I'm a perfectionist, which can both be a blessing and a curse. Scrupulosity is a type of perfectionism that can hinder one's spiritualism. And this topic can span several different posts -- I may come back to this several times.
Today will be just an introduction. Scrupulosity comes down to this:
Jesus says "Be ye therefore perfect," but I'm not perfect.
Such a contradiction! And I believe that ultimately, it's the number one reason behind why many people leave religion. It's a paradox that religions are supposed to help us become better people, but in pursuing these goals, we realize how imperfect we are and see how impossible it is.
It reminds me of a recurring dream I used to have where I've died and gone to heaven. In this heaven, we are allowed to do anything we want, but if we break any of the rules ... even one of them, then we get kicked out. And there are so many rules. As a result, I find it impossible to enjoy this heaven, as I'm not entirely sure what all the rules are, and I know I'm not going to last long -- and every day I see friends falling. So, it becomes like its own hell.
When I was young I was taught the Plan of Salvation, where there are three main outcomes in heaven: the Telestial (bottom), the Terrestrial (middle), and the Celestial (highest) Kingdoms. And for years, I told myself, "I'm not perfect, so I'll shoot for the Terrestrial Kingdom." I said as much in my Sunday School class as a teenager, and my teacher, Bro. Daughtery, stopped the lesson right there and asked me why I wasn't shooting for the Celestial Kingdom.
I answered, "Because it's impossible. Only perfect people go there. I already know I'm not going to make it."
And he basically changed my life. I can't remember exactly what his arguments were, but he helped me to realize that it's never too late for any of us. We can try and shoot for the top. We can strive for perfection even though we can't achieve it in this life. And most importantly ... a lot of people who are imperfect now are going to make it to the top.
My church gets a lot of flack for apparently having too many rules, checklists, and duties. Many members feel stress from trying to keep up and having to do everything, and some leave, feeling that it's much better not to have the stress at all.
I also hate rules and checklists ... especially the checklists ... but I've come to realize that most of this is self-imposed. And when our leaders give us these rules and checklists -- listen carefully -- they're not saying that they are minimum requirements for entering heaven, but rather they are tips and guidelines to help us in our journey to achieve perfection.
And that's what scrupulosity is. It is when we, ourselves, through our own perfectionism, submit ourselves to unattainable goals, and when we fail we suffer undue stress. At the time it feels like it's the Church doing it to us, but for myself, after further analysis, I realize that it is I doing to myself.
I wish I could speak more, but I must force myself to keep the time short. We'll come back to this later. In the meantime, feel free to share your own thoughts about perfectionism, rules, scrupulosity, and so on. How do you cope?
I really do miss seeing all my friends at church. Even today we're still not meeting -- we're evidently waiting for the counts and active cases to subside. And it's clear from our local leaders that safety is the number one goal -- they do not want a church service to be a conduit for the spread of the virus.
This has been both a blessing and a curse over these last few months. We're now in our 6th month and counting. Let's go over the curses first so I can save the best for last.
Curses
I usually get bored at church, mainly because I hear the same thing over and over again -- stuff I already know. During Sunday School or Priesthood Quorum, I'll be doing puzzles on my phone to keep my brain active while I'm listening ... that seems to help out a lot.
Every now and then I do get a good nugget when someone teaches me something new, or relates a story that helps me see an old concept in a new light. So, perhaps these nuggets make it all worth it.
But during the absence of my church colleagues, I've come to learn that church is more than just learning stuff. It's also about building a community, so we can reinforce each other and become friends -- a way in which we can help each other's lives to be much better and more bearable. And now with this big long rest, I can see what I'm missing, and I can't wait till we see each other again. Right now it just feels like there's something missing in my life.
Blessings
But then again, being able to hold church from home has brought some unique opportunities. This is what our local church leaders have recommended over the past 6 months: we can conduct church in our homes, similarly to how we have church in our buildings ... sing hymns, pray together, have talks and discussions, and so on. We're even authorized to conduct the sacrament (Eucharist, Last Supper) as long as a person has the priesthood authority to do so.
In one way, this helps us to customize church to better fit our family. In my case, it also seems to bring my family closer together. And as I've heard several of my priesthood friends say ... it's been years since we've "blessed the sacrament" and now we have the unique opportunity to do it every week.
