Hmm....  I'm kind of tired right now, but I figured I needed to read some scriptures... This time around, I realize how being under the rule of a tyrant would be absolutely horrible.  In this case, Alma was under the rule of one (or more) of the Amulonites - which were his wicked peers when they were the king's priests.  Talk about...

Ya know when you have one of those days where something is just off?  Well..  Today started out that way, but that all changed when I decided to crack open a couple of my energy drinks. Now, I'm no proponent to something addictive and potentially dangerous, but I'm a believer also that everything has its place.  I mean... Morphine ...

This chapter was good to read.  I felt the spirit quite a bit.  Some insights I had this time around were interesting... I really wish I knew how much Alma knew about the Gospel before he was converted by Abinadi.  Regardless of how much he knew, it's interesting that each decision Alma makes with his little city of people he broug...

Wow....  I guess all of our babies couldn't be 100% perfect in the birthing process. I thought I'd have written 2 or more entries by now, but...  Things definitely are dynamic with birth, so ya never know. If you haven't read the pre-post and the first post on Samuel's birth, I'd recommend it, just to catch up... After the birth,...

I'm still kind of in awe of it all, but ....  holy cow..  Samuel Jason Jones has arrived! We got into the car around 4:30pm after Sarah had been in labor since around 6:00am.  Wow... What a trooper. We arrived here at the hospital at 5:00pm anticipating his arrival around 10:00pm or so...  Yeah right...  Samuel had ot...

I thought that today I'd be enjoying conference, but instead I'm playing Mr. Mom, as Sarah is trying to control her contractions. I woke up around 7:30 this morning to the tune of my wife exclaiming that she was sure today was the day.  Due to her body's signals, I believed it. So, we've been patiently waiting for her body to get a bit mor...

Interesting that the council invites the entire Nephite people in the land of Nephi to join in the discussion about how they should free themselves.  I wonder why they make a point to note that. Also, it's very cool that Mosiah received them with joy, although I can't find any reason that they should have done otherwise. This seems like a ...

Update:  Due to the popularity of this post, some people are having a hard time viewing the video posted above.  If it won't play for you, simply wait until the gray progress bar has filled 1/4 to 1/2 of the way before you press play.  That should do the trick. Yesterday I took the day off work to go to my bother's sealing to his w...

Ya know...  This time around with this chapter was filled with little tid-bits of inspiration.  I don't remember this chapter being so filled with doctrine, but I'll do my best to write down what I thought about as I read the chapter. The first verse which caught my attention was verse 4.  The people of Limhi were, by and large, a ...

Ya know...  I'm not the best coder in the world, and I'm not the geekiest of geeks, either.  I personally know quite a few people who would classify me as a "mutt coder", because I really don't care too much about code purity. I'm not quite sure what in me makes me that way, but it's true.  Maybe it's because I learned p...

Today I had an interesting thought.  It's a question that possibly has thousands of answers, but, since I'm on a pensive streak, I thought I'd write down some of what I came up with. The thought was "How do you tell if someone cares for you?", which also spawned the thought, "How do I tell if I care for someone else?", whi...

It's not too often you read stories about a business who knowingly chooses gentoo as their Linux distribution of choice;  this is why I liked this story so much. Everything they say about gentoo (both good and bad) I believe is right on the money. This company chose gentoo to run their main servers for an email marketing company, and haven...

I just returned from a family vacation at "Down-At-A" water-park with all my immediate family (minus Andrea) and had a blast. During the evening of the first night, the discussion was lulling a bit, so Curtis and I decided to begin discussing some doctrinal points of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. During this discussion, both Curtis and I ...

Sorry for the outage, guys. If you tried to access ilovemyjournal.com between last Friday and today, you probably just got a "timed out" response. We had some technical difficulties, but all is well now.  No journals were affected. If you notice anything wrong with your journal, please contact me....

To be honest, about 80% of these two chapters made no sense to me at all.  I didn't put forth my best effort to understand, but I really did concentrate. A couple of verses made a lot of sense to me due to the state of the world we live in. Chapter 15 verses 20-23.  You know it's a bad day when people in general accept wickedness as r...

