bluebell

I've started just clicking on stuff that I think might be right and about 98% of the time it works. I used to low key stress about it but now I don't care enough.

I guess we never got the memo as we never took our kids with us until they were old enough to have a job and were paying consistent tithing themselves.

Makes me wonder if there’s either a new bishop or a new executive secretary.

That makes sense.

Agreed. It’s much worse for me now than it used to be

We’ve had a lot of TULIP Calvinists who have posted here over the years. I’m aware of their doctrine. It doesn’t translate into a belief that a specific Calvinist church is the only true church though. Not as it’s been explained to me anyway. There is probably one out there somewhere that does believe it. Lots of independent Calvinist churches out there. Catholicism is probably the closest mainstream church to our views on one true church. The biggest difference is that they accept Protestant baptism as valid (if I understand correctly. Probably best to let one of the residents Catholics speak on that)

Youth conferences are still held in most stakes (at least in the US) and are different than EFY or the new FSY stuff. They are generally put together by the stake youth leadership (the stake young mens and young womens presidencies) and then the ward YM and YW presidencies help during the event. They are a lot of work, it was always my least favorite thing about serving youth leadership callings. Entertaining and spiritually feeding (and just physically feeding and keeping alive) a few hundred kids for a couple of days is a herculean task. Some of the people in charge of the big ones probably should get paid as well!

I'll try to clarify. It is equivalent to them not considering themselves to be the true church because the disagreement has no bearing on their beliefs about what will be happening to each of them in the next life. While the presbyterian may believe the methodist or the baptist is wrong on some points of doctrine or belief, they generally don't believe that translates into a need for the methodist or the baptist to change anything in order to receive eternal life or be saved. There probably was a time (and in some independent congregations I'm sure that time is right now) where the doctrinal differences were much more tied to heavenly consequences. Most of the big denominations came to existence during a time when people were very much trying to find the 'correct' gospel and they persist today, even though the members don't usually hold to the same perspective, for a lot of different reasons. My husband grew up very active Lutheran. He began investigating the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when the pastor of his church was kicked out due to disagreements with the ruling church council and they wanted to hire someone else. The pastor that was booted started his own congregation and took a large chunk of the other congregation with him (while my husband started taking the missionary discussions and moved on). That's one example of why so many different protestant churches exist and it has nothing to do with the old Lutheran congregation believing that they were the only true church, nor the new Lutheran congregation believing they were the only true church. (I was shocked to learn just how many different kinds of Lutheran churches there are!). As an aside, I'm not sure that 'snotty' is the tone that you want to be conveying right now, but it's what's coming through so just be aware. Sometimes we don't realize the tone that our posts have and I'm guessing you aren't here to do more harm than good. Accuracy is important to me. I've seen to many members become the worst enemies of the gospel of Christ because of they way they speak and act when trying to defend it. I have been that person in the past and all that comes from it is bad fruit.

They’ve had a form of FSY for decades. At least since the 80s I think. But it was called EFY and you had to travel to BYU (or maybe a couple other locations around the US, I’m not sure) to attend. Worship band type music has been a staple of those events for just as long. You could even by the tape or CD at Deseret Book each year.

I’ve spent enough time with people telling me, as a latter-day saint, what I actually believe that it’s a red flag to me when a Latter Day Saint does it to someone else. We have to be really careful not to create a double standard in these kinds of conversations, where it’s ok if we do something to someone else that we would never tolerate them doing to us. There are obviously some independent denominations out there that do believe they are the only right ones. There have certainly been times in the past (and in places even now) when persecution between denominations was intense. Some of that had more to do with cultural heritage rather than doctrinal disputes. It’s messy But most (I was very careful in my work choice there) do not view church and Christianity through that lens. A Presbyterian may think that a Methodist is wrong in some of their beliefs, but, generally speaking, they don’t have a problem considering them to be Christian. I’m curious why it’s so important to you that they do? It’s seems like a weird hill to die on.

Same on the women’s garment issue. My choices are either triple extra small or triple extra large. I don’t live in Utah so going to an actual distribution center there isn’t an option (though for some reason it does seem like they have them available since I see many many people online getting them) and the distribution center closest to me hasn’t had any either for a while. It’s very frustrating. .

It makes sense that it would be at the prophet’s discretion and that not all would want to move into a new home just because.

From what I understand it means that they all receive the same amount. I would guess that that is true even for the prophet and apostles (that they receive the same dollar amount as any other GA), but I do think that the prophet at least also receives a place to live next to temple square (and that the 15 get health care too, but that's just my assumption). I've also heard that plane tickets and those kinds of expenses are covered (not reimbursed but paid for outright) but that they fly business and never first class. When traveling they used to stay with the local leaders so rarely a need for a hotel room but I'm sure not sure if that's true anymore or not. Again though, I couldn't say how accurate the information is.

That's hard. Would it be appropriate to tell them that you trust them to be safe in the women's restroom but cannot predict how others will respond to them? Then the decision would be theirs. Not sure if that would work or not in a liability situation though. Are there laws in your state that dictate what restroom a person must use?

This is what it says on the church's website concerning General Authorities, for anyone interested: General Authorities leave their careers when they are called into full time Church service. When they do so, they are given a living allowance which enables them to focus all of their time on serving in the Church. This practice allows for far more church members on a worldwide basis to be considered for a calling to serve as a General Authority, rather than limiting considerations to only those who may be financially independent. The living allowance is uniform for all General Authorities. None of the funds for this living allowance come from the tithing of Church members, but instead from proceeds of the Church's financial investments.

