Source: Mission President Handbook, 2006, page 86.
https://www.scribd.com/doc/201377673/LDS-Mission-
President-s-Handbook

Hi all,

I've enjoyed being a fairly active participant here and engaging with many of you.

I am having some employment and personal situations (nothing serious) that are going to eat up most all of my time for a while. So I will have to take a break from r/mormon.

Best wishes to all and I hope to see you all again soon.

(Hope you all enjoyed the BYU/ND football game. Go Cougars! And basketball is starting now!)

I edited together some clips from Travis Anderson's channel to highlight his argumentative, mean-spirited and condescending approach to apologetic interactions.

Here is a summary of the clips:

1. He says if he prays and gets an answer it's God, if he doesn't get an answer it's God's will and either way it confirms God is real.

2. He is discussing the biblical punishment for a woman who is raped and who doesn't cry out. He argues that the man can't know that's "bad".

3. The triune God is an arbitrary monster.

4. If only Panama and Peru would let Mormons "dig up the whole country" then we would find the Book of Mormon peoples.

5. Paul claimed he saw Jesus and Christians accept that so they are hypocritical not to accept Joseph Smith's claims. Christians who accept the Bible should accept the Mormon religion because both have weak support for their claims.

6. "Jeremy Runnels is an idiot and anybody who reads (the CES letter) and takes it seriously probably falls into the same camp"

7. The papyrus we have "has never been claimed to be the book of Abraham". "How many egyptologists papers have you read about the Book of Abraham?" "I believe the biblical texts are just historical documents" and if there are contradictions I just shrug my shoulders. I don't think God wrote them.

8. The person he is talking to says he won't answer the questions about the historical false prophecies of Joseph Smith about Independence. Travis says yes I did. I told you D&C 84 and 124 and that responds to it. Travis says so you read them 5 years ago, don't you remember what you read? I remember what I read five years ago.

9. Jacob Hansen is not an apologist, he's a "popularizer". "Jacob Hansen owns an ice cream shop!"

10. He says he was an atheist before. "I struggle to believe God exists. If someone takes away the Book of Mormon and stuff I will just bag God altogether...the God of Protestants, the God of Catholics is a horrific monster!"

I think Travis is better at creating atheists than believers. When even Steve Pynakker says you're a bad dude then I think there is something to it.

I am a Christian who has been studying Mormonism since college, but I always seem to run into more questions than answers. I don't even know how to phrase some of the many questions I have, but I will give it a shot and hope some of y'all can help me understand LDS doctrine better as I continue to read more LDS literature.

In the book of Ether, Jesus says that Adam was made in his image, but Genesis clearly says he was made in the image of God (Elohim). I was under the impression that Yahweh was Jesus and Elohim is Heavenly Father, but I guess that is not the case here, since Jesus is Elohim whose image Adam was created in.

1. What does it mean to be God and how do Heavenly Father and Jesus both get to hold that title of God while being separate beings?

2. Is Yahweh Jesus in Mormon theology, and Elohim is Heavenly Father? How do these Old Testament names relate to current theology?

3. I also thought Mormons believed that Jesus became God when he ressurected, but I suppose this is false, so did Jesus become God, or was he always God?

I would appreciate answers from all of you, TBMs, PIMOs, ExMOs, never-MOs and amything in between. I often get "We haven't received revelation on that" when I ask theological questions, so any answer is better than that.

Would really appreciate some advice both from exMos and attending members.

I am feeling a lot of emotions right now, kinda on the verge of tears after meeting with some missionaries for the second time.

I will try to collect m thoughts and not make things too incoherent. I grew up in a very liberal mainline Protestant church, female pastor, Bible is an allegory, mission trips every summer to some place. I then watched as basically right after I got out of highschool that foundation go away, by the time I was 20 the average age in the pews was nearing retirement. It hasn't even been a decade and according to one of two people I know who still keep tabs, the church basically is insolvent due to lack of attendance even on holidays.

In college I read a lot on Catholicism for various Biblical exegesis classes, I thought about converting to Judaism but the introductory classes were never available. They never had any seats left.So the years have now gone by and I'm almost 30 trying to rediscover my faith and I know about the BOM from the musical and from folks I knew in college, I figure the community is great. I visit the YSA and everyone's nice to me, everyone is around my age and we're talking like normal. I felt like a hermit who crawled out to civilization it has genuinely been that difficult to make connections with people my age around here.

So then today I am talking with the missionaries and we get done with the lesson, I'm planning to attend on Sunday just to seee what a service is like and someone will be driving me. We talked mostly about relationships, Adam and Eve.. it felt very basic Christian theological stuff. My mom then comes into the kitchen a while after they leave and says "why not visit a Jewish temple or a Catholic church? Don't mistake them being kind as faith."

Which... Fair. I might be a bit in over my skis here but to me at this stage of my life where am I supposed to go eh? The Reform temple only meets once a month, the Conservative Jewish groups haven't picked up the phone in a year nor answered my emails. I don't know if I could sincerely believe in the Catholic trinity and I especially find a lot of the trad-Catch discourse online something that puts me off attending alone. I think had I come to where I now live and met a bunch of people near me age I wouldn't feel so strongly about this?... I feel like second to belief is a supportive community, knowledge that you aren't totally alone. I know logically it doesn't hurt because I haven't yet been baptized but I just can't imagine walking into a Jewish service and finding the same sense of community? There was a community church Christmas service I went to last year where they played all this music from a prompter, people got up to eat cake, we sat on folding chairs under a tent. It didn't feel like church?

