Note: This is a sticky post (ie remains at the top of the home page). The reason for making this sticky is to keep the focus centered on the purpose of this blog and the future of LDSFriends.com. To see more recent information please view the posts below.

You cannot help but watch General Conference and not be inspired. This conference was no different for me. I watched and realized that there are many areas in my life that need improvement. One such area deals with LDSFriends.com.

For sometime we have been working on creating a website that is a social area on the web for both members and non-members alike. Back in 1996 Roger Brown and Christian Adams began LDSFriends.com with this same vision in mind.

Unfortunately, in 2007 a few of us convinced Roger (Christian was no longer working on LDSFriends) to let us “spruce up” the website. However, our programming knowledge was limited and we had to rely on a lot of free software. Our final results was a dating website, which none of us really wanted.

We told ourselves that we would only keep this temporarily dating site up until we were able to create the website the way we really wanted it. Well, fast forward to over two years later and we still had the temporary dating site up and our “new and improved” site was still under development. Truly, this is not what we wanted for LDSFriends.com.

Finally, I felt that the time had come to bury the dating site. I also wanted to keep our few remaining faithful fans of LDSFriends abreast of the developments of this site. Thus, I have put up this blog to do just that (though, I will also be using this blog for spiritual writings as well).

The design you see on this blog is the exact design we will be using on the new website. So, when I say we are close to finishing I really mean it. For those of you who would like to help us finish up this labor of love please contact me and we will put you to work!

Thank you for your patience. We hope the final product will be worth your wait! ~Paul Wilson

03/01/2010 Update: New York Times Photo Gallery of the Earthquake

I thought you all might be interested in this—an account of the Chile earthquake from the Santiago Temple President’s wife.
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…we heard from our Santiago Temple President, Tom & Cheryl Lyon, written by his wife, Cheryl:

Thanks to all of you who have emailed your concern for us. We can state unequivocally that we’re fine. We can also state with the same emphasis that riding through that quake in our rocking fourth-floor apartment was for me the scariest experience I’ve ever been through!

I was sure we were about to die – that either the ceiling would fall on us or that we’d collapse through the floor. It truly was an emotion I’d never experienced before. My whole body shook for the next two hours, and after that I couldn’t stop crying.

We didn’t even have the presence of mind to get out of bed during the quake. I felt paralyzed, staring at the ceiling and wondering when the earth would stop rolling. It was the longest two minutes of our lives! We could hear things falling out of cupboards, and pictures falling off the walls. But the sound and the movement was the worst.

Our sturdy building held up fine. Just lots of dust and a few broken dishes. But elsewhere, as I’m sure you’ve seen on the news, people didn’t fare as well. Lots of damage. Virtually no stores open. Most parts of Santiago still have no electricity. Collapsed overpasses have closed major highways. The airport is closed because of damage, and planes have been rerouted to northern Chile or to Argentina. Our new missionary doctor was to arrive this morning, so I don’t know where he and his wife have ended up.

What a joy to walk into the temple and find it in perfect condition. We just had to close a few drawers and straighten a few crooked pictures. It felt so good to be there in that peaceful refuge and find normality. Moroni did lose his trumpet, however! That was the only noticeable damage.

How grateful we are for how well the Church takes care of us. We’ve often thought the 24-hour emergency lights in our building were excessive, but we were surely thankful for them at 3:30 this morning as everyone was evacuating the building – including the missionaries downstairs in the MTC. It was so disconcerting to get out of bed in the dark and stumble over fallen items in the bathroom. We got just a taste of what the Haitians have suffered, though their damage and deaths have been so much more devastating, even though their quake a weaker one. So far here they’re reporting 123 deaths, but we assume the toll will climb.

We had to decide what to do about the temple. We had every session booked for the day, and wondered if people would arrive. We met with one of Tom’s counselors – who had arrived at 5:00 for the early shift, as faithful as ever – and our registrar. We knew it would be difficult for the employees and workers to get to the temple and there was not electricity at the time. One faithful laundry sister came a great distance to help, but there was no gas for the dryers, so she had baptismal clothes from last night lying out all over the laundry.

The temple has an emergency generator which roars into action the second the power goes out. But we learned that it runs on petroleum which lasts only four hours. By 8 a.m. we knew we were about to go dark again, so we made the decision to simply close the temple for the day. Then, just in the second that the lights began to dim, the power came back on! (We’ve learned since that we’re the only section of Santiago that has power yet.) So then we decided to hold just one session, since we had three out-of-town couples staying in the hospedaje who were expecting to receive their endowments and be sealed today. We mustered all the missionary couples, along with a group of faithful sisters who work the late shift on Fridays and then stay over for the Sat morning shift. We had a most moving morning. The quake had brought such a sense of unity to workers and patrons, and the Spirit was amazing. I’ve seldom had such a moving experience at the veil – with three consecutive young sisters who were receiving their endowments.

