Category: Mormon Life

General Conference Trivia – April 2018 (Slideshow)

Last weekend’s general conference was Epic! It was probably my all-time favorite conference in my 40 years of life. I love the changes that were made to the priesthood quorums and the “ministering” program.

We had an extended family family-home-evening planned for after conference. I threw together a Keynote slideshow trivia game. I will post it here in case anyone wants to use it in a family home evening or church activity.

It made for a fun night and a good review of each of the talks in the conference. I will explain how we played so it might give you some ideas, but you can use this however you want.

  1. I told everyone before the conference to take notes because we would be playing a trivia game.
  2. I told everyone they could bring their notes to use in the trivia game.
  3. Asked the two youngest children to come up front. They were team captains and picked their team. It was funny because they were so innocent and they had no strategy. Grandpa – who had 18 pages of notes, was the last pick.
  4. For each question, the teams could talk about it and look at their notes, then the team captain gave or approved the final answer.
  5. The team captain also kept track of their team’s points.
  6. I gave one point for each correct answer. There were also a couple of bonus points in the game that kept the score close.
  7. If a team didn’t know the answer or gave the wrong answer, I gave the other team an opportunity to steal the point.
  8. In the end, the losing team had to serve dessert to the winning team before they ate dessert.

Here is the link to download the Keynote slideshow: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ShSz9sDu9aMhX1F_adiRbgtNSNniQexR

I exported it to Powerpoint. You may want to test things and make sure they work right: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1RaICZt-_j4ytYimHaVcFi7jqK66a06PV

I converted the Powerpoint to a Google presentation also: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1YcL8WoSE_isULl3sy2wLuNXIgNO2-HjS8Qojv8ow3n8

General Conference Packets – Thank You Beehives!

This morning our 6 year old daughter Gracie was whining and complaining because she didn’t want to watch General Conference and my wife, Rachel didn’t want the kids just playing in the toy room and fighting the whole time. Gracie was getting pretty dramatic about it. Just before it started the doorbell rang. It was a beehive girl in the ward. She dropped off 3 packets that had a conference activity book, bingo game, and a pack of M&M’s. It was seriously so cool! There was a little note from the Beehive group saying “we hope you enjoy general conference.” I was not only impressed that they did the project but they were out delivering them in cold, windy, snowy weather. Seriously, it was really cool. Gracie saw them and got really excited. Our 4 year old son, Gehrig was excited too. We didn’t have a problem keeping them in the room after that. Gracie was listening for words fill up her bingo card with her M&M and Gehrig was coloring in his workbook and drawing his favorite apostle, Elder Uchtdorf. Nolan, our 18 month old was devouring his M&Ms. Those young women really saved us! I think even Rachel really enjoyed it. There was a page for each apostle and activities to do while they were speaking. She used Nolan’s packet and followed along and made notes in it. It really was not just for kids I guess!

I Enjoy Home Teaching

I had two home teaching appointments tonight. I realized something when I got home. I really enjoy home teaching. It was a surprise to me actually. I guess I always figured it was just something I do to fulfill my duty. As I was pulling in to my garage I got a great feeling just knowing that I enjoy visiting with my families. They are my friends. The visits went well. Whether we are just talking about life or the Gospel, I enjoy visiting.

What do Mormons, PDAs, & DVDs Have in Common?

I was looking at some web statistics this morning and I noticed that I had quite a few hits on my DVD site coming from a forum at LDS Mingle. I was intrigued (mostly because I’m LDS) so I signed up temporarily to see what the talk was about. A member there suggested visiting DVD Anthology to track your DVD collection, keep track of movies you loan out and print lists of your movies – exactly what I created the site for 🙂

Another man piped up and suggested, why bother when you can keep track of all your movies on your PDA and not have to be tied down to the internet. They argued for a bit about the pros & cons of each. I thought it was funny, because little do they know that the creator of DVD Anthology is also the owner of Shilbon Software and LDS PDA! 😀

I wanted to join the conversation, but it required that I pay for membership. Since I’m already married I couldn’t see the value in it. 😉

[tags]LDS, DVDs, PDA, PDAS, Palm, Clie, DVD Collection, Mormons[/tags]

What’s In A Singles Ward?

I’ve had this argument with a few family and friends and so I need to put my strong opinion out in the open to get some feedback and arguments – both opposing and supportive.

I feel that if you are single and looking for a mate, you’re more likely to find your mate while attending the home ward in which you live rather than attending a singles ward.

