Every few years I search for new histories and photos of my ancestors. One ancestor, Elizabeth Simpson, has had an internet presence for a long time. For some reason, she’s become pretty popular, and today I found her in a lot more places.

In addition to other claims, she’s now an outlaw woman, a mascot for savory almonds, and born much later than she actually was since a picture of her granddaughter is said to be her on this website (this is a pretty common mistake).

The mistakes with the pictures and the repetition of the obviously untrue tale that Elizabeth’s father invented the grandfather clock (it was invented long before his time) are so easy to verify. Reminds me again that all those other histories and photos I’ve found must be suspect too.

Still, those almonds might be tasty. And the other outlaws in my family don’t have such interesting tales.

I’m starting to wonder if that single custodial dads might be one of the most overlooked groups in the church. I never thought about this until last week when the paramedics dropped off two of our neighbor’s children, children of a single dad. Read more »

Would it make a difference to the international church if a Mormon were the President of the United States? Romney’s candidacy alone has obviously made a difference for the Church in the US, but what about in other countries, particularly those where the church is either not recognized or completely insignificant? Read more »

Think the world is falling apart? It depends on how you spin it. Foreign Policy has an article with a bit of good news in it, something that’s pretty refreshing when all you hear in the news (and too often, at church) is that everything is awful. Here are a few of the points: Read more »

Four years ago we had our last of several miscarriages. We quit trying to have any more children at that point. Things obviously weren’t working out and neither my husband nor I felt strongly that we needed to keep trying; I actually felt quite the opposite. Read more »

The son of a friend of mine working in Iraq needs help with an Eagle Scout project. He is arranging to send school supplies to two primary schools in a village near Baghdad. The local military unit will help deliver the supplies to the schools. There are about 300 children in the two schools. Read more »

I had the good fortune to attend the LDS International Society’s annual conference on Monday at BYU on the international church (my fortune was good because I took my children with me and they behaved so well that I was able to listen to 5 presenters). There were a variety of speakers from Elder Carmack to Valerie Hudson. This isn’t just a summary of what was said, but also a few of my own questions about the international church. Read more »

It is the beginning of Holy Week, my favorite week of the year. I love to follow along with the final events in the Lord’s mortal life each day. I love the hymns that my family sings this week. The emotions of each day — Jesus’ anointing on Tuesday, the washing of the disciples’ feet on Thursday, the atonement, the crucifixion, the resurrection — cover the entire spectrum of human experience. It is a beautiful and sorrowful time, and a time for rejoicing.

Have a wonderful Palm Sunday. And enjoy conference too.

According to the Ensign, the scriptures are “available in languages spoken by more than 95 percent of Church membership.” This is an incredibly high percentage. The Church has done an amazing job of translating the scriptures into languages that are widely spoken.

But this percentage can be a bit misleading since in that 95 percent, many non-native language speakers are included. Second language speakers in some cases are comfortable reading the Book of Mormon in that language, but that often isn’t the case. Is Russian good enough for all of the former Soviet Union? Is English good enough for all the Philippines and India? I don’t think so. Read more »

I loved Karen’s post a a while ago about going to church in Kabul. She’s working in Afghanistan and attends church with some American servicemen. The whole post made me a bit jealous after spending a year in Kyrgyzstan in a similar situation. Read more »

Ever since I started learning Arabic, I’ve enjoyed singing hymns in foreign languages. There really weren’t a lot of hymns translated into Arabic though, but I still would sing the hymns in Arabic when I could even though I never could get my husband to sing with me.  I think there are more hymns translated into Arabic now, in a small booklet (they’ve got one in Kazakh, so there must be one in Arabic). Read more »

Is it just me, or is it becoming more common to ask Primary teachers to do things besides teaching Primary during church?  For example, requiring Primary teachers to attend teacher improvment classes during the second hour.  Holding visiting teaching conferences during Relief Society and requiring all women Primary teachers to be there.  Having the youth take over the Primary on the 5th Sunday so all the teachers can go to the combined RS/Priesthood meeting.   My husband teaches high priests in addition to Primary and has to get a substitute every time he teaches HP. Read more »

No, I’m not late. January 7th is the day that most Orthodox Christians celebrate Christmas because their liturgical calendar follows the old Julian calender instead of the Gregorian. So in countries like Russia and Georgia and for the Christians in places like Jordan and Egypt and Kyrgyzstan, Christmas is now. С Рождеством Христовым            and عيد ميلاد سعيد

Kyrgyzstan and Egypt and Jordan aren’t Christian countries of course, they’re Muslim. The only people who celebrate Christmas in the Middle East are a handful of Christians, mostly Orthodox Christians of various traditions who’ve lived there for a long time and a few Protestant and Catholic coverts and expats. In Kyrgyzstan Christmas is a Russian holiday and even many Russians don’t do much for Christmas since the Soviets quite effectively made everyone forget about religion (an exaggeration, yes, but there’s some truth in that statement).

The Kyrgyz members of the LDS church in Kyrgyzstan don’t celebrate Christmas at all. They were all Soviets Muslims before joining the church and obviously never had a tradition of celebrating Christmas the way Orthdox converts do in other countries. And really, it doesn’t matter if anyone celebrates Christmas or not.

But…I missed Christmas the year we lived in Kyrgyzstan. Almost all of our friends were Muslim or Mormon, so none of them celebrated Christmas except the lone American Mormon family who was there too. There was no reason to push Christmas on the local members. But Christmas certainly isn’t a Mormon holiday, or an American holiday; it’s simply Christian and celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ. It’s probably the most widely celebrated holiday in the world (Easter is the only other holiday that might surpass it), no matter which day it’s celebrated. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to encourage LDS converts to celebrate Christmas (and let’s leave Christmas on whichever day is most convienent in the country those converts are living in- there’s no reason to tell members in Russia that they ought to celebrate Christmas on December 25th instead of January 7th).

So for those of you who have lived in non-Christian countries that have a reasonable number of local LDS converts who weren’t Christian originally, did the local members celebrate Christmas? Did the expats and missionaries encourage (or push) it? What do you think?

I was browsing through the children’s section of the library while the boys were reading about dinosaurs and looking for books on magic tricks when I stumbled on Death Warmed Over in the cooking section. Read more »

It’s not cool to admit you like Islam.
Read more »

A little-known gem came in our mail the other day. I love to subscribe magazines, but because we move so often and it’s expensive to get magazines overseas, I don’t get as many as I’d like. But we do get Saudi Aramco World. Now, I’m not here to discuss Aramco in any way (and I assure you, I’ve heard more stories that you can count about Americans living in Saudi Arabia), nor do I care much about oil drilling in the Gulf. But World is not about Saudi Arabia or oil or Americans living overseas. It’s simply one of the best non-technical publications out there on the Islamic world. Read more »

I don’t like the story of the daughter of Jephthah. To summarize (Judges 11, especially verses 29-40), Jepthath, a captain of the armies of Israel vows to the Lord that, if the Lord grants him victory, “whoever comes out of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return victorious from the Ammonites, shall be the Lord’s, to be offered up by me as a burnt-offering.” The armies of Israel are victorious, but when Jephthah returns home, his daughter, his only child, is the first person out of the house and she is the one who must be sacrificed. Read more »

Kazakhstan is trying to decide if this is really the case. Sacha Baron Cohen, an undeniably crass comedian, has invented Borat, a Kazakh journalist who’s not exactly a role model for tolerance and respect. Borat is now the subject of a soon-to-be-released film that’s getting attention. Honestly, Borat is pretty offensive, but he’s got plenty of fans. Read more »