David and BonnieI guess we must have still been feeling an empty spot in our hearts from the death of our newborn son when a woman came to our door one morning asking if we would be willing to take two little children into our home who had just witnessed their father shooting and killing their mother (her sister). We didn’t hesitate; who would? We asked if this would be a temporary or a permanent arrangement and she felt sure it would be permanent. Bonnie (3) and David (7) were beautiful children who were obviously traumatized. Our parental instincts instantly kicked in and they were soon part of our family. We and our four young children did all we could during the next year to help them heal and be happy again and they made great strides. We made inquiries that year about officially adopting them and were devastated …

Read the entire article here.

The central incident of rebaptism in the history of the Church is the rebaptism of Brigham Young and his fellow apostles in the Salt Lake Valley on 6 August 1847. Chronicles of that event left the impression that this was the first occasion in Mormonism where rebaptism for renewal of covenants was practiced. The one author who initially acknowledged that the practice of rebaptism exited during the lifetime of Joseph Smith, also limited that practice to two functions: (1) those who were baptized for remission of sins prior to 1830 and who were rebaptized as members of the Church once it was organized on 6 April 1830, and (2) “some members of the Church who were in transgression were again baptized, without first having lost their membership by excommunication.”

Other scholars though have noted that:

“For many years [in the nineteenth century] it had …

Dennis Weaver is the president of The Prepared Pantry.

Sometimes my great ideas aren’t so great.                                            

I love baking in a skillet.  It gives me another pan to go to.  When I bake cornbread, the heavy skillet keeps the cornbread warm.  I bake apple pies, coffeecakes, and crumb cakes in skillets.  They’re cute in a skillet.

I had never baked peach pies in skillets.  Why not?                                      

I gave Kelli Tracy in our test kitchen a recipe and instructions to bake peach pies in our eight, nine, and eleven-inch skillets.  Nice plan.

We couldn’t find our dark nine-inch skillet.  So I asked Kelli to bake it in a nine-inch silver clad skillet.  I knew that a silver pan was going to be a problem; silver pans make for soggy bottom pies.  I tried to ignore that, “Just put aluminum foil over the top and bake it for an extra ten …

I had been visiting Buster and helping him on his computer. When I finished, he asked me if I would be interested in some old hamburger he had in his freezer. “It wouldn’t be any good to eat. You’d have to feed it to your dog.”

I figured our dog would like a change from dry dog food, so we made our way out to Buster’s garage where his freezer was. When he opened it, I was shocked to see a bird there that, at that time, was on the endangered species list.

I gasped. “Buster, what in the world are you doing with that in your freezer?!”

“I found it. It was underneath a power line. Apparently it died of electrocution.”

“What is it doing in your freezer? You can’t have that!”

“But I didn’t kill it. I just found it. It was already dead.”

I explained to him …

Ashby D. Boyle II is the president of George Wythe University.

I. Mormon Ethics: Suddenly, Now a Topic of Interest within the Academy’s Sacred Groves

Non-Mormon scholars in, for example, Ivy League Departments of Religious Studies such as Yale University’s have turned to both accepting Mormonism as an object of study and asking the questions of genuine investigators, in their own native tongue. A paternalistic scholarly indifference has changed to respectful curiosity with a demand for answers.

What accounts for this change of heart?

I can only attempt a brief explanation. As a Jewish scholar at Columbia explained to me, as the Church is seen by religious intellectuals as a social power — a trend that relates to last year’s U.S. Presidential election– the Church and our scriptures are taken seriously as scripture. Within these sectors of the Academy, the Mormon Moment’ is enduring.

Why this matters is because our …

(This article is adapted from Rescuing Wayward Children. Click here to learn more.)

The still small voice whispers yet a deeper meaning. Home is heaven. We are strangers here on earth. My real home is not here, but there.-Elder Gene R. Cook[i]

Understanding the extent of the Fall and the condition of our physical bodies is a significant step forward in understanding a child’s condition of waywardness.

Like us, our children are strangers here-not strangers on earth, necessarily, for it was created to be their eternal home,[ii] but strangers in this remote sector of space in a telestial setting far from their Heavenly Father. To say that they fell is an understatement; they fell enormously. They, like the earth, once enjoyed celestial associations in a celestial environment in the celestial presence of God. President Brigham Young explained,

When the earth was framed and brought into …

A friend of mine once said as he was coming out of a Church meeting, “I know the ideal is that our leaders are called by inspiration, but I think in this case it must have been by desperation. He didn’t have an agenda for the meeting, everything was pure chaos and I honestly don’t know what was decided. The meeting ran fifteen minutes over and people left just shaking their heads.”

My friend saw a new leader conduct a Church meeting in an ineffective way. He responded by criticizing the leader and questioning the inspiration of his call.

As a business consultant, I frequently critique business leaders and give them feedback to improve their performance, but what about Church leaders who are not promoted for their competence based on the judgment of a boss but are called by revelation to serve the Lord and His children? Could it be …

Includes D&C 2; 110:13-16; 138; Joseph Smith-History 1:37-39; Our Heritage, pages 98-99, 101-02, 105-07.

Historical Context
Joseph Smith informs us that when Moroni made his historic visits to him on the night of September 21, 1823 the angelic minister quoted four Old Testament passages (Malachi 3 & 4:4-6; Isaiah 11; and Joel 2:28-32) and one from the New Testament (Acts 3:22-23). “Thus the Book of Mormon [was] introduced to Joseph Smith as [a fulfillment of] Bible prophecy. The two great doctrinal threads that bind the Book of Mormon together-the promises made to the fathers and the divine sonship of Christ-perfectly reflect the prophecy and teachings of the prophets of the Old World” (Joseph Fielding McConkie & Craig J. Ostler, Revelations of the Restoration, 22).

In this way, Joseph knows right from the beginning of the restoration that the Lord is simply continuing His eternal work of redeeming families in …

…

Salt Lake City – The rich timbre of Hayden’s cello concerto and the majestic beauty of Rachmaninoff’s second symphony will fill the Tabernacle at the Orchestra at Temple Square’s annual fall concert on Friday and Saturday, October 18-19, at 7:30 p.m. This year’s special guest is Daniel Gaisford, a renowned American cellist.

The concert, “An Austrian Cello Concerto and a Russian Symphony,” will be directed by Igor Gruppman, conductor of the Orchestra at Temple Square. The concert will also mark Igor Gruppman’s 10th anniversary conducting the Orchestra. Gaisford will take the lead solo in Haydn’s Cello Concert no. 1, and for the second half of the evening the orchestra will perform Rachmaninoff’s Symphony no. 2 in E Minor.

Hailed by The New York Times as “transfixing” and The Philadelphia Inquirer as “remarkable,” Gaisford has firmly established himself as one of the most gifted cellists of his generation. As a soloist, …