u/Fether1337

Some people are born into horrific circumstances outside of the gospel and are forced to experience all manner of difficulties in life.

Others are born into immense wealth, with parents that live them, raised in a faithful and gospel filled environment, surrounded by opportunities to grow spiritually.

These circumstances are thrust upon us with no input on our end. And this is based entirely on luck. We did nothing of our own to find it selves in the situation we are in.

But I don’t like the word luck.

I’m trying to find another word or phrase for this.

I’ll shoot down the word “blessed” because there is a connotation on it being tied to some amount of faith. And it doesn’t really address why some people are born in awful circumstances. It also demeans the difficulties they face. And the reality is that if you are seeing this question, you are certainly living one of the most comfortable lives known to human history.

I’m feeling the word “allotment”. What we have been given and our stewardship over our situation

Two-part question.

Question one is targeted specifically to the fathers and mothers who traveled (or spouse traveled) a lot for work and whose kids are already out of the house.

Do you feel your traveling harmed your relationship with your kids? Are there things you did that helps? Are there things you wished you did different?

Question two is for any father or mother that travels (or spouse travels) a lot for work.

What do you do to stay connected with your kids while you are working?

Context:

Kids are 8,6,5,2

I typically work two weeks on in two weeks off. Sometimes it shifts where I’m only one week gone another time. I’m three weeks gone.

Early in our marriage, we felt it was important for my wife to stay home with the kids and homeschool then. And despite the higher cost of living in the west, The job I have pays well and is enough to cover our needs and provide for a meaningful experience for our family.

But I get stressed thinking what we might be missing out on by not having me in the home half the time.

I facetime with them every day when I’m gone.

When I’m home, I have a blast with them, spend time with them, read scriptures and pray with them. I participate heavily in church and try to bear my testimony as often as I can, talking about Jesus.

I want to see what other traveling dads do.

And I want insight from empty nesters who traveled a lot about what they experienced with their kids.

I work with a testing lab that has deep roots in cannabis and the aromatic/oil space.

We are working toward building out our testing capabilities for peptides, but curious what it takes to break in.

We have a few peptide suppliers we have been chatting with and the consensus seems to be just "street cred".

Is that accurate?

Full disclosure, our lab is getting into peptide testing. We have been heavily involved in regulatory testing in the hemp industry and are deep in the aromatic/essential oils space too.

We are developing the testing methods now and are looking to break in as a viable 3rd party lab. We have several contacts on the testing side to make sure we are providing accurate testing, but we are lacking in actually knowing what suppliers, producers, and buyers expect.

What does it take to break in? A contact in the peptide space said it was mostly just "street cred" since there isn't any regulation at the moment. Is that accurate?

I’m curious if the experience of moving to larger city wards is the same experience.

I grew up in a small town in UT and absolutely loved the connection I felt there

After getting married, I moved to another small town on the other side of the state and was expecting a similar experience. But I quickly found that breaking into the small town social circles was difficult.

The ward I’m in is split down the middle by a river. One half is established, fairly wealthy, life long members of the community and the other half are smaller new builds. Mostly younger families from outside the small town.

The established half are extremely kind and wonderful people, but there seems to be a social/trust wall between us and them.

I’m extremely active in my calling, service, and socially. We have also made strong friendships with people on both sides of the river.

However, a little mover half the ward lives on my side of the river, and I don’t see them interacting much with eachother or the other half of the river

The leadership in the ward, outside two members, have been exclusively on the established side. And the callings centered on service (bishop, EQP, RSP) have all only been on the established side.

This is important because our side has real needs that aren’t getting talked about because the people in charge are just unaware. And there doesn’t seem to be real attempts to fix that.

All this to say that there seems to be a subtle us/them dynamic here. I’ve been proactively engaged in this ward for 5 years and I still feel there is a wall between the two halves.

Is this present in city wards too?

I lived in Vegas for one year and that ward was just as welcoming as my hometown ward.

Getting kids to pray:
Early on my wife and I made it a point to not turn prayer into a battle. Meaning we weren’t gonna force our kids to say prayer or kneel for the prayer.

But then we also learned that our kids would never say prayer or meal during a prayer if they didn’t have a reason to.

So we made a game of it.

Each day is one of our kids designated day to say the prayer at least once. They get to choose when they pray. Additionally, when they say their prayer, they get to do it while piggy back on me.

We’ve been doing this for about two years now, and they love it! We rarely hear complaints about saying prayers. In fact, they often argue about who gets to say the prayer.

On top of that, often times I’ll tell my kids that I don’t want to do the piggyback today, and they are completely OK with it. And they will just say the prayer normal.

Reading Scriptures:
For years, we only read out of the new children’s scriptures the church put out. Our kids love them so much.

