Spreading the Gospel of FHE

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It’s fun when the media publishes something nice about Mormons. Woot to The Atlantic. Who knew family ritual and togetherness (even if not the ideal we envision) could become so revered.

Enjoy your Easter, which hopefully you will be able to spend with family. I’m headed for easter basket fun with a grandkid, together with the promise of games with friends and a meal of delectable lamb and hot cross buns, between sessions of General Conference.

May your weekend be similarly focused on the renewal of Christ’s resurrection and the preciousness of those with whom we have the privilege of associating in life.

How to Watch #LDSConf

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General Conference starts on Saturday morning here’s how to watch:

LDS.org
MormonChannel.org
BYUtv.org
The Mormon Channel on Youtube
BYU Radio, from their website and their app
BYU Radio on SiriusXM, Ch 143

If you want to connect with other Latter-day Saints during the Conference, use and follow hashtags on social media. Some common hashtags to use are:

#LDSConf is the most popular and common. You can also use the name of the speaker, for example, #PresNelson or #SisterOscarson. You can click on a hashtag to see what others who are using that hashtag are saying, or you can use a service like Twubs.com to follow along in real time (it’s very fast!).

Or you can just unplug, grab your journal and take notes on your own. I love taking notes during Conference and then going back to those notes to see what impressed me in the moment.

The Church usually has the audio available for download shortly after each session ends, with the transcripts coming later in the week. Also, you will probably see lots of LDS sites and facebook pages sharing memes (or picture quotes, as they are called on LDS.org). The Church has these in their media library HERE.

We hope you enjoy General Conference and come back to share your feelings with us here on The Millennial Star. Also, if you have not come over to Facebook and liked our Facebook page, please do. When you do that, make sure to click on the “Following” button and then choose, “See First” to see our posts.

Seeing Joseph

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I’m pushing out a new edition of Reluctant Polygamist soon and decided to revisit the image of Joseph on my cover.

My concept was to overlay my altered image of Joseph’s face (the image on the right) onto the death mask, allowing some of the texture of the death mask to provide nuance to the image.

But when I showed the result to my husband (without informing him what I’d done), his comment was “the head looks too big for the body.”

This had nothing to do with my update, but everything to do with how I’d originally attempted to correct the proportions of the painted image.

I went back to the drawing board. This time I scaled the death mask to see how much I could get it to align with the existing image, rather than presuming I had to move everything on the face to align with the death mask (as proposed by Lorie Winder [ref]Winder, Lorie, “In Search of the Real Joseph Smith,” Sunstone, issue 24, Nov/Dec 1980, p. 31.[/ref] ).

It turned out that the original image I was working from (see the pretty face on the left above) aligned with the brows, eye centers, lips, and chin. The only thing that didn’t line up was the tip of the nose.

The nose on the original image is noticeably petite, so it never occurred to me that it could be too long. I shifted the tip away from the lips, towards the eyes, and underlaid the death mask. The result is what you see in the middle.

#BecauseOfHim & Preparing for Easter General Conference

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Yesterday was Palm Sunday, the start of Holy Week for the Christian world. There is so much to think about and to contemplate as we prepare to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I served my mission in Bulgaria. On Easter morning, or Velik Den — the Great Day, in Bulgarian, the Bulgarians go to church and greet each other by saying, “Christ has Risen!” The person then answers back, “Indeed, He truly has risen!” I love greeting my ward friends this way on Easter morning — they’re slowly joining the tradition with me.

This year the Church is promoting the #BecauseOfHim media campaign. You can go to Mormon.org/easter to find videos, pictures, and insights to read and then share with your family and friends. The focus with the campaign this year is, “How will you change, #BecauseOfHim?” That question has so many possibilities for each of us as individuals, in our families and in our communities. It’s safe to say that in most corners of society there is division and strife. We can help to eliminate that strife in our own spheres of influence by learning about our Savior, and then using His patterns of behavior and interactions with people, in our behavior and interactions with others.

We also have the great opportunity this Easter to hear from the leaders of the Church this weekend during General Conference. We also will have the opportunity to participate in a solemn assembly to sustain Pres. Russell M. Nelson as the new president of the church. We will also be able to sustain two new members of the Quorum of the 12 Apostles, in addition to the other apostles, and church leaders. A week ago I posted a meme on The Millennial Star’s Facebook page with a quote from Elder Uchtdorf which said, “Whatever we seek, that we will surely find.” I think it’s really easy to find voices critical of the church online at this point — too easy. Those voices seem to dominate the narrative about Mormons in the media and in the general chatter that exists in social media. My hope is that we will reject these voices and look toward, and listen to the leaders of the church for guidance and for the answers to our questions and prayers. If we approach General Conference with questions, the Lord will provide the answers in the talks, from the mouths of His called and chosen servants. Let’s listen to them. Let’s hearken to their words, and then go and do the things the Lord commands for the next six months.