For a previous talk in a church meeting, I need to come up with a definition of wisdom. I looked around the Internet for hours and read just about everything I came across, and when you added up all the different views and thoughts about wisdom, I’ve decided to define wisdom as this:
Wisdom is the product of the application of faith in the things we know to be true.
Maybe sometime I’ll give a more complete discussion about wisdom.
The First Presidency message this month is from President Gordon B. Hinckley and is titled: A Perfect Brightness of Hope — to New Members of the Church. It is a special message written especially toward new converts and members of the Church. It talks to them about their transition into membership and the culture of the Church.
Throughout the message, President Hinckley tells the new members how we (existing members of the Church) will help them. Here are some quotes that help illustrate how we are suppose to help new members:
As a footnote: according to the Church’s Member and Statistical Records Division, first-generation members made up 64 percent of the total Church membership as of July 2006.
According to the Albuquerque Tribune, a companionship of missionaries in Albuquerque, New Mexico found an envelope from a local financial institution containing two stacks of bills, valued at $1,200. The missionaries turned the money into the police, and joined a list of only 15 other people who had ever turned lost/found money in. The amount of money they turned in was the highest ever for the area. If no one claims the money in 90 days, the missionaries get to keep it.
I guess we are going to have to wait to see if the missionaries get the money or not. On one hand, the envelope was from a financial institution, which might be able to track down the proper owners. On the other had, the missionaries found the money on a crime-heavy street, so there may not actually be any proper owners.
I hope the missionaries get to keep the money, but the greatest reward is the publicity they got for being so honest. Hopefully their true find will be people wanting to learn more about the Gospel because they were so impressed with the missionaries’ honesty.
If you’ve ever seen digg.com you will feel right at home with Sustain’d. Sustaind.org is a website with links to LDS-related articles and posts on the Internet. Like digg.com, users can vote, or sustain, their favorite articles, which controls which articles show up on the front page. Users can also submit articles or comment on articles.
Sustain’d is kind of addictive if you are an LDS news junkie like myself. I think it would be even more fun if there was a bigger user base so that there will be more action on the site and more comments about the articles.
I hope you like Sustain’d. If you ever end up submitting an article, may I please request that you put a little bit of effort into the summary/description. The description should be short, yet long enough for the reader to understand what the article is about without having to actually read the article. This will allow me (and other users) to more quickly sort through the articles so that I can read and sustain the ones that are most important to me.
I recently found this article online from Herald Tribune in Southwest Florida about a companionship of missionaries there. The article is called Run, don’t walk and has a pretty accurate description about missionary work.
It is great that missionaries are getting this sort of press. They work hard, and I’m glad they get some recognition about what they do.
General conference was last weekend, and it was a great conference. I was traveling back to Portland last Sunday, so I missed many of the Sunday talks. Fortunately, the English texts of conference are now online. Other languages are coming soon.
I’m impressed with the speed with which they were posted, and I thank those who worked so hard to get them posted.
I served a mission for the LDS Church in Romania. Recently I found out that the wife of the current mission president of Romania has a blog. Her blog is called Grandma Chubby’s Stuff, and it is very good at keeping news and information about the Church and missionary work in Romania.
Welcome to my new religion blog titled, Jacob on Religion. I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as the Mormon Church. I wanted to start a blog that would be a place to share my thoughts about mormonism, religion, and ethics and values. I also hope that I can use this blog to share my testimony with others.