Windy Sydney

I love this photo... best if viewed large!

If you haven't made your way over to WhyMormons.net you are missing out. The website is amazing, and there is tons of information regarding the church... I came across "This day in Mormon History" under the "LDS History that would shock your Mormon Grandma" section. Here are some of my favorites... for the full list, click here!

• Oct 30, 1843 - Brigham Young's diary states: "Monday evening Baptized Sisters Cuoub [Augusta Adams Cobb] & Hari[e]tt Cook." Two days later Joseph Smith marries these two women to Young. Augusta Adams Cobb married Henry Cobb of Boston, Mass., in 1822. She left him five of her seven children to join with the Mormons. Her husband divorced her in 1847-- four years after she married Brigham Young.

• Oct 21, 1973 - First Presidency letter urges 78,800 Mormons in Washington state to vote against referendum to allow nineteen-year-olds to purchase and consume alcoholic beverages.

• Aug 23, 1908 - U.S. immigration officials send nine Mormon immigrants back to England because they admit belief in LDS doctrine of plural marriage.

• Aug 23, 1982 - President Spencer W. Kimball is photographed with Brent and Charlene Ashworth with Mark Hofmann's forged "Lucy Mack Smith letter." The photograph and others are used extensively by the church to publicize the letter. At the meeting Kimball genially asks Ashworth, " Are you giving this letter to me?" Asworth replies, "I'll see that you get a good copy of it this afternoon."

• Apr 7, 1854 - Heber C. Kimball preaches at General Conference: "The Plurality of wives was established & many of you have fought it & you may fight it until you go into your graves & it will still be the work of God & will Continue to be to all Eternity."

• Apr 7, 1861 - Brigham Young preaches, "If a woman is sealed to a good man she should be satisfied & attend to her own business & let her husband alone & not be watching him all the time. Women are sealed to men to bring forth Children & not to gratify passion & much was said upon this subject"

• May 21, 1969 - First Presidency letter allows LDS servicemen in Vietnam to dye the regular, one-piece, temple garment to match green color of military-issue underwear.

• Mar 21, 1857 - Apostle Wilford Woodruff writes in his diary: "I bought an Indian boy of Brother Willis this morning abo[u]t 6 years old. His Indian name was Saroquetes. We call him Nephi. He appears like a smart active good boy. I paid $40 for him."

This is directly from the LA Times, I take no credit for the article Peter H. King wrote!

Reporting from Parowan, Utah -- Our trip to the Parowan Prophet began with a letter to the St. George Spectrum. It was set among missives proposing that oil companies bail out Detroit automakers, that county inmates be forced to winter in tents, that lawyers be barred from public office. A rough crowd.

This particular letter to the editor in the St. George, Utah, newspaper carried the headline " 'Prophet' shares grim forecast," and it was signed by one Leland Freeborn of Parowan, who wrote that he was known to many as the Parowan Prophet.

After establishing his bona fides as an international talk radio guest and proprietor of a survivalist website that has "passed more than 100,000 hits," Freeborn wrote:

"I think that you should hear what my opinion about the Obama election is: that he will not be the next president. I said on my home page in August that if he lost to expect to see the 'riots' that 2 Peter 2:13 tells us about. He didn't lose. But the story is not finished yet. I still think they may begin the riots before Christmas 2008, as I said."

These riots, according to his prophecy, will encourage the "old, hard-line Soviet guard" to seize the moment and rain down nukes on the United States, killing at least 100 million of us.

"Prepare now," Freeborn's letter concluded. "We are downwind from Las Vegas. I hope you can survive."

It took an hour to reach the prophet, a high-country drive through stunning red-rock formations, the color of which matches the politics in this corner of southern Utah. A freeway billboard, depicting a nuclear mushroom cloud, provided directions to the prophet's two-story house.

The frontyard seemed a staging ground for rapid flight -- two or three motor boats, a raft, a canoe, a recreational vehicle and an old sedan, parked with its engine running.

The man who answered our unexpected knock wore a cowboy hat with a big feather stuck in the band, and a beard suggestive of St. Nick. We asked to see the prophet. He said we had the right guy.

Freeborn hobbled out the door on crutches and eased into a wheelchair on the porch. As it turned out, he was heating the car not for rapid escape from a nuclear cloud, but to take a neighbor to the doctor.

"I only have nine minutes," he said.

