Bible Videos on Mormon Channel

In the past months I may have mentioned to you that Midvale and Murray are becoming a new mission July 1st, Utah Salt Lake City Central.  It is one of two new missions in the country where the missionaries will not be allowed to tract/knock on doors or have cars.  The mission president's home is in the mission and has previously served as a mission president elsewhere.  Senior couples are called from within the stake to serve rather than leaving for other areas.  Instead of sharing three pairs of missionaries with 3 stakes our two pairs will cover only our stake.  We have many non-LDS in Midvale and 60% who are members in our stake do not attend.    

Saturday night at our stake conference several members were asked to speak and some of the Church's bible videos were used to follow up after some of the brief talks on Jesus Christ.  I use some of these in making facebook pages.  This is one I use for English-speaking.

In talking with a friend I realized not everyone knows where to find these 2-3 minute videos.
FYI:
http://mormonchannel.org/biblevideos

In December at Mark's I learned I can watch them on my television via my Roku access to Mormon Channel.  You probably know how to do the same using other devices connecting to your TV.

The video of Jesus suffering in Gethsemane is another one that I really appreciate. The message of course is inspiring, but for me its also more believable because Christ looks like he has suffered. It reminds me of a painting I saw at a recent international LDS art exhibition.  Christ had suffered, he had bled, his garments were stained.  It touched me deeply. 
http://mormonchannel.org/video?v=1518836079001

At our stake conference today I heard the most inspiring member missionary messages I've ever heard from the pulpit.  Our stake choir sang "Gethsemane, Jesus Loves Me."  It was remarkable.  So much so, that I spent time to find the words.  There is one recording of a young child singing it.  Its nice, yet its not the same as my memory of adults singing it and following what we had heard and seen.

Gethsemane song

by  Roger and Melanie Hoffman

Jesus climbed the hill to the garden still
his steps were heavy and slow
Love and a prayer took Him there
to the place only He could go.

Gethsemane
Jesus loves me
so He went willingly
to Gethsemane

He felt all that was sad
wicked or bad
all the pain we would ever know.
While His friends were asleep
He fought to keep
His promise made long ago.

Gethsemane
Jesus loves me
so He went willingly
to Gethsemane

The hardest thing that ever was done
The greatest pain that ever was known
The biggest battle that ever was won
This was done by Jesus
The fight was won by Jesus

Gethsemane
Jesus Loves Me
so He gave His gift to me
In Gethsemane

Gethsemane
Jesus Loves Me
So He gives his gift to me
From Gethsemane

Interestingly, it was Elder Todd Christofferson's conference address that I finished reading at lunch.

The Prophet Joseph Smith confirmed the Savior’s central role in our doctrine in one definitive sentence: “The fundamental principles of our religion are the testimony of the Apostles and Prophets, concerning Jesus Christ, that He died, was buried, and rose again the third day, and ascended into heaven; and all other things which pertain to our religion are only appendages to it.”⁷ Joseph Smith’s testimony of Jesus is that He lives, “for [he] saw him, even on the right hand of God; and [he] heard the voice bearing record that he is the Only Begotten of the Father”

I can be the best friend I know how to my neighbors and as prompted by the Spirit reach out in natural ways without ulterior motive.  That's what I've been doing since I've been a ward missionary the past several years and it has felt good and right.  I've seen how you do the same where you live.

In response to my Father's Day facebook posting of Dad's photo, a dear friend shared a comment David often said. "We are all becoming, and no one has arrived." We all need the remembrance of Gethsemane in our lives. We need Him.

I feel very glad that I live in Midvale!

Back to the videos . . . a few at a time.  Its been a nice Sunday.

#1000, More or Less.

The image David took for me at their Bogus Basin chapel.  I use it when Google hasn't photographed a location.  Fitting the title to the location increases the detail for the facebook page. 

I just completed my 1000th Facebook page for LDS chapels in US/Canada in 7.5 months.  1190 more to go.  Ha!  Maybe I can finish by the end of the year.  This isn't all the chapels but it is the list given to me of about 2300.  Another missionary did about 20 before she moved to another project.  The math doesn't add up because there are some blanks in the list but its close enough to celebrate. 