It also gives us much more opportunity to speak and teach to each other. And sing with a much smaller crowd.
What's most interesting is that last year our church launched a new initiative called "Come Follow Me." It was billed as a new way to prepare for upcoming days, and lo and behold, it has become an integral part of our home churching these past 6 months.
How it works: our church assigns a reading for the week, and provides spiritual guidance in conjunction with that reading, and we are to meet with our families during the week to discuss, read together, or however we feel best to use it.
Last year we read through the entire New Testament. And this year we're attacking the Book of Mormon. Right now, the entire world is reading about the wars at the end of Alma, with the Sons of Helaman staying true to their cause and honoring their parents.
It helps to bring unity among the church, but during this crisis, it also helps us to know what to concentrate our Sunday church lessons on.
I'm curious to hear about your church experiences from home ... did you do anything? Are you back going to real church by now? Have any of you had bad experience from churching at home?
Today we had ourselves a Zoom meeting, and the topic was on how to stay spiritually and physically healthy. The physical aspect makes sense during these pandemic times -- with the gyms closed and staying at home all day, it's easy to neglect exercising and health. I, myself, have noticed I haven't been getting any upper body workout of any kind. And I've just now started taking vitamins to boost immunity in case I catch this disease.
The spiritual aspect is just as important, and lately I've felt a little lacking. And someone suggested -- if you have issues, instead of hitting them head on, perhaps the best approach is to build up your spirituality, (and merging in what others said), and then you can build momentum to quickly attack any and all issues effectively ... kind of like building a spiritual immunity.
So, I'm going to add quick little weekly snippets on this blog where I pick some random spiritual topic and blah blah blah for about 30 minutes (which for me can be on the moderately long side). As always, I encourage further discussions and reactions in the comments -- either here, on Twitter, or on Facebook.
So am I spiritual enough? I come across as a funny guy. I'm always telling jokes, and I can take almost any situation and come up with a bad dad pun in five seconds flat. And yeah, sometimes they can get dirty. People who know me know I have a hard time turning that off. I guess it's how my brain works, and I like to make people laugh. Happiness, I find, is a cure for almost all ills. And it definitely increases my popularity.
But am I spiritual? I'm not sure exactly how to answer that. I look at some people who are really good at doing all the checkbox items: reading scriptures, going to church, doing their ministering assignments, regular family readings and meetings, doing genealogy, visiting the sick in the hospitals, and so on, so on.
And then I look at myself. It's hard to keep up with all that stuff and still have time for other things. I'm more inconsistent with the checkbox items. But I still feel like I have a decent relationship with God. It always feels like I have a prayer in my heart mostly all the time, and I'm always bouncing ideas at God ... I never give him a break. These are less like prayers, but more like a conversation with a mentor. I know he's listening, and sometimes I hear him answer back. He'll say, "Now that's a great idea." And then many times I never get around to executing that plan.
At least I'm communicating.
The world we live in is busy. There are so many things to do. I'm trying to keep up with my day job and my music publishing business. My subconscious is running all the time, doing code almost every waking hour, composing music, planning, finding patterns in everything, cooking up stories. It never shuts off ... and how can I compete with that and be more spiritual?
I don't think checking off the boxes gets one into heaven, but doing those items certainly helps one to focus and learn how to be spiritual. But what exactly does that mean ... to be spiritual?
I think it's connecting to all things spiritual, whether it's talking to God, thinking about Jesus, or becoming receptive to the influence of the Holy Spirit. People of other religions can also be spiritual and connect with higher beings, or gain a higher understanding of one's existence through deep meditation.
But none of it does any good unless it's turned into action. Once we have a higher understanding, it should always translate into something actionable -- in other words, we can understand what we can do better to make someone's life more bearable.
We can bear testimony to our friends and explain spiritual matters. We can be guided to seek out people who need help, and provide assistance. We may even learn what tasks or projects we can accomplish that is lovely and of good report so that we can bring happiness to many people.
If we're always striving to do better, improving our own lives, or the lives of our friends and neighbors, then yes ... I think we are being spiritual enough.
What do you think?
This ends my 30 minutes of random blah blah, but I hope it is received well. I'll keep this up every Sunday, and see how it goes. My own personal plan to increase my own spiritual immunity and hopefully make other people's life better in some small way.
