Kenngo1969

OK.

Is that what the Vega$ odd$maker$ are $aying? Sorry! Couldn't resist! Carry on!

If my bishop doesn't ask, I won't tell. (I don't know what kind of specific training bishops receive on things like this, but I wouldn't be surprised if the only instruction they get is that the only question they should ask is, "Are you a full tithe payer?" and the only answers they should accept are, respectively, "Yes," or "No.")

Paging @A Wretched Soul! "Bueller?! Bueller?!"

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is excommunicatin' the faithful, now, eh? Tsk-tsk-tsk! Makes me wonder if I'm next ... not! Oh, well! Sucks to be her, I guess!

Sincere seeker after truth ... who hasn't been back to engage his interlocutors since lobbing the bomb, flooring the accelerator, and exiting the scene of the drive-by bombing at high speed? Yeeeaaahhh ... color me doubtful on that one. @A Wretched Soul, if I'm wrong, and if you can at least work up enough [fake? ] umbrage to return to this thread and tell me I'm wrong, I'll gladly apologize, but ... I ain't holdin' my breath!

A scripture does come to mind: "Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you, and shall speak all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in Heaven. For so persecuted they the prophets who were before you." Matthew 5:11-13. I hope no one experiences any lingering ill effects from this incident and that everyone, including the perpetrator, gets the help they each need.

RIP, President Holland, and condolences to family and friends. I have a President Holland story that, although he was not involved [directly], I think he would appreciate and find amusing. Before she realized that she wouldn't have to know much about biology or chemistry or other things of that nature to do what she wanted to do and to be successful in life, my mother attended what was then Dixie Junior College for a quarter. Coincidentally, a couple of weeks before President Holland's call into the Quorum of the Twelve, I happened to spot my mother's yearbook in our downstairs library. I pulled it off of the shelf and thumbed through it, and it wasn't hard to spot President Holland, who was something of a BMOC *, at various places in it. Prior to this, I was unaware of President Holland's association with Dixie College (from which I had graduated a year or two before). I thought to myself, "Hmm, that's interesting," and then I replaced the book on the shelf. A couple of weeks later, when it was announced that President Holland had been called into the Quorum of the Twelve, I told my mother, "You know, Mom, you went to school with him." (Of course, I use the phrase "went to school with him" quite loosely here: I'm quite sure they didn't move in the same circles! ) She was skeptical. She said, "Oh, I did not!" I said, "You did, too, and I can prove it." I went downstairs, retrieved the yearbook, brought it upstairs, and turned to one of the several pages that featured President Holland quite prominently. I said, "He hasn't changed much, appearance-wise, in the last 30 years, has he?" So, thereafter, "Elder Holland" became "Jeffrey, my classmate": "Boy, my classmate, Jeffrey, did a really good job in this Conference, didn't he?" Whereupon I would respond, "But, Mom: His close friends call him, 'Jeff.'" I hope, one day, to be able to tell Elder Holland that story in person. RIP, Elder Holland, and condolences to family and friends, but God be thanked for the matchless gift of His Divine Son. _________________ * "Big Man on Campus"

As Count Rugen told Prince Humperdinck in The Princess Bride, "If you haven't got your health, you haven't got anything." (Seriously, though: No, I don't, in fact, believe that. Some of the best people I have ever known also have been the ones who have faced the most serious health challenges of which I, personally, am aware: As Christ told His Apostles, "And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." Matthew 10:28, KJV.) I do wish everyone as healthy a Merry Christmas and as happy a New Year as are possible.

@A Wretched Soul Poor guy! Sucks to be you, I guess! Oh, well! Cough-cough-[Troll!]-cough-cough-cough! P.S.: In the [unlikely] event that you should happen to see this, I hope you had a Merry Christmas!

With the price of gas these days, what's that, like, 5 miles?! (Sorry! Had to do it!)

Hmmm ... I smell a .... ummm ... rat!

@Calm's comment made me think of this, but it isn't necessarily in response to it: Appropos of nothing ... , I was reminded of Elder Jeffrey R. Holland's address, "Lord, I Believe," from the April 2013 General Conference: For whatever it's worth ... or not! Carry on!

You're correct that I can do the former, and, also, you're correct in your implication (if I understand you correctly ) that I cannot do the latter. I cannot do the latter, not necessarily because I agree with absolutely everything President Nelson ever did (though I'm not saying whether I have or whether I haven't, whether I might or whether I might not ), but because I don't consider it to be my role to do so. [I'm not calling anyone out here for lack of faithfulness: I don't work for the ACME Judgment Company: If you need approval, you approve, and if you need disapproval, you disapprove. You look in the mirror. You weed your own garden. And I will do the same.] The Church of Jesus Christ (see what I did there? ) is not an organization that is run according to democratic principles in which the majority rules. (It is not "Vox Populi, Vox Dei." Right is right even if nobody says it, believes it, or does it, and wrong is wrong even if everybody says it believes it, or does it.) If, indeed, President Nelson or anyone else who ever occupies the position of Prophet and President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints ever were to do something that is inconsistent with God's will that is serious enough to impact the overall direction of the Church, deciding that this occurred and what to do about would be well above my pay grade. And even if the vast majority of members of the Church of Jesus Christ were to agree that President Nelson had done something untoward, deciding that this occurred and what to do about it would still be well above my pay grade. (Whether he and Wendy exchanged a slightly cross word on January 31, 2019 probably wouldn't qualify. )It is my understanding that the way things work, if President Nelson or President Oaks or anyone who might succeed the latter were to do something untoward that has a material adverse effect on the direction of the Church of Jesus Christ (meaning that, whatever it is, it is not in harmony with God's will), the Presiding Bishopric and "twelve high priests" (who could be, but, if I understand it, do not have to be, members of the Twelve: Doctrine and Covenants 107). Or, God could simply say, "I am able to do mine own work" (see 2 Nephi 27:19-23) and take care of the matter directly.