Maybe some day the pages will be helpful to someone.  Currently they are likely just an authority support for searches.  Maybe someday they'll be used by a unit.  I just do them.  It doesn't really matter.  Some day the geeks may decide to bag the whole thing.  That doesn't matter either.  Its all a process of figuring out what makes a difference in searching.  Its been fun recognizing places I've been and interesting seeing remote locations where people gather every Sunday to worship.  Its been fun also figuring out how to work around obstacles that pop up.  Interesting diversity in spite of the routine.  My time is cheap.

Some day I might do some more blog writing but for now I draw a blank on subjects.  The Spirit prompts of what to do, for now its just 5 to 10 fb pages a day, sometimes exploring topics to blog, tweet, et al.  I'm exploring Pinterest.  Interest in Salt Lake Magazine got me started there.  Its sort of like browsing around where people hang out and discovering topics or interests in common, occasionally, learning from one another.   If it weren't for my mission I wouldn't have time for most of this.  I enjoy being informed and looking for an opportunity to make a difference in some small way.  

Covington, Louisiana.  My most recent facebook page.

I used to spend more mission hours but currently I feel to find birth, marriage, death dates and places for descendants of William Brigham Parkinson.  Other times its working on some other family history question that seems to surface from time to time, like the Clark question from cousins in Hawaii and North Carolina currently waiting for attention. 

There is just no end of things to do that just might make a difference.  So celebrate #1000 -- do a dance, clink your glasses or simply be glad you have more to do than this. 

Colt Revolver Relic: Bits of Parkinson history.

I finally took another look for more information on our old gun from the Parkinson property at the base of Little Mountain.  This time I went online to identify the year of manufacture of the Colt relic.   

The following I knew from a gun collector and history buff  library patron in Bozeman.  More information was going to cost $25 from Colt some years ago, so I never went ahead with a match with the serial number. 

1851 Navy Colt Revolver

36 Caliber

Octagonal Barrel

Serial #17499

Today, I found a phone number online and was expecting to pay a fee.  Not so,  she just looked up the information above after I noted the octagonal barrel.

In better days it would have looked like this.  The engraving on the cylinder is a Navy image, therefore its name.  Note the brass piece above the wood handle, that is the back strap that is missing from ours for whatever reason.  

Identified by Colt to have been manufactured in 1852.

7 February 2012 

Wikipedia has more interesting trivia on the 1851 Navy Colt .

My interest in the revolver had been renewed when I took my mission memorabilia to the Church History Library, Tuesday.  They will begin digitizing my journal, letters home, slides and scrapbook.  They'll return the items with a thumb drive in about four months.  They want them for a Brazil Mission project they are doing with emphasis on sister missionaries.  While in Boise I read everything but found nothing needing editing.  I added a preface and afterword to the journal to give perspective.  It has been an interesting journey to see one more evidence that the Lord has things in mind for us that are better than what we might have in mind. 

Scott Christensen, archivist, had written his thesis on Sagwitch the Shoshone chief whose tribe was massacred just north of Franklin in 1863.  Scott loaned me a copy.  It is available online at Digital Commons.  It was very interesting hearing a fuller history of Chief Sagwitch without prejudice but rather appreciation for his strengths.  It was interesting to see the tribe's original record of the temple ordinances they did after the dedication of the Logan Temple.  At that time they didn't have a written language.  Their history was relayed through stories from one generation to the next. From these stories they knew their ancestor's names.  

I hadn't known of an attempt to later establish a homestead community for the tribe near Franklin sponsored by the Church.  A more successful one, Washakie,  was located by Tremonton as I recall.  It was an effort to avoid a reservation environment for them.  

You might remember that the Samuel Rose Parkinson family took in one of the three surviving children from the Bear River Massacre and gave him the name Shem Parkinson.  He was about three-years old at the massacre.  SRP notes him in his journal.  Evidently, there was a trial for stealing from SRP in 1874.  Even so, a couple of months later he notes Shem went along with the family to Mendon for a celebration.  Shem died when he was about 21 or 22 of pneumonia.  

Thirty-Years Thoughts

Thirty years since Chris slipped away.