Last year I shared my "eclipse" testimony, or what I learned after having gone down to Greenville, SC to see the US Solar Eclipse of 2017. I gave that testimony at my church the first Sunday in September 2017. Shortly after that in October, there were at least two different General Conference talks using the eclipse as an analogy, only the speakers went a different route than I did.
I saw the corona as a beautiful thing, of which the surface of the sun was a distraction, hiding it from our view. The moon helped to cover the distraction, which allowed us to see the corona.
But the general authorities went with the idea that the moon was a small distraction hiding the larger sun from us -- turning a once-in-a-lifetime beautiful phenomenon into an ugly thing -- something that didn't resonate with me.
They said that one can hold up a thumb and hide the sun from view ... just a tiny little thing (a distraction) keeping us from seeing the bigger picture. Yeah ... I get it.
Then, around that same time in 2017 we had a general authority from Utah announce a visit to our upcoming Stake Conference in December -- generally a big meeting with over a thousand of congregates attending. I'll give more details in a later post, but for now let's just say that the visiting authority didn't like the music I had picked with the stake music director for the meeting -- rejected it outright without even listening to it.
To me, that was, and still is, a really big thing. I felt I had been inspired, and that God himself approved our choice, only for it to be rejected by a visiting authority who "doesn't really understand music." I was bitter, and I must admit that it still stings, two and a half years later.
For the few weeks that followed, I made plans ... I wasn't going to provide any of the music for Stake Conference ... or I'd show up and walk out in the middle, leaving them high and dry for an organist ... or I'd stop going to church altogether -- perhaps shop around and check out the music scene at other churches. In fact, one or two weeks I was so angry I couldn't go to church at all. I had to stay home and cool off.
During a social event at this time, I ranted to my good pianist church friend, thinking she would help feed into my "righteousness indignation," but instead she had the gall to bring up the General Conference talks. "You know, like what you said in your own testimony about the solar eclipse." She said I was letting a little thing get in the way of my salvation. It was blocking my view of what was important.
My first instinct was anger ... first off because I did not like their analogy and it was NOT what I said in my testimony. And then I was angry because -- why couldn't see how big this thing was? It may have been a little thing to her, but it didn't happen to her. It was still big to me.
But her words sunk in. I couldn't ignore her, and I had to admit she was right. Leave the church? If I were to return to Jesus and say, "But you saw what that general authority did to me, going against your inspiration," would I really expect him to pat me on the back and say, "Yes, I know; come on in"?
Walk out on my peeps in the middle of Stake Conference? That would guarantee they'd never ask me to come back to play organ. If I had carried out any of my plans, it would have backfired more than I would have intended. Ultimately, the music director asked me to stick with her and play some other pieces she had picked out -- I couldn't leave her after all we had been through, and if anyone was hurt more than me from the event, it was she. In the end, we both ended up doing the right things -- I played, and I stayed.
With so many aspects of life to consider, I couldn't let this one musical event destroy my life.
From this whole experience, I had two key takeaways ...
#1) It is very EASY to let one small thing pull you away from the church. It almost happened to me, and I've seen it happen to several other people. Someone gets into an argument, and one, or both, decide not to come back to church. Someone may disagree with a church policy and leave. I've even seen someone disagree with the Church but then wait until the Church reverses before leaving. There are entire blogs, pages, and organizations, each built on single specific issues against the Church. In each case, it's such a small little thing in the grand scheme of things.
#2) It is also very EASY to push people away from the church when they're going through hard times by telling them how small the thing is. (Of course, my friend knew what I could handle.) Even though small in the grand scheme of things, it's still a big thing to that person. Music is very important to me, and so my pain was magnified, while I know others would never understand. If you want the friend to stay in the church, you will have to be careful and diplomatic in how to help them understand how small the thing really is. At first, step into their shoes and listen. Show your support and understanding. And then when they feel your trust, you can start to give them perspective, and help them to see for themselves that there are much bigger things to worry about.
With this in mind ... hopefully you can use some of these ideas to help you stick with church, and also how to keep others to stick with church ... helping each other to become better people, viewing everything with the proper perspective ... not letting single issues getting in the way of your salvation. There is so much going on in our lives that's bigger than most anything that can happen to us, and with God we can overcome anything.
