Far West Missouri Stake Notes

[BroJones]

A colleague in Vienna, Austria, sent me this video clip, from a talk I gave in 2007 at Faneuil Hall, Boston. I think this is important for the record, so here it is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jb0W_ai8Bos" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Interesting that I will soon be living so close to Tom and Frank who were key players in the research I did...

[EmmaLee]

Wonderful! What a happy and exciting thing for you and your wife! My parents served three full-time missions after they retired and they loved the people in those areas dearly. May we ask where to, and when you report? All the very best to you both, and to your family.

We report to the New Jersey Morristown mission, on April 18th. We are en route now...
Thanks for asking!

Small world! That's one of the missions my parents served in a couple of decades ago. They loved the people there - served mostly with less-actives. Kept in touch with some of those folks for many years after coming home. Congratulations and God speed, Elder and Sister Jones! :ymhug:

[David13]

Cogitating - ideas for earning beaucoup bucks in a small town --

1. Mouse control -- I need to hire someone fast!
2. Healthy cookies and drinks - like wheat grass drink, and vinegar drinks... i'm serious
2b. -- An empath could help a lot of people by doing private "unofficial" naturopathic treatments...
Close relative is paying a lot to such a person in Penna

3. Write a book. My son Nathan is succeeding with his latest trilogy
See Amazon, Nathan Jones, "Fuel", "Shortage" and "Invasion" - he's making around $150-200 a day now!

4. Snow removal and lawn mowing
5. Firewood - I need some.

More ideas?

Brother Jones
Thanks for the ideas there.
I have two goals. To remarry, and to move to Utah, not necessarily in that order.
I'm just about to decide if I should now move to Manti in the next few weeks.
But I will have to look at that area in Missouri after the information I see here.
And I will have to work.
Having now been in Los Angeles 45 years I'm ready for a small town, and Manti is a nice small town with a big Temple.
Congratulations to your son at doing so well. There are so few opportunities there for young people, yet he seems to be doing well
dc

[BroJones]

Brother Jones
Thanks for the ideas there.
I have two goals. To remarry, and to move to Utah, not necessarily in that order.
I'm just about to decide if I should now move to Manti in the next few weeks.
But I will have to look at that area in Missouri after the information I see here.
And I will have to work.
Having now been in Los Angeles 45 years I'm ready for a small town, and Manti is a nice small town with a big Temple.
Congratulations to your son at doing so well. There are so few opportunities there for young people, yet he seems to be doing well
dc

Dear David -

Great to hear from you!

You noted a goal to re-marry - I'll get right to the point.
A very eligible/single and interesting sister moved into our Albany MO branch about a year ago. I HIGHLY recommend that you, ummm.... consider this option. She's a keeper imho - for a wonderful Priesthood holder like you!

[Darren]

Talking with my gardening friend and High Councilor in our Far West Stake, Brother Ed Dufrain yesterday. I had asked him about the possibilities of upgrading the building in Gallatin to a full size stake center building. And what he responded to me was very interesting.

He told me that two years ago he was told by President Thomas of the Platte City Stake about the Church building a Stake Center in St. Joseph, and that the Church was moving towards purchasing land in St. Joseph for the new stake building, near to the South Belt Area and that that land purchase would also include the land necessary to eventually build a temple. What Bro. Dufrain said was that President Thomas said that when the St. Joseph Stake was assembled that Albany and Maryville would be part of that new stake, to also include a ward in Iowa and Kansas.

And that President Thomas has since said that this land purchase and building for the new St. Joseph Stake would happen before a new stake building for the Far West Stake.

Granted, this is hear-say.

And by the way, I have an announcement to make next week for the Albany Branch, that has to do with my family. So stay tuned.

God Bless,
Darren

[BroJones]

Will stay tuned! thanks for the interesting information, Darren - hope your family is moving towards the Albany Branch...!

[BroJones]

Sister Jones and I had a wonderful day yesterday at the East Orange, New Jersey, Branch to which we have been assigned by our Mission President.

There is such a lot of LOVE in that Branch. (And not many white faces! very diverse.)

I wish to say that there are many reasons for us to pray and exercise our faith for deliverance in times of trouble. Yesterday at the Gospel Principles class (taught by a full-time missionary), we met Angie and her son. Later, we drove her and the child to her apartment in Newark.

