Changes to Church Website

Last summer, Ron Schwendiman, Manager of Internet Operations for the Church, gave a presentation (PPT, 14 slides, 382KB) at BYU Education Week on the future of the Church's website. Here are some of the highlights he presented on what the Church's website may look by the end of this summer.

• Full site navigation and content in 10 languages (Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish)
• Site organized by user need or interest
• Single-source authentication (user ID and password) of users to provide content based on roles and positions (My LDS.ORG)
• Expanded and integrated search capabilities in all 10 languages

In addition, he provided the following screenshot of a preliminary design of the new site.

Phrases That Bug Me

While we are on the topic of phrases that bug me, here are some others:

"Does your wife work?"

"Are you babysitting?"

Should Mothers Stay Home?

By divine design, fathers are to preside over their families in love and righteousness and are responsible to provide the necessities of life and protection for their families. Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children. In these sacred responsibilities, fathers and mothers are obligated to help one another as equal partners.

Interesting. Nowhere in this proclamation—whether it is scripture or not is for another post—does it state that mothers are to stay home or that they are not allowed to go out to work.

So why is it that such an idea is taught in the Church?

Looking on the Heart

The Lord looks on the heart. We look on the outside. He sees more than we see.

Mary Siever

Congratulations

Why is it when I receive a new calling, everyone says, "Congratulations"? It's not like I campaigned for them. It's not like I was running neck and neck with some other candidate for them. It's not like it was something I had to attain.

If I graduate from university, it makes sense to be congratulated. If I place in the top ten of a marathon, it makes sense to be congratulated. If I eat a two-foot-long sub sandwich in under ten minutes, it makes sense to be congratulated.

All those things are accomplishments. Receiving a new calling is not an accomplishment.

Same goes for having babies. I am so not looking forward to everyone saying "congratulations" in the fall after our baby is born.

New Calling

It is official. I am now the new elders quorum president of the Lethbridge First Ward. The stake presidency set us apart today.

The previous elders quorum president is moving this week and the bishop decided to put me in his place. Actually, he initially refused to give me up as ward clerk having been comfortable with how I ran things clerically. His counsellors managed to talk him into it.

I have known about it since the end of April even though the bishopric hid it from me until I was officially called by the stake presidency.

Things are different from the last time I was called as president. The quorum is smaller, I am one of the oldest in the quorum and I have learned a lot having served with a bishopric and a stake mission presidency.

I have a few ideas in mind regarding some initiatives we can implement to improve home teaching, strengthen quorum unity and grow the quorum. I meet with my counsellors this Tuesday to discuss these and we’ll see how receptive they are to them.

If anyone is interested, here are the callings I have had since I was married in 1995:

• elders quorum second counsellor
• elders quorum president
• ward mission leader
• stake mission secretary
• young men president
• ward clerk
• elders quorum president

Nope. No ward bulletin editor.

Mormon Temple GoogleBomb Bombed

It's been over a month since the Bloggernacle went crazy with the so called injustice that resulted in a Google search for "mormon temple" showing up no positive sources for temples of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A number of blogs decided to start making links to positive sites hoping to change that (here, here, here and here to name a few).

It appears all those efforts amounted to nothing. There appears to be no change. Of course, this did not surprise me and should not come as a surprise to anyone else that it doesn't surprise me. After all, I commented on a number of occasions that it wouldn't work. Google is smarter than that.

First of all, none of the sites linking to the positive pages are big players. They have very little effect on such a common phrase (490,000 results).

Secondly, the commonly used pages for the positive information had very little content and had poor HTML structure. Both of these qualities have a big effect on search engine placement.

Finally, few, if any, of the participating naccers are temple-oriented.

If we want positive, helpful resources come up for searches of 'mormon temple', there need to be content-rich, well-structured sites. With such sites will come links from all over the LDS cybersphere. That is the only way to do it.

Funny. It's also the best way to do it.

UPDATE (for Kaimi): Google re-indexes every month. It's been over a month since the Bloggernacle went ahead with the GoogleBombing efforts. If it was going to make a difference, it would have by now. The problem is not that there wasn't enough time. Read above for the problem (some of it applying to the poor implementation you suggested).

Go to eBay for Monopoly

...he gave the site the name Mormonbid.com to indicate the level of honesty and trust one can experience on the site. For example, R-rated movies are generally discouraged on the site, as are games of chance, pornography and advertising that may deceive the buyer.

No Monopoly? That sucks.

