Mormon Culture
Up for Awards
Wheat and Tares is hosting their annual awards. I am up for the following awards: Best Personal Post – Facing Your Parents Mortality Best Post on the Temple – Temple Prep Suggestions So, go over there and vote for me! (Yes, I am campaigning.)
Salt Lake’s Cure for Homelessness
Salt Lake City has reduced homelessness in Salt Lake City 72% since 2005. How did they do this? Comedy Central recently highlighted Utah’s cure and it is pretty simple: they give homeless people homes. But doesn’t that cost a lot of money? Lloyd Pendleton, the director of the Utah Homeless Task Force says it costs […]
Church Ball
My son recently became a deacon and was invited to play ward basketball for the first time this week. We got there right at 7pm (in the middle of the prayer), and discovered my son was the 5th guy there for his team. Good thing he showed up! To my surprise, my 12 year old […]
Did you Meet the Mormons?
This past weekend, we noticed that Meet the Mormons was at the Dollar Theater (actually it is $1.50), so we went to see it. (I admit it–we don’t like to pay the higher prices.) I walked into the theater, and it was nearly sold out. A recent article said that Utah County is 84% Mormon […]
The Christmas Star in BoM
When I was a child, I was always excited about putting the Star on top of our Christmas tree. The story of the Christmas star is found in the Book of Matthew: Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the East came […]
Impromptu Sacrament Meetings
When I was a kid (approximately 8-10 years old), I used to get up every Fast & Testimony meeting and bear my testimony. I was so obnoxious, my family told me I didn’t need to get up every month. So, I took a few months off. One day we had Ward Conference (and I still […]
Uninspirational Missionary Farewells
I attended my nephew’s missionary farewell this weekend, and it got me thinking about missionary farewells in general. It used to be that a missionary family would invite his family to speak, there would be special musical numbers, often advice from an older brother, and bishop’s remarks about the missionary. While some meetings went long […]
Is it Time to Update the Word of Wisdom?
Fair warning: I know that Thursday is Thanksgiving, so this post will probably be a killjoy. The Word of Wisdom was written in Joseph Smith’s day and primarily concerned the major health problems of the day: alcoholism and and tobacco. These were industries of “conspiring men in the last days.” But obesity is turning out to […]
The LDS Drug Problem
I watched Lisa Ling’s program on CNN Saturday night dealing with the LDS Drug problem. (A short preview is available here.) On the one hand, it was unremarkable. Drug users (in any community) say that they want to stop doing drugs, but are very flaky and keep doing them. LDS users are no different. On […]
Mormon Heretic 