This investigator had seen two Elders (one was Elder Fotu, of Tongan extraction, tall and strong) and went over to talk to them. She was going through a VERY difficult time in her life. Her husband (they were married about 1.5 yrs ago) - had been BEATEN to near death by a gang in Newark. Sigh...

The Elders are teaching/helping her and her son and hope to teach her husband soon. But he is still in the Intensive Care Unit at St Michael's Hospital, recovering from his beating. So this is a rough area, all right... And we feel to pray for each other and help each other.

Last week, Mission President Taggart confided that he had driven in a neighborhood in or near Newark some weeks ago, at night - where he felt very uneasy. That happened to Sister Jones and I last Saturday evening, as we provided transport to Carlos, a branch member. He lives about a mile from Newark, and we live about 3 miles from Newark... We had to travel at night through a rough-looking area with bars and people on the streets etc.

However, I felt we should just drive through - and we did so, safely.

A branch member yesterday told us of a young man, a grandson of a member of our branch, who had been shot in the face and killed in the Newark area, so yes, it is a very rough place to serve.

Again, our blessing from Stake President Call before we left Missouri was that the Lord would grant us a spirit of DISCERNMENT AND WISDOM and help us through dangers, to know which roads to take and which roads (and neighborhoods) NOT to take, and the Lord would protect us.

President Call paused, and gave me a special blessing of COURAGE which is now very much appreciated. This was during our setting-apart blessings.

I'm praying for that courage and spirit of discernment and wisdom today - and I appreciate so much your prayers for Sister Jones and I!

While in the Manhattan New York City Temple last Saturday, I felt very strongly a need to:
1. First get acquainted with members of our branch (and LDS in this area)
and then
2. Teach them about the Lord's plan for their safety and refuge - specifically, Zion / New Jerusalem (D&C 58, 57, 45, 133, 3 Nephi 21 Moses 7, etc)

I will do so - and pray the Lord will help me know when and how to do this.
__________________
Quote:
Alma 26:27 Now when our hearts were depressed, and we were about to turn back, behold, the Lord comforted us, and said: Go amongst thy brethren, the Lamanites, and bear with patience thine afflictions, and I will give unto you success.

[BroJones]

I came across this (below) in my gospel studies about authentic love ("love unfeigned" in D&C 121) and the counterfeit, pseudo-love. If there is a "love unfeigned", then there must logically also be a false type of love.

Pseudo romantic love.jpg (182.7 KiB) Viewed 3251 times

[Darren]

In the book, "The Fastest Way to Learn Spanish is to See IT!" by Bruce Wydner is some very profound insights on the word love and the mechanics of love. ("IT" in the title of the book is Jesus - "See" [as in to Seek] a.k.a. Love, is the basis of language)

Being the world's foremost authority on his works, and quite capable to teach from them, here is some understanding on LOVE. Maybe you will find these observations useful.

Pure Love comes from our Eternal Intelligence part of our tripartite being. Love means to seek. We have only one personal possession to trade with the Lord for His eternal life, offered by Him to mankind, that one eternal possession of ours to trade with is The Instrument of our seeking. Seeking is the attribute of our Intelligence. We give our Will to the Lord, and in doing so we consummate the contract to love God with all our hearts.

On its own the Spirit part of our being cannot develop pure love, it has not the ability by itself to find the object of our seeking. The rational mind can only find love as it is guided by the will. Satan second guessed his inherent love for God with his Spirit's Thinking Instrument, he put the rational mind before the intelligence's seeking, in this condition Satan cannot love.

Our physical body part of our being knows only materialism, hunger, thirst, appetites. Unless guided by the will of our Intelligence our bodies cannot discover pure love.

The Formula for Pure Love is EQM - The Relationship between ALL Energy (E) and ALL Matter (M) is ALL Quality (Q).

Knowing the basic principles makes understanding love very easy.

When Jesus came to the lost tribes of Israel in the North, at his temple (hov) in FornSigTuna, he told the men to love Him with all of their hearts, and this they took upon themselves by covenant, by oath. Then seeing their undeviating devotion to Him, He gave them another commandment to also love wife and kin.

("The Story of our Law for little children" by Bruce Wydner, pp. 68 - 70)

The Original Charter of the LAW

This is LAW.
Speaking to the leaders of Northern Europe, as they came to his Temple, at Lake LAW, the King told them the following:

(Speaking of his mind’s eye, the eye within our heads with which we mentally look) “In the life before this one I gave this eye within my head to my ‘perfect’ or ‘complete’ or THORough’ Father. We call him ‘THOR’ or ‘THUR.’