Right now we’re sleep-deprived, and Tom has already gone back to bed. The stress has left us exhausted – but we’re alive and well! We’re still feeling aftershocks – called “replicas” in Spanish. They’re reported about 25 of them. One just rolled by as I was writing this.

So, that’s the report. After some rest we may venture out and about to see what we can see.

Thanks for your love and concern.

Tom and Cheryl
President of the Santiago Temple

In my institute class we are going through the different parables of Christ found in the New Testament. Below is what we have documented, but there are disagreements among bible scholars on the official count of the parables. Anyway, I asked the teacher to email me the below handout for the benefit of everyone else. All the scriptures are linked to the scripture database at lds.org. May you find your precious coin as you read these.

Parables of Christ in the New Testament

1. Barren Fig Tree – Luke 13:6–9
2. Chief Seats – Luke 14:7–11
3. Empty House – Matthew 12:43–54; Luke 12:24–26
4. Foolish Rich Man – Luke 12:13–21
5. Friend at Midnight – Luke 11:5–13
6. Good Samaritan – Luke 10:25–37
7. Gospel Net – Matthew 13:47–50
8. Great Supper – Luke 14:16–24
9. Hidden Treasure – Matthew 13:44
10. King’s Warfare – Luke 14:31–33
11. Laborers in the Vineyard – Matthew 19:27 – 20:16
12. Leaven – Matthew 13:33
13. Lost Coin – Luke 15:8–9
14. Lost Sheep – Luke 15:1–7
15. Lost (Prodigal) Son – Luke 15: 11–32
16. Man Taking a Far Journey – Mark 13:34–37
17. Mustard Seed – Matthew 13:31–32
18. Pearl of Great Price – Matthew 13:45–46
19. Pharisee and Publican – Luke 18:9–14
20. Pounds – Luke 19:11–27
21. Rich Man and Lazarus – Luke 16:19–31
22. Royal Marriage Feast – Matthew 22:1–14
23. Sheep and the Goats – Matthew 25:31–46
24. Shut Door – Luke 13:23–30
25. Talents – Matthew 25:14–30
26. Ten Virgins – Matthew 25:1–13
27. Treasures New and Old – Matthew 13:51–52
28. Two Debtors – Luke 7:36–50
29. Two Sons – Matthew 21:28–32
30. Seed Growing Secretly – Mark 4:26–29
31. Sower – Matthew 13:1–9, 18:23; Mark 4:1–8, 14–20; Luke 8:5–8, 11–15
32. Uncompleted Tour – Luke 14:25–30
33. Unjust Judge – Luke 18:1–8
34. Unjust Steward – Luke 16:1–13
35. Unmerciful Servant – Matthew 18:21–35
36. Unprofitable Servant – Luke 17:5–10
37. Wheat and Tares – Matthew 13:24–30, 36–43
38. Wicked Husbandman – Matthew 21:33–46; Mark 12:1–12, Luke 20:9–18

Parables of Christ in the Doctrine and Covenants

1. Twelve Sons – D&C 38:26–27
2. Labors in the Field – D&C 88:51–61
3. Nobleman – D&C 101:43–62
4. Woman and Unjust Judge – D&C 101:81–91

I’m not sure who to credit for recording these tender moments in time. This article truly is a great example of how the Lord gives light to his children in their darkest moments! ~Paul W.

Much of Haiti lies in rubble. Collapsed roofs lie at angles, smashed against the floor below them. Cinder blocks slant in heaps along the roads. Some streets in Port-au-Prince look like old pictures of bombed-out Berlin after World War II. It’s a horror, an apocalypse.

Yet, amidst a shoddy neighborhood stands a jewel, the Croix-des-Missions LDS church and sounding through the air is a hymn: How Firm a Foundation.

It is a particularly well-chosen song in a land whose physical foundations could not stand the earth’s tremors, but whose Latter-day Saints have proven to be remarkably resilient. They know that though all but a handful have lost their homes, their foundation is in the gospel of Jesus Christ and that is firm.

Attending the 3-hour church block on Sunday felt remarkably normal to us. There were the Saints dressed well, many in crisp, white shirts that looked newly ironed. The deacons wore their white shirts and ties as they reverently passed the sacrament.

How can this be? Without homes, they are living on the street in hastily-assembled, makeshift shelters on any flat land that is available. Their walls may be sheets hung over ropes or pieces of cardboard. Their beds are concrete or hard earth. Everything they owned—and that already wasn’t much—has been stripped from them by an initial quake that lasted about 45 seconds and after shocks that continued for days.

