Experiencing Sunday as a Child

I grew up attending church in my LDS ward in the days before the consolidated meeting schedule. For more than 30 years the Sunday worship habits of Latter-Day Saints have included a three-hour block of meetings for all members. The block is broken into three segments.

A 50-minute segment has separate meetings for children (Primary), Young Women, young men (Aaronic Priesthood), adult women (Relief Society), and adult men (Melchizedek Priesthood). A 40-minute segment includes a continuation of Primary for children under 12 and Sunday School classes for everyone else. The remaining 70-minute segment is Sacrament meeting, where the entire congregation gathers in the chapel to worship together and to partake of the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. A 10-minute break separates each segment of the block. Some wards hold Sacrament during the first segment. For others it’s at the end.

When I was a child, the young men and the adult men would arrive at the church to attend priesthood meeting an hour before the rest of the congregation came. Then the whole congregation would gather for Sunday School, which included opening exercises followed by classes. Children under 12 attended “Junior Sunday School.” We’d then go home and return later in the afternoon for a 90-minute Sacrament meeting. (Except on fast Sunday, when Sacrament meeting immediately followed Sunday School.)

The Primary auxiliary met one afternoon each week. Relief Society also met during the week. Young Men and Young Women continue to meet one evening weekly for Mutual.

There are some significant differences between the current consolidated LDS meeting schedule and the split schedule that was used when I was young. For starters, moms used to have to get everyone ready for church twice each Sunday.

Maybe others grew up in families where perfect children quietly stayed in their Sunday best following morning meetings until getting home from Sacrament meeting. But I was one of five boys. We changed out of our Sunday clothes after getting home from Sunday School out of sheer economic necessity. Mom needed to preserve our good clothes as long as possible. Had we stayed in our church clothes between meetings, they likely would have been unfit to wear to the afternoon meeting.

The split schedule also meant that we spent the whole day involved in church meetings. During my formative years, Dad was always serving in some leadership position that required him to attend meetings during the early hours each Sunday morning. He’d be tired enough that he would often get some napping accomplished between morning and afternoon meetings. After a morning of getting kids to and from church, making a lovely Sunday dinner and cleaning up, Mom would also often collapse for much needed rest.

We kids would frequently be shooed outside to provide a little bit of peace for our parents. We’d engage in many activities that I’m certain would be on the “Don’t” list of any lesson about keeping the Sabbath Day holy.

One Sunday between meetings my brother and I ended up down at “the gully,” a water retention basin about a block and a half from our home. There was a lot of new construction going on in that area, so it was a natural draw for curious and adventurous boys. Since our neighborhood was filled with young families, there were lots of boys in a fairly narrow age range in the area. A huge group of these kids had congregated around this huge mud hole that Sunday afternoon.

Excavation had exposed many rocks and left large dirt clods on a ridge overlooking the bog. Seemingly countless boys were standing there doing what almost any boy in such a situation would do—throwing rocks and dirt clods into the water.

I was only about five or six years old, so I didn’t have much of a throwing arm. After being unable to reach the water consistently with my rocks, I noticed my older brother and a couple of other boys down on the mud bank on the other side of the gully. Some of the boys were trying to hit them with dirt clods, but they were out of range.

Taking measure of how close the water was to where my brother was standing, I surmised that I could land my rocks in the bog more easily from that location. I made my way down there and found that I could make splashes with my rocks from there. Of course, being guys, the whole activity soon devolved into a contest of who could make the largest splash.

By this time, most of the boys on top of the opposite ridge were heaving huge rocks or clods into the water, so they didn’t have much range and we were in little danger of being hit.  Or so I thought.  I heaved up the biggest rock I could carry. But I could see that I’d have to get much closer to the water to successfully make a splash. As I ventured out closer to the water I was suddenly whacked on the head by a rather large rock zooming down from the opposite ridge.

Being a rather young child, I screamed in pain and went wailing home. About halfway between the gully and my home, a kindly neighbor darted out of his house to see if he could help. I was holding my head with a bloody hand. My head hurt like crazy. I was blubbering so incoherently that I couldn’t even tell the man what had happened. He got me home to my folks. Mom kept changing out cold washcloths that she held compressed to my head until the bleeding slowed.

Then it was time to go to Sacrament meeting. Mom deliberated about whether to seek medical attention, but back in those days that would have meant going to the emergency room at the other end of town. Besides, I wasn’t bawling out loud anymore. So we got dressed and went to church. The top of my scalp throbbed the entire time. Although Mom dabbed at it with Kleenex, it kept leaking and making my hair sticky.

My wound eventually healed. If anyone brings up that story even today, Mom will say that she feels badly about not taking me in and getting my head stitched up.  If I were balding, a lovely scar would still be apparent.  On another Sunday afternoon my brother severely broke his arm while jumping on a large inner tube. That time Mom had to skip Sacrament meeting to get the arm set and casted. Such were our Sunday afternoon escapades in those days.

Since we always had our big Sunday dinner at lunchtime, our family opted for simpler fare for our evening meal. After getting home from Sacrament meeting, Mom would set out sandwich fixings and we’d eat sandwiches, often while watching the Wonderful World of Disney on our old black & white TV.

With all of us seated around a relatively small table, and all reaching for food, the spillage of drinks was a frequent occurrence. A child spilling his milk in this setting could expect an immediate reaction from each parent. Mom would move with lightning speed to get something with which to stanch the flow of fluid before it dripped off the table onto the carpet or seeped through the cracks where the table halves joined the expansion leaves. The offending child would also earn Dad’s renowned stern German discipline.

One Sunday evening, it was Dad that spilled his milk. We children sat pensively, wanting to laugh but knowing that we’d be in for it if we did. As Mom made her well-practiced dash for a dish towel, Dad cast about for anything that might blot the spill before the milk dripped off the table. He could see that the fluid was moving so fast that even Mom’s rapid response wouldn’t be fast enough.

Being a man with a quick analytical mind, Dad grabbed the closest blot-worthy item he could reach—my brother’s sandwich. Using the sandwich as a towel proved to be effective in stopping the spread of the spill. My brother didn’t think this was funny at all. But the whole rest of the family responded with gales of laughter. This was perhaps the funniest thing I ever saw Dad do during his life.

Sundays are different for my kids than they were for me as a kid. My kids usually only have to get dressed for church once. Upon arriving home, we do not require them to stay in their Sunday meeting clothes. They still roughhouse on Sunday. They will often jump on our trampoline, sometimes while fighting with Nerf swords. I know people that consider such displays to be highly irreverent and not in keeping with the Sabbath. But given the nature of children, I think we’re actually doing a pretty good job.

We have carried over a Sunday tradition from my wife’s family. When not in meetings, we reserve Sunday time for family time. Our kids do not hang out with friends on Sundays. I am quick to say that I have no problem with families that choose otherwise. This is just something that we have found to be successful for our family.

We also avoid entertainment that is not at least somewhat worshipful on the Sabbath. If we watch TV, for example, it is limited to worshipful content. We do not watch sports, or secular TV shows or movies on Sunday. We have found this to be useful in helping us try to focus on worship throughout the day.

I guess that, even though Sunday activities are somewhat different for my children than they were for me when I was a child, in many ways they are similar. We attend church together as a family. We try to do things that will help us make the Sabbath a special day each week. Some Sundays are better than others, and I’m sure that some of our activities don’t look very worshipful to others. But at least we make an earnest effort to keep the Sabbath holy.

Our Memorial Day Visits

I never really had graves of loved ones to visit until just a few years ago. At least not closeby. My maternal grandparents are buried a full day's travel away in a tiny out-of-the-way town in northern Wyoming. My paternal grandparents were buried in Germany.

I say, "were buried" because the common practice in that area is to turn over graves after a while unless families continue to pay fairly exhorbitant 'rent' for the spaces. If Oma's and Opa's graves haven't been turned over yet, they will be before long.

Until fairly recently the nearest grave of a close relative would have required significant travel. So we usually found little motivation to go to a cemetery over Memorial Day weekend.

Then four years ago my Father-In-Law died after a difficult battle with lung cancer. Having served in the Air Force as a young adult, he was interred in the veteran's portion of a local cemetery.

