The LDS Church Responds to Criticism and Details Efforts to Reach Out to Women

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The Millennial Star has received the following letter from the Public Affairs department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints entitled “Context Missing From Discussion About Women”.

The letter, written by Michael Otterson, Managing Director of Public Affairs, responds to recent criticisms from bloggers and explains and clarifies the Church’s efforts to reach out to LDS women and to listen to their ideas and concerns. It also clarifies the role of Public Affairs and their supervision by the highest authorities of the church.

Letter: Context Missing From Discussion About Women (PDF Document)

Text of the letter follows:


Context missing from discussion about women

Comments on various blogs over recent months about what Church leaders
should or should not think and do about women’s roles in The Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints prompt me to provide some context from an insider
perspective that may be helpful.

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ScriptureLog for WordPress – Flooding the Internet with The Book of Mormon

[Cross Posted from Sixteen Small Stones]

Before I get into the tedious specifics, let me get right to the main announcement.

Daniel Bartholomew and I are very excited to introduce you to ScriptureLog.

[We appear to be having some issues with our web host.  We hope to have it resolved soon. So if it doesn’t load try again after a while.]

ScriptureLog

Scripturelog is a free, open source plugin for the popular WordPress blogging platform that turns WordPress into a collaborative online LDS scripture study journal.

scripturesThe plugin installs volumes of scripture into WordPress as hierarchical, inter-linking pages of books, chapters, and verses. Once the pages are installed, you can use the built-in features of WordPress by yourself or in collaboration with others to read the scriptures, take notes, and discuss the gospel.

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Confessions of a Scrapbooker’s Husband

My sweet wife has an addiction to rubber stamps, paper cutouts, brads, hole punches, picture layouts, colored paper, ink, toner, ribbons, scissors and tape. All signs indicate that she has contracted that life-altering infection commonly known as “Scrapbookus Giganticus Obsessium” or “Recordum Lifeus Largo” Some of the more obvious signs of this addiction include a dizzying array of colored ink pads, enough paper to make the environuts go postal, and photographs scattered from heck to breakfast throughout the house. An ever increasing number of scrapbooks seem to absorb an ever diminishing supply of bookshelf real estate, and the one thing in the house my wife can always find is her camera.

My wife’s “affliction” has ratcheted up her creativity (already impressive) to heights never explored before. She has become much more tech savvy with her digital camera and the computer that organizes a plethora of pictures each week. She can turn ordinary events into a celebration of family life, and records them in a way that drive us back to the books time and again to relive fun times and remember those moments which help shape our family’s character.

In the not so distant past, my wife took her scrapbooking out to the blogosphere where she has not only recorded images of our life, but written her own thoughts about the images shown there and how they have affected her. I look at her blog regularly to get her wonderful perspective on life and parenting, and I thoroughly enjoy the way that my wife is recording our family history. I am confident that future generations of my family will also be blessed by the things that she has recorded about us, just like we are blessed by the journals and photographs of our ancestors.
I am grateful for my wife and her attention to the details that make up our experiences here. I thoroughly enjoy her hobby and am glad that she has found something fun for her to work on during the few quiet hours she gets at home.