Nailed it

Last week my daughters (ages 7 and almost-5) and I set up to play a game of Lord of the Rings Risk. The 7-year-old rarely shares events of the day without any prodding, but as we were finally playing Risk on Sunday evening, she turned to me and said, “Today in class I accidentally called the Terrestrial Kingdom ‘Middle-Earth.’ My teacher said ‘Congratulations, that’s from Lord of the Rings!’ and gave me a high five.”

Sephardic Jews and the LDS Connection: Utah History Encyclopedia Is Wrong- Joseph Smith Was Right, Orson Hyde Is of Jewish Ancestry

hydeI believe investigating the history of the Crypto and Converso Sephardic Jews has the capacity to impact how we view the history of the Church. For example, from the Utah History Encyclopedia, published by the University of Utah:

There is a popular myth that Orson Hyde was of Jewish ancestry, but careful investigation has uncovered no evidence this is true.

In contrast, an excerpt from the book by Ivan J. Barrett Joseph Smith and the Restoration:

In 1832 only a handful of Jews lived in Palestine, and those who did had no rights under Turkish rule. The roots of Zionism in the Jewish communities of Europe were barely stirring and the thought of Jews gathering at all was virtually unheard of let alone a return of the Jews to the Land of Palestine.  But from that very time on, the spiritual stirrings of the Zionist movement began in earnest. God was about to give special ‘key’ to modern prophets as he had done with ancient ones; ‘keys’ to move the nations. In 1831, only a year after the Church was organized by Joseph Smith, another young man with a prophetic call by the name of Orson Hyde, age 26, of JEWISH ANCESTRY, was confirmed a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by the Prophet Joseph Smith.  When Joseph laid his hands on the head of Orson Hyde he gave him a unique blessing where in he prophesied the following: “In due time thou shalt go to Jerusalem, the land of thy fathers, and be a watchman unto the House of Israel; and by thy hands shall the Most High do a great work, which shall prepare the way and greatly facilitate the gathering of that People.”

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Family Goals -The Best and The Worst

      Each week our family has family meetings, or family councils.  We use this time to check up on the family; on how well we are maintaining the right spirit of the home, and on how well our family is using it’s system of family government. 

     During a recent family meeting we decided to discuss how our family did during the past year.  We each took turns recounting the three best things and the three worst things which happened to each person during the past year.  At first Continue reading