November 2007

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Especially if you came from Mormon Archipelago as it only includes my major article posts.
Thanks for visiting!

LDS Alive in Christ
Immediately following baptism members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons) are confirmed members of the church by the laying on of hands where they are commanded to receive the Holy Ghost. These two ordinances entitle members to the gift of the Holy Ghost, but what needs to done in order to actually receive the gift of the Holy Ghost—the first Comforter?
Answering this question is what this blog is about. It is my hope that this blog, can assist in some way, to help each who visit here to grow in their gift of the Holy Ghost. The ultimate purpose of receiving the Holy Ghost is to be brought back into presence of Christ—the second Comforter. To be alive in Christ means to hunger and thirst to receive these two Comforters.

Kids Cooking Blog
Recipes, ideas and tips to getting kids involved in cooking in the kitchen and learning how to cook from preschool age- teenagers.

Kids Sewing
Kids Sewing projects, lessons and help in teaching kids to sew and projects for beginner -moderate sewers.

Scriptures Podcast
The Scriptures Anytime, Anywhere

The Ward Choir Network - sing.accompany.rehearse.conduct.rejoice
Designed to assist those who direct, accompany, and sing in the local choirs of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Includes forums and free PDF exercises to help choirs improve.

Discoveries
Perspectives from a LDS couple living in Los Angeles.

More can be found at LDS & Mormon Blogs. To submit your blog please fill out this form. Thanks.

Tom Udall has reversed himself and has announced his campaign for the New Mexico senate seat .  Strangely, this Associated Press article makes a big deal that Tom and his cousin, Mark Udall from Colorado, are both running for Senate but overlooks another cousin.  Gordon Smith will be defending his Senate seat in Oregon.

All three are considered to have very good chance of winning so the next Senate may have three cousins in it.   If so, Tom Udall would join Harry Reid as a LDS Senate Democrat.

The Soup Kitchen
Ramblings from the thoughts of a semi-mystical Liberal Mormon.

Straight to the Core!
Just my life and a hodge podge of other stuff.

All My Sunbeams

The Smoot Sentinel
Just a glimpse of our daily life for family and friends.

Miguel Lomelino
Europe & World events, but also about the LDS Church, of course

Banner, Sword, and Shield
A blog by a fourth year history major commenting on History, faith and other items of interest from an LDS perspective.

More can be found at LDS & Mormon Blogs. To submit your blog please fill out this form. Thanks.

Churnings and Burnings
I had originally intended for this blog to mearly be a journal of my artwork but…I’ve enjoyed writing so much that it’s turning into the book of me. The best part is that my range of readers runs from a twelve year old in my ward to people who collect my artwork from everywhere.

BYU 201st Ward Literature and Literacy
Discussion board for Mormons exploring literature and film.

HiTekRider
This blog contains my rantings. I am a technical writer by profession and want to hone my non-technical writing skills on my blog. Entries are of general thoughts and rantings. Thoughts on life experiences and wherever else it may take me… I am hoping that my voice will develop as I write daily entries.

Mormon Soprano
Life in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir : “America’s Choir.” What does it really take to make it? One soprano invites readers to share the audition process and subsequent journey as a new member of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

Juvenile Instructor
Three grad students and a couple of undergrads posting their thoughts on Mormonism in American religious history and the history of the American West.

More can be found at LDS & Mormon Blogs. To submit your blog please fill out this form. Thanks.

Shove Me in the Shallow Water

Online Income Project
One man’s quest for an online income.

Bryan In Seoul
Tales, Triumphs, and Tips From A Male Kindergarten Teacher in Seoul, South Korea.

Mom’s Musings
A cross between a missionary tool and a means to communicate with like-minded individuals,Mom’s Musings is a blog about my observations, thoughts, and experiences as they relate to daily life. Themes are both spiritual and temporal and vary in nature from topics like gratitude and prayer to my son’s birthday (yesterday’s entry). Scriptures and General Auhthorities are often cited as are psychologists, novelists, and my grandchildren. I guess the best thing to say is, “Check it out.”

Sixteen Small Stones
J. Max Wilson writes about a wide range of topics including Literature, History, Politics, Religion, Culture, Technology, LDS Technology, and Puppetry.

Where There Is No Vision, The People Perish
Sort of a back-to-the-land blog, only with the Doctrine & Covenants instead of Timothy Leary.