Dad's grave is inauspicious. The headstone is level with the ground. It's not far from the road that loops around and through the rolling green expanse. It's really quite a peaceful and beautiful area. We now make a sojourn to Dad's grave each Memorial Day weekend. The cemetery is festooned with many American flags. Many graves show signs of having been visited.

A little over a year after my Father-In-Law passed away, my Dad died of heart disease. Dad was interred in a cemetery that is only a mile from my home. It is a place I have frequented throughout my life. As a child I walked by or through the cemetery on the way to and from school. In the summer we would walk through the cemetery on our way to and from the community swimming pool.

When my kids were young my main workout was speed walking. We had a two-seat jogger stroller. I'd load up one or two kids and take them on a stroll that included going up and down the roads in the cemetery. Having lived in this area for a while, it is surprising how many names I recognized as we passed grave markers. My kids used to love to see the many rather unique monuments that are scattered throughout the cemetery.

Now I make a habit of stopping by Dad's grave each time I go for a bike ride. The headstone is upright. It sports my parents' names and basic info on the front. On the rear it has the names of their children, a graphic of the Christus statue, a graphic of a set of scriptures, and an engraved quotation of John 17:3; Dad's favorite scripture.

I have a little ritual that I perform when I stop by Dad's grave. Mind you, I am usually riding pretty hard because I am trying to keep my heart rate up. I stop my bike, get off, stand in front of the headstone, remove my helmet, and bow my head. I then don my helmet, re-mount my bike, and am soon on my way.

We always make it to Dad's grave over Memorial Day weekend. Usually we make it there more than once. It has been a tradition to have a family gathering on Memorial Day with some or all of my siblings' families. Usually as we get ready to wrap up the event, we make a quick trip to Dad's grave before everyone heads home. Each year the cemetery staff does a lot of work to beautify the grounds in anticipation of Memorial Day.

When we visit the graves of my Father-In-Law and my Dad, I recognize that the experience is different for each member of my family. Each brings a unique perspective to the visit. It is not really possible to convey to my children what I experience as I stand there, since they didn't share the same relationship with these men that I did. Nor do they have the same level of maturity. I suppose that the important thing is that we make an effort to honor our loved ones that have passed on.

As is the nature of life, the number of nearby graves of loved ones will increase as the years pass. We will do what is needed to visit those graves. I hope that my children will do the same if they are in a position to do so. Who knows where life will lead them and how far away they will end up living?

It has been said that the way a society treats its dead says a lot about its level of humanity and civility. My Dad and my Wife's Dad are gone. But the love I feel for them is not diminished. That is what I will be thinking about as I visit their graves this weekend.

Mind Games and Economic Semantics

Rationality is a significant principle in economics. It is employed to explain how people make choices. This SmartMoney article highlights Dan Ariely, an expert in behavioral economics that has PhDs in cognitive psychology and business. An accomplished and engaging public speaker, Ariely contends that many choices are made on an irrational rather than a rational basis.

An example of Ariely’s contention of general and predictable irrationality mentioned in the SmartMoney article involves mortgage-backed securities that played such a prominent role in the 2008 housing bubble crash.

“Most people, it turns out, are comfortable with a small amount of cheating; if the incentives are in place, they can bend the rules and still consider themselves "good people." That's one reason Ariely is disappointed but not surprised that high bonuses are back in the financial world. "If I pay people $5 million to view mortgage-backed securities as a good product, most people will believe [those securities] are good," says Ariely.”

If this is a good example of irrationality, it is a poor one. In fact, it looks a lot like cases cited to support rational choice theory.

The common use of the term rationality denotes sanity and fact-based emotionless decision making. This appears to be the way the term is used throughout the SmartMoney article. It would seem that this is how Ariely employs the term.

Rational choice theory, on the other hand, defines rationality as making choices based on which option is likely to produce the greatest return at the lowest cost. It applies in all decisions regardless of whether they involve monetary matters or not. It suggests that people respond to the incentives they perceive—all of the incentives, not just those that translate directly into money.

Paying someone “$5 million to view mortgage-backed securities as a good product” creates a huge incentive to adopt such a view. Rational choice theory says that a person receiving such an opportunity would balance the perceived benefits and costs of accepting that view against the perceived benefits and costs refusing to do so.

Maybe the person considers what his neighbors will think of him or what his God will think of him, as well as how his physical lifestyle will improve. Perhaps, like Tevye singing If I Were a Rich Man, they see their neighbors revering them for their wealth and even increased opportunities for worship and doing good.

One of the main points many economists make with respect to rational choice theory is that no one is better suited to make any choice a person faces than the person themselves. While no one has perfect information regarding any choice, each of us brings a unique understanding of the costs and benefits involved to each decision. It would be impossible for anyone else to fully comprehend the number of factors we consider and the weight we apply to each factor when making a decision. Some of these things are so automatic that we probably couldn’t articulate them all if we wanted to.

Whenever someone purports to demonstrate that people make irrational economic choices, it is almost always because they have indulged in the hubris of assuming to know what is best for others. It can be relatively easy to quantify whether someone spends overall less on a cart of similar groceries at store A than at store B. But to then assert that someone that shops at store B is behaving irrationally is extreme arrogance.

How does the outside observer know all of the factors that go into a shopper’s cost-benefit analysis? Declaring emotion to be irrational makes it far easier to study behavior and to declare it irrational. But the fact is that we are emotional beings. It is absurd to attempt to separate people from one of their core characteristics in the name of science.

In the store A, store B example, might it not be possible that some shoppers are willing to pay more to shop in a store with better lighting, more pleasing décor, or a layout that makes more sense to them? Or maybe it’s a matter of time vs money. They happen to know where things are in store B and their time is more important to them than the savings they would get by going to the unfamiliar store A.

I know people that are deeply religious that choose to shop at a store that is closed on the Sabbath, although, prices are generally higher. I suppose Ariely and his ilk would say that these people are behaving irrationally. But their choices are perfectly rational under rational choice theory. They perceive a greater net benefit from their choices despite the fact that shopping receipts show that they spend more. Spiritual benefits are hard to track through cash register receipts.

In effect, Ariely is simply playing a game of semantics, applying some behavioral economic theories to the common understanding of rationality rather than using the term as employed by most behavioral economists. From the grand living he earns by doing so, it would seem that he is highly incentivized to engage in this deceptive behavior. That too demonstrates rationality.

Me Run for Office? Not Likely

Two neighbors that I very much respect asked me yesterday to consider running for city council this year. Three of five council seats will be up for election this fall. This isn’t the first time I have been asked to run for public office. There was a time in my life when I somewhat fancied that idea. By the time I arrived at a station of life where it might have seemed possible to seek public office, I had come to abhor the thought.

I have noted that most of my neighbors feel that they have done their civic duty if they vote in the November elections. A few try to vote in primary elections and one-off matters like bond elections. A very tiny minority attend their party’s caucus meetings and only a very few of those attend party conventions.

Many of my neighbors have no idea what the city council is doing unless something out of the ordinary gets reported. Many could not tell you the names of their state representative and state senator. Some aren’t sure who their U.S. representative or senators are. Yet most of these folks consider themselves to be decent, civic minded folks.

Every once in a while people get hot under the collar about some public matter that threatens to affect them in a more personal way. Then they get more politically involved—some temporarily and some more permanently. It is during such civic spasms that I have been approached about running for public office.

The current civic paroxysm is occasioned by the city considering the construction of a public works facility near my neighborhood. About a dozen years ago, descendants of pioneer settlers sold a handsome chunk of farmland to the city after reaching an understanding of how the property would be used.

A small portion of the property would be subdivided. Family members of the sellers would be given opportunities to buy lots up front. The property that was not part of the subdivision was to be maintained as green space. The city could build a park but not a sports venue on the land.

I was concerned when I heard that the actual deed did not include these agreements. Some other type of instrument was supposedly drawn up for that. The subdivision went in, part of the area became a lovely park with an outdoor amphitheater, and the remainder continued to look much as it did at the time of the sale.

Of course, city leadership changes over time. The current leadership sees a large chunk of property owned by the city that might be a decent spot for a new public works campus. City leaders are still licking their wounds from the last attempt to locate a public works facility in a residential area on property the city already owns. They appear to have stepped into a mess again, having been caught unaware of the terms under which the property was acquired.

Current leaders have been conscientious enough to check with those that were in leadership at the time the city bought the property. Former leaders have corroborated residents’ claims that the city agreed to maintain the area as green space.