It's been a year now since the announcement on misusing the term "Mormon," and as you may notice, this blog is still called "The Mormon Mel." I've received a few questions and have decided this is a perfect opportunity for a fun discussion.
First, a little catch up.
In August 2018, our new leader, the 94-year-old President Russell M. Nelson, launched an effort to correct the branding of our church. The official name of our church is, and has always been: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The concern is that perhaps we have relied too much on the nickname "Mormon," such that it has corrupted the Church's image, and has led to confusion. For example, several times people have asked me if I believe in a God named Mormon. Or they don't realize that we rely on the Bible as much as we do the Book of Mormon. And many don't know we believe in Jesus Christ at all.
But just imagine ... if everyone called us "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints," it could help clear things up. Do we believe in Jesus? "It's in the name of our church." Do we believe in the Bible? "What Jesus-believing religion doesn't?"
It all makes sense. While the Church tones down on the use of the term "Mormon," it helps clarify our doctrine, and help others understand what we believe.
So then, why have I not changed the name of my blog to comply? Wouldn't it be better to call it "The Latter-day Saint Mel," which would be in harmony with the new Style Guide?
Short answer: Because, for me, nothing has changed. The name of the Church hasn't changed, and for decades we've received the same counsel urging against the use of the nickname "Mormon." I had all this in mind a few years ago when I chose the name of my blog, and the reasons behind the blog name haven't changed. Of course, this will need more explaining.
I'll start with describing how soap works. (wait for it...)
The typical soap molecule has two sides to it. One is an oily fatty acid side, and the other side is a harsh alkaline. The oily side likes to stick to oil, while the alkaline (lye) likes to stick to water.
If you try to wash your oily hands with only water, it doesn't work very well because oil and water don't mix. The water just slides off, and you still got oily dirt on your hands. If you try to pour lye on your hands, hoping it'll help the water clean your hands, it might work, but it'll burn your hands. Likewise, if you try to pour on oily fatty acids, it'll just smear and get oilier.
It takes both the fatty acid and the lye in combination to make it all work. Kind of like a mullet ... you know, business in the front (the lye), and party in the back (the fatty acid)? This video gives a little bit more detail on how soap works, if you want to know more.
What I'd like to point out here is that the fatty acid is a type of "hook" that is needed to attract the oil and dirt in order for the "business" to work. Ultimately it's the lye that attaches to the water to pull away the dirt, but it's useless without the dirty fatty acid side.
This "hook" concept appears everywhere in book writing and advertising. You want to attract customers to buy your products or read the meat ("business") of what you want people to read.
Think about this: if you have something to say, why should anyone listen to you? More often than not, people don't care what you have to say, because they're preoccupied by whatever they enjoy or whatever they're worrying about. You could talk and talk and talk, but they'll most likely tune you out.
Unless, you catch their attention. Perhaps you've seen the Looney Tunes short where a man tries to get people to see his dancing frog? Nobody comes until he paints a "FREE BEER" sign.
This is ultimately why I chose to include the word "Mormon" in my blog title. It is my hook, and my main targets are people who aren't members of my church, but are looking to learn more about it. Plus, I love the clever alliteration. So many "M"s! The Mormon Mel!
It also fits nicely with the names of my other blogs: The Word of Mel, The Music of Mel, and The Econo-Mel. Each blog title has just two accented syllables and follows a simple pattern.
Once I get people to my blog, I then hit them with the "business," and I think I do a pretty good job at this. People who visit learn things about my church, and they're usually grateful and very appreciative of how I present things.
Practically everyone has heard of the "Mormons." They may not understand what it is, but they do know that it's something, and that it's peculiar, and interesting. These same people are much less likely to have heard of "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" or the shortened "Latter-day Saints" and probably don't know they're the same as "Mormons."
Check out these search results as presented by Google Trends. The following graph shows a popularity index of different keywords among actual Google searches. I've set blue = "mormon"; red = "latter day saint"; yellow = "lds"; and green = "church of jesus christ of latter day saints."
"LDS" has been consistently popular over the past 15 years. "Mormon" appears to track slightly under "LDS" until 2011 when the "Book of Mormon" musical came out. And recently it has gone back down to its previous level. But look at the green and red lines -- you can hardly see them at all.
And check this out ...
The geography of "Mormon" searches cover the entire United States, with peaks in heavily LDS-populated states.
