(This is the first half of an article based on a 2013 FairMormon Conference presentation)          

A Relief Society President searches the Internet for material on a lesson. A High Priest Group Leader follows various links on the Web preparing for a talk. A returned missionary watches some “Mormon” videos that were sent to him from a friend in his student ward. All three eventually leave the Church because of testimony-shaking material they “discovered” on the Internet. Most of us know someone who might fit such general scenarios.

Not only do they discover unsettling contra-LDS information on the Web, but they might not know where to turn for answers or help. They may feel that it wrong to question or doubt. They may be apprehensive about expressing their questions, concerns, or doubts to other Church members (or even to their spouses or other family members) because they fear that they …

This article originally appeared on Daniel Peterson’s blog, Sic Et Non. 

Some years ago, I was irritated by a gratuitous insult to my faith in Thomas Cahill’s otherwise interesting book How the Irish Saved Civilization.  While discussing the ancient Iranian-born religion of Manichaeism, now long gone but once (for a few centuries) a serious rival to Christianity, Cahill suddenly, out of the blue, compared it to Mormonism and to the doctrine of Jehovah’s Witnesses.  All are, he said, shallow and superficial faiths, “full of assertions . . . but yield[ing] no intellectual system to nourish a great intellect.”

I thought this remarkably unfair.  While Jehovah’s Witnesses have been noted over many decades for their disdain for higher education, Mormonism has, to put it mildly, not been so known.  Indeed, as far back, at least, as Kenneth R. Hardy’s “Social Origins of American Scientists and Scholars,”…

Mormons are incredibly industrious. The beehive, and the word, industry, were on the first flag when Utah attained statehood in 1896. And that pioneer heritage of working almost harder than is humanly possible, is still a cherished trait. Words like “striving” and “personal progress” are part of our vocabulary as we constantly take inventory of our efforts to excel and grow . “Be ye therefore perfect” rings through our culture like it has a 5 o’clock deadline.

And, despite church leaders telling us not to run faster than we are able, many of us have grown up with a good bit of pressure to “be about good works,” or at least be busy serving and doing. And here’s where the problem lies: Many of us have crammed our lives so full of tasks to complete each day, that we’ve cut out one of the most important directives of all: …

One advantage of burial: You can brag to everyone that you were bitten by a rabid coyote.

If I really want my mother to work herself into a lather, I’ll tell her I intend to be cremated. She won’t look up from her crossword puzzle, but she’ll be foaming, you know, on the inside.

Typically she’ll start with some injunction from past church leaders about the sanctity of the human body.

(Author’s note: I’m putting the link for the Church’s current position on cremation right here. Please don’t leave grumpy comments informing me that fill-in-the-blank general authority back in Ought-two said we’d be in a pack o’ trouble if we were cremated. The resulting slap fight tends to give the very patient Meridian editors acid reflux.)

I’ve never understood how sticking this precious gift of carbon in a hole in the ground to be devoured by ‘skin worms’ …

technology doesn’t have a solution for everything.…

The foods you bring home from the store and put into your cupboard directly affect your health. When I began losing weight with Jackie Keller, one of my first health coach assignments was to clear my cupboards of all the foods I shouldn’t eat. Next was to purchase the right kinds of foods, bring them home, and organize them. Plan your menu for the week, and then make a market order.

When you shop with this in hand, you are less likely to buy impulse items. To make a market order, fold an 8 1?2 by 11-inch sheet into thirds vertically (from the top to the bottom of the paper), and then in thirds again horizontally (from side to side of the paper), making nine squares to write in. Starting with the top squares write “produce,” “dairy,” and “meat.” In the middle squares write “frozen,” “canned,” and “dry goods.” Across …

Far from being a run-of-the-mill Romance, Unexpected by Karen Tuft throws the reader a few curves.   The story is told from two different points of view. First there’s Ross McConnell’s side of the story. As an exceptionally handsome and brilliant young man in his last year of law school he falls in love with the “perfect” woman. Liz is beautiful, also a senior law student, fun, brilliant, and ready to be baptized. Her refusal breaks his heart and leaves him cynical where women are concerned, but he reaches a bargain with his parents that if he doesn’t marry by a certain age his mother and sisters will have free rein to help him find a wife.

Natalie has traveled from an unhappy, lonely teen mother to a second marriage filled with ridicule and put-downs. When her second marriage fell apart she went through a second divorce. When her ex took …

This article also contains an interview with writer/director Garrett Batty by Seth Adam Smith.

On March 18, 1998 two missionaries for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints serving in the Russia Samara mission knocked on what must have been thousandth door of their church service. The scene is a familiar one to anyone who has served a mission. They knocked in the hopes that someone on the other side of the door would benefit from their message of Jesus Christ, but when the door opened what they found was far from a golden investigator.

Invited to this apartment by a stranger on the street who had requested an appointment with the elders to hear about the Church, Travis Tuttle and Andrew Propst were instead beaten upon arrival and taken for ransom to a remote location in Russia where they were held for five days.

The event made international …

It was harvest time, and Dolores struggled to feel like she was of any value. From the time she was a young married bride, she had worked beside her husband in the fields. She had been as proficient at running a horse team as any man. Later, as times changed, she learned to work tractors, trucks, and every other kind of farm equipment.

But things continued to change, and as she grew older, she found herself being replaced, first by her sons and daughters, and then by her grandchildren. They felt she was too old to be working in the fields, and she had to admit that some of the fancy, modern equipment seemed strange.

Every time she would try to find a place to work in the cellars, in the fields, or on the equipment, one of her grandchildren would come along and say, “It’s okay, Grandma, I’ll do …

Caramel Apple Cakes

In our newlywed days in Alaska, we lived high on a hill overlooking The University of Alaska campus.  We had three or four acres; I don’t remember which.  We were really into gardens.  We tilled peat into the soil to make it rich and dark and in the long daylight hours, vegetables like broccoli, peas, and potatoes grew like crazy.  Warm weather crops like beans and squash were more challenging but doable.

Merri Ann ground wheat and made homemade bread.  I baked and put potatoes, carrots, and squash by for winter.

I remember baking a lumpy apple cake loaded                                                
with lots of apple chunks and walnuts and drizzled
with a caramel sauce.  It was fantastic.

I’ve long since lost the recipe but was in the mood last week to recreate it.  The closest thing I could find on our website was a mini bundt cake recipe.  …