First of all, I understand the desire to want to go where there are more singles to choose from to increase your odds of finding your mate. This logic makes sense but it is flawed. I was going to launch in to a parable about dogs and such but I changed my mind.

Instead, I think I’ll just put it out there… This is my feelings about singles wards from my experiences. Keep in mind that this was 8 years ago and things may have changed since then, but I doubt it.

Continue reading What’s In A Singles Ward?

LDS Planet = Lonely Planet

There exists among the various dating sites one by the name of LDS Planet dot com (I wrote it out rather than give them another inbound link to boost their pagerank). I’m sorry, but you would probably have to be completely brand new to the internet to join this site.

Now I’m happily married so I don’t visit dating sites, but this one caught my attention when I noticed a Google Adsense Ad with the Title “Latter Day Blog.” I’m guessing that their ad has appeared on this site before and they saw the name of my site in their traffic reports and they are trying to milk it for all its worth.

Just out of curiosity I googled LDS Planet and found this rather humorous spam complaint against them. Apparently they are creating fake profiles and spamming people to convince them to join.

I went to the site itself and notice the footer explains that it is owned by “Zencon Technologies.” It simple Google Search of this term shows what kind of wolves are running this site. The two results contain the terms “scam alert” and “ripoff report”. Then you may notice the various other dot com dating sites they have running such as BlackPeopleMeet, DivorcedPeopleMeet, LoveAndSeek, BlackChristianPeopleMeet, PeopleMeet, SingleParentMeet, GamerPeopleMeet, … yada, yada, yada. I didn’t take the time to see how long their list ran.

Needless to say these people are low class idiots trying to milk their dating web script for all its worth.

I’ve blocked their ads from my site, but I encourage you to click their ad whenever you see it to run up their advertising bill. Hopefully if they start spending more on ads than they are making it may drive them away. Unfortunately, with so many clueless people on the internet I doubt that will happen anytime soon.

Thy Savior

I’m one of those annoying people who likes to correct others incorrect use of the English language. I don’t know why. It’s not like I’m an expert in English. In fact, my last English class was my junior year in high school 11 years ago. My step mom was a junior high English teacher. Maybe it was the joy I had in finding flaws in her grammar that brought me amusement when correcting her.

In any case, it seems in the past two weeks I’ve heard something said in prayers that I find interesting. It is this phrase: “We thank Thee for Thy Savior…”

Now, in my mind it would seem more appropriate to say “Thy Son” or “Our Savior”. It would seem to me that since we are addressing our Heavenly Father, the term “Thy Savior” would imply that Jesus was the Savior of God the Father, which is not the case. For what is a savior? According to Dictionary.com, a savior is “a person who saves, rescues, or delivers.” Certainly our Heavenly Father does not need to be saved, rescued, or delivered as he is God and is perfect.

As long as I’m on the topic, I might also point out something I hear much more often over the pulpit. When a person closes a talk or testimony I often hear: “I say these things in the name of thy Son…” This works well in prayers when you are addressing your Heavenly Father, but when you are addressing a congregation, I think it is better to leave out “thy Son” and simply close in the name of Jesus Christ. Even changing one letter might be appropriate: “the Son.”

I hope I don’t offend anyone by my comments. My hopes are instead that we might be more conscious in how we speak of our Savior.

Leadership Titles

I have always tried to use proper titles when I address or speak of my leaders in the church such as calling the Bishop “Bishop” and the elders quorum president “President.”

Now that I have been called to be an elders quorum president, I find it awkward to call myself “President Davis.” I never have done so. When I make calls and I will normally say, “Hi this is Dustin Davis.” The person on the other end will normally respond with “Hello President!”

I wonder though, should I refer to myself as president as I am doing work as the president (such as making phone calls)? I think I use my own name because I don’t want to appear arrogant. I also sometimes feel the calling is bigger than myself – as if I don’t measure up to elders quorum presidents that I have had in the past.

I try to remember when I get calls from leaders. Do they say, “This is Bishop So-and-so” or “This is President So-and-so”? I can’t really remember.

Is this topic trivial and totally unimportant? I’d like to hear your thoughts.

Thankful for Cake

Last Saturday my wife was making cake for a funeral in our ward. Our neighbor had died after a long battle with cancer. My wife tried to explain this to our 3 year old who is always by her side when she’s making cookies or cake. After the cake was in the oven we made lunch and our daughter said the prayer. Now this is really sad and I don’t think my daughter fully grasps the concept of death, sadness, and grief, but we had to smile and shake our heads at her innocence when she said, “I thank thee that the lady died so we can make cake.”