Author Archives: Joyce Anderson

About Joyce Anderson

Her family and friends call her the Queen of the United States...and Mom -- Joyce Anderson has been involved in LDS apologetics for over 20 years and with the Millennial Star since 2010. Since the beginning of the Covid19 pandemic she has added homeschooler to her list things she does in addition to being the butcher, baker & candlestick maker. When not schooling the children, she reads, paints, declutters, teaches primary, and is happy to share a bowl of chips & salsa with anyone who stops by.

Christmas Music: The Good Years

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Being a child of the 70s, I was raised right! By that, I mean, my parents who grew up in the 50s and 60s had lots of good music in the house, on vinyl. My mom had quite the record collection, which included many of the Goodyear Christmas albums. Why did a tire company sell Christmas records? For the same reason companies sell stuff today today, to make money. Every year from 1961 to 1977, the Goodyear company would produce these holiday records and sell them in their stores. I don’t know how my mom got a hold of them, but we had them all growing up. It was a treat to stay up late on a a weeknight and listen to records during the Christmas Season. Thankfully we have the miracle of youtube and someone has created a channel with old Christmas records.

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Christmas Music 2020: Starlight

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In 2018, I did a series of posts about Christmas music. It was a fun activity for me and really helped me enjoy the Christmas season.

This year, more than ever we need the healing power of music. My mother passed away earlier this year, and I have not been able to listen to music since her passing without being sad. Someone shared this song with me recently, and I was able to listen without feeling sad about Mom’s passing and I’ve been able to listen to other music in the last few days and enjoy it without feeling her absence. I’m sharing it with our readers in the hope that it lifts someone up today.

If you have a favorite Christmas song let me know in the comments and I’ll share it in the coming weeks. Merry Christmas this year. We need it more than ever.

#GiveThanks: The Miracle of the Flour

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I’ve kind of hesitated to participate in the #givethanks challenge. Mostly because I hate doing whatever the crowd is doing, and I don’t want to be trite in my gratitude. I’ve been thinking about what I could share that’s not shallow.

In the early days of the pandemic and shut down, when the store shelves were really bare of everything, I was quite worried how to feed my family. With moving two years before, a broken foot, and then my husband and I both losing a parent in a short time period, I just had let our pantry and food storage get really low. Week after week there was no bread in our store and I was starting panic. With a food allergy kid anything that comes from a commercial bakery is going to be unsafe to eat. There are two kinds of commercially produced bread Kroger sells that my son can eat. I was also down to my very last bag of flour and half-jar of yeast, so even baking bread was going to be problematic.

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Keeping Faith At BYU

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A few weeks ago Millennial Star contributor Tom S. wrote an essay titled, “The Meaning of the Gay Dating Fiasco at BYU”. This prompted some good discussion among our readers, some of which didn’t believe that there are people who work for and teach at BYU that don’t fully support the church. Tom’s essay was published right about the time a new group called Keeping Faith at BYU was organized. You might have read more about the group over on My Life by GoGoGoff. So far their work has prompted a lot of discussion in the affirmative and in the negative online. But it’s a discussion we need to have about BYU.

As our own J Max Wilson shared on twitter a few days ago, “I had chosen to major in English with my eyes wide open about what I was going to encounter. But I felt bad about the students who were not expecting or prepared for their faith to be attacked at BYU. I came to BYU knowing that there would be apostate professors and students. My father had been at BYU more than a decade beforehand working on his PhD and had often told us about his apostate professors. When my own daughter was accepted to BYU last year we had a good talk about the fact that she could not assume that either her professors or her fellow students would be faithful members of the church. She started BYU knowing that some of her professors and the other students might push apostate ideas and reject the teachings and directions of the prophets and apostles.”

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