Thoughts and stories, by Pal

  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 ...

What We Have Learned – Let Us Not Forget By  Carolyn Nicolaysen  · June 23, 2020 Pandemics are unwelcome visitors, but they can teach us much about our own goals and priorities. Hopefully, we have learned the importance and joy of real, quality time with family. Hopefully we have learned friends are important to our mental health and wellbeing, teaching us to be a better friend and neighbor. Most importantly, hopefully we have learned to trust in the Lord, to pray for His guidance and to experience the peace only He can bring. What many have learned is how really unprepared they were for a self-quarantine and all that entails. Many have discovered birthdays and graduations still happen. Some, meals don’t cook themselves. Others, stores do run out of supplies. Still others, there is a good reason to have a substantial savings account. And, the idea that things happen to other people, well, sometimes we are the other people. Over the past 12 years...

Alma Chapter 5, in the Book of Mormon, has so many questions that it would be good for us to analyze and ask ourselves.  This is a great article! Come, Follow Me for Individuals and Families: “Have Ye Experienced This Mighty Change in Your Hearts?”, Alma 5-7 By  McKay Christensen  · June 2, 2020 Cover image: “Our Advocate”, by Jay Bryant Ward. Have you been guilty of looking at others your own age and thinking, “Surely, I can’t look that old?”  Here’s a story from a good sister on the subject… “I was sitting in the waiting room for my first appointment with a new dentist.  I noticed his DDS diploma, which bore his full name. Suddenly, I remembered a tall, handsome, dark-haired boy with the same name that had been in my high school class some 40-odd years ago.  Could he be the same guy that I had a secret crush on, way back then? “Upon seeing him, however, I quickly discarded any such thought.  This balding, gra...

I totally agree with this article.  I have always loved people of all races, and I am very saddened when people do not show them respect and love.  But this article has such good and honest thoughts about the situation in the United States right now, and I hope you'll read it, and find wisdom in it! The Riots and the Danger of False Narratives By  Maurine Proctor  · June 2, 2020 The Book of Mormon, written specifically for our times, is a warning in so many ways, but there is a caution that we should not miss. That is the consistent and emphatic plea about the perilous and destructive power of false and manipulative narratives. When you look at the book through that lens, suddenly you see it everywhere. Again and again the people are “stirred up to anger”, even to the dissolution of their own nations, by the ideas and arguments that take hold of them with such power they cannot shake them. They hold on to them with self-destructive fero...