It was enough time to sketch out his history -- a Mormon of substance, a father of 12, he had crashed his airplane in 1975 and fallen into a three-week coma, during which he went through "to the other side" and emerged a prophet.

Freeborn, now 66, took "a plural wife," as he put it, and parted ways with the church. He forfeited his wealth, spreading word of his prophecies. He appears to live now mainly on sales of newsletters and survival information packets advertised on his website.

Asked for examples of successful prophecies, he offered O.J. Simpson's murder acquittal and Al Gore's winning of the popular vote in 2000. But his core insight has been a repeated dream of seeing nuclear flashes to the west while shopping at a Wal-Mart during Christmas season.

And this, he warned, appears to be the year.

As Freeborn rose to leave, he said he would be hosting a weekly religious meeting that night. He urged us to come.

"If you can write a story," Freeborn said, "you can save a lot of lives in L.A."

I spent ALL DAY in the kitchen, slaving, decorating and toasting coconut... I am exhausted... and I hated out the cookies turned out. Ick. Maybe I am too picky, and I know I can be a bit of a perfectionist, but I like these boring old Gingerbread men the best...

Andee

I came across Ken Clark's presentation of "Lying for the Lord," on YouTube, and I found an online essay that he wrote to chronicle the enormous list of lies the church has been caught in. Here are some of the lies that stick out to me the most, for the entire list that Ken Clark made, go here. For the YouTube Presentation, go here... you won't regret it!

• The official version of the first vision was crafted nearly 20 years after the event supposedly took place. To make things harder to believe, the story changes to make things seem more dramatic.

• The History of the Church was not written by Joseph Smith as the church lets people believe. Joseph was killed before the project could be completed. In fact, most of it was completed in August of 1856 by historians who made the text look as if Joseph wrote it. Shady.

• Official Mormon histories mention nothing about Joseph Smith's drinking or tobacco use to make a more inspiring impression of the prophet.

  "At one time, he had preached a powerful sermon on the Word of Wisdom, and immediately thereafter, he rode through the streets of Nauvoo smoking a cigar."

• Joseph Smith and the Church remove all information about Joseph Smith being a con man. Documents discovered in 1971 by Dr. Wesley Walters in Norwich, New York, verify that Joseph Smith was a "glass looker" and that he was arrested, tried and found guilty by a justice of the peace in Bainbridge, New York, in 1826. Hugh Nibley, famous dissembling LDS apologist also stated, ""...if this court record is authentic it is the most damning evidence in existence against Joseph Smith." Dr. Nibley's book also states that if the authenticity of the court record could be established it would be "the most devastating blow to Smith ever delivered" (Hugh Nibley, The Mythmakers p. 142. See also The Changing World of Mormonism, Chapter 4, "Joseph Smith and Money Digging").

• Official Mormon histories are not forthcoming about the statement by the three and eight witnesses respectively, who claim to have seen Smith's gold plates and handled them. Their experience was one that took place in their imaginations or as they called it, "spiritual eyes," "eyes of our understanding," "a supernatural vision," or "visions of the mind." To say that the witnesses handled a literal, physical object is more impressive than admitting that they merely imagined that they handled literal, physical objects.

  Martin Harris (one of the 3 witnesses) testified publicly on March 25, 1838 that none of the signatories to the Book of Mormon saw or handled the actual physical plates." He also indicated that Joseph had prepared an affidavit beforehand and asked the witnesses to sign it, but because they had not seen a physical object, only a vision of them, some hesitated to sign; but were finally persuaded by Joseph. David Whitmer also told Zenas Gurley Jr. on January 14, 1885 when asked if the witnesses actually touched "the real metal," "We did not." The witnesses handled "the plates" in a vision only, according to Whitmer. Such is the power of imagination. (Grant Palmer, An Insider's View of Mormon Origins, Chapter 6) There are other significant problems with the story of the 3 and 8 witnesses described by Palmer, for those interested in reading more.

• One of Joseph Smith's first experiments with adultery began with a teen-age girl named Fanny Ward Alger who worked in the Smith home as a maidservant. Why is this important? It shows his true character...

