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A Snapshot of a Community’s Preparedness
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Last night, the community in which I live participated in an emergency communications drill conducted by the local stake of the LDS Church. The stake has been working diligently in recent months to solidify its emergency preparedness and communications plans, and encouraging each of the assigned congregations to likewise work on their plan and prepare.
As part of the communications plan, a hierarchy has been established to allow the flow of information to travel smoothly up from the ground to the stake leadership. This structure is as follows:
The Rights of an Embryo
Come November, individuals living in Colorado will have the opportunity to define through legislation what a person is, and therefore who is entitled to individual rights. Titled the “Colorado Definition of Person Initiative”, the measure seeks to amend the state Constitution as follows:
…the terms “person” or “persons” shall include any human being from the moment of fertilization.
Understandably, the proposed amendment is a loaded issue with both sides of the battle becoming firmly entrenched in their preparation for war, leading up to election day. Those few simple words are a direct threat to the so-called “pro-choice” crowd, and therefore the greatest opposition to the bill comes from those who see it as a threat to a woman’s rights.
The epitome of the opposition’s argument can be summarized with the following quote from a recent Washington Post article:
The Child Soldier
In some distant countries mostly ignored by the American media machine, children are forced to enter bloody, drawn-out wars. Kidnapped by night and at times forced to murder their family members and peers, these children become desensitized casualties of war ignored by those who claim to support the overthrow of dictators and support of democracy around the world.
According to Human Rights Watch, an estimated 2-300,000 children are currently fighting in military conflicts around the world. They are brought into a world where murder, rape, plunder, and torture are the status quo. The events to which these children are subjected scar them permanently and have a deep impact upon the rest of their lives—if they are lucky enough to survive the war in which they are fighting or flee to safety.
CotM: Smile Train
You’ve seen them on TV. You squirm a little when their pictures appear, the awkward smiles making you feel a little uneasy. You change the channel to find something more pleasing to look at.
I’ve done it before as well.
I’m referring to children who have improperly developed clefts. While cleft palates are a large problem, it’s the cleft lips that are so visible to others. Smile Train exists to provide affordable and accessible surgery to children throughout the world who suffer from this problem. For around $250 per surgery, volunteer doctors are able to repair this disfigurement and put the child on the fast track to better health, social acceptance, and opportunity.
Additionally, the organization assists local doctors in acquiring the equipment and skills necessary to perform these surgeries for children in their area. In their eight and a half years of doing business, Smile Train has provided free cleft surgery for over 340,000 children.
For the Strength of Youth—Music and Dance
I gave the following talk in another ward today:
Do you ever find yourself whistling along to a popular song on the radio without paying attention to the lyrics? Or have you ever heard a person justify their choice of music, saying that although the lyrics are inappropriate, they don’t pay attention to them, and just like the song because it has a good beat?
In For the Strength of Youth, we are instructed regarding music as follows:
Music is an important and powerful part of life. It can be an influence for good that helps you draw closer to Heavenly Father. However, it can also be used for wicked purposes. Unworthy music may seem harmless, but it can have evil effects on your mind and spirit.
Reciprocal Charity Equals Equality
The Apostle Paul, one of the more cryptic of early Christians, gave some potent instructions to his fellow Saints regarding helping the poor. Perhaps one of the more interesting passages, indicative of the way to attain true equality, illustrates the balance of gifts given to God’s children:
For I mean not that other men be eased, and ye burdened:
But by an equality, that now at this time your abundance may be a supply for their want, that their abundance also may be a supply for your want: that there may be equality. (2 Corinthians 8:13-14)
This scripture flies in the face of conventional socialist wisdom which states that men should be equal in terms of possessions and opportunity. Indeed, even we Saints have been commanded to be equal in terms of earthly things (though accomplished by a method that starkly contrasts welfare/socialism). In light of such a quest, Paul’s words prove immensely helpful.
Our Own Tests of Faith
Given the insight of historical analysis and the distance of time, it is easy for people in our day to look back on others’ trials and notice what they did wrong. Pursuant to this line of thinking is the tendency to assume that we would have acted a certain way, were we to have faced similar circumstances. But faced with our own trials of faith and commitment, what will future generations say of our own decisions?
Have you ever wondered about your decision to stand with Christ in the pre-mortal realm? The very fact that we are alive today is an indication of our decision to accept God’s plan. But what was that decision like? Did friends and loved ones decide to follow the opposing side? How intense was the struggle? How harsh were the words exchanged? How flattering and tempting were the enemy’s enticements?