It's been awhile since I continued on in my quest to read and write about each and every chapter in the Book of Mormon, but, I'm still at it!  I'm gonna finish!  Here's Alma 18: The first thing I notice this time around is something I don't think I've ever noticed before. In order to feel badly about doing something, you have to at le...

Okay, so I recently watched a documentary on the Foo Fighters called "Back and Forth", and I thought it was really well made - okay, I thought it was awesome.  The funny thing is - I don't own a single Foo Fighters album, and am really not familiar with them as a band, even though I generally like the "rock" genre they asso...

Well.... Not much to write, other than this week's goal wasn't forgotten. :) I'd say that 5 out of the 7 days I had were a success of making at least 90% of the decisions during the day based on strengthening the family. My job is going well, although it's kind of scary because I'm the sole Linux guru of the company. They're putting a lot of fa...

Hmm...  What could "prosper in the land" possibly mean?  This is something I've fought with recently, while think about prosperity in general.  When someone says, "That guy has really prospered", or "she is really prosperous", what could it possibly mean? Some things in the scriptures are mentioned on...

I just realized that it's been a month since I last wrote about the Book of Mormon.  Man, if I'm gonna finish this thing, I'm gonna have to pick up the pace! First thing I noticed with this chapter is that when Alma got the revelation concerning the spirit world, it seems that he was just asking a curious question, "What happens to the ...

Today was spent with my good friend, and brother, Ryan (and his family, who happens to love my family!) We spent the day moving all sorts of large items from our home into the storage space we're renting.  From the kitchen table and chairs, to the couch downstairs, to the hutches - we made two trips full of items, with our mini-van and Dad'...

My mom called me up a couple of days ago to give me some not-so-great news. My dad got fired from his job.  Now, those of you who know my dad know that he isn't "fire-able" material.  While he was employed at his full-time job at the prime of his life, he happened to "keep a job" for more than 15 years, so...  ...

During last month's testimony meeting, our wonderful Luci whispered into Sarah's ear, as the church members were expressing their feelings about Christ, that she really didn't want to go up there.  It was totally unprovoked, but as she is somewhat frightened of unfamiliar situations, was totally understandable. We told her that it was okay ...

Update: The file upload works great now. The server browser is also fully functional for uploading new images as well as browsing images you've already uploaded.   ILoveMyJournal.com has upgraded to the new FCKeditor, and it has quite a few new features, but along with the new features, the image uploads aren't working quite righ...

Ya know, I thought up until now that verse 6 refers only to the people under the reign of king Lamoni.  Evidently, it was everyone under the king of the entire Lamanite nation.  Amazing, amazing missionary work. Heh... Yeah... In reading the rest of the chapter, it pretty much names exactly the cities which were converted.  I guess...

As I read this chapter, I found the question in my head, "why was Nephi prompted to put Isaiah in here?" One thing I'm noticing in this chapter and the last, is the writing style of Isaiah is quite starkly contrasted against the writing of Nephi.  It's wildly poetic. I enjoyed this chapter as much as I did the last.  I didn'...

Me and my good friend Scott chatted for far too long today about a very interesting subject.  The subject was brought about by this article, which, in essence is just a conversation between an aethiestic professor and two of his students. In a nutshell, the professor makes the claim of God creating Satan, and thus creating evil, and thereby ...

Confrontation and contention has always been an interesting thing for me.  For one, I hate it and I don't know how to deal with it.  I'm a passionate person in every sense of the word.  The moment I feel like I'm being attacked, it's everything I have to do to keep my head level and my blood from boiling.  Unfortunately, this ke...

 So, I was reading this chapter when I came upon the phrase "fulness of joy" in verse 10.  The phrase caught my eye primarily because it was only mentioned for the 3 Nephites who chose to stay.  It was not mentioned for the others.  That caused me to wonder how often the phrase "fulness of joy" is used in scr...

So, the Christmas season is officially here, and I'm feeling more Christmas Spirt than I ever have in my life - by a long shot. I attribute this to two things...  First and foremost, attitude, and making good choices.  To me, Christmas is a spiritual season because it's filled with love, good will, charity, friends, and family.  If...