I hate that I have this lump in my throat of "what if". Maybe I should try to reach out and just.. see how it goes and also attend the YSA things to decide? I've found that talking to members has helped shape my perspective a lot more than the missionaries, understanding how people actually live the faith. Granted my mom had no idea the BOM was anything other than a musical title.. but still, in the back of my mind I know she has a point to not overly commit right away.. but I just don't see things being any different to all the secular events I've tried wherein I'm the youngest by several decades?? Getting a planet in the afterlife is not swaying me, lads.

Reading Schedule & Discussion Index

Today’s reading: Finish Chapter 2, “When Belief Is Torn.” - Begin: “Seeking Answers but Finding Problems.” - Include: Everything remaining in Chapter 2, including “Preparing the Soil,” the takeaway, reflection questions, and application. - Stop BEFORE: “Part 2: Prepare the Soil.”

Approximate Kindle anchors: 69/70 to 79. Follow the headings; the Part 2 divider is our stopping point.

Brief synopsis

Strong examines where people seek answers and how those encounters can affect trust. Drawing on survey responses and interviews, he describes a recurring, but explicitly non-rigid, sequence connecting moral concerns, questioning, intensive searching, and damaged belonging.

He then considers the emotional cost of staying silent and distinguishes respondents’ relationships with God from their relationships with the Church. That distinction won’t describe everyone; these accounts shouldn’t stand in for every faith transition.

The chapter closes by urging readers to listen without immediately correcting, defending, or trying to fix someone. There’s plenty to discuss here, including what listening can accomplish and what still needs an actual answer or change.

Discussion questions

1. How well does Strong distinguish unanswered questions from damaged trust?
2. What does his God-versus-Church distinction clarify, and whose experiences might it leave out?
3. Where is compassionate listening enough, and where do institutions need to change?

We’re aiming for roughly ten Kindle pages daily, adjusted to natural breaks. 32 days remains an estimate.

Candid disagreement is welcome. Full logistics and award details are in the index.

When a household arrives unannounced into a settled camp, every custom becomes visible.

The arrival changed this.

Children ran ahead, uncertain whether to greet or retreat. Beasts were untethered, then tethered again. Goods were set down where no space had been prepared for them. What had been a stopping place became, all at once, a gathering.

Lehi came forward to receive Ishmael’s people with warmth sharpened by relief. Sariah followed, her expression already working to reconcile necessity with kindness. She embraced Ishmael’s wife and spoke with her at once of children, of travel, of the small mercies that make endurance possible. Nothing was said publicly of burial, though everyone present had measured the company and knew what had been lost.

The first meal was taken politely, which is to say stiffly. Prayers were offered twice—once in our father’s accustomed form, once in Ishmael’s. Neither displaced the other, and both left a residue of unease.

The daughters sat together. The eldest met our eyes without challenge or invitation. The second smiled once, briefly, then returned to her food. The youngest watched everything. Their father’s place remained open longer than courtesy required, until at last someone moved the dish aside.

“Already,” we said, “the camp is divided.”

That night, the tents rearranged themselves without instruction. Ishmael’s household gathered close, their fire burning longer into the dark. Ours lay farther off, the space between filled with glances and half-formed conclusions.

Customs collided.

Ishmael’s family observed the evening meal as they always had, with elders seated first and daughters moving quietly between them, eyes lowered, hands practiced. Bread was passed in an order that required no discussion. Cups followed age and standing. Such things are not trifles in a household. They teach children who belongs where before any doctrine can improve the matter.

Our father allowed it, though the effort showed in his face. He had grown accustomed to a looser table, to sons reaching when hungry and conversation wandering where it would. He was a generous man, but generosity is more easily offered when it is not required daily, and we learned that night how easily righteousness can be mistaken for custom.

Later, Sariah spoke quietly with Ishmael’s wife. We saw in their exchange the careful diplomacy of women tasked with softening the consequences of men’s certainties. They spoke of loss, of usefulness, of how long a thing must last before it becomes familiar; and beneath that, we thought, of how a household continues once the man who consented to it is no longer there to answer for the decision.

“This,” we thought, “is the true work of salvation.”

As days passed, novelty wore away. Old soreness remained. Tempers shortened. Expectations multiplied without instruction. What had been prophecy became routine, and routine revealed its own costs.

Nephi moved among the camp with quiet competence, answering questions, settling disputes, rearranging burdens. He did not command; he assumed. This unsettled us more than commandment would have.

“You are very sure of yourself,” we said.

“The Lord hath prepared the way,” he replied.

“Yes,” we answered. “And you do so enjoy walking it first.”

By the third evening, alliances had formed. Resentments had names. Children played together among burdens not their own, learning the shape of a future that had already begun without them.

We stood by the river and saw that what had once been a temporary encampment now bore the weight of something more durable—not unity, but necessity wearing the garments of order.

Nephi looked out over the gathered tents.

“We are being prepared,” he said.

“Yes,” we replied. “We feel it keenly.”

Thus did the journey change from movement to settlement, and the cost of the vision present itself not as danger alone, but as daily life.

LDS accept that a human proxy can take the place of a dead relative, or some other person who died without baptism.

Do you think the LDS god would accept mechanical dolls and robots dunking “phantom “ proxies for works for the dead? the automated process could facilitate a lot more baptisms. a recorded voice could also say the required prayer much faster. work could also continue without stop, except for maybe routine maintenance of equipment and maybe program updates.

Does LDS scripture actually state proxies for the dead need to be human?