The Gospel According to Jeffrey

Yesterday afternoon, I asked a few questions of my Facebook friends: specifically: If you believe that we (i.e. humans) were created for a purpose, what is that purpose? If you do not believe that we were created for a purpose, do you believe in some form of extramortal existence, i.e. that we exist in some form before and/or after our lifetime here on Earth? If you do not believe that we exist extramortally, what do you believe constitutes a person’s existence? For example, is one’s existence predicated on being alive? If so, what criteria dictate that someone has begun or ceased to be alive? etc. My friend Liana posted an amazing summary of her beliefs, one that matches the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ almost exactly. The crux of her response is as follows: I do believe we are here for a purpose. Each of us come with different lessons that we are working on while we are here. These are decided before we incarnate. Over multiple lifetimes, we work towards lear...

In my first area of the mission field, we had our elders quorum meeting first and sacrament meeting last. Since I arrived in early March, it was my first Church meeting out of the Provo MTC  when the quorum president made an amazing announcement: in approximately two weeks, contractors would be installing a satellite dish behind our rented meetinghouse so that our ward would be able to watch the upcoming, and all future,  General Conferences  live via satellite, instead of waiting for videotapes to be snail-mailed in a couple of weeks. The excitement in our little quorum was palpable, including among the missionaries who had thus far spent their entire missions without seeing General Conference at all—a significant sacrifice for those who had been serving for a while. As the initial commotion died down, the president continued with a second announcement: since we’d be viewing General Conference live on 2 April, Fast Sunday would be postponed until the next Sunday,...