  William E. McLellin, Mormon apostle, indicated that Emma Smith "looked through a crack and saw the transaction" in the barn. (Richard Van Wagoner, Mormon Polygamy: A History, 2nd Edition, Signature Books, 1989, pages 4-11) The affair led to a severe rift between loyal follower Oliver Cowdery and Joseph. Cowdery referred to Smith's indulgences with Fanny Alger as "A dirty, nasty, filthy affair." Church leaders and loyal defenders avoid linking Smith with his adultery by calling it an authorized "plural marriage." Todd Compton, author of, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith, 2nd edition, notes that in February or March of 1833, when Joseph was 27 and Fanny Alger 17, he had sexual relations with her. After Emma found out about Joseph's secret love affair, she turned Fanny out of their house, where she had been working as a servant. (In Sacred Loneliness, pp. 34-36) It has been noted that calling it a marriage instead of an affair raises more questions. Polygamous marriages were not legal in Ohio, the man who married Ms. Alger and Smith had no authority to perform the illegal marriage, nor had God authorized Smith to enter into polygamous arrangements in 1833-1835.

• Joseph Smith institutionalized the practice of lying, so church leaders could deny the practice of taking multiple wives and keep Smith out of legal trouble. Straight-faced lies permitted leaders to deceive with a clear conscience; believing that God permitted and even encouraged lying to protect the principle.
  

• Contrary to the traditional LDS claim that a first wife had to give her consent in order for her husband to take another wife, Emma Smith was unaware of nearly all of Joseph's "marriages" to other women.

  Eliza Snow, secretary to Emma in the Relief Society organization, as well as Sarah Cleveland, Emma's counselor, who was legally married to John Cleveland, were secretly married to Joseph, and Emma knew nothing about the marriages. According to Newell and Avery, "To live as a secret wife to a friend's husband demanded evasion, subterfuge, and deception." (Mormon Enigma, p. 119)

• Joseph Smith secretly married 17 year old Sarah Ann Whitney in August 1842 without Emma's knowledge or consent. He had no intention of confessing his conduct to Emma.

  He wrote to Sarah and her parents who approved of the marriage, "The only thing to be careful of is to find out when Emma comes, then you can not be safe, but when she is not here, there is the most perfect safety... Burn this letter as soon as you read it." (Mormon Enigma, p. 125)

• Martha Brotherton, an 18 year old convert from England in 1842, emigrated to Nauvoo, Illinois with her parents. Brigham Young approached Joseph Smith to ask if he could add Martha as another plural wife.

  Smith agreed and called a meeting with Young and Martha. She knew nothing of the agreement between them beforehand. And her parents were not invited, though she was a dependent minor. After Smith and Young tried to persuade her, Martha refused the offer of marriage. They encouraged her to lie to her parents and keep their proposal a secret and tried again and again to persuade her to accept Brigham's proposal. Martha finally appealed to them through tears and pleading that she be given time to think about the offer. After being sworn to secrecy and permitted to leave the room, Martha revealed everything to her parents and wrote it down while the important details were fresh in her mind. She told others in Nauvoo about the episode before the family boarded a steamboat bound for St. Louis. She published her account in a St. Louis newspaper (St. Louis Bulletin, July 15, 1842, p. 2). Smith, stung by the article, immediately denied that the events Martha described took place. He went further. He issued false affidavits and statements that called Martha not only a liar, but also an apostate and "mean harlot." Smith used character assassination when he thought the situation warranted it; no matter how young his victim was. (Arza Evans, The Keystone of Mormonism, Keystone Books Inc., 2003, St. George Utah, pp. 20-21.)

• Joseph lied about lying when the Expositor was published in Nauvoo, accusing him of lying.

  During the city council debate over some allegations made in the Expositor, Joseph declared that he had not kept the doctrine of polygamy secret but had taught it openly. William Clayton recorded however, that Emma Smith told him "it was the secret things which had cost Joseph and Hyrum their lives." (Solemn Covenant, p. 367)

• Current LDS apostles are refreshingly honest about ordering church members to be dishonest. They have ordered those who employed by the church to suppress the truth about Mormon history.
  

  --Boyd Packer declared, "There is a temptation for the writer or the teacher of Church history to want to tell everything, whether it is worthy or faith promoting or not."
  
  "Some things that are true are not very useful." (Boyd K. Packer, "The Mantle is Far, Far Greater Than the Intellect", 1981, BYU Studies, Vol. 21, No. 3, pp. 259-271) He threatened and warned Church Education System Employees to suppress historical information when teaching LDS students.

