Holy moley, I cannot even keep up with this. :svengo:

Last question first: we do baptisms on the assumption that the person has to accept it in order for it to be valid. Since freedom to choose--agency or free will--is paramount in LDS theology, it would go against all our beliefs to think that anyone could be forced into the Church. We do the baptism in the hope that the person will accept it, but never assuming that he will. The reasoning behind what we do is fairly simple. In the Bible, Jesus says that he who believes and is baptized is saved; he who does not believe is not saved. Baptism seems to be a requirement; it's what a believer does. You can't be with God if you don't get baptized. But what about all those people in the world who have never been able to be baptized? Various churches get around this by having the 'baptism of all believers' or by saying that baptism is a dead work and unnecessary. We believe that baptism is necessary, but that it can be done at any time, even after death. Since we believe that one of God's greatest gifts to us is that families can be together forever, we want our families to be linked together eternally. For that reason, we search out our ancestors who never had the chance to learn the full gospel while they were alive, and we try to give them that opportunity so they can learn more while they are in the spirit world. That's pretty much why we do genealogy--it's like missionary work for your own family. Oh, and now I've previewed and there's a ton more. Ack. I think this was explained before, but those kingdoms don't exist yet and won't until after the final judgement. Right now there's the spirit world, which is divided into paradise and prison. Look earlier in the thread for more.

Hm, misconceptions that bug me--that women are considered inferior in our church. That Mormons are brainwashed and have obviously never examined their own beliefs. And that we are not Christians. I have never felt anything other than a fully valued and equal woman in the LDS Church, and I have a perfectly good brain with which to think about truth. The truth that I believe is that Jesus Christ is my Savior, and that makes me a Christian. :)

No one is infallible except God, and Joseph Smith was certainly not perfect. But I think the majority of Mormons (including me) would say that polygamy was truly a commandment from God for the LDS people of that time. Here's the 8th Article of Faith: "We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly; we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God." So we do not believe the Bible to be infallible; we believe it to be inspired, to contain lots of gospel truth, but also that truths have been lost or removed from it in the course of time. Even the Book of Mormon is not considered to be an infallible document in the way that evangelicals seem to consider the Bible to be; it has a verse right in it that says that if there are mistakes in it, they are the mistakes of men and not of God. We don't really think that eternal marriage is contradicted in the Bible. But if there is confusion in the scriptures, we have a modern prophet and the right to ask for light and inspiration from God. The teachings of the current living prophet are always considered to supersede teachings from the past, as our needs might change (for example, the Word of Wisdom, our dietary rule about alcohol etc., is modern revelation that is for us, and was not given to those who lived in Biblical times). Yes, though we do not know a lot about her. We call her our Heavenly Mother.

That looks fun--though I must say that I've always thought that pumpkin juice sounds VILE.

That's what 'tithing' means, yes. At the same time, no one is going to check your income. At the end of each year, you go in and have a little appointment with the bishop (which is a nice opportunity for him to check in on everyone anyway) and he shows you a list of all your donations for the year. You check it over and make sure that it's correct. Then he asks how you would define yourself--full or partial tithe? And you say, 'yes, I have paid a full tithe' or 'I paid a partial tithe.' And that's the end. You're judging yourself; everyone is going to take your word for it. But if you want to attend the temple, being a full tithe payer is one part of that. After all, in the temple we make more serious covenants; we consider tithing to be the lesser law, the minimum standard. It would not be right to lie about tithing and then go make covenants with God to live a higher standard that that! I'm sure there are people who do exactly that, but that's between them and the Lord.

IME the whole 'planet' thing is trying to make us sound like a science-fiction cult. Otherwise it's been explained well already. I would like to address this, though, since I think it's not quite accurate. When we speak of the Celestial Kingdom, as Xuzi explained it's where families are eternal. When a married couple is sealed in the temple, that is supposed to be an eternal bond. To Mormons, marriage is a very central doctrine and marriage is required for certain things in heaven. However, I'd just like to say that there is nothing 'worse' about being a woman. Both men and women need to be sealed to do those things, so it's not like the single women are going to be left in the cold. We believe that everyone will have their chance, too, and while not everyone is going to be able to be married in mortality, no one will be punished for that.