It may be that the city would be within its actual legal rights to develop a public works facility on the property. But it would engender a great deal of ill will among residents, as well as descendants of original settlers who only agreed to sell the property with the understanding that it would remain green space.

Frankly, I empathize with city leadership. The current public works facility is old. Maintenance costs are rising, the buildings do not meet current seismic code, the city has outgrown the facility, the property footprint isn’t large enough to accommodate an adequately sized new facility, and even if adjacent property were available its characteristics would render it unsuitable for that use.

The city needs a new facility in a new location. Predictably, nobody wants this facility in their neighborhood. The standard not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) sentiment runs strong for pretty much every location the city has considered.

It’s a sticky wicket. City leaders have been asked why they keep looking mainly at residential locations for the facility instead of considering spots that are already industrial. It turns out that almost all of the available property owned by the city is surrounded by residential communities. The city has been planned as mostly residential. There isn’t much industrial space.

Why can’t the city buy the rundown vacant grocery store for this purpose? Not sure. Maybe it’s too small or too expensive. At any rate, buying property would necessarily cost a lot more than using property already owned by the city.

Costing more is a problem. Voters have recently disciplined leaders that raised taxes instead of trimming budgets. This chastening has been sufficient for city leaders to work harder on being more frugal. I would be surprised if they voted for tax increases or asked voters to support a bond in the near future.

At any rate, some of my neighbors, suddenly concerned about what city leaders are up to, are casting about for alternatives. They should be careful. If they manage to elect new leaders, how sure can they be that the new leaders will be an improvement over the old?

I am personally acquainted with the mayor and three of the five city council members. I must admit that some of their choices upset me. But all of these people are upstanding individuals that earnestly try to do what they believe to be in the city’s best interest.

Besides, I cannot honestly say that I could or would do any better than they do. One of my neighbors suggests that this realization is “humility” and would be an asset in city leadership. Sounds like flattery to me.

I know myself to be a pleaser. I like to think that I have integrity, but I also know that I readily respond to the incentives inherent in whatever situation I find myself. I try to keep myself out of situations where my integrity might be compromised. Politics deals in shades of gray. No matter what you do you are bound to have people upset with you. You’ve got to have a thick hide in politics. I’m not sure I am (or even want to be) that resilient.

It has long been my philosophy that one can do his or her civic duty in many ways other than serving in public office. I believe that being a functional father and serving in the Boy Scouts are viable ways of strengthening the community.

Seeking public office also means campaigning. Campaigning costs money. It means unabashedly asking people to give you money and offering them a good reason for doing so. It means a lot of hard work. Getting elected usually requires a passion for the job. I harbor no such internal fire for political position.

As I mentioned earlier, I presently loathe the thought of being a politician. I once kind of liked the idea of having the honors that accrue with such positions. Now the thought of such accolades creeps me out. I have little desire to have the thrill of exercising control over others.

While some may say that we need people in public office with such characteristics of political modesty, I’m not so sure. Would you go to a doctor that detests being a doctor? Would you want to send your child to a teacher that hates teaching? Would you hire a receptionist that finds interfacing with the public abhorrent?

We live in a society where people specialize in pursuits. The more specialized and the more proficient they become, the more they are sought after and compensated. While it is wise to be wary of anyone that has avarice for power over others, the fact is that we tend to seek to fill positions with people that are good at performing those jobs. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a server at a restaurant, a mechanic, a clerk, a farm worker, a network engineer, a manager, a bus driver, or a politician. As the ‘hiring managers’ for elected officials, voters are unlikely to select someone that doesn’t really want the job.

Even with three city council seats up for election, the incumbent factor must be considered as well. Over the years I have noted that it isn’t enough to advertise how good someone will be at serving on the city council if the incumbent is running for re-election. Unless the voters are dissatisfied with the incumbent for some reason, the newcomer won’t be elected even if he/she is the most qualified candidate ever.

I’m not sure whether any of the three incumbents are running this fall (although I suspect all are), but none of them has done anything that would cause voters to oust them. Unless there is an open seat, I would see no purpose in trying to beat an incumbent with which voters are not displeased.

The main point is that I have no desire to run for political office. (In fact, I have anti-desire to do so.) I do not believe myself to be potentially any better at managing the city than the current crop of leaders. I lack the energy and drive necessary to be elected. I am completely unwilling to put in the kind of time and effort needed to mount a serious campaign.

I am flattered that some of my neighbors think that I might be a good elected official. But it simply isn’t reality.

Tribute to My Mom

Mothers Day was two weeks ago. Ever since then I have been thinking about my Mom. I have intended to write something about her, but one thing after another has delayed my writing.

I saw very few pictures from my Mom’s childhood when I was young. Then a few years ago, her brother, who had spent his career as a photographer, found a few family photos from the old days. He cleaned them up, reproduced them, and sent them out to family.

When Mom looked at the black and white photos of the family on the porch of the old homestead, she said that she didn’t remember the clan and the place looking so rundown. She said, “It looks like the Grapes of Wrath.” Dad looked at the photos and said, “That’s because it IS the Grapes of Wrath!”

Mom was born in a small town in the rural Midwest during the hardscrabble years of the Great Depression. She was second to the youngest of her parents’ large brood. Like everyone else in the area, my grandparents were farmers. Also like their neighbors, they fell on very hard times during the depression.

Grandma was a member of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Her sister sent her a letter saying that she had joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and was going to send missionaries to teach my Grandma. Grandma responded that if the missionaries came, she would prove them wrong.

The missionaries showed up during harvest season. During the day they went out and worked long hard hours helping Grandpa with the farm work. In the evening after dinner they taught the family the gospel. Grandma soon changed her mind and joined the LDS Church along with some of the older children. From that moment on, Grandma was a stalwart member.

Mom was a young girl when the family left the Midwest and moved to a tiny town way up near the northern border of central Wyoming. They were attracted by the oil field jobs in the area, since it had become so difficult to make a living farming. They still had a farm, but Grandpa spent the rest of his working years doing hard manual labor in the oil fields.

Mom was baptized a member of the LDS Church in northern Wyoming. Her Dad had been baptized a few years earlier. But Grandpa was never a serious churchgoing type. And he never gave up his tobacco.

One of my older cousins relates that he and a couple of our other cousins were pretty young boys when Grandpa caught them trying out cigarettes behind the barn one day. He said that it was the only time he ever saw Grandpa get really angry. Through strong words and corporal punishment he tried to impress on the boys how addictive tobacco was. He wanted to give up the dirty habit, he said, but he just couldn’t.

The only pictures I ever saw of my Grandpa until I was an adult were of him emaciated and dying of cancer incident to his tobacco addiction. He passed away while my Mom was pregnant with me.

Grandma did an astonishing amount of family history research from her outpost in rural Wyoming with very limited resources (in the days before computers). Once a year she would make an excursion to the Salt Lake Temple to do ordinance work for her kindred dead.

When Mom was a teenager she spent a year living with her brother’s family in California. She cared for the young children while her brother and sister-in-law worked. On one occasion they drove to Utah to attend the LDS Church’s general conference. They had to drive through Ogden to get to Salt Lake. Even living so far away from the area, they knew the seedy reputation of Ogden’s 25th Street. Mom said she felt unclean just passing through the town. Little did she know that she would one day live in Ogden.

Back at home, Mom worked in the local pharmacy after school and on Saturdays. Like most small town pharmacies, the place featured a soda fountain and hand dipped ice cream. During football season, the local high school games would end almost at the same time that the pharmacy was supposed to close. Mom said that the manager would try to keep the place open longer to catch the stream of people leaving the nearby football field. The girls that worked at the pharmacy, on the other hand, would try to make sure the place closed right on time so that they didn’t have to wait on the crowds.

Mom went to work one balmy afternoon wearing a light jacket. Then a severe winter storm blew in while she was at work. She lived several miles from town. Around closing time, her little brother showed up on his bicycle. Apparently Grandpa was still at work in the oil fields with the family’s only car. But Mom couldn’t ride on the bike with her brother. So she walked home with inadequate footwear and outerwear. She said she has never been so cold in her whole life.

After graduating high school, Mom took a trip to visit some friends that were living in Salt Lake City. While she was there, she ended up getting a job with a small CPA firm. Later she took a typist job at the LDS Church Administration Building. Back in those days, all businesses employed typists because every document had to be created from scratch. Large organizations had armies of typists.

