The Gospel According to Jeffrey

This morning I was thinking about something that happened to me, about eleven years ago. I had been serving as the Sunday School instructor for our ward’s 14-15–year-old class, but that morning in Sacrament Meeting, I had been released from that position and was teaching my class for what I knew would be the last time. I wanted to leave my class with a sure knowledge that I know the Church is true, so I chose from my video collection one which compiled audio and/or video recordings of the Presidents of the Church, from Wilford Woodruff through Gordon B. Hinckley, sharing their testimonies. I intended to teach an abbreviated lesson, show the video, and conclude my service to the class by adding my own testimony to that of the prophets. Everything went as planned. I taught the lesson, introduced the video, and pressed Play. I was greeted with a video that, while superficially matching the description of the one I intended to share, was definitely not the same video....

Rockin’ vest, Brother Jones. A few weeks ago, there was a post on Mormon Life Hacker regarding Needs-Based Home Teaching , so I thought I’d share my experience with doing just that. Hopefully it will help someone out there. In late 2011, I was serving as elders quorum secretary in the ward with the lowest activity rate in our stake. Because of our low activity rates, there were dozens of families—literally hundreds of people—who didn’t have home teachers assigned. In many cases, no one even knew who they were! I’m not sure if the directive came down from the stake president or if a suggestion was made at the ward level and approved by the stake, but we revamped our home teaching program completely, using the following counsel from the Church Handbook of Instructions, Book 2, §7.4.2: “Quorum and group leaders assign the most effective home teachers to members who need them most. When assigning home teachers, leaders give highest priority to new members, less-active members w...