From 1998-2000 I served a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Ohio Cleveland Mission. The boundaries took in the entire northern third of Ohio, and a sliver of Pennsylvania.

I wrote this as an email to my mission president the other night and he asked that I share it on our mission’s Facebook wall. I decided to turn it into a blogpost (but have removed the names for privacy).

The church leaders have encouraged us to stay in touch with our converts. This is a wonderful experience that I had the other day and an example of the long-term blessings from serving a mission.

It took almost 11 years but tonight I finally feel like my mission was worth it, and that the Ohio Cleveland mission was where I was meant to serve.

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The message of the restored gospel is very strong here in Alexandria, Virginia – especially among the local Ghanaians. Many have joined the church recently and it is invigorating to feel of their testimonies.

This missionary experience recently occurred to three Elders serving in my city. I learned of this experience through my bishop and it has been posted on our mission’s blog. The original was a letter from one missionary to President Albright. I have copied it as I received it. The bolding is mine for emphasis.

Dear President Albright,

Elder Davie, Elder Harper, and I were at church on Sunday two weeks ago. As we prepared to walk into the Mt. Vernon Ward sacrament meeting, a recent convert named Patrick Onoche, a Ghanaian, approached us with another man, also from Ghana. Patrick introduced us to the man as his uncle. As we discussed the gospel with this visitor, we discovered that he is actually a Prince from Ghana’s Ashanti Tribe. His name is Oheneba [Prince] Osa Kyme. Here are the interesting facts about this prince: The Ashanti Tribe, with over 3 million members, is the largest and most powerful tribe in Ghana. He and his family are the actual caretakers for the numerous idols and shrines owned by the King of the Ashanti. He was born into royalty and it has been his life-long duty to protect the King’s shrines and idols. He is now about 75 years old. He showed us photos of the idols and the King with his family. His passport also confirmed that he was a tribal leader.

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Despite mountains of evidence, critics of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have for years claimed that Joseph Smith wrote a piece of fiction known as the Book of Mormon. For this blog entry I want to examine one of those critiques: the ever popular reformed Egyptian debate.

In the book of Mormon sometime between the years of A.D. 401-421 Moroni, the son of Mormon (for whom the entire volume of sacred writ was named), wrote:

And now, behold, we have written this record according to our knowledge, in the characters which are called among us the reformed Egyptian, being handed down and altered by us, according to our manner of speech. Mormon 9:32

One of the extremely popular criticisms relating to this verse is that “there is no evidence in Egyptology of something called ‘Reformed Egyptian,’ and that the Book of Mormon’s claim to have been written in this language is therefore suspect.”

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I recently purchased a copy of David Ridge’s “65 Signs of the Times Leading Up to the Second Coming.” Though most likely not a complete list, Brother Ridges lists 65 signs that the faithful Saints are to be watching for as written by prophets throughout the course of history. The author categorizes each sign with one of three categories: Fulfilled, Being Fulfilled, or Yet to be Fulfilled.

Helaman has already touched on one of these signs.

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For some time now I have been interested, as many people before, in the chronological timetable from Adam’s removal from the Garden of Eden to the conquer of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar in 597 B.C. To this date, nobody has been able to come up with a complete, exact and proven timetable for the individuals we regard as the Patriarchs of the Old Testament, and I doubt anybody ever will. The goal of this serial is to lay out my current LDS views of the chronological problem and allow others to discuss them.

In undertaking this task I will be referring heavily on the standard works of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, which include: the Holy Bible (KJV), the Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price. In an instance where a discrepancy may exist with regards to the timeline, I will favor the LDS standard works over others, such as we will see with the lifespan of Enoch, and the age of Noah at the birth of his three sons.

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From a talk I gave in 2009, upon moving into my current ward:

I. Introduction:

With the convenience of modern medicine, doctors can counter seasonal allergy attacks by injecting the patient with tiny doses of the particular allergen over a long period of time. This process slowly desensitizes the patient’s body to the specific allergen, even though their doses continued to increase.

Much like this method of treatment, Satan deviously introduces many immoral “allergens” into our lives through the media and entertainment. His intent is to desensitize our hearts and dull our spirits so that the evils of the world are less noticeable over time. Once successful, he continues to barrage us with the intent to “ensnare the hearts of men” (Alma 28:13). The majority of these evil pollutants can be found in movies, music, television, the Internet, books and magazines.

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From November 1998 to October 2000 I served as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in the Ohio Cleveland Mission, fondly referred to in the Doctrine & Covenants as “the Ohio.” My mission was a roller coaster of an experience. There were good times and bad times, success and failure, obedience and slothfulness. I developed a love for some of the areas I served in, made a lot of memories and had a lot of faith-building experiences.?

In looking back on the time I spent in northern Ohio I will openly admit that I could have done better; but, more often than not we did the work, the Spirit converted individuals, people were baptized (in a fairly difficult mission), and the field was harvested.

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In my ward I am the Aaronic Priesthood adviser. I teach the young men, ages 12-18, a lesson each week about being bearers of the priesthood and how to be righteous boys who will turn into righteous husbands and fathers.

The first Aaronic Priesthood lesson of this year was on Who Am I? Since the beginning of each new year often brings New Year’s resolutions, I led off with instructing the boys that sometimes the best resolutions we can make are not necessarily the ones that others can see. While the stereotypical resolutions of “go to the gym,” “lose weight,” and “stop smoking” are noble pursuits, cleaning the inner vessel is possibly more important as it affects our spirituality and can help bring us closer to God.

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Those latter-day saints who enjoy the historical side of the scriptures, especially how the Book of Mormon plays into the Restoration, will enjoy the most recent addition in a series of articles on Mormon Times by Michael R. Ash. In today’s article, Brother Ash discussed the correlation between the Urim and Thummim, the Nephite “interpreters,” and the translation of the Gold Plates.

As we learn in the book of Ether, Mahonri Moriancumer, more commonly known as ‘the brother of Jared, was instructed to seal up the record along with two stones to be used as interpreters in the future. As Brother Ash writes, “These interpreters eventually ended up in the hands of Mosiah the younger, who used them to translate the Jaredite record — the Book of Ether.”

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The other day I responded to a tweet by @helamansarmy in which he asked for someone’s take on Moses 2:20. The resulting conversation can be seen here. In the resulting conversation back and forth, Helaman asked if I’d like to become a contributor on this blog. Having wondering how I could turn my personal blog into something with more of a focus as this blog has, I jumped at the chance. So here I am, the newest contributor to Helaman’s Army. I look forward to working in collaboration with Helaman and sharing thoughts, experiences and testimonies with other like-minded latter-day saints out in the blogosphere.

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