman to serve a mission for the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She Served in the San Antonio Texas Mission starting September 28, 1978, just about 29 years ago. As we celebrate pioneer day this upcoming weekend, I thought it would be appropriate to share an experience of a pioneer from my neck of the woods.

Mary Sturlaugson grew up in a home with 23 other siblings and was proselyted by missionaries in 1976. She told them if they ever came back, she would kill them. The missionaries felt like they should come back but were discouraged by their mission president. Later, the mission president called those elders back and said he too felt like they should return. They did, and Mary answered the door with a knife in her hand. (more…)

Someone has failed, failed miserably. I say to bishops throughout the world that with all you have to do — and we recognize that it is much — you cannot disregard the converts. Most of them do not need very much. As I have said before, they need a friend. They need something to do, a responsibility. They need nurturing with the good word of God. They come into the Church with enthusiasm for what they have found. We must immediately build on that enthusiasm

-Gordon B. Hinckley (more…)

Ok, I am a nerdy ward clerk, I admit it. This post isn’t about doctrine or theology at all. It’s about practice. If it seems secular and aspiritual in nature, it’s probably because I am a ward clerk and not an EQP.

This week I was asked to help set up the division of households for home teaching between the High Priests and the Elders. This is a challenge for me, and a big one. Ultimately, My solution was to pull about 20 different reports then push it back to the EQP and HPGL to work on, but I’d love your thoughts.
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About a month before I went on my mission, I made this movie while I was trying to teach myself Maya. I obviously thought “The Matrix” was a great movie. And No I didn’t think this is what being a missionary was like. Anyway, I never did figure out the kinematics, but I thought this was a fun way to let you know me a bit better.

ArNMWHJW7rg

One of my favorite bloggers, HP, took a friendly dig at me the other day, and it set my mind in motion and first reminded me that the word “love” is problematic, but then that my conception of love is perhaps vastly different than others. This post represents a meandering look at “love.”

We live in a capitalist society of consumerism, which is based on the laws of supply and demand. This means that we often have a concept of scarcity ingrained upon us, and we are typically unable to think in terms of abundance in many areas. This concept of scarcity works in time, where we only have so much time to give. It works in money, where once it’s all spent it’s gone. It works in cars, and clothes, and slices of pumpkin pie.
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