So now missionaries can use all modern communication techniques to interact with their family every week, not just on Christmas and Mother’s Day.

Check out the full article at the Official Church Newsroom.

It has become tradition on Valentine’s Day for our family to go watch the Oscar-nominated shorts.

Most years we only get around to watching the animated shorts. This year we splurged and watched both the animated and live action shorts.

Alas.

If you love feeling good, watch this year’s Oscar-nominated animated shorts. If you love to dwell on the terror, horror, and dread of the worst the world contains, watch this year’s Oscar-nominated live action shorts.

Recently on social media, a friend of mine who is a Trump Republican, called my libertarian views and solutions “Pollyanna.” I responded that freedom isn’t Pollyanna. One of the problems I see is that freedom is scary. It is full of risks. Our natural inclination is to control risk, so we build safety nets and walls, start wars elsewhere, and imprison anyone who does not conform to our version of morality.

However, history shows that our misguided, though sincere, efforts often lead to worse problems. We create winners and losers, pockets of power (monopolies), and divide people rather than unite them.

Government’s only role is to protect our inalienable rights:: Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Nothing else. Why is that Pollyanna thinking? Because it isn’t complex? Because it doesn’t demand layers of bureaucracy?

It is all about fear. People fear risk. Yet without risk (freedom), people and nations cannot grow and enrich themselves. The same free market that made America, now has made a 1/2 billion people middle class in China.

With control, there is always a desire for greater control, an endless craving. Because controlling economies and people creates new negative events that then must be dealt with. Only freedom can bring the best results consistently

This week’s lesson

http://joelsmonastery.blogspot.com/2019/02/come-follow-me-john-2-4.html

It was in the summer of 2005 or 2006 in Temple Square when two sister missionaries from Italy explained the gospel to an Italian man and his wife. They showed the couple the grounds around the Salt Lake Temple. All too soon, the man and his wife had to leave.

At this time, we don’t know who those sisters were. They were, however, doing the happy work that all missionaries do, discussing the gospel of Jesus Christ with all willing to hear, comporting themselves with dignity and honor and joy. These sisters didn’t know then the huge impact their interaction would have.

A Friendship Born in DC

I heard about the sisters from Elder Gordon H. Smith, who is spending the weekend presiding over the Stake Conference in Annandale, Virginia. Though Elder Smith claims to have repented of his political past, he was a U.S. Senator from January 1997 to January 2009.

One day then-Senator Smith received a call from Salt Lake City. A General Authority from Europe would be in the DC area to assist in reorganizing a stake. Would Senator Smith be willing to give this General Authority a tour of the capitol?

Of course.

The General Authority was a fellow named Dieter Uchtdorf. Senator Smith thoroughly enjoyed the hours they spent, impressed by the enthusiasm Elder Uchtdorf had for history and other aspects of the United States.

Can You Help?

In 2006, a few years later, Senator Smith’s assistant poked her head into his office. She explained there was a fellow on the phone from Salt Lake. But she didn’t think the Senator wanted to take this call.

“What’s the fellow’s name?” Senator Smith asked.

“Something German. Dieter Uchtdorf, I believe.”