This Used To Count As Home Teaching

Disappearing food isn’t a miracle. It happens all the time – especially at night. In fact I can always tell when it’s happened again because I wake up with severe indigestion and lasagna noodles stuck to my pajama pants. The same thing happens with meat loaf, apple sauce and an edible Mexican ant larvae called Escamoles . That last one was in my fridge by accident. Food appearing with no explanation in time of incredible need, on the other hand, can be considered heaven-sent. I’ve come across three such instances recently. All of which, if taken at the word of those speaking, are nothing short of awe-inspiring miracles. The first happened on the Pioneer trek west. It was a tough road – more so if you were already sick when you loaded into the wagon. So it was for Mary Ann Mellor. She’d given birth to conjoined twins the day her ship was to leave Liverpool, England. The twins died and the doctor’s thought Mary Ann would too. A few days later she boarded the ship on a ...

Joseph Smith staring into the bottom of a hat to translate a book is a funny picture to some. Perhaps ‘to most’ would have been a better way to end that sentence. This was definitely left out of all my primary classes – but I learned about it in books readily available in the church-owned Deseret Book. It’s not really the secret angrier-corners of the internet would have you believe. Not only that – but Joseph Smith didn’t invent seer stones. He wasn’t the first one to throw a stone into a dark place to better see its stories. No, no – hippies love them too. Hippies and Joseph Smith. That’s the complete list of everyone who cares about seer stones. No more no less. Oh – except Io, the god of the Maoris. And boatloads of other Americans. And according to ancient Jewish lore, Adam, Abraham, Noah, Joseph of Egypt, etc… The list really goes on. It goes on long enough, in fact, that Joseph Smith goes from being a lonely stone-starer to one of alleged dozens. It’s actually a huge...