After many years of crises the morning began as usual.  All of you off to school and David to work at the Institute, Jill at home with me.  Chris didn't feel like eating much breakfast.  I helped her to her room to dress and do her morning routine of a few exercises she liked to hang on to.  Then after her prayers she laid on the floor with her scriptures and magnifying glass to read.  She liked some independence.

I continued with tidying up the kitchen as usual and answering the phone.  It was Kris Rodgers--had I seen their dog?  After commiserating with Kris I walked to Jill's room to see how she was coming along and noticed Chris on the floor, her head on her scriptures, very still.  She had slipped away.

Dear little Jill only four-years old did as I asked and called David at the Institute.  I lifted Chris on to her bed and then, just not willing to do nothing, tried to resuscitate her.  At some point I called 911,  again needing to do something until David came.  She was gone.

David picked up each of you at school, you know about that better than I do.  

The way we were five months before.   

My birthday present family photo I had saved for all year.    

A difficult day for Chris, but she did her best and cooperated 

when she understood how much I wanted to have our photo.  

Its a treasure.

Thirty years and today its harder than most years.  

At times I sense David's influence and even nearness, but today,
this 30th anniversary of Chris' passing, I can hardly take it in.

I wonder how it is for each of you.  

I wonder how it was for you thirty years ago.  

We can't linger very long at this spot.

Life has moved on to wonderful times and great memories.  

And so it continues to move on.

We are here and they are there.

It was only with David's illness that mourning was replaced 

and then they were together.

Your wonderful lives and sweet personal opportunities along the way 

fill in their absence, 

until we all meet again.

It is your lives and the wonder of the next generation and 

 the reunions and gatherings from time to time 

that makes up for their absence.

So many, many good things happening these days in spite of 

our separation promised to be brief.

And so we'll have a good day and try to make a difference for good.  

Life is good with you.  You each make a difference.

Love,

Mom

100 Years of Church Education

Tonight I watched the commemoration of 100 years of Church Education.

The Seminaries and Institutes have been a big part of the foundation of our lives.  I'm happy that each of our grandchildren are taking advantage of the opportunity for daily religious education in their high school years.  It makes a difference and blesses us.

Dad was fortunate to have seminary influence all of his high school years.  One of his teachers, Brother Eberhard influenced Dad to want to be a teacher and to study psychology.

I had a semester taught by Brother Scott Whitaker, an artist at Disney Studios and a member of our stake that was willing to be part of the beginnings in California.  We met before school at our ward building and then found our ways to one of the several high schools in our area.  Transportation was a problem.  Families didn't have second cars and their was no public transportation so when the boy in my high school stopped going that was the end of seminary for me.


Serving a mission in Scotland and Ireland convinced David he wanted to teach the youth the gospel all his life.  He wasn't a shoo-in.  His student teacher advisor reported that he had a weird voice that probably wouldn't be acceptable to teens.  We still held out hope.  We knew he would teach seminary but no one seemed to agree.  In the meantime he applied to high schools from Utah to Ketchikan, Alaska.  After interviewing in Vernal to teach a variety of subjects we returned home to "sleep on it."  The next day I got a message at Orem High School where I was teaching to have David call the church education office.

Brother Stanley Best a seasoned teacher and supervisor of seminaries from Price needed a teacher in his area.  At dinner one evening he expressed his frustration to his wife and daughter, a BYU student home for the weekend.  She said, "You ought to talk to my former home teacher, David Parkinson, he wants to teach seminary."  Whatever more she said peaked his interest.  He felt impressed to request Dad be hired.

The administrator first told Dad they had a position in a fine little town, Morgan, that we would just love.  "Oh, sorry about that, its Moab where we'd like you teach."  Well, there was a big difference in landscape and in church attendance.  In those days Moab was about 10% LDS and about half of those attended.  We were excited.  Our five years with the people of Moab became the foundation of our lives and the birthplace of our first three children, Mark, Polly and Chris and some of our fondest memories.  The Mike Bailey missionary letters from New Zealand are another small evidence of our seminary experience in Moab.

