Giveaway 19: Winner

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Thanks to all who entered to win a copy of Connor Boyack's latest book, Latter-day Responsibility. Connor is a web developer, political economist, social media consultant and author of the popular prequel/sequel to this book, Latter-day Liberty.

And the winner is: Shaylee Ann (link to comment). Please email us your address so we can get this sent out to you.

Didn't win? Buy Latter-day Responsibility for yourself or as a gift. Also check out our interview with Connor if you missed it.

Mormon Helping Hands

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by May Jones (bio)

Joshua Brown, who hails from my ward, made this video on Sunday, November 11th, when Mormons across New York cancelled a portion of their church services and arrived to help the areas affected by Hurricane Sandy.

Please share this video with any friends and family that might be able to help. Not only at the Rockaways, but Staten Island, Long Island, and New Jersey. The church is coordinating the efforts, but anyone is welcome to come help. For more information about this and other ongoing recovery efforts please visit Mormon Helping Hands NYC.


Mormon Helping Hands :: Hurricane Sandy :: Rockaways, NY from Joshua Brown on Vimeo.

Giveaway 18: Winners

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We had such a great response that we convinced them to giveaway TWO copies of Disney-Pixar's Brave Blu-ray/DVD combo pack.

And the winners are: Adam Lund (link to comment) and danielle t (link to comment). Please email us your address so we can get these sent out to you.

Didn't win? Buy the Brave combo pack in time for Christmas.

Ordering Patriarchal Blessings

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by Seattle Jon (bio)

I recently took advantage of the church's patriarchal blessing service by requesting the blessing of my great-great-great-grandfather, Marriner Wood Merrill. Within a day someone from the Patriarchal Blessing section of the Church History Department had contacted me, and other than having to hop through a few extra hoops because he is a former apostle, I received not one, but two patriarchal blessings for Marriner Wood Merrill in the mail.

The blessing above, given on December 18th, 1885 just after Marriner became the first president of the Logan Temple, is written in beautiful cursive by Zebedee Coltrin, church patriarch. Not surprisingly, I found the language more elegant and stirring than that contained in my own blessing. Here are a few examples:

"And thou shalt be enabled to proclaim the gospel of the Son of God aloud, for thy voice shall be as the voice of a trumpet, and thou shalt be enabled eventually to roar like a lion from the forest, proclaiming and announcing the mighty work of God about to be poured out upon the children of men; ..."

"And thou shalt have power before the Lord to control the elements, that they shall not have power to injure thee, nor to injure the Temple in which thou presidest, ..."

"Angels shall be at thy command, if it is necessary; and the powers of the heavens shall be exerted in thy behalf, for the Lord, thy God, has raised thee up for a great and a mighty purpose and thou shalt become the father of a mighty people; and thou shalt be blessed with a posterity that shall be great and powerful upon the earth, and the Holy Priesthood of God shall rest down upon them throughout all their generations upon the earth."

"... and thou shalt behold the Lord when He shall come to this Temple ..."

"... and thou wast ordained unto this office and calling in the spirit world, and it shall be carried out in thee in thy days upon the earth; and no hand lifted against thee shall prosper."

Reading these two blessings moved me, and it takes a lot to spiritually move me these days. I'd be surprised if the boldness of language and specificity of promises contained in these two blessings were common within today's church. Enough fortunes generally have not come to pass (for example, Marriner was promised in his first blessing, in 1865, that he would be living upon the earth at the time of the Second Coming) that I imagine today's patriarchs are rightfully more general in their proclamations.

That being said, the prophetic elements of today's blessings, even if watered down, would have to be considered remarkable. That LDS youth continue to seek out patriarchs in order to be guided by these "life roadmaps" bears testimony that patriarchal blessings are powerful personal documents. And that I, as an adult, continue to be occasionally moved by my own - and now my ancestor's - patriarchal blessing(s), shows the value to be found in them as well.

So, pick an ancestor and request their blessing. I think you'll be glad you did.

Had a Good Cry Lately?

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by MAB (bio)

Crying Men by David Prior

I cry about once every four years. I guess if I kept a journal like a good Mormon I would be able to recount these important events with better accuracy. Off the top of my head, here are the events that made me cry in the past twenty years:

• A passage in a book about viruses (My wife loves to tease me about this even though it happened before we were married. The passage was about the size of viruses compared to super clusters. I was overcome with a sense of scale, my insignificance in the universe and the complexity of life.)
• My first child's birth
• My grandmother's funeral
• My aunt's funeral
• And most recently, a movie (juicy details below)

The subject of crying has been on my mind recently because I had a good solid sob about one month ago and I just came across an interesting experiment that is documented in the great video below.

But first, here's my cry story. I was on a work-related, twelve-hour, night-time flight from Amsterdam to Hong Kong. Anxious for the work ahead, I couldn't sleep so I decided to watch an in-flight movie. The first movie that peaked my interest was Moonrise Kingdom. I watched the movie, and it was great, but no, Moonrise Kingdom was not the movie that made me cry.

Not feeling completely exhausted yet, I looked for another movie and this time found Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. The movie didn't just make me cry, I was practically sobbing. I think the guy next to me, as well as his daughter, got a little worried and uncomfortable. I blame it on the movie's plot and subject of course, but also on the fact that I was tired and leaving my family for two weeks. I think the plot was that much more difficult for me because it featured 9-11 extensively and I've been outside the U.S. for over a year. So, on top of missing my family, I felt homesick and disloyal to my compatriots.