  --Dallin Oaks said, it's one thing to criticize the head of a corporation of person in government but "It is quite another thing to criticize or depreciate a person for the performance of an office to which he or she has been called of God. It does not matter that the criticism is true. " (Dallin H. Oaks, "Reading Church History," CES Doctrine and Covenants Symposium, Brigham Young University, 16 Aug. 1985, page 25. also see Dallin H. Oaks, "Elder Decries Criticism of LDS Leaders," quoted in The Salt Lake Tribune, Sunday August 18, 1985, p. 2B) This was another salvo fired over the bows of Church Education System employees, warning them not to teach LDS students the whole truth about Mormon history.

  --Oaks also wrote this in the church's official magazine. "A different principle applies in our Church, where the selection of leaders is based on revelation, subject to the sustaining vote of the membership. In our system of Church government, evil speaking and criticism of leaders by members is always negative. Whether the criticism is true or not, as Elder George F. Richards explained, it tends to impair the leaders' influence and usefulness, thus working against the Lord and his cause." (Apostle Dallin H. Oaks, "Criticism," Ensign, Feb. 1987, page 68)

  --Apostle Russell M. Nelson said, " "Indeed, in some instances, the merciful companion to truth is silence. Some truths are best left unsaid... .Any who are tempted to rake through the annals of history, to use truth unrighteously, or to dig up "facts" with the intent to defame or destroy, should hearken to this warning of scripture:" He then quoted from the Romans 1:17-18 - a threat to the ungodly to beware of the wrath of God. (Russell M. Nelson, "Truth-and More," Ensign, Jan. 1986, page 69)

  The message from current leaders is clear. Pretend that the LDS leaders are infallible, obey and conform. For easy access to these and other statements see http://i4m.com/think/leaders/mormon_loyalty.htm)

• President Gordon B. Hinckley stated to journalist and authors, Richard and Joan Ostling that he didn't know very much about God existing once as a mortal; and "I don't know that we teach it." He stated that his remarks to the reporters, which appeared in print, were taken out of context and that he was misquoted. Richard and Joan Ostler wrote Mormon America, and included in their book Hinckley's denials as well as the transcripts of the interview with President Hinckley. The taped transcripts clearly indicated that President Hinckley's remarks were not taken out of context nor was he misquoted. (Richard and Joan Ostling, Mormon America : The Power and the Promise, Harper One, Revised Edition, 2007, p. 301. Also http://www.irr.org/MIT/hinckley.html; for a partial transcript of the Time Magazine, Aug 4, 1997 article and letter to the prophet's office to ask if Hinckley was misquoted. A similar remark can be found in San Francisco Chronicle, April 13, 1997, p 3/Z1; ) This is reminiscent of denials offered by professional athletes and politicians who regret making statements to the press.

• In a press conference referring to the newly constructed monument at Mountain Meadows in October 1999, President Hinckley made the following statement regarding the tragedy

  "Indians and white settlers accompanied by a few Mormons participated in a massacre of the Fancher Wagon Train." He also mentioned that the truth about the massacre may never be fully uncovered. His remarks failed to accurately summarize the events; a transgression of omission. Mormon settlers led the attack and murdered 120 men, women and older children by shooting them at point blank range after deceiving them, disarming them and promising them safe passage. There were no non-Mormon white settlers, as Hinckley's nebulous statement led his audience to believe.

• Helen Radkey is a genealogical researcher devoted to issues associated with LDS Church. She is also an author.

  "Since 1999, Ms. Radkey has reported on the failure of the agreement signed by LDS leaders and Jewish organizations in which the Church promised to halt its proxy baptisms for deceased Jews. The practice continues, despite denials by the Mormon leadership... In 1995 the Mormon Church signed an agreement to cease its practice of baptizing deceased Jews who were not "direct ancestors" of members of their faith and listing them in the IGI. Despite the agreement, Ms. Radkey learned in 2005 that the LDS church had not kept its word. LDS leaders indicated that they were trying to define the term, "direct ancestor." (http://www.mormoncurtain.com/topic_helenradkey.html)

• The LDS church continues to deceive the public about vicarious baptisms performed in behalf of Adolf Hitler and Eve Braun.

  " Current IGI TM Addendum temple ordinance entries for Mr. [Adolf] Hiedler (Hitler) show that Hitler was "baptized" by Mormons on September 30, 1993, and "endowed" on April 27, 1994, in the Jordan River Temple, Utah..... Eva Anna Paula Braun, born in Munich, Bavaria, Germany , on February 7, 1912, was "baptized" by Mormons on October 16, 1964, and "endowed" on February 5, 1965, in the Los Angeles Temple. She had been "sealed" to her parents some time prior to 1970. This information is current and is easily accessible in the IGI TM Addendum, in which file Ashton stated that no information was available for either Hitler or Braun." (http://www.mormoncurtain.com/topic_helenradkey.html)

I ordered some stuff online...

