MMM Sermons: "Lock Your Heart"

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by Saint Mark (bio)

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints call them "talks," but most (non)Christians call them sermons. This is a series of sermons that many Latter-day Saints love and believe. I hope these sermons promote and perfect your faith as they do mine.

When I served a mission, President Spencer W. Kimball's talk entitled "Lock Your Heart," which he gave in 1968, was one of the first talks I received as a new missionary. It was one of a handful of sermons by the Apostles inserted in our "Modern-Day Ammon" handbook.

After reading it the first time, I was shocked by the stories President Kimball shared. But nothing shocked me as much as when I was transferred to the city of Oita at the tail end of my mission. Disclaimer: the story I am about to relate is ad infinitum hearsay. It's only rumor but sometimes myths and cautionary tales have vestiges of truth. The following story reminded me of the justified importance of locking our hearts from romantic involvement as missionaries.

Oita was a large area. One could drive for three hours in any direction and still be in our district's area. There were only six elders who served this entire area and I was the District Leader. While looking over a map of the area, I noticed a large city just south of Oita called Beppu. There was an area within Beppu named Jigoku Beppu that seemed a little ominous since "jigoku" means hell, but Beppu still sounded promising. One of the elders in our district was from Japan and had a relation in Beppu. I found out from this elder that no missionary had proselyted in that city for a long time. I thought it would be a great opportunity to preach the gospel to a people who had not heard from a servant of the Lord for who knows how long.

However, when I asked for permission from my Zone Leaders, they said that we could not go to Beppu. When I asked why, I received a cryptic answer. What I learned from subsequent questioning and research was that Beppu had been closed to missionary work for twenty years! Why? Because allegedly there had been a prostitution ring that was being run by missionaries in that city. A new missionary who was transferred to Beppu found out what was happening. The other missionaries supposedly tied him up, locked him in a closet and left him there for days. He finally escaped, phoned the Mission President, and the transgressors were excommunicated while the new missionary went home scarred and in need of therapy.

Linger Longer 13

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Linger Longer is a series where we highlight articles that recently caught our attention. Suggest religious blogs to add or recommend your own articles in the comments. Click here for previous efforts.

Bloggernacle (religious sites)

Undiscovered (Segullah)
A Historical Note on “Unorthodox Mormonism” (By Common Consent)
On Being Taken Seriously (Times and Seasons)
Mormon Checklist (Feminist Mormon Housewives)
Pewferences (Zelophehad's Daughters)
Sunday Chalkboard Wisdom (Dandelion Mama)
I Gotta Have More Millstones (The Low-Tech World)
The Word: “Feminist” (The Exponent)
What is Faith (Wheat & Tares)
This Passing Time (Keepapitchinin)
Of Pre(co)cious Value (A Motley Vision)
A Mormon in the Cheap Seats: Truth or The Onion? (Doves and Serpents)
Gender and the Priesthood Ban (The Juvenile Instructor)
First Presidency Member Statement on Anti-Intellectualism (Faith-Promoting Rumor)
How Dare you Even Mention … (Ask Mormon Girl)
Romney Lets His Inner Mormon Out Just in Time for Tampa (Religion Dispatches)
Interpreter Sponsors Its First Conference (Mormon Interpreter)
Is the LDS (Mormon) Church Growing (LDS Church Growth Blog)

Off-Bloggernacle (non-religious sites)
I, Nephi (The New Yorker)
The Real Romney (The New York Times)
Robot Apocalypse (What If?), Glass Half Empty (What If?) and Everybody Out (What If?)
The Joys and Hazards of Self-Publishing on the Web (The New York Times)
Pixel Perfect (Daring Fireball)
With Arena, Rapper Rewrites Celebrity Investors’ Playbook (The New York Times)
'Beam Us Up, Mr. Scott!': Why Misquotations Catch On (The Atlantic)
Guerillas on London Transport (The Poke)
'The Parent Rap': Is Rhyming About Parenthood A Trend? (Huffington Post)
Thirteen Techniques for Truth Suppression (Brass Check)
Why It’s Important For People to Know Experiences Are Better Than Possessions (Peer-Reviewed by my Neurons)
Are You Worth More Dead Than Alive? (The New York Times)
Bankstas in the Age of Money (Vanity Fair)
How Long Do You Want to Live? (The New York Times)
Was I Wrong to Post This Picture of My Daughter and Myself on the Internet? (Huffington Post)

Here Come the (Cultural) Mercenaries

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by MAB (bio)

Pena National Palace, Sintra, Portugal

We just got back from a four-week vacation that included extensive travel in Europe. Some of the highlights, of course, were trips to castles and museums (enjoyed by the adults much more than the kids). Europe is unique in that you can travel relatively short distances to experience a variety of ancient and modern cultures.

