My Place to Reflect

In 2007, I qualified to receive an amateur radio license at the General class with call sign KJ4AAH. When I took the exam, taking higher levels was the same price as long as you kept passing. So I attempted the Extra class exam and failed it quite handily. That helped motivate me to study and a few months later, I upgraded my license to Amateur Extra class and changed to a new call sign AJ4FF. In 2008, I purchased a Yaesu FT-857d radio and eventually put up a homebrew 3-band fan dipole between a blue spruce in one corner of my yard and a much taller spruce adjacent to my house. The blue spruce died and had to come down and I never figured out an alternative to get a long wire into the air with just the one tree near my house. This last year, the tall spruce also had to come down. Well, in the middle of this time, one of my sons decided to plant a maple sapling near my back fence and it is now tall enough to help me out. I'm also more motivated right now to get involved again. I pur...

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. I stand at attention with my hand over my heart. In spite of the literal meaning of this pledge, my pledge is of allegiance to the nation, its ideals, its principles, not the fabric. The flag is a living symbol. I treat it with respect as a symbolic gesture of how I want to treat those principles, those ideals, this great nation. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands. A republic is a nation or state in which the power belongs to the people, administered by their elected officials. This is in contrast to a monarchy where the leader is supreme. In a republic, the people share an equality in standing. One nation under God. It is by the grace of God that we are a nation. And it will only be by the grace of God that we might one day truly be one nation in heart as well as polity. In that Latter-day Saint canon of scripture, we have a story of Enoch wh...

On May 11, 2017, the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints   announced that wards would no longer use the Varsity Scout and Venturing programs for young men in the church. The transition date is stated as January 1, 2018. Rather than dwell on how sad this announcement makes me, I want to turn my attention to the positive emphasis the announcement makes in relation to reaching out to our young men aged 14-18. The new directions for activities are not new but are instructive for seeing the vision of what our modern prophets and apostles are wanting to establish for our youth activity programs. These directions are broken down into principles and guidelines . Preliminary to these principles and guidelines is a vision statement . Building young men with strong testimonies in the Lord Jesus Christ, helping them magnify their priesthood duties and preparing to fulfill their divine roles is the purpose of the Young Men’s 14-18 activity program. Activit...

Wow! What a crazy week this has been. The country certainly seems to be in commotion. Anyway, I wanted to write a few thoughts about voting third party. I've seen political commentary saying that a vote for a third party candidate is a wasted vote, or even worse a vote for the enemy (whoever that might be). For example, this  or this . And the wasted vote interpretation certainly seems to dominate the conversation I'm seeing on Twitter or Facebook. Friend A: ‟I'm voting for [3rd party candidate] .” Friend B: ‟You idiot! That's a vote for [your preferred candidate for devil in chief] .”  And the crazy thing is that both sides are saying the same thing, even in the same state, just about the opposite candidates. Which makes no sense. Hopefully this post makes some sense even though I'm hitting publish at nearly 2 am. Here is the basic reasoning behind calling such a vote wasted. (See this pretty good article from thefederalist.com  — who knew I'd ever say...

Our government is not a democracy. It is a republic. We, the people, elect representatives to govern on our behalf, establishing and enforcing laws. In our nation, the government is dominated by the two major political parties, the Republicans and the Democrats. Political parties represent a coalition of people with many different beliefs and backgrounds who band together to accomplish goals of government that would not be possible in the absence of this coalition. Compromise is an essential component of the political process when a coalition is formed from a diverse group in which a failure to cooperate makes a majority agreement impossible. The presidential campaign continues and we are one month away from Election Day. The two major candidates and their most vocal supporters are extremely polarizing. Often, the choice is cast as finding the lesser of two evils. The trouble is that different ones of us will identify the greater evil in different ways. Here is my concern, especial...