We are left only to speculate about why one third of the hosts of heaven decided to reject God’s plan. Reading the stories of the children of Israel, Lehi and his family, or the early pioneers of this dispensation, we wonder with amazement at how many times they stumbled, especially on seemingly easy things. As one example, President Eyring shared this story of Haun’s Mill:
Capitalism and Charity
One of the most frequent and rarely contested criticisms against capitalism is the assertion that it is inherently selfish and inequitable. Greedy men hoard their wealth, critics cry, thus reinforcing and perpetuating the imbalance the capitalist system naturally creates.
Proffered solutions vary, but all share in common one fundamental element: the notion that the government must be empowered to solve the problem. Thus, the implemented ideal takes on any number of masks: socialism, democracy, communism, etc. Not only that, but the principles involved are able to infuse whatever other form of government does exist, thus slowly warping it into a markedly different system. So it is that within a republican framework legislation can be passed (illegally, though it wears some semblance of legality) that uses government to fix the problem.
Such solutions, however, fail to realize the true nature of the problem, and more importantly, what the correct solution unquestionably is. Proponents of government intervention into wealth distribution argue (whether explicitly or implicitly) that mankind is too selfish to take care of the poor and needy on their own, and therefore they must be required to do so. Further, they assert that when one’s elected representatives vote to implement some socialist policy or program, that it is perfectly fine and legal since it was done by an authorized government agent.
The Protected Class of Sexuality
In anti-discrimination law, a protected class is some personal identifier for which an individual cannot legally be persecuted or harassed. As misguided as anti-discrimination law is, the absurdity is taken one step further when the law creates a protected class from an individual’s choice.
If we have protected classes at all, they should be limited to only natural, biological traits. By instead expanding the definition to also include choices and personal preference, you open the floodgates for all sorts of alternative definitions that corrupt the original intent and neuter any meaning the term once had.
In the California Supreme Court’s recent ruling on same-sex marriage, a portion of the concurring opinion reads as follows:
Coping With Sudden Change
Each of us, at some point in our lives, is dealt a catastrophic, surprising blow that drastically changes the future course of events. What is perhaps more important than how we react is how we have prepared ourselves to react.
To be sure, there are some things that come completely out of left field that we simply cannot prepare for. But regardless of the ideal of preparing for specific circumstances, we can always prepare ourselves mentally and spiritually for change. We do not know what lies ahead, but knowing that change does lie ahead, we can ready ourselves to confront it.
Three Cups of Tea: The Proper Promotion of Peace
The movies I enjoy the most are the ones where you forget that you’re sitting in the theater. You become so enveloped by the plot that you’re seemingly sucked into the events that transpire around you. You share in the protagonist’s successes and feel their pains. Rarely have I come across a book that can pull off this feat.
Three Cups of Tea is a book that did just that for me. It’s masterfully written, and full of plot twists, setbacks, and surprises that might lead you to think it’s a fictional story. Instead, it’s the chronicles of one Greg Mortenson, a former mountaineer who became lost on a hike up K2 in the early 1990s. After recuperating in a remote Pakistan village named Korphe, Mortenson witnessed the circumstances in which the village’s children were educated:
For the Strength of Youth—Entertainment and Media
I gave the following talk in another ward today:
In our technologically-enhanced world, the entertainment industry has thrived in all its forms. TV, movies, video games, the internet, and more, all serve as vehicles through which money is to be made by those who wish to entertain. Our society has willingly gone along for the ride. Consider this frightening statistic: according to the A.C. Nielsen Company, the average American watches more than 4 hours of TV each day. This adds up to 28 hours per week, or two months of nonstop TV-watching every year. In a 65-year life, that person will have spent nine solid years glued to the tube. This says nothing of the additional time spent in the movie theater, listening to the radio or iPod, and using the computer, consuming other forms of so-called entertainment.
The statistics can be even more disheartening. I’ll share two that will help frame my remarks. First, a study conducted in 2004 shows that the average child watches more than 40,000 television commercials per year. Second, the average child will watch 8,000 murders and 100,000 other acts of violence on TV before finishing elementary school. By age eighteen, the average American has seen 200,000 acts of violence on TV, including 40,000 murders.
By now you have probably guessed the topic of my talk today. Following the pattern established by the stake presidency, today’s messages will be based upon the For the Strength of Youth pamphlet, specifically the topic regarding entertainment and media.
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- Our Own Tests of Faith
- Capitalism and Charity
- The Protected Class of Sexuality
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- For the Strength of Youth—Entertainment and Media
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