All that culture got me thinking about my time as a missionary in Honduras. Since I was born and raised in the U.S., and had only been to one border town in Mexico for a day, I was eager to soak up the new culture despite the inevitable "culture shock." And it was shocking at first. But eventually I adjusted. But there is a deeper level of history and culture lying just beneath the surface. I think this is true of anywhere, even for a mission in ... Ohio for example.

I'm a fairly immature person to this day, but was much more so back then. If I had been more mature, had done more research and had a better understanding of history and culture, I think I could have enjoyed the people and my time in Honduras even more. But perhaps I am not fully to blame. My mission president would rarely let us do anything other than missionary work (and we had the standard four or five books we couldn't deviate from). I presume that's still the case in most missions. It would be nice if missionaries were given culture time so they could travel, with the objective of gaining a better understanding and appreciation of the people they serve.

Mormon World Records 2

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by Seattle Jon (bio)

Paul Skousen might not be the best known of the Skousen crew, but he did pen The Skousen Book of Mormon World Records and Other Amazing Firsts, Facts, and Feats. This is my little tribute to his good work. Read previous Mormon World Records here.

via U.S. National Archives

Q: Was a Mormon involved in raising one of the most recognized flags in the world?
A: The famous flag raising in 1945 on the captured Japanese island of Iwo Jima was made possible, in part, thanks to a Mormon. The original flag wasn't dramatic enough for the photographer, so Elder A. Theodore Tuttle, a marine, was sent to his ship to retrieve a larger flag. The resulting photo became world famous. As for that smaller flag, it was stowed away to see glory at another island on another day.

Q: What was the world's oldest unpaid medical bill?
A: When mobs broke into Carthage Jail in 1844 and murdered Joseph and Hyrum Smith, John Taylor was shot four times but survived. Dr. Thomas Barnes cared for Elder Taylor's injuries and nursed him back to health. In a letter dated November 6, 1897, Dr. Barnes gave his daughter, Miranda, graphic details of the shootings, and added, "We took the best care of him (John Taylor) we could till he left us. He got well but never paid us for skill or good wishes." Many decades later, Taylor's grandson, Raymond, became aware of the unpaid debt and decided to settle things with the family. In Santa Rosa, California, he finally located Mrs. Bertha Haskett. She was a direct descendant of Dr. Barnes. Upon hearing of the Brother Taylor's quest to pay his grandfather's medical bill, Mrs. Haskett declined money but suggested any funds to to Southern Illinois University to create a collection about Mormons in Illinois. She quit-claimed the bill to a history professor at the university, Dr. Stanley B. Kimball. Some time later, Taylor received this letter from Dr. Kimball: "Please consider this letter as a statement to you for the sum of $1 which will fully satisfy this more than one hundred year old medical bill." Taylor dispatched a dollar immediately.

Q: Who undertook the longest bus ride to an LDS temple in history?
A: In 1979, the longest round-trip bus ride for patrons attending the Mesa temple was for families in the Canal Zone of Panama. The 8,000-mile bus trek was over some narrow, dangerous roads through all kinds of weather and danger of attack by gangs of robbers in some areas. On January 12, 1979, several families were the first to make the journey. The $160/person trip required most of them to sell many of their personal belongings to afford the once-in-a-lifetime adventure.

Q: Who in the church has walked the farthest to church?
A: Ranking close to the top must be Annie Starling Pilcher of Enoch, Texas. For 43 years, she walked from her home to church and back again, a round trip of about 11.5 miles. This totaled more than 25,800 miles, or the equivalent of about once around the earth.

Filter Bubbles

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by Seattle Jon (bio)

I've recently started attending Elders Quorum again after a longish period of back-room inactivity. Back-room meaning I would find a back room and read rather than attend. The reasons for my inactivity are not the point of this post, but I will share why I’ve returned and continue to attend - I decided to be a more active participant in the lessons. The point of this post, then, is to say what I wanted to say in a recent Elders Quorum, but didn't have the chance to say because time ran out with my hand in the air.

I don't remember the instructor’s question, but a fellow Elder’s response was what caused my own hand to go up. Here is what he said: "I recently overheard several of our youth talking in the hall. One of them said, "If I found out another kid was smoking or drinking, I wouldn’t be friends with them.""

I’m not surprised one of our youth said this. The church’s emphasis on obeying moral and behavioral codes (the Word of Wisdom in this case) comes early and often in our children's lives. Combine this emphasis with guidance in the home to avoid such behavior for health and safety reasons, and what mormon youth wouldn't believe such thinking is okay. If smoking and drinking are bad for me, then I shouldn't smoke or drink, then I shouldn't be around people who smoke or drink, then I can't be friends with people who smoke or drink. The leaps are not illogical, but at what point do our youth's filter bubbles need to be popped?

The phrase filter bubble was coined by Eli Pariser, the president of MoveOn.org, in a June 3, 2010 talk at the Personal Democracy Forum. The phrase, as he uses it, relates to a person's search results, recommendations, and other online data having been filtered to match that person's interests, thus preventing the person from seeing data outside of his or her interests.

