For Everything Else, There's MasterCard.

My wife and my niece were in the kitchen making dinner the other evening. My four year old daughter was in the kitchen, under foot, pestering them. My wife called to me and asked me to do something about it.

With my four year old, there's only one way to get her to come along peacefully, away from her mother: CHEESY-POOFS. I got her a cupful and had her sit on the couch with me and watch TV. Ok, I know. Not the most healthy or socially responsible way to connect with my child, but as I sat there watching her lick off the orange goodness from her little bitty four year old fingers, I would not have traded the moment for all the treasures of the world.

• Subscription to Disney Channel: $ (more than I want to admit)
• Eleven ounce bag of Wal-Mart Cheesy Poofs: $1.69
• Special Disney Princess character cup to hold the Poofs: $4.99
• Watching my four year old sit still longer than a minute, licking the orange flavor from her little fingers: ABSOLUTELY PRICELESS.

Yep, that's right. I'm a daddy.

If We Could Part The Veil....

I've been talking to my unhappily married friend today. He is feeling exceptionally unhappy at the moment. He says communicating with his wife is like trying to speak English to someone who speaks Chinese.

I don't exactly know what to say to him, except to re-assure him that all things shall enjoy their perfected beauty in The Lord's due time, and a time will come when strife shall cease and only the power and glory of The Prince of Peace shall remain. I told him we can all enjoy this peace forever if we are patient and continue our daily gospel living.

I also shared with him one of my most absolute favorite hymns of all time -- "If You Could Hie To Kolob." That song is the most beautiful description of the Celestial Kingdom I have ever come across.

Ball And Chain.

Recently I've been in touch with somebody who served his mission in the same area I did, some years ago. Things are not going well with him. He is desperately unhappy with his marriage. He says he really loves his wife, and still wants to love her, but he says that trying to communicate with her is like listening to fingernails on a chalkboard all the time. He sleeps alone, and has been celibate for the greater part of the last several years.

"If I had wanted to spend my adult life sleeping alone, living celibate, and sharing a house with another adult who is a perpetual, non-stop adversary to me, with whom communication is like pulling horses' teeth, I would merely have stayed single and just gotten an annoying room mate."

"At least in that case I would have been able to finish college and build a career before I'm 42, without interference. I would be in a position to contribute far more to the world than I am doing now. Other than that, it would all be exactly the same, with the same exact teeth on edge feeling day after day...the only difference being my signature on a court document."

Words cannot express, he says, how unhappy and unfulfilled he is. I'm not exactly sure what to do to help him. He is very bitter.

He tells me that all throughout his childhood and youth the Church drummed into his head that marriage is the "end-all, be-all" of eternal existence, and he says that he feels like the Church sold him a bill of goods. He says he feels like he was taken to the cleaners, because of what he believes is exaggerated hype and maximized hyperbole in the Church about marriage.

To be sure, I'll be praying quite considerably for my friend and his wife. I just wish I knew what to do to help him.

I told him to consider the story in The Old Testament where King Saul repeatedly sought to hunt down and kill David. One day, happenstance brought to David information that King Saul was sleeping alone in a cave close by. David went to the cave to confront and possibly kill King Saul. When he got there, he stopped, and told himself that Saul was King of Israel, and therefore God's anointed, regardless of his faults. David cut a piece of cloth from the King's hem to prove he'd been there, and left in peace, refusing to kill the man who had been a mortal enemy to him. David knew that for his own sake it would be far better to leave judgment in God's hands about King Saul's murderous plans.

I told my friend that whether we realize it or not, each of us is called and anointed by God to be an Eternal partner to our spouse. We become anointed as such during the entire temple endowment and marriage process. Therefore, when we criticize our spouses, technically we are speaking evil of the Lord's anointed. If our partner wrongs us in the things that they do, we are still under obligation by our covenants to speak to them and about them in peaceful terms, leaving judgment in God's hands (and the Bishop's hands, where necessary.)

I told my friend that if he considers his wife a perpetual adversary, then it is all the more important for him to pray about her, since Jesus taught us we should pray for our enemies. I have to confess that often times it bothers me if someone patronizes me and says "just pray about it." My friend feels the same way. In this instance though, I told him it just might bring him the peace he so desperately needs, but cannot find. If our spouse is an enemy, pray for them as Jesus said, and just maybe we can find release from our misery and bitterness in the process.

It used to bug me whenever my mom quoted "this too shall pass" to me whenever I've been unhappy. When all is said and done, there really isn't anything that fits the bill as well as that phrase does. I told my friend that in the Lord's scheme of things, all things shall be beautified and made perfect in their time. I told him there shall be a world to come where strife shall cease, burdens will be lifted, cares banished, love for our fellow brothers and sisters shall flow between all of us without end, and never again she we see our former tears. Brigham Young told us that if we could just be patient and bear our life's troubles just this little while, the glories of eternity will be unfolded to us and bestowed upon our heads forever, in due time.

In the meantime, of course, my friend still has to deal with the teeth grinding day to day reality of an imperfect, mortal marriage. I shall pray for him as much as I can.

I'm An Addict!

The Bretheren have counseled us to be careful not to waste too much time online.

I have to confess! I've been a bad boy...I discovered gospel archive material that the Church has on its website, and I've been rummaging through it for HOURS....there is so much cool material.

I especially love the "Teachings of The Presidents" manuals, which have quotations from our past prophets. Excellent, excellent stuff. All my life I have loved to give lessons at church, but gaining background material has always been a problem.