Recently, we were wanting to transition to actual scripture since they’re getting old enough, but we couldn’t find a way to get them involved. Until one day, I pulled out the book of Mormon and told them that I was going to read a story straight from the book of Mormon and they had to tell me what story it was. I read the story of wicked King, Noah, and all four of our kids were listening intently. They quickly got it and we’re very excited wanting me to do another. So I pulled out the story of Joseph of Egypt. I read only about three verses and our five-year-old called out the name of the story.

I am hoping to use Notebook is a way where I can plug in everything I am studying for a topic, and have it grow with me as I learn. Meaning I'd like it to recognize concepts I haven't yet mastered and work with me on those specifically, and when I do learn them, it can move on to the next concept with me.

But it seems like Notebook is really just a static generator of information/content. Not a dynamic study tool.

Am I missing something here? Any recommendations on how to get what I want?

Doctrine and Covenants 29:34-35 says:

all things unto me are spiritual, and not at any time have I given unto you a law which was temporal; …I gave unto him that he should be an agent unto himself; and I gave unto him commandment, but no temporal commandment gave I unto him, for my commandments are spiritual; they are not natural nor temporal, neither carnal nor sensual.

This scripture has been used to teach that all activities are spiritual in nature. We looks at commandments such as the word of wisdom and learn that our physical health is a spiritual matter.

With that being said, do we have just as much of a spiritual imperative to pray and read scriptures every day as we do to eat healthy and exercise?

I booked a sedan. But they were out and gave me a mini van. I called every enterprise within an hour of where I’m working and none of them had sedans, but said they would call me when they did. I’ve called multiple days to follow up with no luck.

Are they just holding them from me cause they don’t want my Minivan?

Before and during Christ’s ministry, the Aaronic priesthood was active under the Jewish faith.

After the death of Christ and the start of Christ’s church, was the Aaronic priesthood stripped from the Jews?

Did the early church have the Aaronic priesthood? Or, like the Nephites, did they exist entirely under the Melchizidek priesthood?

Secondary question. When, and how, did the Jewish people lose the Aaronic priesthood?

Wife ended up the ER to get stitches the other day after colliding with a young woman at church. Everyone is fine and it was more of a bonding experience than anything, haha.

I was later told the church has some sort of supplementary insurance to help with expenses that come from injuries at church.

Anyone have experience with this?

I have Claude successfully integrated into my vault via MCP and Google Drive Permissions. It all syncs across my devices and it is sweet.

HOWEVER, I'd like to figure out how to do something similar with Gemini so I can utilize it for deep research, NotebookLM, and less intensive automations and daily entries, freeing up token usage for Claude.

Can Gemini get set up the same way? I have been trying many different ways and they all seem so much more cumbersome than how Claude integrates with it.

I want to consider this in a slightly different light than the standard Mormon vs evangelical debate.

I want to look at the Mormon vs jack Mormon argument of what it means to be Christian.

It’s a common slippery slope for dissatisfied Latter-day Saint to stop attending church because it “doesn’t work for them”. They then find themselves creating their own belief system where they still say they love Jesus and believe in him, but there is no such worship of him in their lives.

Additionally, their new “faith” looks like this:
- All things that make me feel peace and happiness come from Christ. (Ie reading a book in the morning or going on a hike)
- I’ll spend my time chasing those things
- God is love and all god wants is for us to be loving

When you inspect that faith on its own, They are no longer Christian, but are just generic “theists”, adopting only the name of the Christian God, while ignoring everything else about what it means to be Christian.

They have become “spiritual”, but not religious.

Are these people still Christian? Or do we just call them theists / agnostics?

I’ve been in denial of this for a while, but I need to make a change

LONG gone are the days I can take an hour to myself to study.

I’m looking to see if there is a way or method I can study in short spurts throughout the day. Like 1-5 minute sessions in between tasks or activities (like when I’m done making my kids breakfast and they are eating)

Just interested in insight on this.

AND PLEASE NOTE: I have no emotion behind this question. There just seems to be some logical inconsistencies on the issue. I am not trying to make judgments on what others have done.

Generally, the leaders of the church tend to be stoutly pro-life in their sermons, talking about the value of the life in a womb.

But the "pro-life" stance seems to go out the window with one paragraph:

>"Exceptions of when it may be justifiable to have an abortion include ... when the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest.
In these circumstances, the decision to have an abortion should be made only after careful consideration. As you prayerfully make this decision, remember that Heavenly Father will never abandon you."
( https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics/abortion?lang=eng )

This line has inadvertently affected my theological understanding of the value of a zygote/fetus, that there is a point in development when an unborn baby has less value than a born one. Because you would never say it's ok to kill a baby if it was the result of rape or incest.

