Devobah

Hello all. I’ll be straight with you: my worship could use a bit of work; both in temple and regular sacrament meeting worship. I feel stagnant, and I often just scroll through my phone like a heathen a lot of the time. Besides doing something about that, I’ll pose the question here: What have you done to make your worship (in the temple or sacrament meeting) more meaningful to you? To our Catholic, Orthodox, and other Mainstream Christian friends, I would love how you make your worship more meaningful as well. Please feel free to post scriptures, devotionals, personal thoughts, or meaningful messages below. I appreciate you all! God bless you.

Dude! Either I’m looking at the wrong threads or it’s been a bit. Welcome back if it’s been a bit. Also I agree.

Ah. Those parts of my mission weren't added until the last six months. I drove through Muskogee on the way to a Zone Conference once! My last area was the Eufalla branch which covered parts of Checotah and I think Gore?

Oh no way! My grandfather was from Lovell! I also served my mission in Oklahoma! I love coincidences.

This is great information. I guess if I looked a bit closer I could have seen that. I thought he got hacked.

Hey all! I was wondering if I could get an answer to a question. First some setup. I was trying to check out something on the CES Letter website (mainly if there were any updates. There don't seem to be any). For some reason it seems that the main page for the website seems to be blocked? or put up for sale or something? I don't really know how to explain it. If you search for any part of the website (besides the homepage of the site) in Google you can see those, but the moment you try to go to the main page from there it doesn't seem to go there. Is there anybody who knows more about website design who would be able to tell me what's going on? It seems odd to me. I don't think the domain is up for sale or anything (because why would it be) but it does seem odd that the homepage is the only thing that is down out of the whole thing. Also, again, there doesn't seem to be any updates. I guess Jeremy is still working on his rebuttal to Brian Hales and getting ready to reveal the CES Director that spurned his request. Those have been up for years though.

I would say it has. I was growing tired of having to do bot verification almost every time I opened up something or refreshed the page

That was my mission. Oklahoma was great and horrible because of that. Sure, people wanted to talk to us, but only because they wanted to tell us how wrong we were and how hell is hot. If I had a nickel for every time I heard “eternity is a long time to be wrong” I would pay off my student debts today.

With friends like them, who needs enemies?

I guess it’s just very sisyphean in this kind of thing. I guess I’ve just spent too much time on the internet. I’m getting reruns. I hate reruns.

John recently appeared on Holy Koolaid to tell his side of the story about the lawsuit. Holy Koolaid has a large audience (perhaps one of the largest audiences) of people who have deconstructed from religion as a whole. I haven’t watched it, but did have time to read through some of the comments. Those few that are faithful are pointing out what’s already been said here; that John is not being sued for using the term “Mormon”, but for using copyrighted images and attempting to look like a Church podcast. Those that are with John focus on the Church being a bully and how the Church is trying to silence him. There is also advertisement for John’s defense fund. Personally, I know too little about these kinds of things to really have a say. As Seeking pointed out a while ago, John plays fast and loose with facts (history of his podcast, why he was excommunicated, etc.) and the Church has curated its history in a way that makes it feel whitewashed in a lot of areas (polygamy, BoM translation, Priesthood restoration, etc.). It’s a lose lose situation in the public eye for the Church. John wins? Antagonists to the Church will have a field day and will likely never let go of it. John will be hailed as a hero. The Church wins? Well they had more money and they have a hit out for John because they've been trying to silence him for years. I just hate this whole ordeal.

A great deal of things. Most of them not having to do with funeral potatoes.

Oh good. Does this mean I don't have to pretend to like funeral potatoes anymore?

My sisters and SIL with little ones aren't ecstatic about it. They were saying that getting their children to nursery and such is already hard enough, but knowing that they will possibly miss Sunday School is a bummer for them. My SIL said, "So it's Sacrament Meeting and then an hour of mingling in the halls." And I couldn't help but laugh. Me being in a YSA, this doesn't mean too much, since my ward actually moves from place to place pretty fast.

I think that one of the things I appreciate that a lot of people don't quite understand is that sanctification is a process, the same with understanding and learning the scriptures and doctrines. We live in a world of instant retrieval of information, food, amongst other things as well. The Lord takes His time with us, and our process is much like caterpillar into a butterfly. Not everything in the scriptures is instant and often requires much thought and study.