One day Mom was sitting in the cafeteria alone during break time when Gordon B. Hinckley walked in. He was not a general authority at the time, but was the top employee in the church’s missionary department. He walked over to my Mom and said that he felt impressed to ask her if she had considered serving a mission for the church.

Mom replied that she had considered a mission, but that the church only let “old maids” serve missions. The policy at the time required young women to be at least 23 years old to serve. When Brother Hinckley asked Mom’s age, she responded that she would turn 21 in a couple of weeks. He said that the church policy was changing to allow 21-year-old women to serve missions. He suggested that she go to her bishop and apply to serve a mission. She followed this counsel and was called to serve in Germany.

Mom travelled to Germany by ship. All missionary language training occurred on the job back in those days. The first German word Mom heard after disembarking was somebody saying, “Achtung!” (Attention!) over a loud speaker. She thought some guy was clearing his throat in the microphone.

Over the next two years Mom served in various places, including Berlin and Hamburg. Back in those days young men served 2½ years and young women served two years.

While Mom was serving in Hamburg, she and her companion were at the local church building one evening when a young German man entered and asked to know more about the church. He had been contacted by LDS missionaries while visiting his parents out on the northwest coast of Germany. He had read everything the missionaries had given him and wanted to know more.

The first meeting with this young German wasn’t very productive. They knelt and prayed to start off. He asked all kinds of deep philosophical questions which the missionaries couldn’t address very well. But he agreed to another meeting.

As they began the second meeting with the young German man, they again knelt to pray. Then my Mom’s missionary companion informed the young man that it was his turn to offer the prayer. Although he felt odd about that, he began to pray and experienced a sensation of divine love so profound and all encompassing that he had difficulty saying much. From that moment on, the man was converted.

Mom grew quite close with this young man. Eventually Mom’s mission wrapped up and she returned to the States. The young man joined the church and continued to correspond with Mom. After a few months, the young man succeeded in arranging passage to America and getting a work visa. A kind couple in Colorado that didn’t know him at all sponsored him. They agreed to financially care for him for five years if he failed to care for himself. Mom moved in with her sister who lived in a nearby town.

Over the next few months, the couple courted. When Dad had been a member of the church for a year, Mom and Dad traveled to Salt Lake City and were sealed in the Salt Lake Temple. They then traveled up to northern Wyoming to visit Mom’s parents. Dad was stunned by how many hours they could drive seeing only what looked to him like desolation.

Dad was further stunned upon meeting his new in-laws. Their home was pretty rustic. Dad said that it was little more than a tar papered shack and that their “farm” was a tiny rundown affair. As far as he knew, nobody in Germany had lived like that for more than three centuries by that time. How could anyone in the world’s wealthiest nation live like that? He wondered what he had gotten himself into.

Mom and Dad soon settled into life in Colorado, where their first apartment was small and old. The bathroom was a converted closet that was so tiny that “you had to decide what you were doing before going in.” Eventually they moved to a larger apartment. During their five years in Colorado they welcomed three sons to the family.

Then Dad got a job in Ogden, Utah, so they moved. After a year of living in an apartment in the inner city, Mom and Dad moved into a starter home in a new development. They soon welcomed another son to the family. The fifth son—my caboose brother—didn’t arrive until some 14 years after that.

The new neighborhood was a joyous place filled with many young families and hoards of kids. About three years after moving in, Mom and Dad began to desire to visit Dad’s family in Germany. Contact with the family was minimal, mostly by mail. Overseas phone calls were frightfully expensive back then. But they needed more money to afford to travel to Germany.

The IRS was opening a new service center in Ogden, so Mom applied for seasonal shift work as a keypunch operator. During tax season, Mom would spend evenings punching taxpayer information into computer cards. I hated those times. I’d come home from school and Mom would leave for work. Dad would get home later after Mom left.

But Mom’s work paid off. After three years she and Dad traveled to Germany for a month. Gracious families in the neighborhood took care of us boys during the weeks that Mom and Dad were away.

Mom needed to work the next season to help defray some expenses. Without being asked, Mom was transferred to the human resources department as a clerk, where the work was not seasonal. Eventually Mom was working day shift. Later she transitioned to the job of personnel specialist and made a career of working at IRS.

Throughout those years, life was crazy with kids, school, activities, and church callings. Mom served in many church callings. Whenever Mom undertook to serve, she did so wholeheartedly. Whether she was a Cub Scout den leader, a Relief Society president, a Sunday School teacher, or anything else, Mom served with deep dedication and devoted energy. If Mom’s essence could be distilled into a single word, that word would be “service.”

When my younger brother was 13 years old, Mom and Dad gathered us around the kitchen table one Saturday morning and explained that Mom was four months pregnant. We were shocked. But a few months later we found ourselves very welcoming of our new baby brother.

As grandkids started to come on board, Mom tried to treat each one with special care, all while juggling her own affairs, working, and raising my little brother. Dad retired relatively young and then went to work doing electrical engineering work on a contract basis. Mom continued to work at IRS.

When Dad was called to be a stake patriarch, Mom became his stenographer. Dad recorded the blessings as he gave them. Mom would carefully listen to the tapes and type up the blessings; more than 750 of them over time. Although Dad’s command of the English language significantly exceeded that of most natural born Americans, Dad was always frustrated that he couldn’t say in regular English the ideas that the Spirit conveyed to him while giving blessings. Mom helped compensate for this by helping Dad refine the language of each blessing until he was ready to deliver the printed copy.

Eventually Mom retired from the IRS. Dad finally retired from work at that time too. A few years later, they went back to their old stomping grounds in Hamburg Germany as missionaries for the LDS Church.

A few years after returning from their mission, Dad suffered a stroke. His heart was in bad shape from having failed to get proper treatment for several heart attacks. After Dad’s stroke, he couldn’t think quite the same. Although he was mentally functional in some aspects, he was incapable of thinking his way through some daily tasks that had been his domain for many years.

Getting Dad’s medications balanced was nightmarish. But Mom persisted. After Dad’s stroke, he frequently suffered psychological trauma at night. Nights could be terrible for Mom as the caregiver, but month after month she persisted in caring for Dad. It wasn't just nighttime either. Dad's episodes of impaired mental clarity and physical impairment caused incredible amounts of stress for Mom, whose 24x7 job became caring for Dad.

Dad’s heart was dying bit by bit. The doctors had told us how it would go, and it pretty much followed that path. As the heart became less efficient, Dad became less able to function both physically and mentally.

Dad had another stroke about a week and a half before he passed away. This time his body and his psychological state were so dysfunctional that Mom simply couldn’t care for him at home any more. He was admitted to the hospital, where he declined day after day until he passed away. Mom stayed steadfastly by his side until the very last.

Mom has been busy in the years since Dad passed on. You guessed it, she’s been busy serving. Not only does Mom do church callings, she busies herself serving neighbors, friends, and family.

Mom has been a wonderful example of service, devotion, and work throughout the years. She has been persistently strong and valiant in her testimony of Christ. She not only sees the needs of others; she actively tries to do something about it. Every day.

That’s my Mom. One of the choicest people I know. I have no idea what I did to be so blessed to have her for my Mom.

Pets

We're not pet people. That is, we don't generally own pets. This has consternated my kids from time to time. But I have my reasons.

Years ago I saw a study that reported that people with Multiple Sclerosis (like me) tend to experience greater problems with the disease if they have fur bearing pets that live in their home. On the other hand, people with M.S. that have pets tended to report better emotional wellbeing than those that don't have pets.

I figured that I'd rather be better off physically, so I opted for the no pet approach — or at least no fur bearing pets. Of course, like every other study, this is a single data point that should be considered in a larger array of data to form a more objective picture.

Truth be told, I just don't want to own a pet. I'm frankly not certain why that is. I loved the pets we owned throughout my childhood. We briefly owned a small black poodle that my mother had gotten from a lady with whom she worked after the lady's poodle had a litter. We called our poodle Cinder.

We loved Cinder, but Mom and Dad were both working full time in those days. All of us kids were gone to school all day. We didn't have a fully fenced backyard. So Cinder stayed cooped up in the house for many hours each day with nothing to do and nowhere to ... uh ... go.