Compare with ...
The geography of "Latter Day Saint" is much more confined to more heavily LDS-populated states, with almost nothing coming from the other states. It's almost as if the other states didn't get the memo!
This all tells me that if I were to change the name of my blog to "The Latter-day Saint Mel", it would drastically decrease its visibility. It would be harder to reach those outside of my church ... a big chunk of my intended audience.
I'll come back to this, but first some quick history.
In 1990, First Counselor Hinckley talked about people calling us "Mormon," and said, "They could do worse." Mormon was an honorable man -- a prophet from around 400 AD. While everyone else was busy killing people and living riotously, Mormon compiled the majority of what we now call the Book of Mormon. He also raised a son in righteousness -- Moroni, who would later finish the work of his father.
When Elder Hinckley became our church President, he ran a successful PR campaign, appearing on 60 Minutes, and submitting to other interviews. He always used the full name of our church, but when people called us "Mormons," he would just smile and say, "Would you like to learn more?" He encouraged us to stand taller and to be a great example to the world.
In 2011, the "I'm a Mormon" campaign launched under President Monson (the one who succeeded President Hinckley). Also, that year the Church put out a light-hearted official response to the Book of Mormon musical: "The production may attempt to entertain audiences for an evening, but the Book of Mormon as a volume of scripture will change people's lives forever by bringing them closer to Christ." And in 2014 came the release of the "Meet the Mormons" movie, which was meant for mainly non-Mormon audiences.
Thus, the idea of using "Mormon" as a hook has been around a long time. Though, recently, President Nelson has indicated that perhaps we had made mistakes forsaking our church's name while trying to bring in more followers. And this is the main impetus for the recent rebranding. A lot of our church's websites have been renamed to move away from "Mormon" and "LDS," and to move more toward the full name and sometimes "Latter-day Saint."
The URL lds.org now redirects to churchofjesuschrist.org. And mormon.org now goes to comeuntochrist.org. Also, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir has been renamed to be the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square -- undoubtedly the most visual manifestation of this rebranding to the outside world. It will most likely raise questions, and help others learn from this new emphasis by President Nelson.
Just one more thing to show you before I wrap up. Many owners of blogs and Facebook pages that previously used "LDS" or "Mormon" have shown compliance by changing to the lengthier "Latter-day Saint" or the full name of the Church. (But not all have changed.)
For example, the group formally known as "LDS Pianists" is now "Pianists of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints." And look at what these name changes did to some of these Facebook Groups:
I can immediately make out what each group is except for three of them: "Latter-day Saint Or...", "The Church of Jes...", and "Latter-day Saint S...", which in turn makes them harder to find. I'm forced to hover my mouse over the title to figure out what each one is.
Now imagine the name of my blog in some feed. Right now, "The Mormon Mel" is short and would fit perfectly. But if I change the name, it would appear as "The Latter-day Sain..." I know that would translate into fewer visitors.
Finally, to conclude, I fully understand the inspiration that President Nelson has delivered, and the name changes that the Church underwent for their websites and organizations. It makes sense that the world should know the true name of our Church.
However, I've given this much consideration over the past year, and I feel that I can serve a much higher purpose and reach more people by keeping the name of my blog the same: "The Mormon Mel." I love the alliteration, and I believe the title is catchy and has high visibility.
Once people come to my blog, I'll set things straight. I do plan to take some other actions to comply with the instructions we've received, such as stopping the use of the word "Mormonism" (of which I agree 100%) and to change the subheading of my blog to reflect the full name of the Church ... stay tuned for more details as I roll those changes out.
Two years ago (the first week of September), I gave this testimony immediately after having seen the 2017 solar eclipse. Since I failed to record it earlier, this is just an estimate of what I had said. It'll be important for other posts I have coming down the pike (the "How to Keep People in the Church" series).
I had gone down to Greenville, SC to view the event on August 21, 2017. You can read all the gory details here. During my testimony I gave the ultra-condensed version. I had been planning the trip for years. I could have stayed in my home city of Winston Salem, NC, which was in the 95% eclipse zone, but that wasn't good enough for me.
In order to catch 100%, I took the day off from work, spent almost 4 hours driving down with my family, and then we saw it. Pictures and video don't do it justice. It was magical -- like a 3-D paper origami moon covering the prettiest corona you could ever imagine with its strange red/purple light. It was like nothing I had seen before, or will rarely see again.