More can be found at LDS & Mormon Blogs. To submit your blog please fill out this form. Thanks.

Leading Families
This is the official blog of Dr. A Lynn Scoresby, and will be updated frequently with my thoughts on child development, families, our education system, and other topics of interest to our day. My goal is to help people ‘help more than they hurt’, and I encourage your feedback and contributions through comments here on the blog and through email.

Something Clever
Practicing The Three R’s of Blogging: Ranting, Raving and Reminiscing

Weightier Matters
A young father’s thoughts about life, family, and religion.

FMyblog
Single guy with four kids, divorced for a couple years. Not everything has to do with Church, but much of it somehow relates to the gospel.

My America
Remember when America was great? I think it still is! Blogging the reasons why…

Jay McCarthy
“His greatest creation is himself.” - Harold Bloom

More can be found at LDS & Mormon Blogs. To submit your blog please fill out this form. Thanks.

Who Gets to Answer: “Are Mormons Christians?”: Perhaps there are limits to self-definition, but come on:

A believer insisting that “Mormons are Christians, period,” is somewhat like a Muslim believer saying, “Islam means peace, period.”

The blogger is a religion journalist soliciting questions for the Ostlings, so head on over if you have a suggestion.

Welcome To My Soap Box
Political and Social Commentary from a Southern Californian Mormon who got tricked into moving to the SLC

Mormon Potluck
Mormon Potluck is a group of friends who come together regularly to talk about news, culture, and technology, and share their views on the world. We created the Mormon Potluck Podcast to be one of the venues, but also have created this website. We invite everyone to participate: comment on blog items, send us links, or ask for us to talk about something in our podcast. Mainly, our goal is to have fun!

Mighty Mighty Joneses
Family blog from Kirtland stake

The Morgan Follies
Follow me in my adventures in learning how to be a mom. I am currently attempting the task of homeschooling my two oldest monsters,being entertained by a very lively 4 year old, and cloth diapering a very attached little toddler and newborn. Just getting out of the house can be like an obstacle course. So sit back and enjoy the ride- today a roller coaster, tomorrow a tunnel of love.

Play More, Laugh More, Live More

An Artist’s Musings
An LDS painter, with a lively interest in history, writes about her concerns. At the moment that’s politics, but tomorrow, who knows…

More can be found at LDS & Mormon Blogs. To submit your blog please fill out this form. Thanks.

The Washington Post has a very nice piece on the Church’s increasing global presence and its internet outreach. 

Perhaps the best illustration of this is the story of one convert who first investigated the Church through its more common internet resources.  But it sounds like he was won over when he came across the online version of the Church’s secret weapon for conversion:

After reading about the church online, Omowaiye clicked his way to a dating Web site for Mormons (though not officially affiliated with the church). There he began chatting electronically with Deborah Hess, a relocation manager from Colorado. After corresponding for a year by e-mail, webcam and phone, Hess recently came to Lagos and married Omowaiye, a quiet, soft-spoken man.

Due to the bruising nature of the primaries, Evangelicals have been getting a lot of ire in the Bloggernacle (a lot of it justified). Romney’s religion has been constantly rehashed as a stumbling block for the Evangelical vote. 

However, if enough Evangelicals support Romney and he gets the nomination, his religion “problem” won’t be going away.  Although the Mormon issue has been widely portrayed as a GOP matter, Democratic voters are even less likely than Republicans to vote for a Mormon.

Well, first of all, polls like this one (see Table 4) suggest that Democrats are more likely than Republicans to rule out voting for a candidate on the basis of his Mormon faith. Now maybe all those anti-Mormon Democrats are African-American Baptists or working-class Catholics, but Dems with a post-grad education are more anti-Latter Day Saint than Dems with just a high school degree, which at the very least suggests that there are plenty of secular voters who wouldn’t pull the lever for a Mormon. Not, presumably, because they want to establish an “only Trinitarians need apply” standard for public office in the U.S., but because they consider Mormonism weird and cultish, and they don’t want a President who buys into its tenets.

According that April 2007 poll, Republicans are more likely to vote for a Mormon than Democrats by 50 - 38. That may be because Democrats don’t like the Mormon religion, they don’t like religion period, or they don’t like the predominant politics associated with Mormons.  What else?  

Could Democrat voters be as bigoted as Evangelicals?

