I learned in church today

[All-American]

I have heard that one all my life. I have also heard if you live the commandments you will be bless with good things. Seems to make it pretty easy. Good things come God is doing it for you, bad things come and and it is God doing something good so you can learn from it.

I wish in the scriptures somewhere it just said, "shit happens".

"All these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good."

[byu71]

"All these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good."

Great scripture. It is a statement about life. Like I said, shit happens that's life.

[wuapinmon]

Great scripture. It is a statement about life. Like I said, shit happens that's life.

No, shit happens to you FOR A REASON.

[byu71]

No, shit happens to you FOR A REASON.

That reason isn't Gods doing, it is my own doing.

[TripletDaddy]

my EQ is not very prepared on Sundays. In the past 4 weeks, we have had 1 prepared lesson, twice the teachers forgot it was their turn (one time the bishop pinch hit and the other time the EQP whipped out the manual). Today the teacher was at Sacrament, Sunday school, and opening exercises...then went home! We sat around talking for 20 minutes and finally the EQP asked us all to walk over and join the high priests.

At least the EQP didn't try to wing it again, that was brutal last time, although he was trying his best. :igiveup:

People.....please prepare your dang lessons! If you are called to teach and you accept the calling, please prepare something and get up in front of the class and get the job done. What is up with elders? This is pandemic because it happens far too frequently. Teaching a class in church has to be the lowest common denominator activity in our culture. Anything passes for a lesson, for better or worse, so it isn't that hard to do for crying out loud. But not showing up or not preparing anything is uncool. :rant:

It was not a total loss. We were able to vote on and finalize the menu for the upcoming Fathers and Sons...BBQ on Friday night :rockon1:

[il Padrino Ute]

my EQ is not very prepared on Sundays. In the past 4 weeks, we have had 1 prepared lesson, twice the teachers forgot it was their turn (one time the bishop pinch hit and the other time the EQP whipped out the manual). Today the teacher was at Sacrament, Sunday school, and opening exercises...then went home! We sat around talking for 20 minutes and finally the EQP asked us all to walk over and join the high priests.

At least the EQP didn't try to wing it again, that was brutal last time, although he was trying his best. :igiveup:

People.....please prepare your dang lessons! If you are called to teach and you accept the calling, please prepare something and get up in front of the class and get the job done. What is up with elders? This is pandemic because it happens far too frequently. Teaching a class in church has to be the lowest common denominator activity in our culture. Anything passes for a lesson, for better or worse, so it isn't that hard to do for crying out loud. But not showing up or not preparing anything is uncool. :rant:

It was not a total loss. We were able to vote on and finalize the menu for the upcoming Fathers and Sons...BBQ on Friday night :rockon1:

I agree completely with the bolded part. If one doesn't want to make the effort to follow through with the responsibility of a calling, just say no. It's really that simple.

[LA Ute]

I attended a Salt Lake ward in the avenues area. It's a fairly heady ward, and we've been there many times. Today's sacrament meeting was an unexpected delight. 5 young women were asked to speak of someone in their ancestry whom they admired and who had influenced them positively. Two girls spoke of pretty traditional Utah pioneer ancestors (one of them Brigham Young). The third spoke of her own mom, who joined the Church in the Dominican Republic and raised the her both there and in Utah as a single mother. English was not this girl's first language but she did a great job. The next girl talked of her great-grandmother, who came to the USA after joining the church in the early 20th century. Those two presented a nice window into the growing diversity of the church. The fifth speaker has Down Syndrome and read her talk as carefully as she could from pages typed in very large font. She was hard to understand but everyone in the congregation seemed to be listening intently as gave a beautiful talk about her Dutch ancestors. Really a very sweet meeting.

Earlier we attended the Tab Choir broadcast at the Conference Center. We thought it would be nice, today being Pioneer Day and all, and it was. There were rousing renditions of "They, The Builders," "My Song in the Night," "Shall We Gather at the River," "Faith in Every Footstep," and of course "Come, Come Ye Saints" as the grand finale. Really enjoyable.

[Pheidippides]

The fact that we all teach and believe the same things exactly and are just alike is one of the best testimony builders out there. This per my EQ instructor. I resisted the temptation to ask what testimonies were like prior to 1965.

This is after I turned down a request from the WML to teach the new member discussions to some new members (something he wasn't expecting) and got cranky enough in EQ to respond to a particular question about a bible passage by saying "well, in the NIV that section is translated as...". Clearly I am a full heretic now.

Yesterday was a "let's see which one of niku's buttons we can push" day.

