My Place to Reflect

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...

I'm scheduled to speak in our church service on Sunday, January 27, 2013.  Anyone is welcome to come and join us.  The meeting starts at 1:00 pm.  If you want to come, you will want to know where my church is: 210 South Avenue, Harrisonburg, Virginia . For an official short summary of what to expect, visit the following description at  www.mormon.org/worship . Our meetings actually consist of three parts over a 3-hour block. For 2013, our meetings are as follows: Sacrament meeting: 1:00 - 2:10 pm This is the main worship service for families, children are welcome Sunday school: 2:20 - 3:00 pm Classes are available for ages 12 and up Primary: 2:20 - 4:00 pm Junior Sunday school classes are available for ages 3-11, grouped by age Priesthood/Relief Society meeting: 3:10 - 4:00 pm Separate classes designed for men and women, ages 12 and up The rest of this blog entry is my attempt to explain a little more about what our meetings are like.  If you have qu...

During the summer of 2009, the teachers and priests in our ward chose to participate in a week-long summer camp at the Boy Scout Claytor Lake Aquatics Base near Radford, Virginia.  Activities at this camp all centered on aquatics activities.  Our young men participated in canoeing and kayaking, waterskiing, large boat sailing, snorkeling, motorboating, and even a pilot program for personal watercraft (jet-skis).  One of our goals for the week was that the experience would provide strong spiritual experiences as well.  In order to accomplish this goal, we started the week by challenging each of the young men to look for spiritual analogies in their activities. One example came from a class on the large boat sailing.  The youth had learned about a principle called tacking.  They reported that if you just try to sail with the wind to your back, you can only go as fast as the wind and would be at the wind's mercy.  Sailboats, however, are built with a k...

In the late 1990s, I was an adult leader for a Boy Scout unit (technically a Varsity Scout team) that was sponsored by my ward (the title given to congregations of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints , aka Mormons, coming from the fact that congregations are organized geographically) in Tucson, Arizona.  One weekend in September, as part of Operation On Target , we were hiking up Picacho Peak  and I found myself in a conversation with a friend on the topic of evolution. My friend was trying to downplay evolution, saying that it was "just a theory" and using arguments similar to if not exactly the analogy of the watch formed without a watchmaker .  He was wanting to argue that schools really should be teaching alternatives to evolution.  (I can't remember if we were talking about creationism or intelligent design.) At the time, I was working on my PhD in applied mathematics at The University of Arizona, with an emphasis particularly on the intersec...