Finally, in the interest of being humane to the dog and keeping our basement free of pet excrement, we gave Cinder away to a family that could provide her a better environment. I think I cried myself to sleep every night for more than a month after that.

A few years later a little mutt followed my brother home, although, he tried repeatedly to get the dog to go home. She stayed around our house, so we felt that it was our duty to feed her and give her water. After three days we discovered who the owner was. My younger brother was heartbroken when we returned the puppy.

The owner explained that the puppy was part of a litter that was going to have their shots within a week. If we were interested, we could buy the dog for the price of the veterinarian visit. My younger brother got Poochie for his birthday. She soon became part of the family.

13 years later, Poochie was suffering from a heart condition that caused her a great deal of pain. We had a neighbor that was a veterinarian that gave us medicine. He explained that if the medication didn't help within 48 hours, no treatment would help.

The medicine didn't work for Poochie. One night after she spent the whole night walking around the yard coughing and in obvious intense pain, we held a family council. We decided it was humane to put Poochie down. I was the only family member that had both the time and the fortitude to take her to the vet to have her euthanized. It was a difficult chore. My Mom, who didn't particularly care for the dog, cried.

Poochie was the last pet I had until my oldest son brought a goldfish home from school when he was in fourth grade. Over the next few years we went through several episodes of owning fish. Most died quickly. If the fish lived long enough, the story was always the same. The same children that had begged and pleaded for a pet, promising to be ever vigilant in caring for the critter, would prove to be reliably unreliable in cleaning the aquarium.

We actually had one fish that lived quite a while. It started out as one of a whole passel of goldfish. Eventually it was the only one left alive and it was over half a foot long. When nobody in the family was willing to care for the fish any longer, we gave it to a local pet store.

A number of years went by before we obtained our next pet. That was just a month and a half ago when my youngest son received a tree frog for his birthday, along with a good terrarium and all of the necessary supplies. This only came about after many months of pleading and painstaking research.

My son was tremendously proud of his little frog, which he dubbed 'Stickers' due to the way the frog could stick to the surfaces of the terrarium. For the most part, my son was pretty careful about caring for the animal — sometimes only after we reminded him of his duty. The terrarium was kept in the proper temperature and humidity range. The water was changed on schedule. The frog received the best diet possible.

Then yesterday evening we found Stickers lying feet up in the soil-like material on the bottom of the terrarium. My son was completely broken up over this loss. He cried that he wasn't worthy to own a pet. I did my best to explain the circle of life and the inevitability of each pet's demise. Only prayer and blessing seemed to comfort my mourning son.

At my son's request, Stickers was left in the terrarium overnight. Today my wife found a small box just the right size for Stickers. My son forbade us from flushing or trashing the frog's remains. Rather, we buried Stickers in his little cardboard coffin in an ornamental bed in the front yard. My young son actually got his much older brother to play Taps on his trumpet prior to putting the dirt back into the grave.

My son then fashioned a cross out of two popsicle sticks. He wrote "RIP Stickers" on the tiny cross and placed it on his frog's grave. I get the feeling that, although my son has known Stickers for only a few weeks, he will long remember his first real pet.

School Discipline

I clearly remember the first time I was sent to the principal's office. I was in third grade. Our grade was spending the afternoon in the school cafeteria doing square dancing for physical education. Like almost all of the boys, I found the activity less than pleasant — especially when we had to join hands with the girls at our sides. Yuck!

Whenever we had to circle or promenade, the boy across the square from me would run. This caused some problems with dance, and that is exactly why he did it. This boy was a frequent mischief maker. But dance after dance he got away with his shenanigans.

From my viewpoint, it looked like the boy was having great fun. Other boys and even some of the girls were laughing about it. Although I knew it wasn't kosher, I thought I'd give it a try too. The next time we were to circle, I ran rather than trying to keep time with the music. So did the other boy. By this time the joke was old, so fewer classmates chuckled.

Suddenly I felt a hand firmly grip my shoulder. I turned to see a seriously angry teacher. She was actually a small woman, although, at age eight she looked pretty big to me. She marched me unceremoniously out of the cafeteria as my classmates gaped. I was taken to the principal's office. The principal wasn't there, so the teacher pulled a chair into the doorway of the office and made me sit down. She said that I was not to move from that chair until she returned for me.

I knew that I deserved the treatment I was getting. I was upset with myself for following the example set by one of our grade's most notoriously obnoxious members. It chagrined me that he had gotten away with the same behavior multiple times, while I was punished on the first offense. Still, a part of me secretly admired this feat.

As it turned out, this episode occurred quite close to the end of the school day. Soon the bell rang and hundreds of students streamed past the school office. Most gawked at me. Some wondered aloud what nasty thing I must have done. The teacher had purposefully set the chair so that I would be publicly humiliated. I have to admit that it was a pretty effective tactic. I had tears streaming down my embarrassed face.

I was glad when the school grew quieter because there were no more students to ridicule me. For a while I could hear lots of noise from outside the building. But gradually even that noise faded. I sat in the chair for a total of about 40 minutes. For an eight-year-old with nothing to do, that's like an eternity. The hands on the clock seemed to move ever so slowly.

Finally I heard the footsteps of someone approaching the office. It was the cross teacher. She told me to come with her. I wondered what new forms of torture awaited me. But she simply escorted me back to the classroom, had me get my stuff, and told me to go home. I was glad to get out of there, but I was still crying as I raced home on my bicycle.

I never went to the principal's office for discipline again during my school years.

I'm still not sure what was going through that teacher's mind that day. Although students might not believe it, teachers are human too. They are perfectly capable of having a bad day once in a while.

Obviously it is necessary to maintain some level of decorum in school settings in order to facilitate learning. Especially in this day and age it is difficult to know precisely how far educators should be permitted to go in pursuit of this goal.

One of the schools I attended had a large whacking board hanging on the wall of the office emblazoned with the phrase "BOARD OF EDUCATION!" I never saw it used. The threat of its use was enough.

When I was in junior high school, I was once sent on an errand by a teacher during class. As I came near the school office, I could see the gruff assistant principal harshly yelling at a boy that was one of the school's main screw-ups. Not only was the man yelling, he was kicking the boy in the butt over and over again. Hard!

Just then one of the larger male teachers brought another boy who was a frequent participant in the first boy's escapades. The assistant principal was wearing square toed dress shoes. He turned to the second boy and yelled, "I'm going to ask you some questions and you had better answer me straight!" Lifting his kicking foot, he said, "You see the toe of this shoe? It was pointed when I started!" I could see serious fear in the boy's eyes before I turned the corner.

This kind of behavior by an educator would not be tolerated today. It could even result in jail time.

There have in recent weeks been several news stories about educators that are accused of going too far in disciplining a student. In some cases parents have sided with the educators. People have gotten on radio shows and written on websites stuff like, "Why, when I was a youth, if a teacher had to whack me at school, I got whacked much harder when I got home."

Positive incentives are to be preferred over disincentives such as punishment. But punishment must exist as well, since not all disruptive behaviors are prevented through positive means. The question is exactly what is permissible and what isn't.

Frankly I believe that it is not possible to precisely codify what educators may do to punish unacceptable behavior. It probably isn't even desirable to do so. What is permissible is necessarily governed by community standards and general school culture. Certain lines may be drawn. Indeed, some lines should never be crossed.

But the more refined rules regarding punishment become, the less flexibility educators have. Knowing that they could easily step over one of the myriad rules, they are more likely to refrain from punishment at all. School districts that have gone this route often have a very high level of dysfunction. The inmates run the asylum. Teachers in these battle hardened schools just try to make it through the day so that they can collect their pay and go home. Any learning that occurs is a luxury.

I'm not calling for a return to the day when it seemed appropriate for an assistant principle to kick a kid in the butt hard enough to cause bruising. The older I get the less I am convinced that abusive treatment accomplishes much good. Still, it is good for students to learn that in the real world there are harsh consequences for harsh behavior.

Pretty mealy-mouthed stuff, eh? I'm afraid that real life is like that sometimes. We rarely have clarity in developing approaches to solving our most serious issues. It's the nature of life. It's a good thing that some educators are willing to accept this hard work. Perhaps learning this kind of thing from a teacher's example is as valuable as the academic learning a student will get during his/her school years.

