NOM

My eldest niece is going on a foreign mission next week and gave her farewell address at church yesterday. I love my niece, I spent a lot of time with her as a kid and she was like the little sister I never had (I am the youngest sibling). She knows the state of my belief. I had an opportunity to chat with her briefly last night and told her that not everyone on her mission will have her welfare at heart and to take care of herself and do lots of good on her mission. And that she can email me with any request.

Her farewell talk was on pioneers, like all wards the week of pioneer day here in Utah. She gave a great mormon talk. She shared 2 modern miracle stories about her 2 grandfather's conversions, including my dad's. She talked about a guy who went on a mission to Palestine and got sick and died there, paving the way for the church to lay claim to having a presence in Palestine before Israel was a country so the LDS church could be recognized (unlike those baptists) and purchase land for BYU to send people to. His mission didn't go the way he thought it would but he was still able to help the church blossom in Israel. This story bothers me.

And then the story of the three 18 year old boys who carried 500 suffering saints across the Sweetwater River in 1856. Whom Brigham Young wept for when they all died of complications of the rescue. And who are guaranteed exaltation. She even said she was reading from the record. Except that apparently that's not what happened at all. 2 of those boys died after Brigham Young. None of them from apparent complications. And the suffering saints all worked hard to cross that river and many others from SLC were there helping too. The "record" often quoted came from a letter written by Solomon Kimball in 1914 to the New Improvement Era. Solomon was 9 years old at the time of the Sweetwater crossing.

Bry Cox did a great write up of this.

Making miraculous tall tales does a disservice to truth-seeking LDS people everywhere.

Good luck niece, I hope your mission is a good experience for you.

Thanks for sharing that link, I save all these debunk articles for future use.

I feel blessed that I probably will never be the parent of a full time missionary. My son never wanted to go and my daughters have all declined. The one daughter most likely to be a full believer has so far decided not to go. She has a lot of pressure from other family members, but has made it clear that she has other plans.

But in the unlikely even that she changes her mind and decides to to, I will make it clear that my support of her mission is provisional. She is there as an adult volunteer with parents supporting her. Her mission president will try to be her leader in all things and simply might not have her best interest or safety in mind. I will make it clear that she is allowed to come home at any time with or without her mission president's permission. She is allowed to call home at any time and needs to place her own safety above any mission rules.

I don't know how this would all turn out. More nieces and nephews may be heading out, but I have to defer to their parents in that case. I also realize that my wife dearly wishes she could send one of our children on an LDS mission. I probably will dodge this bullet entirely and there is no good reason to let my family know about these ideas.

FiveFingerMnemonic wrote: ↑Mon Jul 23, 2018 11:56 am Thanks for sharing that link, I save all these debunk articles for future use.

This link might be better, as it is generously sourced and from BYU: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q ... WlQP8JzSWN

It contains the same information, but more and more gently.

There's a good Mormon Discussions podcast on faith promoting stories that covers this one - if anyone wants to listen to it, you can find it at https://mormondiscussionpodcast.org/201 ... g-stories/

It goes over a lot of the more common faith promoting stories: Transfiguration of Brigham Young, Miracle of the Gulls, Lorenzo Snow hanging with Jesus in the temple, Woodruff's vision of the Founders being mad no temple work had been done even though it had been done, etc.

I know not all of the details of this are 100% solid (the Milk Strippings one is interesting because we can't prove for sure that Joseph was married when the story happened, or if the wedding was performed after he died).. but it's a great listen otherwise.

That sounds interesting like an interesting podcast. I'll add that one to my que for later this week.

Thanks for the reference.