Considering the fact that more information is now created in a single year than was created from the beginning of human history through 2008, we, the human race, need filters. But we need to think of the values embedded in the filters we use. Personalized filters are a great corporate strategy, but they're bad for citizens because ultimately personalization could lead to the end of public conversation. The LDS church has its own filter – correlation (read Brad’s 9-part series on correlation over at BCC) – which in my opinion has been less than positive for church members because it too is leading to the end of conversation, to lively discussion, to variety and to debate.

The Elder continued by saying something like, "I wonder how many of us continue to think as this youth does … in that our friends, the culture we expose ourselves to and/or the information we use to inform our opinions are all filtered to match our existing beliefs." So, if you agree that conversation, lively discussion, variety and debate continue to be needed in the church, when do the filter bubbles of our youth need to start being popped? What might this youth have said instead of "… I wouldn't be friends with them."?

Modern Mormon Geek Moment #2

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by Bradly Baird (bio)

I confess that I maintain a secret life as a fan of popular - and not-so-popular - culture. I know that each of you knows what I am talking about. You assiduously keep your guilty pleasures secret and never let anyone outside of your immediate family know about them. Because to reveal such things is to reveal your inner geek; that deepest most secretive (and embarrassing) part of your personality. But no matter how deep inside you've hidden your geekiness, I am here to say that you should let it out every once in a while and share it with someone. You never know, you might discover a fellow geek. And in that spirit, I present my second geek secret ... please don't beat me up, take my lunch money, or give me a wedgie. Previous geek moments here.

When someone first described the central plot and themes of Avatar: The Last Airbender to me, I laughed out loud and dismissed it as yet one more dumb children's television show. The whole concept seemed like new-age claptrap infused into a Saturday morning cartoon format.

After the program completed its second season, my son began to take an interest and started to watch, utilizing our Netflix subscription. However, the only television in our home with Netflix access is located in our downstairs living room, a space that is often occupied by my wife or myself. One Saturday afternoon, he came into the room and proposed that we watch Avatar together. I was not excited by the idea, but thought I would be a nice old man and watch the program with him since he loved it so much.

We sat down and watched an episode from the second season - Zuko Alone - and to my great surprise, I really enjoyed the program. It is intelligently and creatively assembled, demonstrates an uncommon thoughtfulness found almost nowhere else in the onslaught of modern children's television programming, and provides a compelling plotline to follow.

I like that it tells a continuous and ongoing story with twists, turns, multiple storylines, jokes (both visual and verbal), explorations of human relationships, and that it attempts to understand the extraordinary complexities of humanity by touching on war, cruelty, compassion, kindness, love (romantic and familial), friendship, the environment, responsibility, morality, education, women's rights, and diasporas, to name but a few.

I also like that there is never a simple solution to any of the problems faced by the main characters (Aang, Zuko, Katara, Toph, and Sokka); they struggle to learn, struggle to get along with one another, fail at many things, nearly lose their lives, make many mistakes, and eventually - because of all of this - build lives for themselves. While it is not a perfect program, the creators offer a great deal of honesty about life, all the while providing an entertaining epic drama/comedy.

And in case I have overstated anything or tried to make it sound like more than it is, we should remember that it is a cartoon and it is targeted towards children. The program contains its share of silliness, childish jokes, magic, events that stretch credulity, and the occasional solution that is too simplistic in nature. But, this is all part of the package that makes the program interesting and helps to make its serious(very) premise retain its charm.

The program concluded its run on Nickeloden almost four years ago, but my children and I download the episodes on Netflix about once a year and hold an Avatar marathon (we are only talking about sixty episodes, each about twenty minutes in length). I suspect that we will probably only do this once more before the inevitable interests of teenagerdom overtake their lives, and then we will probably never watch the program again. But, I will always have a place in my heart for Aang and his friends.

New Boy Band

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by Pete Codella (bio)

One of my best friends - who I met while performing with the BYU Young Ambassadors from 1992 to 1994 - is Tyler Castleton. He is a renowned music producer and songwriter who has spent time in Utah and Nashville perfecting his trade. He has worked with Martina McBride, Marie Osmond, Jericho Road and Hilary Weeks.

Tyler is putting together a new boy band and has issued an open call notice for male singers, ages 13 to 17, to tryout for the band.

He is ... "seeking confident, energetic pop vocalists with a good ear and ability to blend well. Looking for serious performers interested in an amazing national and international recording and performing experience."

Open Call Auditions
September 15, 2012
10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
The Pointe Performing Arts Academy
10981 North 5600 West, Highland, UT 84003

To schedule an audition time call Todd Schwartzman at 801-822-6798 or email him at toddschwartzman [at] gmail.com.

If you know of a teenage boy with performing chops and a penchant for good Christian standards, this is a wonderful opportunity.

The audition notice is also saved on my Pinterest profile if you'd like to share it from there.