Member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Michigan

We just had stake conference in the Bloomfield Hills Michigan Stake of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints this weekend. It was truly a day in Zion. I have been called to invite others to come and see and come and share and to take a name to the temple. The latter I will do with the name of one of my wife's relatives. I was so glad to hear from Elder Peter M. Johnson of the 70 who made mention of being from New York, and the trouble of moving to the dry climate of Utah including having to work extra hard on his 'fro. Elder Johnson is the only African-American general authority (not the only black one though, Elder Sitati and Elder Dube are clearly black, African, just not in any way shape means or form American). The most moving talk was by a girl who just turned 12 last month. I wish I had had the vision of temple envolvement when I was her age. The failure to find as many names is partly due to a harder process, little internet access (we didn't get intern...

The most recent reform in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was announced this week. It involves changes of the age at which youth can advance in the priesthood, receive limited use temple reccomends, and related issues. The change involves shifting movement to being fixed by birthday, to the start of a year in which a person's birthday occurs. The change is not universal. Baptism is still at age 8, and rules about advancement to relief society, the Melchizedek priesthood and being able to go on missions have not changed. Nor has the age at which the Church allows dating, 16, changed at all. Cub scouting and boy scouting seem to be largely unaffected, but if I read it right the move from 11-year-old scouts to regular scouts is at the start of the year one turns 12. This means some will be 11-year-old scouts for weeks, while others for virtually a whole year. Since the Church is fully leaving scouting at the start of 2020, this is not a long term issue. Starting ...