Faith of My Father

As a kid, my Dad was one of the most devout people I personally knew. He had rock solid faith in the gospel of Jesus Christ. I was well into my adult years before I fully understood the journey that had brought him to that point.

Dad grew up in a nonreligious family in Germany during the 1930s and 1940s. As the Nazi regime gained control of the country, school teachers and administrators were replaced with Nazi loyalists who taught the children a mixture of nationalism and rationalism.

Dad had no reason to consider religion to be a reasonable approach to life. He had no religious friends. Most of the people he knew thought of religion as a quaint tradition and thought that anybody that took religion seriously had to be deluded or crazy.

But Dad was also very analytical. Studying electrical work, he was used to being able to drive to something that was true. Electrical theories could be tested and proven. The whole war made no sense to him. His analytical mind saw a lot of people doggedly pursuing things that were obviously not true.

After World War II as Dad progressed into young adulthood, he took a very philosophical approach to life. All of his companions drank, smoked, and caroused. These obviously self destructive activities seemed stupid to Dad. He could not bring himself to participate in them from a rational standpoint.

Once Dad was doing a job for a private telecommunications firm installing a complex system in a building that housed several businesses. One of the largest was a tobacco wholesaling company. Seeing how hard Dad worked, one of the bosses offered Dad a job that dealt with the firm's transportation logistics. Dad would have immediately more than tripled his salary. Dad felt that taking such a job would be hypocritical. He could not accept the job and be true to himself, so he continued being an electrician.

During this whole time, Dad searched for philosophical truths wherever they could be found. He took opportunities to study from learned professors and to explore the works of the great philosophers. The more he studied these, the more he felt that all of these missed the mark. They had a semblance of truth but they always veered off before hitting on real truths.

Dad left no stone unturned in his search for truth. He began studying religion, delving deeply into all major religions and even many non-mainstream religions. It became one of his hobbies. He compared and contrasted all kinds of philosophies.

One one occasion Dad had an opportunity to meet with one of the top priests in Germany. He thought that this man surely must know the truth. They had a very frank discussion. Dad was quite disappointed to discover that this high ranking church man had little certainty about his beliefs. At least the man was honest about that fact.

While visiting his parents one weekend, Dad met and was taught by two missionaries from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. They spoke poor German and wore ill fitting suits. But they caught Dad's attention when he discovered that they were spending 2½ years (missions were longer in those days) preaching the gospel with no pay. In fact, they were paying their own way. Dad had never heard of such a thing.

The missionaries told of the origins of the LDS Church. Dad listened curiously. When they told of Joseph Smith's first vision of Deity, Dad thought of the similarities this story had with other descriptions throughout history of mortals experiencing encounters with God.

Then one of the missionaries bore witness of the truth of Joseph Smith's testimony. Dad experienced a feeling he had never had before. He didn't know for himself, but he knew that the missionary knew that what he was saying was absolutely true. Dad could not deny it.

A few weeks later Dad met with LDS missionaries in the city where he was living. He had read everything the missionaries had given him and he wanted to know more about what he had felt that day. The missionaries opened with prayer. Dad found this meeting somewhat less satisfying because he had an agenda to get certain deep philosophical questions answered while the missionaries had an agenda to teach a set lesson plan. But Dad agreed to another meeting.

When the time came to start this next meeting, the missionaries invited Dad to kneel with them to pray. One missionary then turned to Dad and informed him that it was his turn to pray. Dad had never prayed in his life. If God existed at all, Dad could only imagine a non-personal entity. He couldn't imagine a God that was intimately interested in the lives of each person on the earth. He had seen too much evil and carnage in his life to think that such a being could exist.

Dad was a bit flustered, but not wanting to offend the missionaries, he decided to give a short prayer. He opened his mouth to speak, but before the first word escaped his lips he was overcome with the most intense outpouring of love he had ever experienced. He was suddenly aware of the presence of God; not some imaginary being, but an all powerful Divine parent that very personally loved him and wanted the very best for him.

Through his tears Dad finished his brief prayer and the missionaries gave their lesson. But the words of the lesson were nothing compared to the relationship with God that Dad had suddenly discovered. Knowing that God listened to his prayers, Dad prayed almost constantly over the following days. He prayed silently when he was out and about. He prayed aloud in his apartment.

Visionary gifts run in Dad's line. He had many experiences that many believers would love to have and that some nonbelievers chalk up to mental problems. For example, scriptures were hard to come by in Germany in those days. Not having access to his own set of scriptures, Dad saw them in vision.

Upon retiring to his bed at night, something akin to a computer screen would appear before his eyes. The scriptures would appear on the screen in German and would scroll up the screen for hours. This went on night after night until Dad knew the scriptures very well even before he owned a printed set.

Although Dad had a tremendous spiritual conversion to the LDS Church, he did not experience a social conversion. He had to admit that most of the church members he encountered were seriously odd and flawed people. While Dad felt alive in Christ, many church members went about their church activities with seemingly little attention to having a vibrant relationship with God.

When Dad came to the states, he encountered people in the church that he said would have made great Nazis. That creeped him out. But Dad was completely certain about the truths that had been revealed to him and he knew that he could not deny those truths. This approach became the hallmark of Dad's life. It became Dad's identity.

That is the kind of father I grew up with. No matter what questions and perplexities I faced in my younger days with respect to the gospel and the church, I knew with absolute certainty that Dad knew that the gospel was true. Over time I came to know gospel truths for myself. But I would be ungrateful if I did not acknowledge how much Dad's witness influenced me. His faith was strong enough to keep me upright. For that I will be forever grateful.

GA Visits During My Mission

Years ago I spent two years serving as a missionary for the LDS Church in Norway. During my time there I had occasion to meet several of the church's general authorities. Each of these occasions has left certain notable memories in my mind.

The first of these occasions was when Elder Dean L. Larsen of the First Quorum of the Seventy visited for stake conference in Oslo. Following the weekend's meetings, Elder Larsen had a couple of hours to burn on Monday before catching his flight home. He could have done a little sightseeing around Oslo. He could have rested. Instead he asked my mission president to assemble the mission office staff for a personal training session. I happened to be a member of that staff.

The first thing that impressed me about Elder Larsen was that he took time to sit down with half a dozen young missionaries instead of tending to personal matters. The second thing that impressed me was that he was wearing exactly the same kind of Swedish double-knit suit that I was wearing. He was well groomed and well kempt, but his suit, shirt, tie, socks, and shoes were about the same cost and quality of the clothes the young missionaries were wearing.

Elder Larsen spoke to us for a few minutes about being more effective missionaries. I remember him telling a story about becoming a shot put champion in high school by taking a chance and doing what he felt was right instead of following the pattern that everyone said was the best method. Then Elder Larsen told us to ask him questions—any question at all.

At first we stammered around. None of us could think of anything to ask. He prodded us until we began asking questions. His answers were kind, often coming from the scriptures. Occasionally he replied that he didn't know. After he left for the airport, it dawned on me that none of us had asked anything bizarre or inappropriate.

On one occasion Elder Howard W. Hunter, then a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles came by the mission office with his sister. They were on their way to a conference elsewhere in Scandinavia and had stopped to visit one of their ancestor's homesteads just outside of Oslo.

Those of us in the office were a bit star struck to see a man walk in whose picture was on the wall of the office. Elder Hunter was very unassuming and low key. He acted as if he were nobody important. He was a man of few words. When we asked how his transatlantic flight had been, he replied merely, "Oh, uneventful."

I had several occasions to interact with Elder Robert D. Hales, then a member of the First Quorum of the Seventy. While I was in Norway he was called to preside over the Europe Area. He subsequently made a number of visits to Norway, where our mission president was a personal friend.

For one of these visits my mission president asked the missionaries in Oslo to put together a talent show for Elder Hales. Since our mission president and Elder Hales had worked together in scouting, the president encouraged us to use a scout campfire approach for our entertainment.

It turns out that 19-21-year-old young men with encouragement of this nature are far sillier (and even raunchier) than anything you see at scout camp. Some of the office staff sang a barbershop song. It really went downhill from there. A few acts pushed up against the edge of propriety. We surged confidently past that point when one elder that had been in a heavy metal band used a butane lighter to shoot a pillar of flame from his mouth in the darkened room.