Store Wars

And you thought organic issues were a serious matter.

Joseph Smith Public Apology

So a grade four teacher apparently told her students that early Mormon leaders had been jailed. When one of the students asked if they were criminals, she reportedly replied that some people thought they were. As a result, at least one good Utah Mormon demanded a public apology.

Ah, fundamentalist Mormonism at its best.

Church Population

Have you ever tried to quantify the membership of the Church to get a better idea of its size? Consider the following thoughts:

• roughly the same size as Buenos Aires, Argentina, or Seóul, South Korea
• larger than Cambodia but smaller than Guatemala.
• would fill 584 Conference Centers
• if you were to count one member every second, it would take roughly six months to count them all.

New Quorums of the Seventy

The Church has posted on their news site that the third and fourth quorums of the seventy have been split to create the seventh and eighth quorums of the seventy.

With the additional members of the Fourth Quorum of the Seventy approved at a recent general conference, the Seventh Quorum of the Seventy has been organized from a division of the Fourth Quorum.

Members of the Seventh Quorum are drawn from the Brazil North, Brazil South, Chile, and South America South Areas. The Fourth Quorum is composed of brethren serving in the Central America, Mexico north, Mexico south, South America North, and South America West Areas.

In addition, the large geographic area covered by the Third Quorum of the Seventy has made it advisable to create the Eighth Quorum of the Seventy. The new quorum is composed of Area Seventies from the Asia, Asia North, Australia, New Zealand/Pacific islands, and Philippines Areas. The Third quorum consists of brethren serving in the Africa Southeast, Africa West, Europe Central, Europe east, and Europe West Areas.

Urban Garlic

Has anyone seen the new Philadelphia Cream Cheese commercial where the angel says she just came back from a long shift at the pearly gates?

She said she was settling down with a snack of her favourite flavour of Philadelphia Cream Cheese: urban garlic.

Urban garlic? What's wrong with rural garlic?

Then my wife reminded me that Americans pronounce 'herb' as 'erb'. So, it's not urban garlic after all, but 'herb n' garlic'.

Ah. The beauty of being bombarded by media from a foreign country. Sometimes, I wish I had closed captioning.

Diamonds and Daffodils

Ten years ago today, Robert Barnard pronounced Mary and me wife and husband in the Seattle Washington Temple.

It was an amazing day filled with love, peace and joy. The past ten years have been filled with the same. Sure, there have been times of sadness, disappointment, heartache, despair, grief and a slew of other negative feelings and emotions. Nevertheless, we are both better people and are closer together because of them.

Mary doesn't like me talking about the potential of her dying someday and my remarrying. I certainly don't think about it as often as she likes to illustrate. I am confident that our chances of living to a ripe old age together are very good. I do think about what would happen if she died, however, because I honestly don't think there is anyone else out there like her.

When we were first married, I could have probably married any one of a good number of women. Mary has changed in the past ten years from what she was in the 20th century. Her values and ideas of changed in some areas. Some of them have changed to match mine. Others have changed along with mine. She has experienced events that she never had before.

I think about what would happen if she died because I worry that I would have to settle for someone far less than she is. I worry that if our children were still young, they would have to settle for a mother who is far less than the ideal. And Mary is the ideal.

Mary sees my good side. She avoids seeing my bad side. She extols my virtues to everyone and keeps my vices to herself.

She is truly amazing. She is talented, beautiful, intelligent, compassionate, selfless and loving. I consider myself very fortunate that she is still with me. I consider myself fortunate to have no idea what the seven-year itch feels like.

If I had known ten years ago what Mary would be like today, I wouldn't have waited two and a half months to marry her.

If my life is a result of the last ten years with Mary, I am excited to see what life will be like in 2015.

How Can You Weep?

And Enoch said unto the Lord: How is it that thou canst weep, seeing thou art holy, and from all eternity to all eternity? (Moses 7:29)

One of Us

What if God was one of us?
Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on the bus
Tryin' to make his way home?

One of Us, Joan Osborne

Underwear

So, I asked my six-year-old daughter at supper tonight, "What did you eat under there?"

"Under where?"

"Gross! You were eating underwear? Ha ha! Underwear!"

"Papa! I didn't say a compound word. I said two words. Under. Where."

New Blog

A new women's blog has appeared in the Bloggernacle. My sexy wife is on it as well as Amira, chronicler, Heather P., Johnna, Peggy Snow Cahill, s'mee, and Mary Adams.

It looks to be a good blog.