Early 1969, the CES teachers were offered opportunity to express their interest in taking seminary to England and Scotland.  We were ecstatic but again passed over.  For a couple of months I was bothered by a convincing dream I'd had walking in Scotland and felt anxious that the decision makers didn't know that we were to go.  Then as we were leaving for Easter in Logan David got a call from Brother Best.  "How would you like to go to England, David?  The brethren were going to offer Australia, but I thought you'd rather go to England.  There's already someone assigned to Scotland but they've decided to add two men in England instead of one to join Brother John Madsen."

Those first four men were greatly challenged in numerous ways in those first three years.  Importing learning materials was very difficult at customs.  Then they decided to print their own and that was an adventure with each home office having a mimeograph machine to crank out the copies for the homestudy students and their teachers.  Personnel changes occurred when John Madsen was called to preside over the Bristol Mission.  More changes came the next year when his replacement opted to return to Utah with their teenage daughter to finish high school.  They persevered and figured it out.  Each year the growing number of CES men from the States eventually went to Germany.  Rather than meet in Germany for their annual staff conference they figured that the Holy Land was just as far as Frankfurt.  The administration in Salt Lake accepted their proposal to convene in Jerusalem, Greece and Rome if they would develop a study program to prepare themselves for the educational and spiritual experience.  That was the beginning of many years of CES training in the Holy Land for experienced teachers and their wives.   It was also the month Bruce was born so I stayed home.  We returned to the States the week after David returned from the conference.  1972 was also the year of the first Area Conference of the Church.  Members gathered from all parts of the United Kingdom in Manchester, England to hear President Joseph Fielding Smith.  I recall walking Bruce in his stroller outside as the hall emptied and a powerful feeling to linger as long as possible with the wonderful spirit of gathering I had felt.

Our association continued with hundreds of students first in Smithfield, UT at Sky View High School, then taking homestudy  to Kansas and at Wichita Institute of Religion.  Hutchinson, Kansas was a great experience for us among people  that hadn't had the opportunity till then.  Teaching the Wichita State Institute students at the stake center each week was a great delight for Dad.  He traveled monthly to Western Kansas and into Oklahoma training teachers and holding Super Saturdays with the homestudy seminary students.  I got to teach homestudy seminary in our ward one year.  Dad was again called as bishop.  We had some of our greatest personal challenges with Chris's diagnosis of brain cancer.  We were blessed with the one more child we felt to have but hadn't yet come to our family, Jill.  And again, we were influenced by wonderful neighbors and friends at church and in David's work.  

In 1980, Dad and I were thrilled for his opportunity to teach Institute at a larger program at Montana State in Bozeman, MT.  We had felt to decline a previous opportunity to teach Institute in Phoenix, AZ because of Chris' recent hospitalization at Primary Children's and his call as bishop of the new Smithfield 7th Ward.  Not getting to teach Institute had been a brief disappointment.  His four years at Bozeman were some of the great joys of his teaching career and his life.  He loved the country and again he loved his students and being with them every day, teaching the gospel multiple classes in a day, playing ping pong with them, encouraging them and showing them how to enjoy life.  Dad really loved living the gospel and teaching the gospel.  There was no other job he would have wanted to have.

1984, Dad's last year with church education.  The number of students had nearly doubled.

 

100 years since the first class of seminary at Granite High School and seminary students and their teachers are in much of the world, influencing every day of their lives.

Studying the scriptures every day of our lives makes a difference.  Teaching that principle was David's focus and his example.  It is a guide to happiness and a protection.

Note:
If you missed the broadcast as I did, you can view it online at http://seminary.lds.org/history/centennial/?cid=lds-home-feature.

Election 2012 by Park N Sun

Election 2012 by Park N Sun

New HubPage

My new missionary blog begins:

"All of us need information. The best job I ever had was reference librarian at a public library. Every day was interesting helping people find answers to their questions. We all know Google has made it even easier. So why is it that people fall prey to scams, political lies, and every other kind of misinformation? This is a good year to try to make a difference for good information.

"I like this easy to remember test to determine good information."

You can read the rest and like, comment, follow at 

 http://plumbobnbee.hubpages.com/hub/Election-2012-issues-candidates-Mormons