It’s an Orange Life
Observations of life, with a humorous tilt.

The Heisses

For Our Day
The gospel of Jesus Christ gives us answers for not just for eternity, but also for our every day life. This blog centers it’s posts upon the principles of the gospel that will make our lives truely happy.

Finding My Place In This World
Me, my life, and my struggles to find my place in this world as a Latter-Day Saint.

Deliciously Clean Reads
A book review blog where anyone can recommend teen and adult books that are free of sex and profanity.

Whimsy Books
Discussions on being a mom, reading, and writing for children.

More can be found at LDS & Mormon Blogs. To submit your blog please fill out this form. Thanks.

Voters in New Hampshire and Iowa have reported getting phone calls purporting to be research polls, but instead are asking questions emphasizing Mitt Romney as a Mormon.  And not in a nice way: push polls.  And they’re coming from a Utah-based firm!

An individual in Manchester, Iowa, contacted me on Wednesday night saying he received a call with information about McCain’s military service and anti-spending record.

Then there were “lots of negatives on Romney,” said the recepient of the call in an e-mail, including mentions of his “flip-flops,” hiring illegal immigrants as landscapers and extensive discussion of Mormonism.

“Statements were on baptizing the dead, the Book of Mormon being on the level of the Bible, and one about equating it to a cult,” said the Iowan, deeming them “common criticisms of Mormonism.”

The AP adds a little more anti-mormon details:

Among the questions was whether a resident knew that Romney was a Mormon, that he received military deferments when he served as a Mormon missionary in France, that his five sons did not serve in the military, that Romney’s faith did not accept blacks as bishops into the 1970s and that Mormons believe the Book of Mormon is superior to the Bible.

Strangely, the “research firm” used to do these calls is based in Utah. According to J.A. Miles, it has call centers in Provo and Rexburg and the firm’s founder and chairman is on the advisory board at BYU’s Marriott School Center for Entrepreneurship.

The McCain and Giuliani campaigns have strongly denied their involvement (it’s doubtful Huckabee has money to do something like this). Since it would be so foolish for a campaign to be directly involved, I bet some third-party group is trying to help out its favorite candidate.

Melinda Beth
A blogumentary about the life of a mormon mom, her litter of kids, and the funny things they say and do.

Fluent in mumble
journal of writer and composer Nathan Howe of Grate Media

You Always Burn the First Pancake
Musings of two educated people with no clue of how to be intelligent parents

Moments of Clarity and Chaos

I’m So Funny
I’m a cynical housewife and these are the stories of my hysterical life.

More can be found at LDS & Mormon Blogs. To submit your blog please fill out this form. Thanks.

I thought it was possible to support the troops without supporting the war.

Election officials ordered the removal of donation boxes set up by a troop of Cambridge Boy Scouts of America during last Tuesday’s municipal election. The boxes were set up inside the 33 polling stations around the city to collect donations for soldiers serving overseas in the war in Iraq.

Marsha Weinerman, executive director of the city’s Election Commission, said the boxes were removed after a resident complained to commission workers about their implied “pro-war” message.

Even more frustrating?

The Boy Scouts has its own website and blog devoted to the legal issues and litigation it faces.

UPDATE:  Fortunately, it sounds like it will have a happy ending.

My Life, Art, Love, and God
About artists and their lifestyle choices, both in and out of the church. I talk about the conflict between religion and art, and how it’s resolved by me and other religious folk. Also discuss issues topical to artists, like economic development and secondary careers.

The Journal Of A Black Mormon Girl
Black. Mormon. Girl. Here I will share my thoughts and beliefs about the spiritual chapter of my life. I will write of the things we do as a peculiar people as well as the experiences of being a Member of the Church of JESUS CHRIST of Latter Day Saints. I want to the world to know that I am not ashamed of that which guides me to be a better person and that which leads me to Christ. It’s a great journey, I hope you’ll enjoy the view from your seat

Hiram Bertoch’s Blog
Where I have been, where I am, and where I am going. Comments about life, kids, politics, and religion.

An Ordinary Mom
Just an ordinary mom doing ordinary things, but hopefully making an extraordinary difference in the lives of her children.

Reagan Quotes
Daily Ronald Reagan quotes, sometimes with commentary.

LDS Anarchy
Not your average Mormon blog.

More can be found at LDS & Mormon Blogs. To submit your blog please fill out this form. Thanks.