I wake up to this over my bed now... (frame coming soon...)

New T-Shirt

Another T-shirt

I have the day off tomorrow (thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster) so I am planning on doing my Christmas baking. I have sugar cookie dough, gingerbread cookie dough, icing, colored sugar, coconut, chocolate chips, and ribbons to decorate with. I will post the results tomorrow!

Please check out this post on J. Michael Wiltbank's AMAZING professional photography blog for an update on the photos he took for his final project.

Also, take the time to look through his work. Its very inspirational for a self-taught wanna-be photographer like myself! All I can say is... WOW.

Looks like BYU caved under the pressure.

I really think this has a lot to do with Chad Hardy's fight for his diploma. They refused his certificate after participating in the graduation ceremony because of his "Men on a Mission" calendar and his excommunication. They claim he violated the honor code...

If that is the case, why did they let him participate in the graduation?

If you would like to help Chad Hardy's fight for his diploma (that he EARNED HONESTLY... something the church should honor.. don't you think???) please go to www.chadhardy.com and read about his fight. As you can imagine, the church has unlimited funds to fight things like this for years... Chad doesn't have that kind of money. He has a set of amazing lawyers on his side, but he can't fund this by himself. You can make donations for his legal defense through paypal, and you can forward the website to people you know that might be willing to help him out.

I personally believe that the BYU honor code has a ton of people looking very closely at it at the moment... including lawyers and reporters. As soon as they realized they couldn't get away with censoring this project, they caved.

Just my humble opinion.

I don't believe for one split second that there was a "miscommunication" as they claim in the press release. Please.

I am glad the photos are back up, because the project is an amazing idea... and executed beautifully.

Andee

Okay, so here's the deal...

My camera wasn't downloading images to my computer for the longest time. I thought I had a short in the USB cord that connected the two things, and ordered a new one from amazon.com. Unfortunately, I was in for a huge disappointment when the USB didn't work. I was sad. Very, very sad.

Today was my first day off in like a zillion days (okay, just eight) and I finally had the chance to contact the kind people at Canon support. I can't say enough nice things about these people... the guy who answered my phone call knew exactly what to do, and had me up and running after updating some of my software.

Thank you, Paul, from somewhere... you helped me get my camera back, I was losing my mind without it. I made him laugh really hard when I told him he was my "new best friend." He was cool.

Anyway, here is a giant list of photos that have been waiting to be shared. At the bottom, you will see the kittens as they get into Christmas mischief. I hope you like them!

Andee

A young man attending Brigham Young University did an art project that was censored by the Church officials. What was so horrible about his photography?

These are some of the final images for my fine art photography project. These portraits are of students of BYU who identify themselves as homosexual and a person that supports them. With all of the dissenting views regarding this topic in the past few months I have felt very strongly about this project. The portraits will be shown in pairs. The idea is that there are gay and lesbian individuals not only in the Mormon culture, but also at BYU. I also chose to photograph someone who is a support to this person. This could be a family member or friend. This support person may also identify themselves as homosexual and both people may provide support to each other. I am not telling the viewer who identifies themselves as homosexual, because I hope the viewer will realize that placing a label with the portrait only creates divisions in our society and furthers stereotypes. It is my hope this body of work can be a vehicle for tolerance, support, love and change.

I photographed all the portraits using similar lighting and cropping. I also used a tilt shift lens to achieve selective focus, so that the subjects eyes are the only part of the image in focus. This was purposefully done to force the viewer to look in the eyes of these individuals. I hope that through this project we can realize that all men (and women) are created equal in the eyes of God.

I have to share this... I love it. Love it, Love it, Love it.

I was browsing through some of my favorite creative websites and I came across this photo set of a wedding on Once Wed. In case you haven't seen the website, it's worth your time. Even if you are not getting married, there are TONS of amazing creative ideas for everyone to use when they are entertaining.

Zach and Leann (not sure if their last name(s) are mentioned on the site) shared their photos of the unique wedding they had.

It was a wonderfully creative wedding... here are a few of my favorite shots...

And the one thing that made me want to share this...

Her SHOES!!!

Amazing!!

Who would think to do something like that? It's awesome! It gives the entire attire a new and fresh look, don't you think?

Great stuff...