The spirit of this talk came to me about 1/3 of the way through reading it. It spoke to me of an immense gratitude which I feel for being a member of this church.  Not only is it this church, but it is His church.  I belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the same church which Jesus Christ himself set up when he was ...

I just finished reading the talk "My Soul Delighteth in the Things of the Lord", and it was a good talk. It made me think of my own upbringing, and the upbringing of my children.  I loved the following statement: "I delight that I am a daughter of Heavenly Father, who loves me. I learned of my divine identity in my earliest ...

For some reason, I love the commandment of paying tithing.  It's probably one of the top 10 commandments of which I have a burning testimony. I love this quote (as well as Jacob 2:19) "President Heber J. Grant stated, “I want to say to you, if you will be honest with the Lord, paying your tithing and keeping His commandments, He...

The video above is of a band called "Florez", who really did quite well.  But the real reason for the video above is for the LDSMusicians group to see Art City Park, where the LDSFest will be held this year. I just did a quick panoramic for people to analyze and with which to become informed. That's really all.  We got bored a...

Well...  The video says it all, but for those of you who don't want to watch it, here's the low-down. Woke up Saturday and it rained for about 4 hours, so Plan B only got to play one set.  The set we played absolutely rocked, and I can't wait to get the footage from the videographer who shot the set (I'll be putting up snippets for sur...

This is the first time I think I've ever watched / listened to / read a talk given by Elder D. Todd Christofferson. My first impressions of him are very, very high.  He has a very poignant, straightforward, yet very soft tone to his voice.  He does not waver in his speech, and seems completely convicted of the things he says. I enjoye...

As I sit here listening to, watching, and reading the talk given by President Uchtdorf, I'm puzzled by my lack of caring of the faith of my fathers. I don't exactly know why it is, but I.....  I've never really looked at what my parents believe being a part of my faith.  I don't know if that is wrong or what... What I believe is what ...

When I went in to my 6 month review about 4 month ago, I didnt know what I was in for. I assumed things would go well because I had accomplished everything I set out to do and more, so I felt pretty good. The interview went very well.  They complimented me on my work, the sales reports, the new web site, the money I was saving the compan...

For those of you who don't know, in addition to running ILoveMyJournal.com, I also run an inspirational website called LDSCompanion.org. Today when I arrived at work, I had an email from someone who had pressed the "contact us" button. The message I recieved encapsulates the entire reason I created that site, and caused tears to well ...

I decided to document Friday's happenings of the 2008 Ed Roth (Rat Fink) Memorial Reunion because they were a bit funner than Thursday's.  So.... Here's your boring report of Thursday.  hehe...  It was fun playing, but to me, it was more like a practice session for what was to come Friday and Saturday. The video pretty much sums it...

Ya know...  It's that time again.  I've gotta sit here and see where the keyboard attached to my brain takes me.  I wonder how many people could do this.  I mean, I've always been kind of the weird one of the bunch - and I'm okay with that. When I came up with the idea to have an on-line journal (about the time that the whole...

I've been needing to write a bit more about what's going on in my life lately, so... I'll give it a try this evening. First, you'll notice by the video above that yesterday morning a sad event occurred. No, my cat didn't die. No, my computer didn't fry. My mohawk went bye-bye. Yup.  I woke up yesterday morning and just couldn't ...

 So, the past few days have been days of trial, and these days come and go largely, I believe, to help me remember the covenants I've made to God, and to help me remember how sweet it is to feel the Spirit. When I read the end of verse 11, I wondered what those who had never felt "clasped in the arms of Jesus" might think of those ...

I'm not exactly sure what happened, but I lost the post I just wrote about chapter 6. I didn't realize how short it was, so I wrote about the importance of scriptures spoken of in verse 5.  If we didn't have scriptures, our kids would eventually lose the commandments of God (unless, of course, it was revealed again). Also, it's good to not...

Reading this talk from Bish H. David Burton really made me feel good.  It brought the Spirit of God into my little work office and made me realize how much good there is to be done in the world. I personally had no idea the church was doing so much to help so many people.  I knew of some major disasters in which the church lent a huge h...