Several more acts were down right inappropriate. But the kicker came when two elders performed a "magic" act on the mission president, Elder Hales, and the two assistants to the president. They cut off these men's ties, put the severed ties into a bag, and promised to magically restore the damaged neckware. After the third failed attempt, the elders said, "Oops!" and ran offstage.

Everyone laughed, including Elder Hales. But it didn't take a genius to see that behind his smile he wasn't very happy about the evening's entertainment. The next day our mission president revealed to the office staff that Elder Hales had taken him to the woodshed after the event.

On another occasion, I was riding in the mission van with another missionary and Elder Hales as we took him to a meeting across town. The other elder asked how much light one must have received from the Holy Ghost before denying this testimony would turn the person into a son of perdition. Elder Hales replied that he wasn't sure what the official doctrine was on that point, but that he felt that he had had sufficient light since childhood to know that it wouldn't be a good idea to tempt God about it.

At this point, Elder Hales bore his testimony of the Savior Jesus Christ. The elder bluntly asked if he had seen a vision. Elder Hales kind of skirted that question and replied that his testimony of Jesus wasn't based on a single event. Rather, it was a knowledge that had grown brighter and brighter until it was rock solid.

The next time I saw Elder Hales was when he came to speak at the LDS institute of religion adjacent to the college where I was studying. I was slated to be at work at the time of the speech, but a friend asked me to accompany her while she sang at the event, so I rearranged my schedule. I was sporting a full beard at that time, so I thought I wouldn't be recognized. But Elder Hales publicly recognized me as one of "my missionaries." Then I was a bit embarrassed about the beard because returned missionaries had been advised to maintain their mission grooming standards.

Each time I personally interacted with a church general authority during my mission, I and the other missionaries initially regarded these men as superhuman celebrities. Each time, these men showed their humanity and humility. We then knew they weren't superhuman. I later realized that such imaginary assessments were inferior to what these men really were—fallible beings striving to serve God to the best of their abilities ... and with real power from God.

Mormons are Healthier but Fatter

A series of studies have shown that religious people tend to be more overweight than nonreligious people and that Latter-Day Saints tend to be more overweight than members of other religions. In this Deseret News article author Michael De Groote briefly explores the studies and what they mean.

Researchers have linked the sense of wellbeing that accompanies religious devotion with being satisfied with one's body. De Groote writes, "In other words, religious people feel so good about themselves that they don't notice the fat as much."

Most religions promote a somewhat healthier lifestyle than is common in the broader culture. Some religions have rather austere health codes. Latter-Day Saints in good standing adhere to proscriptions on tobacco, alcohol, tea, coffee, and drug misuse embodied in the Word of Wisdom as defined in the church's scriptures and teachings of its leaders. When a church member is asked if he/she lives the Word of Wisdom, most Latter-Day Saints interpret this to embody only the prohibitions mentioned above.

However, the actual Word of Wisdom in D&C 89 includes a lot of do's along with the don'ts. For example, all food and drink is to be "used with prudence and thanksgiving" (v11), meat should be used "sparingly" and under certain conditions (v11-13,15), and herbs, grains, fruits and vegetables are "good for the food of man" when used properly (v11,14,16,17).

The reality today is that failing to adhere to the WoW's do's will not keep a church member from holding a leadership calling or entering the Temple, while violation of the don'ts will. In essence, church members can be gluttons and/or eat a generally awful diet without being though of as unworthy. But using tobacco, tea, coffee and alcohol, and misuse of drugs are among the activities that make members unworthy.

LDS culture has a deep relationship with food. We use food for recreation. Refreshments heavily laden with fat and refined sugars are regularly served at church activities.  We share recipes for creative treats.  We use food for comfort. We serve decadent funeral potatoes and other unhealthy delicacies at funeral luncheons. We specialize in taking in meals to families dealing with illness or tragedy.

Is it any wonder that many rank and file Latter-Day Saints have an emotional relationship with food outside of church settings?

We also tend to seek to be emulate others with whom we spend time. The more time we spend in church and social settings with overweight people, the more likely we are to become overweight ourselves. It is a cultural effect.

Despite being more overweight than their nonreligious counterparts, Latter-Day Saints tend to live longer and healthier lives (see 4/13/2010 Deseret News article). In fact, practicing Latter-Day Saints live longer than any generally long-lived ethnic group (i.e. Japanese and Swedes).

Researchers say that these differences cannot be fully explained by differences in physical activity, diet, and use of harmful substances. There is apparently a psychological component to LDS religious devotion that tends to enhance health and longevity. But this same element may lend to Latter-Day Saints doing a worse job at battling the bulge.

Frankly, it is odd for the members a religion that prides itself on its health guidelines to have such a problem with excess weight. Studies show that waist-to-hip ratio has been used across cultures and time to quickly and subconsciously judge general health. When church members are generally overweight, this sends a contradictory message about LDS health teachings and practices even at a casual glance.

Having been overweight myself, I know how challenging it can be to return to normal weight. Many physical, cultural, and psychological elements are marshaled against achieving such a goal. I can't help but wonder if Latter-Day Saints would better manage their weight if this had as great of focus as the don'ts in the Word of Wisdom.

Still, while I work hard to live the Word of Wisdom to my best understanding and what actually works for me, I believe that it pales in importance to things like developing a positive relationship with God and loving and serving one's fellow beings. LDS health is an interesting subject, but I try not to get too hung up on it.

I Can't Miss You If You Won't Go

My wife was recently chatting with an elderly woman that lives alone and has no living descendants. The lady explained that she had recently redone her estate planning because the siblings that had been designated to handle her estate's affairs had passed away.

Lacking descendants of her own, the woman had asked a niece and a nephew, children of two different siblings, to accept the positions previously held by their parents. Neither of these people live in the area, but both accepted the invitation.

The nephew and his wife flew in from out of state to visit for a few days. They met the professional people that handle the lady's estate issues and signed the necessary documents. As they visited in the lady's home prior to their departure, the nephew's wife complimented the woman on her taste and specifically noted a number of the woman's belongings that she would love to have in her own home after the woman's passing.

At first the lady was a bit shocked by this discussion. But she shrugged and figured that it was only natural. Besides, it was meant as a compliment.

At a later date, the woman's niece visited, met the estate professionals and signed the paperwork. As they visited in the lady's home, the woman asked her niece if there was anything she saw in the home that she would like to have. After all, designating things like that in advance can help avoid disagreements among the survivors.

The niece looked at her aunt and replied that one thing she would like most in the home is to see her aunt living there comfortably. The 'things' in the home were quite unimportant to the niece compared to her relationship with her aunt.

It is true that none of us gets out of this world alive and that none of us can take any of our temporal belongings with us. It is prudent to prepare for our eventual demise. If you haven't had to deal with the disposition of a deceased loved one's estate, it is likely that you will at some point have that opportunity. It is wise to be prepared.

But the way we perceive the elderly among us is the basis for how we treat them. If we see them as just biding their time until they pass from this world, this will be reflected in our relationship with them. It is unlikely that we will see these individuals the way God sees them.

This is true even if we are the elderly involved. If we are just waiting to die, we will treat ourselves accordingly. We will fail to perceive the immense value that God sees in us (see D&C 18:10).

Sunday School General Presidency Stresses Improved Learning and Teaching

Last summer when I was called to serve in my stake’s Sunday school presidency, my brother (currently serving in a bishopric) said that he had told his stake president that he’d pay 20% tithing for a “peripheral” calling like that.  I replied that the calling’s lower demand nature would be great were it not for my four other (actually five other) callings, one of which is quite demanding.

Each year prior to April general conference, the LDS Church’s Sunday school general presidency holds training sessions for Sunday school leaders at the Conference Center in Salt Lake City.  Since I was unable to attend last week’s session due to another commitment, I drove straight to Salt Lake after work last night for the reprisal of that session.

I’m not a guy that likes to have meetings just to have meetings, but I’m pretty faithful in attending meetings that I should be at.  It really wasn’t my idea of fun to leave the house at 6 am when most family members were still asleep and not return until 9 pm when the youngest are heading to bed.  But the stake presidency asked me to go to the meeting, so I did.

Having attended many church training meetings in my lifetime, I think last night’s event was one of the better ones.  Quite frankly, it has been fairly common for me to leave priesthood leadership training meetings feeling beat up, having been told with great boldness the manifold ways we are screwing up.  To top it off, the leaders for whom those messages are mostly intended are rarely in attendance at such meetings.  (Go figure.)  I know I’m not the only one that feels this way about those meetings.

