webbles

This is why I like the bigger push for members to do the initial work so missionaries are just giving the basic lessons. I would hope that converts who come through a member will have more understanding than one who only knows about the church through missionary interaction. I do disagree with your "no throngs of people joining the church". The church is growing fairly quickly (not what it used to do) and this is including those that leave. There are areas of the world where the church is growing impressively and retaining the converts. If you haven't seen https://ldschurchgrowth.blogspot.com/, I'd recommend reading it if you are curious about how well the church is growing or shrinking. It does statistics of the church growth. It looks at individual areas as well as the overall numbers.

It sure sounded like you said that. You had said this about a day ago: I guess after re-reading it, you are talking about quitting without the mission presidents approval. But my first reading of it gave me the understanding that you don't think BYU should ever accept Ryder if he left early, even if the mission president approved it. I was never talking about quitting without mission president approval. I'm assuming that he gets approval to end early and he isn't just leaving. His brother got approval so I expect Ryder would also get approval. I guess we are in agreement, then. We both agree that if he leaves his mission without approval from his mission president, then BYU shouldn't accept him. And if he does leave with his mission president's approval, than there is no problem with BYU accepting him. He isn't getting any special treatment from BYU or from the church. It would be solely on his mission president to decide if he gets to go home early.

Ok, so if the mission president allows Ryder to go home early, then would you still want BYU to deny him? I 100% agree that if the mission president doesn't allow Ryder to go home early and he still does, BYU should not accept him. I also don't believe this was discussed in any deal. Oregon would through a massive fit. Any interaction between BYU and missionaries is heavily scrutinized because of the potential conflict. There have been missionaries who flipped from a different school to BYU while on their mission and investigations were done. BYU is really, really careful around this. So, for BYU to make a deal with Ryder to let him come home early is extremely unlikely. Even a "wink, wink" kind of deal would be problematic. Oregon would bring it up as soon as they hear anything about it. Ryder will have to discuss his plans with his mission president who can NOT be influenced by BYU so if the mission president says no to an early release, then either Ryder goes somewhere else or he stays on his mission.

The person who gets to decide on whether he comes home early is the mission president. Why should BYU care about whether he returned early or not if the mission president approved it. That is who gets to make the decision. Because a mission president did this for a player at USC, it means that BYU isn't a factor in whether he comes home early or not. It is between him and his mission president. I don't think BYU should ever reject a returned missionary who was released by his mission president. That would be a really bad. In 2ish years, we should definitely revisit this. I bet that he will serve between 17 and 20 months. Earlier than 17 months makes no logistical sense and I don't see him wanting to do less than what his brother did. If he does more than 20 months, then he would have a red shirt year that he could still use but I don't know if that is worth it vs being on the practice squad. BYU might prefer him to do the full 24 months because of the logistics, though.

You keep ignoring his brother's experience just because it is USC. So it feels like you are fine with a mission president working with a young man to leave early as long as it isn't BYU. Or do you have a problem with what happened to his brother? Do you think his mission president was wrong? Do you think he was getting preferred treatment?

So, it is acceptable for a mission president to work with a missionary so that he can return home early to play football as long as it isn't with BYU? And can the missionary, after returning home and playing for one year, transfer to BYU and be accepted? Also, did you read the Church News article (the one about his brother)? It says: That makes it look like the Church News knew he was going to be returning home early. So I don't see how the church is in a tough spot when they apparently are already allowing it.

This discussion is about whether or not the 1 year mission that the news articles have mentioned about Ryder is really going to happen. Ryder's older brother is really similar. He left on his mission in January; Ryder is planning to leave on his mission in January (he will graduate early from high school). Ryder's older brother only served 17 months (instead of the normal 24 months). He returned home early so that he could do strength training and be ready to play at USC as a tight end. Ryder is probably planning on doing something very similar. You keep saying that the only reason they are shortening Ryder's mission is because he is a BYU quarterback, but we have an extremely similar situation that is dealing with a USC tight end. So the shortened mission is not BYU related.

His brother had only a 17 month mission so that he could play at USC as a tight end. This isn't about BYU or star quarterback.

never mind as the link was fixed

For me, it was just 2 months. But I know of those who worked with their mission president to leave 4 months earlier. And I agree that 1 year early is different. I have never heard that and I don't believe that is what is happening with Lyons. I expect it to be at least 17 months.

4 months is the earliest I know of.

I doubt the entire year as well. But I also doubt that Ryder is getting an entire year off. I pointed out that his older brother had a similar situation and served 17 months. That is a bit earlier than I've personally heard of but I could see a mission president doing it. I would expect Ryder to be similar. He plans to leave in January which is the same time his brother left. Since his brother went to USC, I don't see this being a BYU thing, just a mission president working with a missionary to figure out what is best for him.

I had a companion that was almost the oldest possible for a young man. I remembered him being almost 30 but I guess he must have just been 27 (left at age 25 and was almost finished). For me, as a 19 year old, he was OLD.