Man... I'm tired...  I've got to see what I can make out of chapter 37 because I told myself today I would read and write about it.  So here goes. The first thing that comes to mind is that the popular verse 6 seems to come out of thin-air.  The verse before it talks about the plates of brass retaining their "brightness",...

I'm not entirely sure about the east coast or any other coast, but the clam chowder from the west coast at the Fisherman's Wharf in Monterey California is ....  is....  well...  it's clam chowder the way it was meant to be. Today was a day full of driving in rush-hour-esque conditions, getting the hotel arranged at Monterey, CA. ...

The first thing I noticed this time, is that apparently, Helaman had never had any proof of the existence of the plates of gold Alma and the previous prophets were writing on.  Not entirely sure why that caught my fancy this time, but it did.  I guess keeping the historical records was a pretty sacred thing back then.  I wonder if th...

"Yielding Our Hearts to God"  or   "Change of Heart" - Man, I love this talk. I wish I could tell you all how much this talk means to me.  When I heard it the first time, I was with noisy kids, so I didn't get much out of it, but the next time I listened to it was during lunch, and I was alone.  I...

 I should be way more tired than I am. I just got done praying, and a day before that I had just got done sinning.  You know the kind I'm talking about.   It's the kind you really need to rid yourself of.  The kind that always keeps creeping around, finding an idle brain-cell to occupy...  So, yeah...  Hundreds, if n...

Ya know...  Today was a good Sunday.  In church, we learned about trials, and the nature of them - why God gives them to us, and why we need them.  D&C 58 1-4 is a great reference if you're looking for some good stuff on trials.  We talked a lot about Zion's Camp, and the general tendency the early saints had toward generati...

Earlier this evening, it was absolutely beautfiul outside, and for some reason, I wasn't drained of energy from the daily grind, so I decided to take my wife and my kids out to the park nearby. While I was pushing Collin and Luci on the swings, I realized how wonderful playing with kids can be.  Of course, this wasn't the first time I reali...

 What a horrible, yet extremely personal and hopeful chapter.   The nature of it reminds me of the psalm of Nephi (2 nephi  4:15-end).  What horrible, horrible things were going on at the end, but it just amazes me, the strength of Mormon, and his constant prayers for Moroni - and his pleading to God for his soul to be brought b...

As I was sputtering around the net today, I found a pretty cool feature within google, of which I did not know.  Did you know that google can search blogs for stuff you're interested in? Well.. Today I typed in "LDS Doctrine" and I found this site which had all sorts of good stuff in it.   I read one of his posts concernin...

Ya know...  The first verses of this chapter brought back some well-known stories of Mormon culture.  The most potent one being the experience Joseph Smith had in a Missouri jail surrounded by a mob of people cursing and glorying in their raping, murdering, and wickedness against the Mormon people. Parley P. Pratt said the following in ...

With the new design of ILMJ, I thought it fitting for people to be able to add their own static links on their blogs...  Doing so is very easy. A "page" in your blog is simply an entry which stays in the left-hand column on both your main blog site, and each individual entry, as is illustrated below: So, as you can see,...

I know a lot of the posts this year have been on the spiritual topic, but, I write about the events of my life, and so I guess this is what ya get. Today was awesome. If you've read my previous posts, you'll know that today I sang in the choir, gave a talk in sacrament meeting, and taught the 15-16 year old doctrine class. It was wonderful. ...

Yesterday was a good day.  Yes, yesterday was most definitely a good day. My great friend Scott Morris's father died last week and they held the viewing and funeral yesterday.  I also had our annual concert with my band, Plan B. My day started at 6:45am (a time, I would really rather not see for my entire life), and consisted of dri...

 So... I don't even know where to begin. Honestly, my life is so full right now, I feel as though I might decide to curl up into a remote corner of the world somewhere and hide for a few months. That said, each day I seem to manage to get up with a renewed strength to attack the day's duties with a renewed vigor.  Even though it's cl...

The beginning verses of this scripture were the ones of focus today. For the past 2 chapters (or more), the Lord has been chastising the Gentiles, should they fall into the pride cycle and not repent. The beginning 2 verses of this chapter basically says, "even though the Gentiles were bad, don't get on your high-horse, thinking you're any...