This one line has left me Pro-choice in my life.

I am wondering if I am missing something on this issue.

One of three things seems to be true:

1. A zygote is not human and doesn't have the same value as a baby (my current stance).
2. The allowance of abortion in such situations is the church wanting to avoid criticism.
3. The allowance of abortion in such situations is not permission, but rather an understanding of what the victim is going through.

The easy answer seems to be #3, but if you go that route, you still need to navigate the fact that the person having the abortion still committed murder. How do we answer that?

On one hand, an impoverished family in LA has more access to life saving services than the richest king in ancient times.

On the other hand, wages are stagnating and the cost of living seems to be going up.

A real example: my grandpa really just stumbled through life. No degree, no real life long skill. He hopped labor professions and just moved to where ever he needed to for labor work. He got married and had 5 kids. My grandma never worked a day in her life. They somehow retired in a rather expensive retirement city in the western USA in a modest, but nice house.

Today, I have a much higher skilled job that pays more. But the idea of raising my 4 kids while also saving for retirement seems insane without sending my wife to work.

I feel like I’ve been taught that economic growth raises all ships, I can see that in many cases, but it doesn’t seem to be the case in others.

Is it that economic growth just raises everyone’s survivability?

Im just looking for insight on this.

We had our property management company come and repair a broken ballast on our staircase.

The technician that came was new, as the prior one had been promoted to manager of all their properties.

When he was repairing it, he said “I noticed you had some lightbulbs out. I have bulbs in my truck, would like me to replace them for you?”, tone heavily suggesting it to be a courtesy.

We were surprised by the offer, as we have always taken care of those ourselves. We thanked him and said “sure! We would love that”

The next day, we got an $84 charge for replacing the 7 or so lightbulbs.

The lease agreement states we are responsible for general upkeep around the house and always understood that to include the lightbulbs. And for the 5 years we have been in the house, we always replaced the lightbulbs ourselves.

The lease does not, however, state they will charge us if they provide services for such tasks. Nor does it list charges for if the management company were to do it themselves.

FACTS UP TO THIS POINT:
\- We agree with the property management company it is our responsibility.
\- There is no listing of charges for services rendered by the management company
\- The replacement of the lightbulbs was offered to us as a courtesy
\- There was never any disclosure that we would be charged for the service

I’ve been going back and forth with the office on this and they keep stating “this is the responsibility of the tenant”, which I already told them I agree with, and that it isn’t what we are fighting. We are fighting the undisclosed charge for the service offered as a courtesy by the technician.

Additionally, the technician is arguing that we initiated the request, not him.

We offered to pay the material cost of the lightbulbs, but not whatever service charge they tacked on top.

This really just seems like a big misunderstanding on protocols due to the new technician.

Thoughts?

NOTE: there are a few lines in the lease that say things like “all service requests must be submitted through their portal” (which the light bulb repair was not). I don’t care to make this argument about technicalities in the lease… but should I start pulling that card if they are to keep going back to the agreement?

Location: Utah

We had our property management company come and repair a broken ballast on our staircase.

The technician that showed up was brand new, the one we were use to having had been promoted to manager all the properties.

When he was was repairing the ballast, he said “I noticed you had some lightbulbs out. I have bulbs in my truck, would like me to replace them for you?”, tone heavily suggesting it to be a courtesy.

We were surprised by the offer, as we have always taken care of those ourselves. We thanked him and said “sure! We would love that”

The next day, we got an $84 charge for replacing the 7 or so lightbulbs.

The lease agreement states we are responsible for general upkeep around the house and always understood that to include the lightbulbs. And for the 5 years we have been in the house, we always replaced the lightbulbs ourselves.

The lease does not, however, state they will charge us if they provide services for such tasks. Nor does it list charges for if the management company were to do it themselves.

FACTS UP TO THIS POINT:
- We agree with the property management company it is our responsibility.
- There is no listing of charges for services rendered by the management company
- The replacement of the lightbulbs was offered to us as a courtesy
- There was never any disclosure that we would be charged for the service

I’ve been going back and forth with the office on this and they keep stating “this is the responsibility of the tenant”, which I already told them I agree with, and that it isn’t what we are fighting. We are fighting the undisclosed charge for the service offered as a courtesy by the technician.

Additionally, the technician is arguing that we initiated the request, not him.

We offered to pay the material cost of the lightbulbs, but not whatever service charge they tacked on top.

This really just seems to be a misunderstanding of protocol on the new technician’s hiring.

Thoughts?

NOTE: there are a few lines in the lease that say things like “all service requests must be submitted through their portal” (which the light bulb repair was not). I don’t care to make this argument about technicalities in the lease… but should I start pulling that card if they are to keep going back to the agreement?