The great Conference question is this: How is my life different now than it was before I listened to the prophets? One year, a month after General Conference, I asked my Sunday School class members to share things they were doing differently because of the recent conference messages from President Hinckley and his associates. Not one person raised a hand to share an example. Not one! I hope the lack of hands was a matter of modesty and not an indication of indifference or inaction. I know most of them listened to all of part of the proceedings. Listening, however (as important as it is) will never be sufficient

Sitting at the feet of the prophets for the past two days of General Conference has reminded me of what I think are some worthwhile insights on following prophets. These insights come from the last chapters of 1 Kings and the …

When I was a little kid, I used to sit in my living room in Logan, Utah, and watch General Conference on TV. For those who remember those days in the 60s, General Conference weekends were infamous for their rainy weather. Members huddling under umbrellas, flowerbeds pelted with rain, and sidewalks wet from storms were common camera shots.

They were also famous for stoic men. Then, as now, wonderful messages were delivered by servants of God, and beautiful music emanated from our unequaled Mormon Tabernacle Choir. But few of our leaders ever teared up, revealed emotion, or cried. Men of that era were expected to be unemotional as a whole, and poker-faced, even if they never played poker.

It was a time of detached fathers and the notion that crying revealed weakness. Tender-hearted parenting was the domain of the nurturing mom, while Dad went out as the breadwinner, the warrior …

I remember well when, in 1998, news broke nationwide that two American missionaries had been kidnapped in Russia. Death was to be the penalty if their ransom was not paid. It hit my family and community hard: we lived in Mesa, Arizona, just one city over from Gilbert (where one of the abducted elders was from). I was seventeen and preparing for my own mission at the time, so of course my mom was terrified. The Saratov Approach, the new film by director Garrett Batty, chronicles this harrowing true story with the appropriate intensity and a surprising amount of poignancy. Though it’s gritty and modestly-budgeted, it’s well-made, well-acted, and ultimately very uplifting. What’s more, it impressively balances telling a story about Latter-day Saints while being a film for audiences of all faiths.

Elder Tuttle (Corbin Allred,Saints and Soldiers, Saints and Soldiers: Airborne …

I think most of us would agree that America isn’t doing very well and seems to be getting worse every day. People seem more hopeless, pessimistic and discouraged about life and the future than I can ever remember.

An interesting study  on why Americans are losing confidence in the nation -conducted by Mark Penn, CEO of the polling firm Penn Schoen Berland and Associates, author of Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow’s Big Changes and White House pollster for Bill Clinton – shows that the majority of Americans believe America is going down hill because of a decline in morals and traditional values.

“America is in many ways unhappy with itself and the pop-culture it has become. More than two thirds (69%) of the Country believe that American values and morals have declined, and they point to political corruption, increased materialism, declining family values, and a celebrity-obsessed culture as …

While in New York, I lived in a small town near the shores of Lake Ontario. The mix of people who lived their could be quite diverse and interesting. There were doctors and lawyers, farmers and merchants, and even a few that might be considered hillbillies.

This latter group were the ones that I often found the most interesting. But of all the families I visited, one stands out in my mind. On Sundays, one of the young men I worked with and I went to a little white church with a very small congregation. One of the older men that attended there, who was one of the lay leaders, invited us to come to dinner. He was a man who seemed more like the doctor-lawyer type. He was old enough that his children were married, and his wife had passed away. Thus he lived the life of an old …

In Celebration of Pumpkins: Methods and Recipes

Merri Ann and I fell in love in Fairbanks, Alaska-the land of the midnight sun.   All five of our children were born there.  We lived on a three-acre plot overlooking the Tanana Valley and the University of Alaska, a plot that backed up to old mining claims.  With the kids, we wandered those mining trails and explored old diggings.  On our lot, we cleared off the birch trees for a garden where the slope was banked into the summer sun.  We hauled in a truckload of peat and tilled it into the soil making it rich and thick.  And then we read everything we could about gardening in the far north.

With banked beds, ground cover to capture the summer heat, and over-ambition, we were awash with summer produce.  We had beans and peas and broccoli.  On the deck in planter boxes, we …

This is Backstage Graffiti #144. For those of you who are of a mathematical bent, this constitutes a “gross,” or, if you are of a literary bent, a “grosse.” Or, if you are just intellectually a little bent, “One More Backstage Graffiti! Yahoo!”

And why would a literarily bent person spell it “grosse”? Well, having played William Shakespeare for two whole days a couple of weeks ago, I can tell ya. It was at an event held out at Thanksgiving Point called a “Renaissance Faire.” Note the superfluous “e.” This kind of spelling was, apparently, characteristic of Shakespeare’s era. Note that Shakespeare himself spelled his own name with an extraneous “e.” Of course, the Bard (“Barde”? No.) spelled his name variously. People didn’t care. One playbill even has him listed as “Shaxberd.”

This decorative “e,” along with promiscuous double letters, was so characteristic of the late fifteen-hundreds and early sixteen-hundreds …

 For the eleventh time since its original meeting in 2003, the Book of Mormon Archaeological Forum (BMAF) will convene its Book of Mormon Lands Conference on Saturday October 19^th at 9:00 AM.  Recent conferences have been held in Salt Lake City but this year the venue will be the new Utah Valley Convention Center at 222 West Center Street in Provo.  

Featured talks will include Daniel Peterson “Two Books From Angels: Comparing the Qur’an and The Book of Mormon”. and Mark Alan Wright “The Future of Book of Mormon Studies”.

The conference will also feature presentations by F. Richard Hauck, Elder Clate W. Mask, Royal J. Skousen  and other notable scholars, archaeologists, and explorers.  Two of the original founders of FARMS John Welch and Kirk Magleby will give “Part Two” of their humorous discussion of the timeline of Book of Mormon scholarship that was so popular last year.  For …

Few laws distinguish Latter-day Saints as much as consecration and stewardship. And perhaps few laws are less understood. In this 2-part series, we will explore the law of stewardship, its foundation, stipulations and incredible blessings. Only by our living the law of stewardship can we become Zion people and candidates for eternal life.

Am I a Steward? (Part 1)

(This article is the first of two articles adapted from the Pillars of Zion series. You can download a free sample of the introduction to series: Portrait of a Zion Person. CLICK HERE (www.pillarsofzion.com)

In the vocabulary of consecration, an agent is a steward.[i] The trust extended to a steward is a stewardship, which, according to the Encyclopedia of Mormonism, is a “responsibility given through the Lord to act in behalf of others.” The concept of stewardship reminds us of the principle that “all things …

The great Conference question is this: How is my life different now than it was before I listened to the prophets? One year, a month after General Conference, I asked my Sunday School class members to share things they were doing differently because of the recent conference messages from President Hinckley and his associates. Not one person raised a hand to share an example. Not one! I hope the lack of hands was a matter of modesty and not an indication of indifference or inaction. I know most of them listened to all of part of the proceedings. Listening, however (as important as it is) will never be sufficient

Sitting at the feet of the prophets for the past two days of General Conference has reminded me of what I think are some worthwhile insights on following prophets. These insights come from the last chapters of 1 Kings and the …