No bishops receive any money or allowances (housing or otherwise). Same for stake presidents and all local leadership. It doesn't exist for anyone in those callings, no matter their circumstances because they are not expected to leave their jobs to fulfill their callings (and also, it wouldn't work very well since most will only serve in these callings for 5-10 years and then will be released through no decision of their own). Too often latter-day saints have had a snooty attitude about "paid clergy" but if someone is doing it as a full time job then it just makes sense. It's good for members to know that even though the vast majority of our clergy is unpaid, we also have paid clergy and so we can get off of our high horses about it.

I don't think it was a lie for two reasons. The weakest reason is because an allowance isn't the same as being paid for time served or work being done. The (in my opinion) stronger reason it's not a lie is because it seems clear (to me at least) that he's speaking in generalities. In general those who serve in the church receive no compensation whatsoever.

Very good to know. The last time I went through was probably around 2010 or 2011. It sounds like it has already gotten a lot better.

I think you're right. It allows for a level of separation between the history of Christianity and the church a person attends.

She does feel kind of wasted in the role.

The Devil's Mouth It's free on prime or hulu or netflix...can't remember which one we saw it on. It's a very typical 'college kids' exotic vacation goes bad when something maneating appears where it's not supposed to be' tale. The director does not try to surprise anyone, the trope plays out exactly how you are expecting it to. You might hate the characters more than usually though because they are even more dumb than usual. I watched this with my 12 year old because it looked like a fun, mindless and harmless, scary movie and that's exactly what it was. I wouldn't want to spend any money on it but if you or your kids like nature monster movies then it could be a fun way to bond for an hour and half.

I think other posters have already said this, but most other churches don't believe they are the 'only true and living church'. They almost all believe that Creedal Christianity is the only true belief system, but that is different than what we claim. Many don't have leaders that claim to speak for God either. They claim inspiration and authority from God to lead (either through an extension of papal authority--if I understand that right--or through the priesthood of all believers and feeling called to lead), but that is another thing that is very different from what we claim. I don't know that we are more open about our history than most, maybe. Most Christian religions have the luxury of much older history for sure, and that does blunt its impact a lot. But our unique claims of authority and revelation mean that our history can hit differently, depending how someone interprets those claims. We just can't remove the obstacles that our history can present to people by pointing to other Christian churches. That's a chapter in the discussion but it's not the whole discussion.

Yes, but we don't always understand what we claim, and sometimes it's a faulty understanding that ends up being what hurts our faith. For example, if someone believes that claiming prophets and revelation means that the prophet has 24/7 access to personal visits from Christ, history such as Blacks and Priesthood become a huge stumbling block. That is what I meant when I said that our perceptions and expectations of scripture and our doctrine can make our history really painful. This is especially true when our perceptions and expectations began in childhood and were reinforced by locals leaders and parents. The faith crisis in those circumstances isn't from the doctrine or the history. It's from trying to reconcile perceptions and expectations of the doctrine with a newly discovered history. That's no small thing and I don't fault anyone for finding that a real struggle and not always being able to overcome it.

True, kind of. When the church has been around for as long as it has, starting to disseminate a more accurate history in the late 90s (being generous) isn't really 'a while'. It's the last 30 years (again, if we are generous). It's an awesome thing that I am so grateful for, but it's also fairly recent, all things considered. There are a lot of reasons that even the generous estimates for transparency don't always hold up. For example, before it was closed down for renovations around 2023 the Beehive House tour focused on teaching about FHE, trying to give away copies of the Book of Mormon, and testifying of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The tour guides followed a script that pretended BY had one wife and polygamy wasn't a thing. They even went out of their way to point out "BY's wife's" bedroom. When I asked (a very friendly and not at all contentious) question about how polygamy worked in the house (I was getting my history degree at the time and was legitimately curious) with just the one wife's bedroom, the sister missionaries had no idea what to say and tried hard to move on and sidestep the question. Thankfully my family was the only people on the tour so the sisters weren't embarrassed or anything. Also thankfully, we are a very active family and the sidestepping didn't impact any of our feelings about the church or the gospel it teaches. My opinion of its 'historical' tours took a hit though. I've heard that the tours are going to be historically accurate once it reopens to the public. Hopefully that is true. The reviews for the place are really bad on tripadvisor and yelp because the tour promised was not the tour that was delivered and being more open about the history will go a long way to fix that I think. But, it's still the case that if these changes do happen, they are happening in 2026. Again, that's not 'for a while'. That's recent. I think our leaders understand the need for more transparency now and are very happy to work on getting things right. The correlated materials now prize accuracy over faith-promoting and that's a very good thing. I agree that some critics of the church like to really focus on the church "lying" and refuse to acknowledge the information that did exist or the changes that have been rolled out over the years. Some also tend to not like to discuss how their own family dynamics growing up led to some (or sometimes many) of their issues with the church. But, we don't need to fall into the all bad vs. all good dichotomy. If a critic cannot acknowledge anything good from the church or the gospel then that is their own issue. We don't have to lay the other side of the coin on thick to counter them. We don't have to defend mistakes just because it's a critic pointing them out.

The Sheep Detective Super cute, stars Hugh Jackman, Emma Thompson, and a handful of other well known actors. It's about a shepherd that loves his sheep and he loves them. He would read them murder mysteries every night. One night he is murdered and the sheep decide that they are going to help the bumbling town cop (this all takes place in England I think) to solve the murder. It's very family friendly and a good whodunit.