The Gospel According to Jeffrey

A few months back, I happened across a video on YouTube, from the HBO show Big Love . The clip depicts one of the show’s characters, a fictional plural wife, appearing before an equally fictitious Church disciplinary council. Suffice to say: while people are people and even Church leaders are extremely human, the depiction is very unflattering and completely at odds with the way such disciplinary councils should be carried out ( i.e. with Christian love for the accused). I commented on this, at the time, saying that if any real Priesthood leader were to act the way these fictional ones did, said Priesthood leader would probably also be called up for a disciplinary council. Since that time, I have not returned to the video nor its thread. A few days ago, woman named Anne replied to my posted with an honest question: out of curiosity, what is a priesthood leader and what is censure? Not a mormon just curious. Are any of these guys priesthood holders or can any mormon man be one...

Back when I joined the Church, in 1991—and for several years after—every session of LDS General Conference was preceded by a countdown timer superimposed over videos of happy people from around the world, presumably to evoke the worldwide reach of the Church of Jesus Christ. As the timer counted down and the scenes continued in predictable order, there was a scene of a small, arched foot bridge over a peaceful stream, which gave way to an old, Asian-looking man and an equally Asian-looking girl of about five years of age. The old man was holding out his ostensible granddaughter’s hand as a nearby bird—a hummingbird, if I remember correctly—came ever closer to lighting upon it. Then, right at the “one minute left” mark, the scene would fade as their feathered friend suddenly, for no apparent reason, stopped flapping its wings and plummeted toward and off the bottom of the screen. Does anyone out there know where I can find the footage of this apparently narcoleptic hummingbird? I...