[Surfah]

The fact that we all teach and believe the same things exactly and are just alike is one of the best testimony builders out there. This per my EQ instructor. I resisted the temptation to ask what testimonies were like prior to 1965.

This is after I turned down a request from the WML to teach the new member discussions to some new members (something he wasn't expecting) and got cranky enough in EQ to respond to a particular question about a bible passage by saying "well, in the NIV that section is translated as...". Clearly I am a full heretic now.

Yesterday was a "let's see which one of niku's buttons we can push" day.

Why'd you turn down the offer to teach the new member discussions? As someone who has said you hope to affect change by remaining in the Church this seems like an ideal opportunity for you. I imagine the new convert has some questions and will need some help navigating some things that the elders likely couldn't resolve.

Last weekend we had a couple baptized. The Bishop asked me to find someone to teach them the new member discussions who could help them answer difficult questions that they have. I wish that I could have had someone like you, SEIQ, or several others here to refer to. I was ready to just take it on myself as I have no problem talking about those kinds of things, but thankfully the ward clerk who is a pretty bright guy volunteered.

[Pheidippides]

Why'd you turn down the offer to teach the new member discussions? As someone who has said you hope to affect change by remaining in the Church this seems like an ideal opportunity for you. I imagine the new convert has some questions and will need some help navigating some things that the elders likely couldn't resolve.

Last weekend we had a couple baptized. The Bishop asked me to find someone to teach them the new member discussions who could help them answer difficult questions that they have. I wish that I could have had someone like you, SEIQ, or several others here to refer to. I was ready to just take it on myself as I have no problem talking about those kinds of things, but thankfully the ward clerk who is a pretty bright guy volunteered.

Time commitment. It's for eight new converts - all separate - and I am simply booked solid except Friday nights. I didn't decline so much as say I freed up in October. This wasn't about the request so much as the mannerisms of the request (anytime a relative stranger sits down and puts his arms around my shoulders, red lights go off in my head).

I already do some of the difficult question answering privately. Sort of. I have two rules I do not break: I don't say what I don't believe, and I don't go off the Generally Accepted Religious Principles (GARP) we espouse if I can help it. It makes for a lot of socratic questioning.

[FMCoug]

We got the laundry list of questions about do's and dont's on the Sabbath day. I wanted to ask what the difference was between that and deciding how many steps was too many but we ran out of time.

[bluegoose]

This is after I turned down a request from the WML to teach the new member discussions to some new members (something he wasn't expecting) and got cranky enough in EQ to respond to a particular question about a bible passage by saying "well, in the NIV that section is translated as...". Clearly I am a full heretic now.

I was assigned a single gal to home teach recently. She recently returned to church after being away for more than 10 years. Her 9 year old daughter was baptized about 3 months ago.

We've had them over on Sunday evening for dinner and FHE about 2-3 times per month since the baptism. Our lessons are the new member lessons. Each person in our family, including the kids down to our squirrly 5 year old, takes a small section to teach. We usually keep them fairly informal and try to make them into some sort of game. They have been a lot of fun. We have been really taking our time, as after about 8 lessons we are only halfway through the second discussion.

If you ever have the chance to take on that assignment again in the future, I would recommend trying to find the time for it. I know that family time is sacred when you have a busy schedule, but our family is certainly better off for doing it. I am historically a terrible home teacher and our FHEs are occasionally spotty due to crazy schedules, but I have really looked forward to our weekly visits with this family.

[Pheidippides]

We got the laundry list of questions about do's and dont's on the Sabbath day. I wanted to ask what the difference was between that and deciding how many steps was too many but we ran out of time.

On a related note, yesterday we spent a lot of time in the four gospels talking about Pharisees in my class. I was struck by the similarities yet again.

I still have a very hard time reconciling the biblical Jesus (and the Jesus of 3 Nephi) with the administration and general practices of the church. I have a hard time reconciling the current GC talks with the general practices, for that matter.

Actually, that was kinda the point of my lesson. I started by showing a very blurry picture cropped from a larger picture of the SLC temple. It was low-res enough that you could easily count pixels. And we debated the color and merits of each pixel for a bit, and then I showed them the whole image. After which I made the point that we often spend a lot of time looking at pixels, and that has very little meaning outside of Jesus, and why don't we just go straight to the NT and study some of our topics.

[Jeff Lebowski]

We got the laundry list of questions about do's and dont's on the Sabbath day. I wanted to ask what the difference was between that and deciding how many steps was too many but we ran out of time.

Have this quote handy next time:

http://www.cougaruteforum.com/showpo...6&postcount=59

[UtahDan]

:rant:

This is my new favorite. How long have we had this?