Haiti, right now and for the foreseeable future, is a land sleeping out. People fill the church’s courtyards at night—and instead of woe, they laugh and talk. They have shanties on the median strip between two lanes of riotous traffic.

We asked member after member, how can you be so beautifully groomed on Sunday, given your conditions? They answered that because most everyone is now living in the street, they are indeed dirty during the week, plagued by all the ills that befalls a newly-made street person, but, they added that though they had no water to drink, they had water good enough to wash their clothes.

So there they were singing about what really is their firm foundation and looking like any other LDS congregation across the world—except they are homeless.
Their Lessons and Talks

That is not all. Their lessons and talks were sophisticated and scripturally based, as if they had a library and computer at their fingertips to prepare instead of the side of the road.

The sacrament meeting began with strains of “Come, come ye Saints, no toil, nor labor fear, but with joy wend your way.” For most of us who come from other nations, we would be hard-pressed to find joy in impoverished and broken Haiti before the earthquake, let alone now, but they sang like they meant it, “Happy day, all is well.”

They prayed, “We are all thankful to be counted among the living. We are grateful to know of thy truth. There are many outside the walls of this church who do not have this truth to sustain them through the trials. We know we were kept alive because we have a mission to complete. Bless us all that we can be strong and take care of each other.”

We listened tearfully. The sacrament was passed and each of the seven children sitting on the row next to us took not a single piece of bread but a scoop each. They are hungry.

Then we heard a talk, a surprising, enriching talk from France Nathalie Desir—so beautifully done.
She told the audience:
“For some of the adversity we face, we can place the weight on our own shoulders because we are not obeying God’s laws. That adversity we can control, but there are some kinds of adversity we can’t control like the earthquake. We didn’t do anything to attract it. We all had friends and families who were killed. A lot of people are discouraged and have lost faith, but we as members of the Church now have a mission.

“We know why we have adversities. They are to make us stronger. We have the freedom to either let them overcome us or to make us strong. Just as we send little children to school, the Lord has sent us here for a school.

“Our big enemy is our pride that keeps us from loving our neighbour and obeying the commandments…Since January 12, we all have experienced sleeping outside. As I was lying in the courtyard looking up at the stars, I knew this was the time to manifest charity and mourn with those who mourn, give food to those who need food.

“We have a certain joy, and the joy is knowing these things are temporary. The trials we are given on earth are for us, and the Lord knows everything we are going through and they are to augment our faith and bring us to God.”

The other day I received the following question via the LDSFriends contact form:

“On my way to church today I heard the song ‘Because I have been given much’ on the BYU-I radio station and there was an additional verse with something about because I have been called I too must serve, or something along those lines, really pertaining to going on a mission. Does anyone know the words to that verse? I would love to have them.”

I hadn’t heard that there was a new verse, but apparently there is (though, I am not sure if it is apocryphal or Church sanctioned). Here it is:

“Because I have been blessed Dear Lord, I too must serve.
I’ll leave the comfort of my home to teach Thy word.
I’ll find Thy sheep who’ve gone astray, and those who’ve never known the way,
I’ll make Thy work, my work today.
I shall give love to those in need
I’ll show that love by words and deed.
Thus shall my thanks be thanks indeed.”

So, tomorrow I have to give a talk on missionary work, and I hope you will endulge me as I share it with you. My Bishop particularly wanted me to focus on how to be a missionary even if you are not an outgoing person. I don’t think I quite acheived his objective, but I tried. No matter what, it was good to sit down and put my thoughts into words. Feel free to let me know you what you think. ~Paul W.

Becoming the Missionary the Lord Wants You to be
by Paul Wilson

I had an interesting experience happen to me while serving my mission in Riverside, California. I was tracking in my third area, in a city named Corona, and it was Halloween. My companion and I came to a door where we could smell the sweat aroma of baking fudge. After knocking, a girl, no older than six or seven, answered the door. She pointed to me, squinted one eye, and read slowly the largest print on my missionary badge, “JESUS CHRIST.” She paused and then very matter of factly stated, “Well it’s about time, we have been waiting for you.” An older woman in an apron, most likely her grandmother, came up from behind the girl and said, “Oh no, sweetie, he’s not Jesus Christ!”

Unfortunately, we were not invited in to teach this family, but this little girl made quite an impact on me that day. She taught me that when we share the gospel we come as a messenger, and in a very literal sense, we speak as the Savior himself. There is nothing that God desires more from us than to save all his children.