Taking things a bit lighter, here's a movie about four guys who compete to cry. It has a surprise ending. Then don't forget to answer my questions at the bottom of the post.


The Crying Competition (part 1) from Brent Hoff on Vimeo.

I fessed up to my recent sob ... what caused yours? Men, do you think (as implied in the movie above) that we are vastly inferior to women in our ability to connect to our sensitive side?

Guest Post: Dear Natasha Helfer Parker

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Name Withheld is a prolific contributor of sad, embarrassing, and painful articles to other sources like STD Digest, Modern Train Aficionado, and Ensign. He also reports on Middle Eastern drone attacks under the name “sources who could not be identified because of the sensitivity of information,” and he has written thousands of lousy poems and given hundreds of so-so paintings to museums under the names “Anonymous” and “Anonymous Donor.” As this story would hurt his wife deeply, he chooses to remain anonymous.

Dear Natasha Helfer Parker,

Thank you for your contributions at Patheos. I teach Institute, and I came across your article on masturbation as I was preparing for a class discussion about sexuality. I found your article thoughtful and interesting. I would, however, like to respectfully disagree with some of your points, hopefully in a way that might inspire some dialogue. You have tremendous expertise and experience, so I value how you might respond to what I have to say.

a detail of Lust (1557) by Peter Bruegel the Elders

Background
Like most boys, I encountered masturbation as a teenager. These first experiences were electrifying and shameful. Now that I have two sons, I hope that their experiences are not shameful. In fact, I'm still struggling with how to help them contextualize that experience. For me, part of the problem was that around that same time I also had my first encounter with pornography. The best description of this encounter is actually David Sedaris’ description of his first experience with crystal methamphetamine: "The moment I took my first burning snootful, I understood that this was the drug for me." (12 Moments in the Life of the Artist) Pornography had an immediate and powerful impact on me. Not long after discovering masturbation, I learned how pornography could heighten that experience.

I fall into what I believe is a pretty common pattern. I struggled off and on with masturbation and pornography before serving a mission, during which time I had no struggle. Soon after returning home, the struggle resumed. After getting married, this was not initially a problem. Asymmetrical sexual desire created a situation where my old struggle became my current struggle. In about 1998, I discovered pornography on the Internet, and, of course, this has been a much more difficult struggle ever since. I have worked with every single bishop I have had since that time, trying to overcome the struggle.

In 2010, I tried very hard to separate pornography from masturbation. I hoped to conceptualize masturbation as a physical, sexual expression that could be healthy if it were disconnected from pornography. In spite of tremendous efforts to compartmentalize each one, this did not work. In late 2010, a Bishop’s inspired blessing instructed me to seek knowledge. That seemed like strange counsel, because I had read a number of books and I am usually one to solve a problem with a book. What I did encounter was the Cyber Secrets conference at Brigham Young University.

Mormon World Records 3

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by Seattle Jon (bio)

Paul Skousen might not be the best known of the Skousens, but he did pen The Skousen Book of Mormon World Records. This is my tribute series to his good work. Previous Mormon World Records here.

Q: Who has/had the lowest social security number in the church?
A: The lowest social security number in the church was 000-000-0001. It was reissued to Randy Jenkins of the Glendale, Arizona, Sixth Ward, in 1976. The number had previously been used, of course. However, Brother Jenkins just had to have that number! With a lot of tenacity and determination, he climbed over the federal bureaucracy and, with the help of his Arizona congressmen and senators, sparked the passage of a bill authorizing the reissue of the first 10 social security numbers. Congress agreed to reissue the numbers in 1976 "in the spirit of the Bicentennial celebration." However, after a few years of having to prove the number was a real one, Jenkins became fed up with the problems of being "number one" and applied for a regular number. Every time he wrote his number down, computers or people would reject it saying the number was a phony. Even at BYU, he was constantly taking letters and forms back and forth between professors when the BYU computerized class scheduling system wouldn't accept his SSN as proper student identification.

Q: What city has the most people hooked on candy bars?
A: Salt Lake City was the candy bar and marshmallow consumption capital of the nation in 1985. On a per-capita basis, Salt Lakers swallowed more candy bars than anyone else in the United States, prompting the editorial cartoonist for the Deseret News, Calvin Grondahl, to comment, "We don't spend a lot on light beer, so we go heavy on the chocolate. That's the way it is with people, you crack down on one vice and they go to something else!"

Q: Who owned the largest chicken in the church?
A: Former church historian and long-time chicken farmer Leonard Arrington and his wife, Harriet, were the proud owners of the largest chicken in the church in 1987. Okay, so this wasn't a live chicken, but where else do we put a 6-foot tall chicken who looks like it won't take no for an answer? This plastic-and-fiberglass bird showed up on the Arrington's front porch on Christmas Eve, 1987. Stepson Rick Sorenson had the bird flown in overnight as a Christmas present. When the bird was discovered out front on Christmas morning, Brother Arrington said, "We laughed and laughed for two hours straight."

Q: Who has been the oldest living man and woman in the church?
A: In October 1983, Encarnacion Banares Rampas of Cuzco, Peru, became the oldest woman in the church when she was baptized at the age of 118. She told the missionaries during her first visit to a church meeting, "I just like the feeling there." In 1980, Nicholas Santucho of Canada de Gomez, Argentina, became the oldest man in the church when he was baptized at the age of 116. His wife was baptized a week later at the age of 86. They had 17 children. "There is no secret to long life," Santucho said. "I have lived because God has wished it so."