In 1960, I was a young man living in Australia, serving a two-year mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (The Mormons). My mission was not at all what I thought it would be. But how could I anticipate extreme highs and lows that I had never before experienced? How could I conceive…
How can men and women of intelligence, integrity, scholastic prominence, and with acknowledged expertise, have such divergent views of the Book of Mormon and its origin? For example, take the diametrically opposed conclusions of two prominent anthropology Mesoamerican scholars, who, by the way, are friends. One, Michael Coe, is at least an agnostic, and the…
For 50 years, our sister-in-law, Kaye Terry Hanson, was at the top of Joyce’s and my best-friend-list, and for the last nearly a year, the three of us had daily morning scripture reading via telephone. Admittedly, our morning get-together was often mostly conversation mingled with scripture. Joyce’s oldest sister, Shirley, had been terminally ill a long…
Sometimes I tell full time missionaries today that the reason they have so many mission rules is that when I was a missionary 55 years ago, we didn’t! There’s more than a hint of truth to that. For example, on my mission we were on our own to find a place to live. No written guidelines….