It used to be that I held on to every Ensign I received in the mail since the beginning of time, and every lesson manual I got for Priesthood and Sunday School. I used those to get material for talks. Now, I just go to the church website, and viola. So many things to choose from that I can use. The possibilities are endless.

I tell ya, these are the days of miracles and wonders. It's been said that in the Last Days, knowledge of the Lord will fill the Earth. Folks, I'm here to tell you those days are NOW.

Lacking Some Manhood Lately?

Some cowards wearing ski masks, shouting insults about Mormons, beat up an LDS missionary in Arizona.

Apparently the attackers were sorely lacking in the reproductive fortitude department -- they beat up a defenseless missionary, while wearing a mask even, rather than do something that requires real manhood, like work a real job, pay taxes, or properly raise children.

Being a God fearing Mormon-Christian, I must refrain from speaking what's really on my mind. I have just two words to say to the cowardly, manhood-less attackers, and it ain't "boy howdy."

Read the article here:

http://www.ldslivingonline.com/article.php?articleId=50216 [link]

Yeah! What He Said!

I say to the Latter-day Saints, all we have to do is to learn of God. Let the liars lie on, and let the swearers swear on, and they will go to perdition. All we have to do is to go onward and upward, and keep the commandments of our Father and God; and he will confound our enemies (DBY, 347)...

Every time they persecute and try to overcome this people, they elevate us, weaken their own hands, and strengthen the hands and arms of this people. And every time they undertake to lessen our number, they increase it. And when they try to destroy the faith and virtue of this people, the Lord strengthens the feeble knees, and confirms the wavering in faith and power in God, in light, and intelligence. Righteousness and power with God increase in this people in proportion as the Devil struggles to destroy it (DBY, 351)...

Every time you kick “Mormonism” you kick it upstairs; you never kick it downstairs. The Lord Almighty so orders it (DBY, 351).

-- Brigham Young, Teachings of The Presidents of the Church, Chap35

I Will Go And Do As The Lord Hath Commanded...

Lately I've come to the decision that if all my secular endeavors in life are forever going to be failures like they have been, and if the world doesn't care about anything I have to offer, then at the very least I'm going to get some work done in God's Kingdom before I die.

I've been praying for God to help me find a career that will allow me the freedom to attend church on Sunday, without exception, into perpetuity. I have no college degree or exceptional skill to commend me, the only kinds of jobs I can find are those that require me to work on Sunday. I'm not certain what to do next.

Hack Saw.

LDS General conference is this weekend, and I really want to go see it at the chapel, but I'm stuck with a head cold that has me coughing and hacking constantly. Luckily, I can still watch conference on the internet at the church website.

Whenever I watch conference videos on the church website, it always amazes me how far we have come as a church in the last two centuries. I wonder if the original six members in that very first meeting in a log cabin in New England so many years ago had any inkling that one day their descendants would be watching church proceedings on Cable TV and the Internet from their homes, all over the world.

That one fact alone, in and of itself, is testimony to me that the power of God is behind His true church in these last days.

For The Times, They Are A-changin'

I was riding home from work with one of my friends today. She told me about a friend of hers who was harping about all the changes in the temple ceremony that have occured over the last several years.

Critics of the church lie all the time and insist that Joseph Smith said the ceremony was never to be changed. I'm here to tell you that is absolutely false. Joseph Smith specifically told Brigham Young the endowment was not perfect, and that he wanted Brigham to further organize it after he was gone, according to continuing revelation from the Lord.

For those critics who doubt me, let me refer you to a lecture that gives the historical documentation:

http://www.fairlds.org/FAIR_Brochures/Can_Temple_Ceremonies_Change.pdf

Even the New Testament shows that God may change specific PROCEDURES of The Gospel, but the underlying PRINCIPLES remain the same. Jesus Christ fulfilled The Law of Moses, which is why we don't offer animal sacrifices the way Israel did in the Old Testament. God told Peter to discontinue the practice of circumcision, and He told Peter that the Gentiles must also be taught The Gospel. Peter resisted these changes, until The Lord finally had to get firm with him.

I find it laughable that anti-Mormons spend so much of their time and energy trying to fight the church, when it's a loosing proposition. They might sway a few members here or there, but God told Joseph Smith that mankind may as well try to stop the Missouri river with their fore-arm, as to try to stop His Kingdom from going forth in the Latter-Days.

I welcome the anti-Mormons to waste and wear out their lives trying to fight us. They will have nothing to show for it in the end, except for a handful of weak-willed sycophant followers. In the mean time, I will enjoy living The Restored Gospel, raising my children, and praying in peace. I'll focus on paying my taxes, influencing society for good, and serving my fellow man.

Anti Mormons can rant and rave all they want. Guess what? I don't give a flyin' leap what they say. Anti-Mormons murdered one of my forefathers -- they shot him point blank, on a freezing winter night, in front of his wife and children on their little farm. The wife and children would have been shot point blank as well, but luckily they managed to escape by running into the cornfield. Another of my forefathers literally froze to death under a ragged tent at Council Bluffs Iowa. His wife and ten children had to bury him before they walked on, by themselves, across several THOUSAND miles to Salt Lake.

THE BLOOD OF MY FOREFATHERS SOAKS THE HANDS OF ALL WHO FIGHT THE CHURCH. The blood of my forefathers cries from the ground against the wicked and adulterous generation of our modern society.

I WILL STAND WITNESS AGAINST ANTI-MORMONS AT THE JUDGEMENT DAY, THAT A CHILD OF THE PEOPLE THEY KILLED STILL REMAINS TRUE TO THE FAITH, AND WILL DIE FOR IT LIKE HIS FATHERS, IF NECESSARY.