This isn't a judgment of you, since I don't know you and I lack any mantle that would require me to sit in judgment of you, My Young Padawan. If any adjustments in attitude be required, caveat lector. I'll tend to my own garden, and leave you to tend to yours. But, perhaps your "outside-of-the-Temple" caveat is the key, there. Personally, I find that if I have become prone to be critical of those who are called to preside over me, to paraphrase something Shakespeare wrote once, "the fault, Dear JVW [Dear Kenngo1969], is not in 'our prophets.' It is in ourselves." If I had been alive in Moses's time, would I have said, "What?! Manna from heaven ... again?!! " If I had been alive in Joseph Smith's time, would I have said, "Leave Missouri?! But, this is Zion! "? If I had been alive in Brigham Young's time, would I have said, "Leave Nauvoo ... for Rocky Mountains and desert?"[1] It might well be true (I have no reason to doubt it: I'm simply "hedging my bets" here as a rhetorical device) that, eventually, you, I, and everyone else who is faithful will receive our own seer stone, but ... why wait? If, indeed, it is true that miracles are happening all around us, but we have become so dulled, so desensitized, that we do not see them [indeed, that we refuse to see them], is it really going to make all that much more of a difference if, finally, President Dallin H. Oaks does something we consider to be truly spectacular? Or will we simply say, "Meh, he's just 'another flash in the pan'!"? If any of us is wondering what, truly, is there to get excited about in the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ, [not just in Joseph Smith's time, or in Brigham Young's time, or in President Russell M. Nelson's time, but right now] perhaps we should consider asking a recent convert if we can warm ourselves by the light of his or her fire by asking the convert that question. _________________________________ END NOTE I'm reminded of the old "Mormon Rap," which had a line something along the lines of, "I wish I could've seen the look on Brother Brigham's face when he said, 'Yes, Baby, this is the place!'" I would change that line to, "I wish I could've seen the look on everybody else's face when Brother Brigham said, 'Yes, Baby, this is the place!"

The relationship of this post to the thread may be tangential, at best, and certainly, I don't wish to minimize anyone's grief, heartache, and so on, at losing a child, things that, as a non-parent, I have confessed already are well outside my, errrr, ken (please pardon the pun). The next time you meet your son, @Navidad, he will be well unencumbered by the many of what Paul called "the thorns in the flesh" that so vexed him (and that, by extension, so vexed you and the rest of your family) in mortality. I believe that will be quite a reunion, indeed. While "work in the garden" you all must until it occurs, and while, again, I am aware, acutely that this prospect doesn't salve current pain, it is a prospect to which I hope you cling, and which you anticipate eagerly. While this is a time of year in which we celebrate the most important birth in all of history, the import and the impact of that birth is that it was of the only Person in history who was born to die so that each of us, too, might, as He was, be resurrected, in grand glory and perfection, and might live eternally. God be thanked for the marvellous gift of His Divine Son.

Sincerest condolences on your loss. Even after all of these years, still, I am my only child, so I cannot possibly fathom what is like for a parent to lose a child. While we're not Calvinists [thank the Good Lord, Above, for that!], whatever ordinances are performed [or not] on anyone's behalf, ultimately, it is Christ who determines who is saved and who is exalted, and who is not. It is He who is mighty to save, and it is He who is mighty to exalt. You're free to decline any offer you receive for ordinances to be performed on his behalf. Recognizing what I just said at the close of the preceding sentence, no one should be offended at your declining such an offer. Also, depending on the nature and extent of your son's disability, he may not, under the doctrine of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, be accountable (capable of sinning) in the same way that you or I would be. Under the doctrine of the Church, such people are "alive in Christ." See Moroni 8:11-16.

As far as Muslims who become members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I prefer this Brother's story.

The thing about hobgoblin shoes, if you click them together and say, three times, "There's no place like home!" that's exactly where you end up!

Ich bin Hamburger, aber Ich wohne in Berlin. Oder, Ich bin Berliner, aber Ich wohne in Hamburg. Ich vergesse.

If it weren't for pedantry, I would have no fun at all!

Perhaps he's a bit too inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity?

Is that so? Did it pique your interest to the very peak, or only mildly so? This sort of thing really isn't in my ouvre ... but maybe I'll have a peek. (Sorry. Coudn't resist! As the noted Professor of English, the great Dr. Festus Doofus, Ph.D., of the University of Southern Nowhar put it once, "Them homophones, they's tricky thangs!" )

Nah, consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, don'tcha know?!

Maybe it's for a very lay audience?