For the last several weeks I have been pondering about missionary work, more specifically, my personal style of how I share missionary work. I am not like my beautiful wife, Lindsey, who can openly and eagerly share the gospel with every living thing. I admire this trait, but try as I might, I am not engineered this way.

I am an extremely social person, but I also am hesitant at times to share something so sacred to me with someone who does not desire to hear it. I cannot turn around on a bus and ask someone if they have heard about the Book of Mormon. It was much easier as missionary to do something like this, because, well, I was a missionary.

When I was asked to give this talk the Bishop specifically wanted me to talk about how openly sharing the gospel is not a gift given to only a special few. How the Lord commands all of us to share the gospel and that we all can share it in our own unique way.

As I studied for my talk I came to see a pattern, which if followed can help us share the gospel in a way that complements our unique nature and also follows God’s will. There is a story out of the Wilford Woodruff manual that pulls to light the pattern. In the manual it says:

“Shortly after Wilford Woodruff was baptized and confirmed a member of the Church, he ‘had a great desire to preach the Gospel.’ He recalled: ‘One Sunday evening I retired into the woods alone, and called upon the Lord in earnest prayer, to open my way to go and preach the Gospel to the inhabitants of the earth. The Spirit of the Lord bore witness that my prayer was heard, and should be answered. I arose from my knees happy, and walked some forty rods, and met Elias Higbee, a High Priest, with whom I had stayed a number of months. As I approached him, he said, ‘Brother Wilford, the Spirit of the Lord tells me that you should be ordained, and go on a mission.’ I replied, ‘I am ready.’”

In this story I found four principles that prepares our hearts and minds to share the gospel in the manner the Lord needs us to share it. These principles are, “Desire, Prayer, Readiness, and Faith.”

For those of you who speak Spanish you may recognize the word ojalá. When you translate this word to English you really lose its deeper meaning. The English translation of ojalá is hopefully, but in actuality it is a deep desire of hope, often associated with God. My own personal translation of ojalá is hope and desire bound together by a love of God.

Wilford Woodruff’s story states that he had a great desire to preach the Gospel. This desire or ojalá is the first step to sharing the Gospel. No matter if you are outgoing or shy if you do not desire to share the gospel the opportunity will rarely be open to you. The real question is, “How do we create this ojalá if it is not there?”

Alma answered this question in his analogy of the seed found in Alma 32. In verses 27 and 28 of this chapter we specifically see the importance of merely beginning to believe in ojalá. To further illustrate my point I’ve made these two verses more missionary focused by injecting “missionary work” in place of “the word.” Alma shares with us,

“But behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words. Now, we will compare [missionary work] unto a seed. Now, if ye give place, that a seed may be planted in your heart, behold, if it be a true seed, or a good seed, if ye do not cast it out by your unbelief, that ye will resist the Spirit of the Lord, behold, it will begin to swell within your breasts; and when you feel these swelling motions, ye will begin to say within yourselves—It must needs be that this is a good seed, or that [missionary work] is good, for it beginneth to enlarge my soul; yea, it beginneth to enlighten my understanding, yea, it beginneth to be delicious to me.”

Alma teaches us that to have ojalá in missionary work that we need to begin by having a desire to believe. Let this desire to believe come from knowing that missionary work is the same work the Lord does. We learn this when God tells Moses, “For behold, this is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.” (Moses 1:39)

The second principle to becoming the missionary you want to be is Prayer. In John 17:3 it states, “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.” It is interesting to note that in this scripture the Greek text uses the word Epignosis to describe how we must know God.

In Greek there are two types of knowledge. The Greek word Gnosis means to know about someone or something; whereas, the Greek word Epignosis depicts knowledge based on experience or close association. To have an Epignosis relation with God is to have an intimate awareness of God’s character and will. It is impossible to have Gnosis relation with the Savior and be able to receive salvation.

Often, I have felt that my prayers, particularly concerning missionary work, have been Gnosis in nature. I pray knowing that I should pray, but often I won’t pray with an Epignosis longing to truly know the will of the Lord. Maybe it is because I know already that the Lord wants me share the gospel and I am not doing as much as I can.

One way I have worked on overcoming the Gnosis prayer is to pray differently. I have devised for myself a sacred way to pray. Basically, I will take time to write down all the things I want to discuss with the Lord. I then write the questions I have for Him. Finally, I will write out the answers I believe I will receive to my prayers. After all of this, I will begin to pray with my notes before me. I will pray about all the things I have written down. When I receive guidance to one of my questions I will stop and write down the answer given to me.