There wasn't an age limit. In the 2010 handbook, it said that women from 19-39 could serve an 18 month mission and women from 40 up could serve a 12 or 18 month mission. No idea when it changed but now it seems that women 30-40 can't go on a mission.

I know that mission presidents have helped "your average Peter priesthood missionary" to leave a mission early just to go to school. It happened for me. I was given a choice of leaving my mission several months early so that I could get into the upcoming semester of college. My mission ended in the middle of a semester. I chose not to but several of my cohort did choose it. This was over 20 years ago. I've heard of it with others since then.

I noticed that some articles talked about his older brother only serving a year. The Church News has him leaving in January ( https://www.thechurchnews.com/members/2023/2/11/23591046/walker-lyons-mission-college-football-recruit-norway-usc-trojans/ ) and then an article in a USC blog has him coming back in June the next year ( https://trojandailyblog.com/walker-lyons-mission-leads-to-usc/ ). It quotes from his mission president and says that it was a collective decision between him and his mission president. So, he served about 17 months. More than a year but not 2 years. But the Church News says he will be serving 2 years so it seems that the shortened mission wasn't pre-planned but something discussed on the mission. I haven't heard of leaving that early, but I do know of missionaries who left after serving 20-22 months so that they can get back into college. So it sounds fairly normal. That's what I would expect Ryder Lyons to do as well.

I've never heard of shortened missions for sport figures (besides a few months like anyone else can do) so I'm betting that it is a mistake by the reporters. But we'll see in 1-2 years whether it is real. I don't see why Lyons would want to get a shorter time. The expected QB to replace Retzlaff is Bear Bachmeier. I believe the plan was for Bear to be the backup to Retzlaff for 1 year and then be the main QB afterwards. That's changed with Retzlaff's transferring, but Bear will probably still be the main QB after 1 year. He would have at least 3 more years as the main QB. If Lyons comes back in 1 year, he has to wait behind Bear for 3 years and would only have 2 years. If he did a normal 2 year mission, then he would only wait behind Bear for 2 years and would have 3 years as the main QB.

I don't think the ratios is 1/3 to 2/3. It says "a third part". So, you just need 3 parts of various sizes. Say you have 100 people. 10 of those people like vanilla, 50 like chocolate, and 40 like strawberry ice cream. The "third part" could refer to either of those parts.

Many of the later revelations in Joseph Smith's day aren't revelations like his earlier ones. For example, we do not have any revelation about baptism of the dead before the first baptism happened. Nor are there any revelations before the first eternal sealing. And section 132 was given because Hyrum asked for it and it was because Hyrum thought it would convince Emma. Joseph didn't think it would work because Joseph had already presented polygamy to Emma before and she possibly did accept it for a short time. The Partridge sisters (who said that Emma knew of their sealings) were sealed in March 1843 and section 132 was written down in July 1843.

I'm not talking about the body of the church. I'm talking about Quorum of 12 Apostles ratifying it.

In 1880, Wilford Woodruff received a revelation. It has never been presented to the Church. But he did present it to the Quorum. You can read the revelation in his journal at https://wilfordwoodruffpapers.org/documents/f9c4ddb9-e338-4942-840c-909d3d269391/page/efed2219-7214-41da-b542-b02b8e0c8949. It is fairly long, from page 67 to page 75. I'm not sure if the Lord spoke to John Taylor here. Yes, it appears to be his handwriting but he told absolutely no one about it. His secretary, L. John Nuttall (who records most of John Taylor's revelations), has journal entries for these days and he is there with John Taylor but writes nothing about any revelation. George Q. Cannon, 1st Counselor to John Taylor, is also there and has journal entries and also writes nothing about a revelation. I don't have a problem with the content of the revelation. It is very similar to others that were presented to the quorum (both before and after) so it isn't something out of the ordinary. I just have a hard time with the fact that no one knew about it at the time. Those who were there had no reason to hide the revelation at the time as it wasn't a new or unique idea.

There are several things done in the early days of the Church that would not be accepted today. For example, being given the priesthood before baptism, having the 3 witnesses ordain apostles, sealings outside of temples, baptism of the dead outside of temples. They were allowed because the Church wasn't fully setup. But by 1886, we had practices and teachings on how revelation is supposed to be ratified. The quorum and 1st presidency was following those practices by 1886. This revelation didn't follow any of the practices of that time.

That's called a captcha. Stands for "Completely Automated Public Turing Test". Many captchas are actually easy for computers to solve. Usually, the captchas also do other work to figure out of you are a human. Like how fast you solve it, the order you solve it, how the mouse moves and the typing speed, or if you've solved a captcha somewhere else and still look human. So you don't even need to see a picture for the captcha for it to make a determination.

Quinn says (page 55 here) The source is Abraham Cannon's diary on April 5 1894. I can't find that diary online so I can't link to it.

I don't think any prophet is in the habit of inventing revelations. But there is a process to make sure that it was an actual revelation. And others of his time followed that process. The revelation that Wilford brought to the quorum wasn't also binding to the body of the Church but he still had it validated by the quorum.