Looking through a book of family history, I came across the image of a temple recommend for my grandmother (now deceased), Ida Rose Langford.  It is her recommend to go into the temple for her own endowment - in preparation for her sealing to my grandfather, Howard Tracy Hall. 

At the top a date stamp reads “DEC 31 1941.” Read more »

Odd linkages.  It is sometimes interesting to realize what makes you think about particular gospel principles or events in the history of the Church. Read more »

My grandfather, Howard Tracy Hall, is a Mormon scientist and inventor.  His funeral was just this week.  During this time period I’ve had some time to ponder the wonderful legacy he left behind him.

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A few days ago, in the morning, as is our customary practice before we each head off to work, we were doing some scripture study. More specifically, I was reading Psalm 72 aloud while my wife was getting herself ready. I hit the last verse of that Psalm and closed the book and then she asked me “why does that last verse say that if there are 150 Psalms in the book?” Read more »

Some time ago a friend/acquaintance of mine told me he had an appointment to meet with some Mormon missionaries - but he wasn’t comfortable making the appointment. He said he just wanted a Book of Mormon. So I gave him one.

Some months have passed since then and today he sent me an email that that included the following: Read more »

I’ve been reforming my RSS reader a bit, trying to get it a little more under control, and consequently the topic of LDS blogs (and which ones I want to read) has been on my mind a little bit lately. Read more »

This evening I received a notification in Facebook that someone I knew (who was in my friends list) had sent me a message on my FunWall (as it is called).  I logged into Facebook to see what it was and was surprised to see an inappropriate image with the message “press forward to see what happens.”

I know the person who inadvertently sent this to me, and she would never have done this deliberately.  It’s just not her style.  But I know why it happened because I fell for the same trick.

I was very perplexed as to WHY this person would forward THIS image to me and in my moment of confusion I used my cursor to hit “forward” just as it told me to do.

In that same moment I realized that this action had forwarded this same inappropriate image to all the people in my friends list.  Very embarrassing.  To say the least.

Whoever created this little spam message figured out how to code it so that it would automatically mark off all the friends in your list and knew how people would reflexively respond to the message.

I’m more than just a little embarrassed that this happened and I’ll probably have some explaining to do.

Since I fell for it, I just want to warn anyone who reads this post.  If you get a similar message with a message to “press forward to see what happens” … DO NOT DO IT.

I googled about this problem and found that it is being referred to as “slide spam.“

Does the Book of Mormon have a special Memorial Day message for us, a message in regards to military service? Read more »

In the news and even in the lives of some people around me, I’ve been observing a number of recurrent issues that all seem to point in a similar, negative direction. Here are just some of them: Read more »

Last night a companionship of three sister missionaries came by to visit with us.   We enjoyed having them in our home and the message they had to share with us.

In the midst of our discussion, the topic of the recent events involving the FLDS arose and the sisters related to us that they have seen a noticeable and negative change in the way some potential contacts respond to them.

Specifically, one of the sisters said she is seeing a lot more of the “don’t even talk to me” reaction from those she tries to contact.  While the sisters were upbeat and positive, it saddened me to hear that they were having this experience with people.  It’s not surprising if one thinks about it - but this conversation brought into focus for me the realization that this whole controversy places (unjustly, I think) a skeptical spotlight on not only the LDS Church but also, more particularly, on LDS women.

I don’t have any special wisdom or ideas to deal with this situation.  All I can really say is if there are missionaries (particularly sister missionaries) working in your area, this is probably an important time to show some extra support for their efforts.

The sign ¶ (or pilcrow) appears at the beginning of many verses in our King James Bible.

For example in Genesis Chapter 1 we see:

6 ¶ And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.

I rarely think about the ¶. I usually ignore the ¶. Read more »

Nephi’s use of the word “thought” in 1 Nephi 1:8 often acts a sort of speed bump in my reading. The portion of the verse in question reads:

… he was carried away in a vision, even that he saw the heavens open, and he thought he saw God sitting upon his throne …

Why does Nephi write “he thought he saw God sitting upon his throne” when he could have written a more direct and declarative “he saw God sitting upon his throne”? Read more »

I’m camped out at home on the couch with a bag of cough drops and a roll of toilet paper - taking the occasional dose of Robitussin. This morning I took in my prescription for azithromycin. I’ve had a few cups of tea as well.

So far nothing seems to putting much of a dent in this beast. Read more »

I had heard that David Archuleta was from Utah. After seeing a YouTube video of him singing John Lennon’s “Imagine” - I was wondering if he is in fact a Mormon. So I started to google around and quickly found a Deseret News article that identified Mr. Archuleta as being a member of the LDS Church.

However, there was another point made in the same article that interested me as well. Read more »

As the U.S. presidential race continues, there are indications Barack Obama has more traction among Mormons than any other Democratic or liberal presidential candidate in recent memory. This seems to be due to Obama’s charisma and current political momentum and also due to a certain level of anti-GOP backlash by formerly enthusiastic Romney proponents. Read more »

Matt Mullenweg, “the founding developer of WordPress” will be sponsoring a WordPress meetup in Salt Lake City, Utah on February 2nd. You can read more about it here and here. It appears to be an open invitation to any and all interested local WordPress users, though they are asking for RSVPs to make sure there’s enough space for participants. Read more »

I’ve been thinking a little bit about Steve’s BCC: “Banned!” post and some of the comments. In the process I’ve come up with two analogies to describe the way comments are moderated at Mormon Mentality. Read more »

Because he’s known for pushing such innovative products, everything Steve Jobs says gets analyzed and assessed. Read more »

Some months ago someone pointed out Yale’s seal to me. I’ve held off writing about it until now - but it’s interesting to me that it shows an open book with the Hebrew words “Urim va Tummim” (which translates into English fairly directly as “Urim and Thummim”) and then the words underneath “Lux et Veritas” which translates as “light and truth.” For obvious reasons (to us at least) I think Mormons would find this university seal to be of interest. Read more »

If a member of the bishopbric asks you to play Santa Claus at the ward Christmas party, does that mean you’re fat? Read more »