I can truthfully state that every time I chose to pray in this manner I have been given different answers than what I originally wrote down. For me, it has become a beautiful and sacred way to pray. Due to the detailed nature of this prayer it does take much time, and I can honestly say that I do not pray like this every day. However, if you do struggle with a Gnosis type of prayer I challenge you to try this method of praying. It has sincerely helped me gain a deeper Epignosis relation with my Savior.

The reason I share the importance of the Epignosis prayer, is that missionary work becomes much easier knowing the will of the Lord. Often times, we prejudge people, believing that they are not the type of individuals who are open to hearing the gospel. By spending the time and energy coming to have a deep prayerful relationship with God the layers of judgment are removed and we are able to see people in the same way God does.

Once we have created a deep desire and offered sincere prayer for missionary work the next step is to be actively engaged in our desires, or to be Ready. Wilford Woodruff stated “I am ready” when told to serve a mission. It is the “Woodruff Readiness” that the Lord truly desires from us. This type of readiness I believe is putting action to your desire and being ready to serve in any compacity that Lord expects from you. It’s this readiness which shows the Lord we truly want to bring souls to Christ.

However, there are so many ways to be active in missionary work. One of the best and easiest ways is to offer as referrals all the non-members you know to the missionaries. Let the missionaries approach these people and let your friends decide whether they want to hear the message or not.

Oftentimes, we want to prepare our friends before jumping right into sharing the gospel. Being a friend is important but sometimes it is easier to let the missionaries approach those who we know and allowing them to open up opportunities of sharing the gospel. There is a great talk by Clayton M. Christensen and his wife titled the “Seven Lessons on Sharing the Gospel,” which reveals how they almost missed sharing the gospel with several people. They had initially excluded a few people in sharing the gospel because they hadn’t really become friends with these people first.

Elder and Sister Christensen’s talk also shares another way to be active in missionary work. The action they mention is to use Church lingo in our every day conversations. This has been something I’ve done most of my life and it really helps open doors in sharing the gospel. For me, having moved from Utah allowed me to do exactly what the Christensen’s talk about. I share with people that I am from Utah, and almost every time I will receive a question wondering if I am Mormon.

Lindsey and I had a great experience doing this when we went to a dinner for my graduate program. We were seated at a table with my program director and his wife. When we shared that we had just moved from Utah both the director and his wife started peppering us with questions about the church. We spent a wonderful evening sharing our values, and in no way was either my director or his wife offended by us being so open about our religious beliefs.

The final principle in helping you share the gospel is Faith. For me, this is a tough principle. Not because I don’t have faith in God, but rather, I don’t have faith in myself that I deserve God’s blessings. It reminds me of a quote from my favorite philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, when he states, “It is hard to believe because it is hard to obey.” We are all flawed with sin and Satan will use this fact against us. Do not believe in this pernicious lie. If we truly desire, pray, and act, God will keep his promise and guide us to those who want to hear the gospel.

I witnessed this first hand when I was a teenager. I met my best friend, Logan, at the age of 11. Logan and I were as opposite as two boys can be. He was a talented athlete and I was, well…not. We had vastly different interests from each other but for some reason we became good friends. We would participate in each other’s interests and have fun doing it (though, I never did become any good at sports).

It wasn’t long before Logan was coming with me to Stake dances. We had a lot of fun, but more importantly he came in contact with the Church. When he was 16 he asked his parents if he could be baptized, but they did not consent. The church was foreign to them and they were not yet ready to allow their only son to join. I was devastated; I so badly wanted Logan to feel the joy and peace of having the blessing of baptism and the constant companion of the Holy Ghost.

It took another two long years before Logan was baptized. He was baptized one week after his 18th birthday and one year later he was called to serve a mission in Switzerland, French speaking. However, the story does not end here. Upon serving an honorable mission Logan and I moved to Utah and became roommates for college. It was here that Logan met my cousin Lauren. Lauren had left the church, but through Logan’s friendship and diligence she returned and they were married in the Saint George Temple.

They now have two beautiful children and are both stalwart in the church. I think of how sharing the gospel not only touched Logan’s life, but all the people he taught on his mission, my dear cousin Lauren’s life, and in turn touched my own life. The ripple effect of sharing the gospel is an eternal ripple. Logan’s eternal ripple began with the faith of his 11 year old friend. It was this faith that carried both Logan and I through seven years of waiting before he could be baptized.

Brethren and Sisters, sharing the gospel is not easy, but I testify that it is worth it. I promise you that if you have desire, if you pray, are ready, and have faith that you will see, as the little girl from the beginning of my talk did, that we are saviors to those who accept the Lord’s gospel message.

This I say in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

This was sent over to me and I thought it was a clever and fun way to depict determined honesty and integrity.