Last night was different.  I left the meeting feeling spiritually uplifted with some valuable tools I can use in my calling.  The 90-minute meeting was engaging and interesting.  The general presidency purposefully, yet skillfully used a variety of communication and teaching methods that kept the attendees involved.  This was a departure from the standard two-hour lecture series common to most large leadership meetings.

Well, most of the attendees appeared to be engaged.  The brother seated behind me fell asleep and started making funny high-pitched whiny noises until the gentleman next to him woke the man from his nightmare.  I’ve heard snoring in meetings plenty of times, but rarely have I heard people talk or make other noises during their meeting time slumber sessions.

The main emphasis of the event was on improving learning and teaching in the church.  Learning can take place without a teacher, but teaching cannot take place unless learning occurs.  One may go through the actions of teaching without reaching the students.  Church leaders and teachers should be the best learners so that they can help others learn.

One of the communication methods used was interactive polling.  Each attendee was given an electronic device.  The speaker would put a polling question up on the screen and we’d click a button to respond.  The responses were immediately calculated before our eyes.

One such question dealt with providing orientation for members that receive new callings.  It was clear from the responses that local church leaders need to do much better at this.  Orientation sessions should be sit-down affairs that last 15-30 minutes, not something that happens in the hallway.

During the orientation, one or more members of the presidency of the organization in which the member will be serving should provide the member with the resources needed to properly fulfill the calling.  For example, when orienting a new Sunday school teacher, members of the ward Sunday school presidency should:

• ·         Provide the class roll, help familiarize the teacher with the class members, and explain any important issues.
• ·         Explain protocol (meeting room, time, classroom procedure, etc).  Maybe the meeting could occur in the room where the class will be held.
• ·         Provide the current curriculum.  Tell the teacher it’s theirs to keep and mark up.  Show the teacher which lesson will be taught next.
• ·         Give the teacher a copy of Teaching, No Greater Call, and go over the section on preparing lessons (chapters 30-35).
• ·         Address any concerns the new teacher has.

One brother asked whether the Sunday school presidency should train all newly called teachers in the ward.  The answer was no.  Although the ward Sunday school presidency is responsible for all teaching that occurs in the ward (including visiting teaching, home teaching, and family home evenings), they should only orient Sunday school teachers.  They can and should invite leaders of other organizations to receive training on how to manage their organization’s teachers, but such invitations should be free of coercion (D&C 121:41-42).

Organization presidencies are also responsible for ongoing teacher support.  Among the ideas offered were:

• ·         Visits.
• ·         Group training.
• ·         Individual contact.
• ·         Asking teachers to review specific chapters of Teacher, No Greater Call.
• ·         Asking teachers what the presidency can do to help them.

The general presidency wants church members and leaders to make much greater use of the church’s online resources.  One question dealt with how often and why people have accessed the Sunday school website.  I thought this was funny because I had been using the site via my phone while waiting for the meeting to start.

We were told to watch for a new teaching website to come online within a few weeks and for a leadership library show up this summer.

Finally, the general presidency wrapped up with each member emphasizing one of Elder Bednar’s three points of gospel learning as described in Sunday School General President Russell T. Osguthorpe’s October 2009 general conference talk:

1. Teach key doctrine.
2. Invitation to action.
3. Bear witness of promised blessings.

All teaching in the church should be both spiritually edifying and doctrinally correct.  Sunday school presidencies are responsible for ensuring that proper doctrine is taught in church settings.  It was noted that teachers are sometimes so disorganized or vague that it’s not clear what doctrine is being taught.  The Spirit has difficulty bearing witness of such insubstantial stuff.  And while discussions about peripheral matters can be stimulating, we are to focus on key doctrines in church settings.

Invitation to action on the principles taught is essential to people enacting positive changes in their lives.  Failing to do so is like a chef taking people on a tour of a marvelous feast prepared in his kitchen without inviting them to partake.  Teachers should not shy away from issuing properly inspired invitations to implement gospel principles.  Learning theory is great, but the real value lies in doing.

It was noted that some teachers don’t like promising blessings because they are not priesthood leaders.  But teachers aren’t being asked to invent new promises.  They are being asked to gain their own witness and then testify of the promises that God has already made through proper channels.  People need to understand the positive consequences that will result from their honorable actions.  This helps provide motivation to act.  It is an essential element of improving lives.

Church teachers and leaders should always be asking themselves how people’s lives will be improved by what they do as they carry out their callings.  If it what they are doing won’t improve people’s lives, they’re doing it wrong.

As I left the meeting last night, I was glad I attended, despite the inconvenience.  Our presidency now has material to use for the training meeting we are going to lead next month.  But more importantly, I left the meeting smiling, feeling spiritually uplifted and empowered to better fulfill my calling.

Wedding Rings

As a child I marveled at my Dad's wedding ring. It was a simple silver band that was lightly embossed with a very simple weave pattern.

Mom and Dad couldn't afford much when they first married. They lived far from both sets of parents, neither of whom were in a position to provide much support of any kind. Consequently, Mom's wedding ring was a very simple affair.

When I was still a kid, my parents had Mom's wedding ring re-worked. Years later they replaced the ring with something that was still relatively modest, yet far sturdier than the original. Dad's ring stayed the same. Despite Mom's encouragement to upgrade, Dad kept his simple wedding band.

After Dad passed away, I held his wedding band in my hand, feeling its surface that had been worn smooth by more than 50 years of wear. As I turned the ring over, something triggered a memory of the weave pattern that I had seen as a child. The pattern had been completely worn away so many years earlier that I had forgotten that it had ever existed.

Even as I think about this episode, I look at my own wedding band that I remove pretty much only when required for safety. It is a relatively simple gold band whose only notable markings are tiny characters stamped on the inside denoting the gold quality.

My ring is a rather unremarkable piece of jewelry. Yet it means a great deal to me.

The ring was originally half a size larger. In our first two years of marriage, I gained 40 lbs and then lost 60 lbs. To keep the ring from slipping off my finger we had it resized to fit my altered size. The ring has fit just fine ever since.

There are no big nicks in the surface of my ring. I hardly notice the thousands of tiny marks on the surface. The marks can more easily be seen with magnification.

My wife still wears the ring set that I gave her in two stages: the first when we became engaged, and the second when we married. Actually, she returned the engagement ring a week before the wedding so that I could get the two rings permanently welded together by the jeweler prior to the wedding.

We have had some maintenance done on my wife's ring a few times over the years. It is a somewhat delicate looking setting, but it has proven to be fairly durable. I assumed from the moment I acquired the ring that my wife would want to get something different after a few years. But she has been quite happy with her ring set and has shown no desire to upgrade.

Both of us wear our rings nearly always. I think there's some significance to that.

Neither my wife nor I are much into jewelry. The only other jewelry I wear is an old Timex wristwatch. After we were certain that we were finished having children, we got my wife a beautiful mother's ring. The ring is designed to complement her wedding set. She often wears modest earrings. Occasionally she will wear a non-valuable necklace of some sort when she dresses up. A burglar looking for jewelry in our home would leave with almost nothing of worth.

During the last few years of Dad's life, we were sometimes alarmed at how verbally brusque he was with Mom. This tendency was further complicated after a stroke, when he wasn't able to reason as clearly as before. Despite all of this, I knew that Dad was eternally devoted to Mom. Like his worn wedding band, Dad's devotion was constant.

Mom has a nasty arthritis condition in her hands. A few years ago she had a hinge installed on her wedding ring so that she could get it on and off without having to slip it over enlarged finger joints. Although Dad passed away nearly three years ago, Mom still wears her wedding ring because she still has a husband waiting for her on the other side of the veil.

As I consider my wedding band and my wife's wedding set, I realize that they really aren't worth much in money. That is, both are modest pieces of jewelry. But it's not the monetary value that is important. The real value in our rings far exceeds any earthly possession. In fact, the rings are only a poor symbol of this deeper meaning. But since they are symbols of something far greater, we will continue to wear and cherish our wedding rings.

I hope that someday after my passing my children will be able to hold my simple wedding band and reflect on how devoted I was to their mother. It would bring me great joy if that moment conjured in them happy memories.