I'm another Mormon, so I'll try to jump in too. :) But I have to go eat lunch first.

Mine is "Nine Lives," which profiles nine different devotees of different religious traditions in India. It's quite something.

Oh my heck, I would be going insane too. I don't actually know what to do about this--my first instinct is to come down hard on it because it would make me so mad! Probably that wouldn't be good. So I just want to sympathize with you. (Like, with the Squinkies, my instinct would be to take those and the trains away for a week or something. Pretty much every time, I would take away whatever she had that she was wailing about. But I don't know that that would actually be a good plan.)

On my second try, I got St. Walburga, against famine, which seems appropriate enough.

Sure!

I'm not a knitter, but my sister made these wrist cuffs for me! Mine are navy with gold beads. I love them!

I read the Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy years ago and enjoyed it. It's generally considered to be excellent historical fiction. Certainly I remember it better than almost all the other historical fiction I've ever read.

Excellent! Yeah, I felt similarly about Margery, and last time I tried to read Augustine I got so annoyed that I don't want to try again... Here's my wrap-up post.

:lol: Poor baby! :lol: (I didn't have Barbies either!)

I'll second that; maybe I could get up there!

Two good ones are the Krazy Coupon Lady (authors of "Pick another checkout lane, honey") and the Prudent Homemaker.

My 10yo daughter just came home from church struggling with those feelings. (I went home with a cold.) Most of her friends got video game consoles--Wii or DS or something, often for the whole family. We had a lovely Christmas, but we couldn't afford much and I made about 80% of the presents. And she loves her presents, and she isn't a terribly materialistic kid--I don't even know that she wants a Wii very badly. She's just struggling with those feelings of 'everybody else got fancy cool stuff that we can't afford,' which I think are feelings that almost everyone has sometimes. Me too!

Are we supposed to write a blog post answering those questions, or put them here, or what? There are so many I thought a blog post might be best. I have a week 52 book and it's a very special one! It's a middle-grade biography of a California pioneer none of you have heard of (unless Julie in CA or Liz CA sees this)--John Bidwell. He gets no fame (my personal theory is that it's because he didn't name things after himself) but he was actually very important in CA history. And my mom wrote this biography! Yay Mom! Questions you can ask yourself while you read this book: Would you eat a coyote's windpipe if you were hungry enough? Could you carry a baby across the mountains, with no trail to follow and no shoes to wear? If you were a wealthy girl, would you be as brave as Annie and leave your home and family to get married and live in the wilderness of California? How would you tell the President's wife that she is supposed to share? And why did the lack of a batea keep the Gold Rush from starting for a couple of years?

I'm just popping in late--I failed at blogging for the past couple of months, and I was going to just make a fresh start in 2011. So I put a post on my blog listing the books I'd failed to blog about--I did read a book a week, just failed to say anything--and the author of one of them commented (!!) and asked for my thoughts (!!!). So here is week 51--Growing up bin Laden, by Jean Sasson. She commented there too!

Me me me! RoughCollie, are you asking a serious question or kidding around? I can't quite tell. :001_smile: The Doctor is a Time Lord who travels around the universe in his time/spaceship, which is disguised as a blue phone box and is way bigger on the inside. He is a bit mad and usually has a Companion along. He solves problems. And is cool. The terrible special effects are part of the fun (though now they're not so awful).

An old HS classmate of mine, the one who organizes the reunions, runs a company. He just posted his website's new redesign on FB and said 'Check it out!' Elevator I think the Grammar Fairy just died. That it's on purpose does not help.

Exactly two weeks. We are both Scorpios, which is apparently a terrible thing.

Anything by Eleanor Farjeon, and also E. Nesbit's stories. And Elizabeth Goudge!