In return, He gave me a seed out of his own body. With this seed I then created Heaven and Earth.

At length I came down to Earth, born of my mother, FREE, and lived among my people in Asaland. At the end of my work there I was hung upon the Tree of Life ...”

The following are the words which the King spoke about that event, as recorded by Snorri Sturlusson in the Icelandic book, “The Poetic Edda.”

“I ween that I hung on the windy tree,
hung there for hours full nine;
With the spear I was wounded, and offered I was,
On the tree that none may ever know
What root beneath it runs.
None made the happy with loaf or horn,
And there below I looked;
I took up the runes, shrieking I took them,
And forthwith back I fell.
Then began I to thrive, and wisdom to get,
I grew and well I was;
Each word led me on to another word,
Each deed to another deed,”

Then,
“The branches of the Tree of Life go above all things. The roots of that Tree go below all things. So I descended below all things. And now I have ascended above all things. So now all things, the deeds of all men, are ever before my eyes. But, I can never LOOK to them. All that I can ever look to is my Father’s glory. Now if you will give me your eye, in the same way that I have given my eye to my Father, then the same relationship that exists between my Father and me will exist between me and you.

Then, all of the things that you have SEEN that destroy you ...
The English word “sin” is the same as the word “seen.” Anciently it meant that which your inner eye has “seen” that destroys you. In the Norwegian language the word for “vision,” something which someone has “seen,” is still said, “syn.” The tract “Joseph Smith’s First Vision,” in Swedish, is “Josef Smith’s Forste Syn.”
... won’t destroy you anymore, because EVERYTHING is before my eyes, AND NOTHING DESTROYS ME.

To show all this relationship it is necessary for you to first be ‘dipped’ under water by a person having the authority which I have given to the Twelve Asians.”

Throughout Scandinavia and the Germanies the Catholic word “baptism” has never replaced the different Germanic versions of the word “dip.”

“Then someone with that authority must lay their hands upon your head, as I laid mine on the Twelve, to give you the constant companionship of Tue, the third person in association with my father and me in the ‘Godhead,’ whom we call, ‘the Holy Ghost.’ because he has no body, at this time, as we have.

The Scandinavian word, “God-head” (the “head” being the Scandinavian way of saying “hood,” as in “maidenhead” for “maidenhood”) and the expression, “Holy Ghost,” have likewise withstood replacement by Catholic words.

“You may have his constant companionship as long as you keep your eye single to my glory. For then you will be ‘born’ in the same way that I was; that is, you will be FREE, just the same as I have always been since I was born — of my mother, FREE.

Then, what is more, if you will bring your women to my temple and there both give me your eye, as I have given my eye to my Father, then I will show you how to live together and give life together in a state purer than you knew when you were little children, for then you will BE Wed: and that is my name.

Then you will live together in my Law: Wed-lock. Then you will have a father-in-law, mother-in-law etc.”

To understand the mechanics of Love it also helps to have the Scriptures of the lost tribes of Israel to study.


My wife has just been put under contract to teach 5th grade at Virginia E. George Elementary School in Albany, Missouri 2016 - 2017. I work at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, so this development will put us somewhere in between those two places. My boss lives in Albany and commutes every day from Albany to Maryville and back, so it is very doable. Our youngest graduates this year, and I have been preparing our house in Maryville for sale, so change is about to happen.

God Bless,
Darren

[BroJones]

You're an interesting fellow, Darren - hope to meet you some day!

[/To understand the mechanics of Love it also helps to have the Scriptures of the lost tribes of Israel to study.

Agreed! I look forward to that day (thinking of D&C 133).

My wife has just been put under contract to teach 5th grade at Virginia E. George Elementary School in Albany, Missouri 2016 - 2017. I work at Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, so this development will put us somewhere in between those two places. My boss lives in Albany and commutes every day from Albany to Maryville and back, so it is very doable. Our youngest graduates this year, and I have been preparing our house in Maryville for sale, so change is about to happen.

God Bless,
Darren

That's exciting! that elementary school is about a block from where our house in Albany is located!
Personally hoping you and your family will end up living in the Albany Branch!
There are some great people there, and soon (IMHO) to be a ward.
Best wishes to you, friend.