The Intrepid's Guide to Discovering Truth

The first time I distinctly remember feeling the Holy Ghost is when I was 13. I was living in St. George Ut. at the time and going to Middle School. It was late one school night and I should have gone to sleep, but my mom and I got into a conversation about agency and liberty and what those Alma 61:15 ) I didn't know that was the Holy Ghost then. I would not learn to recognize it until years later while I was on my mission.   mean to us. She took the time in the middle of the night to teach. I felt her patriotic feelings and the Holy Ghost bore testimony to what she said as being true. (See My second encounter with the spirit of God occurred while I was 15, more than two years later. Many things had changed in my life over that course of time. We were now living in Woodland Hills, a tiny community at the south end of Utah Valley. The name, coincidentally is very literal: there were a lot of hills and a lot of trees, shrub oak in fact. I thought it might be wis...

New York is not an obscure place. It's a splendid and curious wealth of people.  The world congregates  here, and the public transportation is evidence of that! Backgrounds very, customs overlap, and the religious beliefs often run the spectrum of practical to mystical and back again. We are all different;  there is no such thing as a cookie cutter person; but in a very real sense we all share something  unique in common: our humanity.                                                                            Indeed we are all brothers and sisters and have been so from the beginning. We believe in the same God and want to do right by our neighbor. Justice is an integral part of our beings. We just want to do what's best. An eagle eye could prove that even a N...

Manhattan , New York. You could say it is center of the world. The wealth that goes in and out every day is enormous, the arts and culture can match any city in Europe, the skyscrapers; Empire, Chrysler, One-World , and the Roc are considered the pillars that hold up the sky and are integral to the American universe. Then there is midtown with it's dual chambered heart; Time-square making up the left ventricle and Grand Central Station making up the right. All people flow to this core (like a giant pump) and back out, making a vibrant scene. But one thing is unanswered in this great whale of a city: Why?   Where is everyone  really  going? Why are they  really  here? What's  really  the point? Answers very. Answers are cheep. And most people pretend to have them. You could sit in Washington square Park for hours and lazily watch the gimmicks go by. You could stroll the Metropolitan Museum of Art as long as you'd care to but eventually every...

I want to describe the pan of salvation as a process, not so much a map or a timeline, but a process. Instead of a line with a lot of circles, lines, and symbolic astronomy,   what if we looked at the Plan of Salvation as a blueprint? Like a blueprint to a highly tuned machine. Imagine in your minds' eye that you could cut a car in half and see how it worked inside; or perhaps the interments used in chemistry would be a better example (with all the vials and tubes and camp stoves and all that dandy equipment.)   The premortal life wouldn't be a big circle on the left hand side of the page, it would be a milk jug. A large jug with the branding label ripped off. Inside would be a clear, viscous liquid containing thousands of little particles which would be poured into the first reaction chamber. There it would bubble and brim before approximately a third of it would be burned. That third, the dross, would be scraped off the surface and transported to a fuel injection tub...

In the world at large, anything that is considered to be evil needs to be defeated. This assumption presupposes that if people fail to initiate a crusade to stop evil, that evil will not only be self-sufficient, but also expansionist. That is a romantic idea, but it doesn't reflect how the world operates. The failure here is to properly define the core nature of good and evil. The definition of "good" from the Webster's 1828 Dictionary: 1. Valid; legally firm; not weak or defective; having strength adequate to its support; as a good title; a good deed; a good claim. 2. Valid; sound; not weak, false or fallacious; as a good argument. 3. Complete or sufficiently perfect in its kind; having the physical qualities best adapted to its design and use; opposed to bad, imperfect, corrupted, impaired. We say, good timber, good cloth, a good soil, a good color. And God saw the light, that it was good    Genesis 1:4 . The definition of "evil" from the Webster...

What exactly is The Book of Mormon ? It is a volume of ancient scripture that was translated by Joseph Smith in the early Nineteenth century. It was not translated through scholarship or knowledge is ancient languages, but its translation was in fact a miracle! Joseph  Smith knew nothing of ancient languages or interpretation of them, but he somehow, through the gift and power of God, was able to do it.  The writer, as Joseph  Smith discovered, in the first part of the the Book of Mormon was named Nephi. He had been telling his narrative of how his father was called to be a prophet in 600 BC. His father was trying to warn the Jews at Jerusalem that unless they relented speedily, the Babylonian Empire would fall in and crush them.  The Jews had shortly before revolted from Babylon and had signed a treaty with Egypt. They thought they were secure form threat. And so they thought Nephi's father to be a mad-man or some kind of rebel. They sought to take away...

When injured, hurt, or sick, the body needs special attention to heal. It needs appropriate food and nutrition. It needs rest and time to recuperate. perhaps even extensive rehabilitation  In a very big way, a person must turn their attention inward to fix what's infirm. However, it's an interesting dichotomy to consider that while the body needs to turn inward to heal,  the spirit must turn outward to be treated.  Why does the spirit need to turn outward to be healed? I think it is as simple as the paradoxical saying of Jesus: " [For] Whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it." In essence, when one is selfish or self serving, he actually damages his own soul! But when one forgets himself in the service of others, he actually find that he has made his spirit whole!  Therefore, whenever you feel self-critical, depressed, angry or upset. Turn outward and look for someone to serve! Look for someo...

I've been serving as a missionary for a long time now. Almost two years! I look back to the beginning, back when I was in upstate New York. I was very much ignorant of what the future would hold. I had only been out for three months and was trying to do my best to teach what I felt (and still feel) strongly is the truth. I remember all the sticky situations in vivid clarity. We scraped by, but one thing is for sure: ignorance will always lead to error.  I remember that hot humid August, we were on Main Street in Poughkeepsie going to an appointment with a man who rented a room on the fourth floor. We were preparing him to be baptized in the fall. He had been reading vivaciously out of the Book of Mormon early on in the read he came to a rather curious and difficult to explain circumstance that happens in chapter 4, verses 6 through 13.  In summery, A prophet named Nephi was told by the Spirit to do something  he thought was wrong. Nephi was a young person, prob...

Immutable, Unlimited, Axiomatic: Truth does not change, Based on circumstances, Or preferences. A vote cannot change The reality of truth. Even things considered Subjective and individual Still eve'rely On the monolithic giant; Truth.