One month ago, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints   responded to the Boy Scouts of America change in the membership standards for adult leaders. I wrote a blog entry on that topic, which you can read here . Today, the Church updated its response with an announcement  from the Council of the First Presidency and Quorum of Twelve Apostles that it is continuing its support of the Scouting program in the Church. Part of the statement says: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints appreciates the positive contributions Scouting has made over the years to thousands of its young men and boys and to thousands of other youth. As leaders of the Church, we want the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) to succeed in its historic mission to instill leadership skills and high moral standards in youth of all faiths and circumstances, thereby equipping them for greater success in life and valuable service to their country. This is a strong endorsement of the purposes of the...

Today, July 27, 2015 (yesterday by the time the post is live), the National Executive Board of the Boy Scouts of America approved a policy change to allow gay adults to serve as adult volunteers in units, with an exception for units sponsored by religious organizations that allows those units to "use religious beliefs as criteria for selecting adult leaders, including matters of sexuality" (for adults only). My church and the sponsoring organization of all of the Scouting units for which I have volunteered,  The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints , gave a fairly strong response , objecting both about the scheduling of the vote and about the outcome of the policy, saying "the admission of openly gay leaders is inconsistent with the doctrines of the Church and what have traditionally been the values of the Boy Scouts of America." The mission statement of the Boy Scouts of America is: The mission of the Boy Scouts of America is to prepare young people...

In the October 2014 General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints , Elder Larry Kacher gave a talk, " Trifle Not with Sacred Things ." He started with a personal experience about swimming in the Indian ocean on the coast of Oman and being caught in a rip-current. The flow of water was quickly pulling him away from the safety of the shore and attempting to swim against the current was of no use . Ultimately, he escaped the current and returned to shore tired and grateful for his life, and the life of his wife who had followed behind him. At this point in the talk, Elder Kacher said: There are many currents in this earthly life—some safe and others not. President Spencer W. Kimball taught that there are powerful forces in our own lives much like the unseen currents of the ocean. These forces are real. We should never ignore them. As I was preparing for a talk in our congregation's Sacrament meeting  (November 23, 2014), I decided to find out more...

The Watchmaker: Being Methodical in Planning for Success As a Scoutmaster and counselor in a ward Young Men presidency, I attended a stake priesthood leadership meeting as part of our stake conference this weekend. Explanatory Aside : In The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints , congregations are organized into geographical units called wards; a group of wards in a geographic region forms a stake, which references the Old Testament scripture, "Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitations: spare not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes" ( Isaiah 54:2 ). In this meeting, a member of our stake presidency referred to the Watchmaker analogy . This analogy is to the effect that if you were to be walking through a desert and came upon a perfectly functioning pocket watch, then your thought would not be that the watch had happened due to random fluctuations in nature, but rather that there had been a watchmaker t...

I am a Scoutmaster for a Boy Scout troop sponsored by multiple congregations (wards) of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints  (LDS church). I've been thinking a lot about creating an appropriate vision for what this unit should be and how I can create a plan for reaching this vision. This blog entry is an attempt to help crystallize this vision and plan. The Boy Scouts of America  provides program materials and resources to chartering organizations so that they can use these programs to accomplish their goals and objectives for the youth that they serve. While many chartered organizations establish Boy Scout troops simply for the natural character and leadership growth that Scouts learn as part of the experience of Scouting, the LDS church charters Scouting units with the express purpose of using Scouting as the youth ministry activity program . That is, our Scouting program is not an optional community activity that happens to meet at our church, it is our ...

In 2003, I was serving in a bishopric in Edmonds, Washington.  Before moving to Washington, I had spent six years in Tucson, Arizona, and had spent nearly 5 years working with Scouting and Aaronic priesthood quorums.  I had spent a lot of time thinking about why The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints commits so much effort to the Scouting program when so many times the results are somewhat mediocre.  I had come to personally realize the power that is available through this program. Anyway, in response to a discussion on an e-mail list about Scouting, I wrote the following comments about why it might be good to charter all of the different programs, even if there aren't a lot of boys. Although I can't claim to be very effective at accomplishing these goals, I am grateful to be reminded of this vision.  (I have edited my comments to make sense out of the original context.) I hope you don't mind if I talk a little about quorum integrity. The most comm...