Thoughts and stories, by Pal

                                   This is a very good article! What Does it Mean to Be a Witness? By  Daniel C. Peterson  · August 17, 2022 To read more from Daniel, visit his blog:  Sic Et Non . We tend to make more progress, spiritually, in times of stress, sorrow, sadness, opposition, and difficulty than in times of ease.  It’s rather like going to the gym, I suppose; exercise with fifty-pound weights builds more strength than does working out with half-pound weights.  Or, as the great thirteenth-century Muslim poet and mystic Jalal al-Din Rumi put it, “The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” That doesn’t mean that we enjoy it.  And it doesn’t always mean that, while it’s happening to us, we can see good in it.  Sometimes, it’s just horrible. From time to time, I feel moved to post this item, which I first wrote many years ago.  I feel impress...

 This goes with the next blog.   I'm loving studying the Pearl of Great Price, in connection with the Creation! In the Beginning: Being Present at the Creation with Moses and Joseph Smith By  Steven C. Harper  · January 11, 2022 Cover image: Revelation to Joseph Smith in June 1830: Moses 1 [3] In all of recorded history, two lessons on “the beginning” (Genesis 1:1) stand out among all others. The first, recorded in the Pearl of Great Price, was sort of like “Take Your Child to Work Day” when a child spends one day at work with a parent to learn what they do. Moses was the child. Heavenly Father was the parent. Moses was “transfigured before him” and the lesson was delivered with stunning effects. [1] God showed Moses “the workmanship of [His] hands,” Moses “marveled and wondered” at the vision he beheld and pleaded with God to understand more. [2]  I would pay any price to be privy to that lesson. The closest I can come is reading the Book of Moses as revealed t...

  The Video Link for John W. Welch's telling of the whole letter by the Prophet Joseph Smith is in this post.  You'll have to copy and paste it to access listening to it.  Very fascinating!  It is in the article the link refers to -- with his picture. Why Did Joseph Write His Famous Letter from Liberty Jail? By  Book of Mormon Central  · October 19, 2021 View the article  on Book of Mormon Central . “O God, where art thou? And where is the pavilion that covereth thy hiding place?” Doctrine and Covenants 121:1 The Know The letter Joseph Smith wrote in Liberty Jail between March 20 and 22, 1839, is perhaps his most famous letter: substantial excerpts from it have been canonized as Doctrine and Covenants 121, 122, and 123. These important sections contain some especially well-known and memorable passages. But few have ever read the letter in its entirety, and thus many do not realize that it also contains further words of advice and inspiration that are w...

  This is a most fascinating article about the Prophet Joseph Smith! When the American Elite Visited Joseph Smith in Nauvoo By  Maurine Proctor  · July 29, 2021 In May of 1844, just 45 days before Joseph Smith would be murdered in Carthage Jail, two imposing visitors arrived in Nauvoo just before midnight. They were Josiah Quincy and Charles Francis Adams from Massachusetts, both American bluebloods, born of powerful families. Adams was the grandson of John Adams and son of former president John Quincy Adams who would one day become a member of Congress and then American ambassador to England. Quincy’s father had been the mayor of Boston and the president of Harvard, and he too would become the mayor of Boston. According to Spencer McBride’s new book  Joseph Smith for President , these two had set out on a grand tour of the western United States, and on May 13 th  had boarded the steamboat Amaranth to travel north on the Mississippi River. They had no intent to ...