The trip back was slightly worse. I-85 was a parking lot, so we used the back roads. It added more than a hour to a regular trip, but it was fun.
I had several Winston Salem friends who had made similar plans. A few took the trip to catch that last 5%, and some stayed behind. That last contingent went outside shortly after lunch and caught as much as they could. They put on their solar glasses and had a fun time. Most of the sun's face was covered except for a small sliver. It was an experience for them, ... however ... they never saw the corona. They missed out on the full magic.
I know this, because, as soon as the first tiniest speck of the sun's surface appeared (the Bailey's Beads as captured by my friend in the picture above), there was instant heat, and we could no longer see the corona, and we had to put our filtered glasses back on.
Now, take a moment to see it from the stay-at-home point of view. I got to hear it from one of my work friends as we all went out to eat lunch at Mama Zoe's. About half of us had gone down to SC, and the other half had stayed.
My one stay-at-home friend said, "I had a blast. Yeah, I know I was planning to go down, but I ultimately decided not to go, because I would have to drag my family through hours of traffic just for a 2-minute show. We had 95% totality, and it got down to a sliver, and it was cool. In hindsight, I'm glad I made the right decision. I got to see it, AND I didn't get stuck in traffic."
Then as you may expect, I and my went-down friends tried to explain what he had missed out on, but he would have none of it. Even though I had seen one of the most spectacular events of my life, I found it very difficult to put into words -- to explain it to someone who really only experienced a small portion of the event.
As we gained up on my stay-at-home friend, he got more defensive and started implying that we were stupid for going down in the first place and that triggered me. I said, "I saw the corona with my own eyes, and nothing will ever take that away from me. It was worth the trip." And that pretty much ended the discussion forever.
I know we could have handled the whole situation better, but I couldn't help seeing some important analogies.
The solar eclipse at 100% totality represents the "true" Gospel. Being able to see the corona is like seeing the full Truth.
All churches have a portion of Truth. Among all the Christian denominations, roughly 95% of the doctrine is the same. (If we include non-Christian religions, there are still some similarities. But I stuck with Christianity in this testimony to keep it simple.) We all believe that Christ can save us from sin, which is by far the most important piece of doctrine.
People tend to stay with the church with which they were raised, because to them, that 95% is good enough. There isn't much incentive to search for other churches, because there is a sense that they all believe the same things with minor differences between the denominations.
But in our church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), that extra 5% makes a big difference. We can see what other people are missing. It's difficult to explain to them exactly what it is, but we know this extra knowledge. I'm grateful for what I've learned, and no one can ever take it away from me.
I said those last words to a room of other members of our church, but I'd like to slightly modify it for my non-LDS readers. There is always room to learn more knowledge. Even in my church, it's believed that more truths will be revealed later (Article of Faith #9). Even though I'm satisfied with the doctrine of my church, I am also searching for further truth, including frequent studying of other religions.
Because ... well ... it's worth the trip. Having Truth is good and helps to put things in proper perspectives. It helps us to see beautiful things that we would otherwise miss.
I would like to end by comparing the above eclipse analogy with at least two talks given at General Conference in October 2017 -- the very quick version. In those two talks, the eclipse was given as an example of the moon being a small thing, yet covering up a large sun. The moon represented distractions in our life that are small, yet big enough to keep us from seeing the light. You can similarly cover up the entire moon by holding your little thumb in front of it.
Though, this is a cool analogy that was used twice independently, I like mine better. Theirs make the eclipse sound like a bad thing. But to me, the corona was the beautiful part to see. It's there all the time, but we can never see it. The surface of the sun is the "distraction," and the moon was the small means that could cover up the distraction long enough for us to see the sun's true nature.
But sure ... two different ways to look at it. Either way, cool eclipses make for cool analogies.
Last year I returned to writing in this blog. During 2018, I published more posts than I previously had in any other individual year. This is because I feel impressed to share all the thoughts that have been collecting recently. I anticipate even more posts this year as I push forward -- around 20-30 posts total.
My 2019 goals include the following:
Continue working on the "Why I'm A Mormon" book (including a retitling).
Explore how to strengthen the membership of the Church.
