Okrahomer

Published here 2025 % Change Stakes 3,695 2.41% Missions 451 0.22% Districts 488 -1.21% Wards and Branches 32,046 1.17% Total membership 17,887,212 2.16% New children of record 91,835 0.24% Converts baptized 385,490 24.88% F/T Teaching Missionaries 78,596 6.03% Senior missionaries 31,613 1.58% Service Missionaries 4,518 7.78% Births + Converts 477,325 Absolute Increase 377,431 Deaths + Exits 99,894

If you’re teaching youth, the first 10-minutes has to be “current events”, so real lesson time will likely net out to about 15-minutes. But this may also reflect how the modern attention span has shrunk in the doom-scrolling age.

It’s not 1-hour Church…https://www.deseret.com/faith/2026/03/30/sunday-meeting-schedule-change-announced-church-of-jesus-christ/

The Lesson of Lazarus By Denise Tucker I have a brother spiritually dead, wrapped tight in graveclothes of sin, enclosed in the terrible tomb of Babylon. But there is One, Even now, who can call forth a life from that grave A message in the miracle— There is no one He cannot save.

openings orson scott card he came from agony to us it was our pain etched on the body he had left fastened to the cross but as he touched the key to the lock and opened up our dark prison only light was in his smile and he named us all his own then we followed him to grass tipped rocks where many long shed bodies waited he slipped into one dark tomb into the white shroud into the reawakened flesh and as the prison filled with light we sang and rolled away the stone

From a believer’s perspective, this “tin plates” idea is hard to reconcile with the historical context — at least for me it is. Joseph Smith lived in a small community where many neighbors were skeptical or even hostile, and some, like Philastus Hurlbut, actively collected statements against him. If he had really bought a large amount of tin or spent time engraving metal plates, I would expect someone would have noticed. What one sees from contemporaneous reports instead are mostly general accusations of fraud, without any concrete details about materials or methods. I’m not saying fabrication was impossible, but it’s a problem that makes the theory unconvincing to me.

New Zealand and Australia are on my bucket list. Since the list is quite long now, it's a good thing retirement is now also on the horizon: #1 on the list (actually my wife's # 1) is a walking tour of the Cotswolds. I'm not sure what comes after.

I feel the same.

Ah! I hadn’t even thought of that. So he believes disruption theory manifests in a kind of Correlation 2.0. That seems a lot more plausible.

Thanks for the transcript. I had to chuckle when it translated President Oaks’ name as “Dallin Chokes.” 😜 I’m admittedly a poor historian; nevertheless, If I am understanding Dr. Park, he seems to imply that “disruption theory” has already influenced Church governance in the form of correlation; but since correlation preceded publication of the theory by almost 3 decades, one would rather surmise that the reverse — that correlation influenced Christensen’s thinking — is more likely.

Good point. Apparently, he had connections in basically every state and many foreign countries. The thing about “possibly” paying tuition for a BYU-Idaho female student made my heart sink; but even if it’s true, who knows what it actually means?

This popped up on my news feed.

Same for me

I believe he said (fairly recently) that he is an accountant.

Wow! This is quite a moving conversion story. I liked how he described: “I felt as if wind were rushing through me.” Thanks for sharing!