The Gospel According to Jeffrey

Last night I was waiting for my older daughter, Leah, to emerge from her first-ever Activity Days when I overheard an interesting conversation. The participant doing most of the talking was a woman I did not recognize, but whom I’m guessing is one of our ward’s many new members. (Not only have we had quite a few recent convert baptisms in our ward, but perhaps 40-50% of active ward members are married-student families, so transience is very much a fact of life.) Regardless, the woman seemed to be a member of the recently reorganized Young Women’s leadership, which will become relevant in a minute. The other participant—if you can call her that—was a young girl whom I also did not recognize, but I suspect is a member of the Spanish branch with which we combine for youth and Primary activities. Judging by her appearance, the girl was probably somewhere in the vicinity of her 12th birthday, and the conversation sounded like the adult leader trying to encourage her to participate in t

A person on a web site I frequent claimed, yesterday, that the Book of Mormon cannot be deemed accurate from external sources. His argument is that the Bible is evidenced by external documents confirming, for example, the existence of Joseph Caiaphas and Pontius Pilate . I’m rather pleased with my response, which thus far remains unchallenged, despite this individual’s continued participation in the thread. As such, I share it here. U-Kish Kan For the record, there is as much extra-scriptural evidence for Kish as there is for Pilate or Caiaphas. Monument 47 displays a named engraving of U-Kish Kan , an Olmec king who lived in the same time and place as the Jaredite ruler. Now, is it possible that U-Kish Kan is not the same Kish mentioned in the Book of Mormon? Of course. Is it even possible that the Book of Mormon Kish is a fictional character? From a strictly logical standpoint, of course. But is it not equally possible, equally logical, that the scriptural Caiaphas and Pi

Just over a year ago, in late 2011, I was called to meet with the first counselor in our ward bishopric and extended a call to serve as a Primary worker. My assignment was to be one of two instructors for the 10-12–year-old boys, a class with about half a dozen active members. The first counselor, Brother Gardner, informed me that the bishopric tried to call Primary workers for about a year, which I immediately assumed was wishful thinking. My wife, Anna, had previously been called into Nursery “for about a year” and wound up serving from before our son David started Nursery (age 18 months) until well after his fourth birthday. Nevertheless, I accepted the calling and was sustained on 1 January 2012. Yesterday morning, I arrived at the ward building at 9:30 a.m. for our annual “Meet Your Teacher” breakfast. I dropped my daughter Leah off at her CTR 7 table and was about to drop off David at the CTR 5, when the new first counselor in the bishopric, Brother Asay, told me he needed to