Venus Rossiter, serving in Tahiti with her husband, Mission President Ernest C. Rossiter, wrote to the Relief Society General Board early in 1919 with her report for 1918.
Month: October 2006
Relic area
Once when I was a missionary district leader, one call to my zone leader went particularly badly. I was trying to get permission for my district to take a hike in the woods, essentially. (The difference between a hike in the woods, and essentially a hike in the woods, was the sticking point
Nephite Legal Reasoning
There are lots of legal stories in the Book of Mormon, but there is not much in the way of legal reasoning. One of the few exceptions is found in Alma 30, which tells the story of Korihor the Anti-Christ.
Primary Lesson 40 Supplement
An Open Letter from Richard Bushman
Dear LDS Bloggers: Many you are aware of the conference for LDS Religious Studies and Divinity School students to be held at Yale University on February 16-17. The aim of the conference is to address issues that create problems for LDS students in religion and to ask what can a Mormon contribute to the debates that go on in these fields.
Murder in the Metropolis: Part the Fourth (Conclusion)
Hooper Young was arrested in Connecticut three days after the discovery of Mrs. Pulitzer’s body.
Levi Savage and Obedience to Church Authorities
The problems of following the prophet is a perennial favorite source of Mormon intellectual angst. What if the prophet is wrong? After all, prophets are human and are prone to mistakes? Indeed they are. Which brings me to the topic of Levi Savage.
From the Archives: Models of Women and the Priesthood
A favorite topic of speculation (and angst) among many Mormons and Mormon-watchers is whether or not women will get the priesthood. It is an interesting topic, but I think that most of the discussions of it are pretty uninteresting. The reason for this, I think, is that they are in the thrall of a single, rather simple model of what it means to “get� the priesthood.
Murder in the Metropolis: Part the Third
Hooper never told the full story of his association with Mrs. Pulitzer; such accounts as he did give were conflicting and incomplete.
Wal-Mart, McDonalds
How do you transplant an American institution to Europe and make it work?
Murder in the Metropolis: Part the Second
William Hooper Young, known as Hooper, was born in 1871 in Philadelphia, where his mother, Libbie Canfield, was visiting, while his father, John W. Young, was in Utah.
Murder in the Metropolis: Part the First
As the ebbing tide of September 18, 1902, lowered the level of the barge canals near Jersey City, New Jersey, a passing trolley engineer spotted the nude and mutilated body of a woman lying in the mud.
The Opportunity Cost of Publishing
In this excellent post, Rosalynde talks about the gender differences in subject material among Deseret Book writers. This renews the discussion brought up by Taryn Nelson-Seawright on the same difference existing in other Mormon outlets. Explanations abound for this phenomena, ranging from differing preferences to piggy discrimination, but most of them are sort of boring. Here’s one that is at least slightly more interesting:
Crunch the Catalog
The hidden meaning of the Deseret Book Christmas Catalog.
Charlotte Owens Sackett: Teaching the Sisters to Sing
Lottie Owens was born in 1877 in Willard, Box Elder County, Utah. Her mother’s family were early Church members in Nauvoo; her father had emigrated to Utah as a convert from Wales.
Primary Lesson 39 Supplement
Blog-Post Bingo (or Tic-Tac-Toe)
Start with a three-by-three grid.
Primary Lesson 38 Supplement
Sunday School Lesson #41
Lesson 41: Jeremiah 1-2, 15, 20, 26, 36-38
Retiring Toscanini
We are a storytelling people. Our Sunday lessons are as often built around a scriptural episode as around an abstract principle. Our General Conference talks and magazine articles are brightened by stories. Our family reunions are celebrations of family stories. We want stories from our returning missionaries, not exhortations on repentance and baptism.
Baby Daddy
Why are babies busting all over?
Isogloss
One way to think about religious difference is with isoglosses.
Sarah Day Hall: Southern Mother in Israel
American Southerners have been joining the Church since the 1830s. The Southern States Mission became the most successful mission field in the Church in the last generation of the 1800s. During those years when southern LDS meeting halls were burned and elders and even members were murdered, many thousands of Southerners responded to the gospel. Two elders knocked on a farmhouse door in Lowndes County, Alabama, on a spring day in 1896. The door was opened by Sarah Day Hall, holding her
BYU Sues Pfizer
This article was interesting.
Choosing Joy
The Brazilian musical Orfeu Negro, a capoeira-filled retelling of the Orpheus story, contains a beautiful and haunting stanza penned by Antonio Carlos Jobim and sung to a heartbreaking tune: Tristeza não tem fim, felicidade sim. Happiness ends, but sadness lasts forever.
Our Crown Jewels: The Church Archives
In the fall of 1983, Dialogue published Davis Bitton’s personal memoir of Leonard Arrington’s tenure as Church Historian, “Ten Years in Camelot.� That essay conveyed the excitement of discovering, writing, and publishing Mormon history on a scale never before known. The essay also records disappointment with changes then underway, betraying the uncertainty, even fearfulness, that comes with change.
The Seer at the Microscope
From time to time I’ve heard it delicately suggested that the Teachings of the Presidents of the Church curriculum is, not to put too fine a point on it, bland pablum, and stale, to boot. These pundits have not read last week’s lesson.
Are Mormons Trinitarian?
Mormons often make fun of traditional Christians for their struggling efforts to make sense of the Biblical teaching that the Father, Son and Holy Ghost are one God. Yet Mormons are committed to the unity of God at least as much as traditional Christians are, by our scriptures, particularly the Book of Mormon.
Stump the Missionaries
This afternoon, we had a family from our ward over for dinner. The missionaries were here, too.