Sophia Is Baptized, Ali Accompanies

 Sophia has been baptized. She said she was nervous, but she didn’t seem it.  She was as cool and pristine as always.  she only required one dipping, too.

Ali was the one to deal with.   She knew from the beginning I was going to be accompanying the song after the confirmation. She asked if she could be on the piano bench right beside me. Of course I agreed.  What harm could she do?  What harm indeed?

She confirmed this with me often. And I continued to agree not realizing that in fact she planned to sabotage the situation -- unknowingly, of course.  

When it was just about our turn, I informed Ali, and  she almost took off. I grabbed her arm just in time. Soon we were serenely  seated on the piano bench. The chorister began to wave her arm and I began to play. Then my horror, Ali placed her hands  firmly right on top of mine. I could barely move my hands. She left them there for the entire first verse. She is strong for a six-year-old.

She played around for the second verse for which I was grateful but she returned her task for the third verse.

I don’t think I humiliated Sophia on her special day. I don’t think Elmer Nelson, my piano teacher, from age ten to twenty took note in the celestial kingdom.

But I do think the world  ought to take special note,  pun intended, of Alison Aukschun.   she is definitely someone with whom making music is magic time.  It’s hard work, you must be alert and there are no advance warnings of anything.

The Mormon "100"

Billy Barty

Here’s a list that requires a little understanding before reading and quoting.  It’s a list of the 100 Latter-day Saints who have had the most influence on the world.  They are not necessarily famous, heroic, celebrities or “big deals”.  They might not be generally well-known, liked, or had a high or continuing level of church “activity’. and their influence was judged as to its impact on the world and not just on the Church.  Remember, however, since the Church membership is close to 14 million, that is no small influence.  

Though we do claim them, the “Mormon 100” lists no one who died before 1830’s official organization of the Church.  

We are also instructed to not quibble too much about the rankings.  

BTW, Mattie Hughes Cannon was one of my great grandfather’s wives, and I have it in writing she was jealous of my great grandmother!

1. Philo Farnsworth - inventor of the television

2. Joseph Smith, Jr. - founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

3. Brigham Young - 2nd President/Prophet of the Church; led Saints to Utah

4. Marvin Harris - inventor of the transistor radio

5. Alan Ashton - inventor of the modern word processor

6. Nolan Bushnell - Father of Video Games; inventor of "Pong"

7. Harvey Fletcher - inventor of the hearing aid, stereophonic sound, the audiometer, more than 20 other inventions

8. William Clayton - inventor of the odometer

9. Jonathan Browning - revolutionary gunsmith; inventor of the repeating rifle

10. John Moses Browning - revolutionary gunsmith; inventor of the automatic shotgun and many other developments

11. Lester Wire - inventor of the electric traffic light

12. John Taylor - 3rd President of the Church

13. Alvino Rey - inventor of the electric guitar

14. John Gilbert - silent film star

15. Thomas Stockham - father of digital sound recording (CDs, DVDs); led the 1974 technological effort to recover sound from the 18-minute gap in Nixon's White House tapes

16. Paul Boyer - received Nobel Prize for describing the mechanism of ATP synthesis

17. Ezra Taft Benson - 13th President of the Church; U.S. secretary of agriculture

18. Lino Brocka - most influential filmmaker in the history of the Philippines

Which of these individuals are among the 100 most influential Latter-day Saints of all time?

• Emma Smith - wife of Joseph Smith

• Eldridge Cleaver - Black Power revolutionary

• Drew Major - inventor of NetWare -- corporate computer network; founder of Novell

• Esther E. Peterson - one of America's most effective consumer and women's rights advocates; establish such regulations and practices as truth-in-advertising, truth-in-packaging, nutritional labeling, and unit pricing

• Stephen R. Covey - author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

• Gordon B. Hinckley - 15th President of the Church

• James Cruze - Hollywood film director

• Lorenzo Snow - 5th President of the Church

• George Romney - President of American Motors; governor of Michigan

• Gerald ("Jerry") Molen - movie producer

• Emmeline Woodward Wells - an early leader of the women's rights movement

• Joe Hill - labor organizer

• Spencer W. Kimball - 12th President of the Church

• Don Bluth - director of animated films

• Ab Jenkins - "Mormon Meteor"; race car driver, designer; held world land speed records between 1932-56

• Alex Oblad - fundamental work in catalysis and contributions to the production of high octane gasoline and synthetic ammonia

• Alma Richards - Track and field star; first Utahn to win a gold medal in the Olympics (1912, Stockholm); In all, won 63 national and regional championships

• Anne Osborn Poelman - author of the definitive textbook in neuroradiology

• Anne Perry - mystery writer

• Arthur Henry King - scholar

• Avard T. Fairbanks - sculptor

• Billy Barty - actor; founder of Little People of America

• Bruce R. McConkie - apostle, author

• Carlyle Harmon - major improvements in disposable diapers

• Colin Low - Canadian documentary filmmaker and IMAX technology pioneer

• Cynthia Garner - first woman to appear on Fortune Magazine's cover

• Danny Ainge - pro basketball player

• Dave Wolverton - science fiction writer, long-time head of the Writers of the Future contest

• David O. McKay - 9th President of the Church

• Donny and Marie Osmond - entertainers

• E. Park Guyman - developed a patented solvent extraction process that has the potential to convert American tar sands into billions of barrels of high grade asphalt and crude oil

• Earl Douglass - Geologist, dinosaur fossil hunter

• Ed "Big Daddy" Roth - Hot rod designer and creator of anti-hero, pop culture icon "Rat Fink"

• Edwin Catmull - computer animation pioneer; co-founder of Pixar

• Ellis Reynolds Shipp - one of Utah's most distinguished leaders in the practice and teaching of medicine

• Elouise M. Bell - English professor and literary scholar

• Emerson Tippetts - contributions to synthetic textiles

• Eugene England - literary critic; English professor; pioneer in study of Mormon letters

• Ewart Swinyard - developed drugs to suppress epilepsy

• Fawn Brodie - author of No Man Knows My History

• Forrest S. Baker III - film producer; founder of Feature Films for Families

• Gene Fullmer - boxer, held Middleweight titles in 1957, '59

• George Albert Smith - 8th President of the Church

• George Hill - coal research including development directed toward the transformation of coal for liquid automobile fuel

• Gideon O. Burton - English professor and literary critic

• Gladys Knight - singer

• Glen A. Larson - television producer

• Harold B. Lee - 11th President of the Church

• Harvey Greenfield - member of the Jarvik-7 team that developed first artificial heart

• Heber J. Grant - 7th President of the Church

• Henry Eyring - chemist and researcher noted for work in molecular reactions; received highest awards in chemistry, including Joseph Priestly Medal and the Wolf Prize

• Homer Warner - development of computer sciences to a fine art in medical diagnosis, particularly for heart ailments

• Howard W. Hunter - 14th President of the Church

• Hyrum Smith - founder of Franklin (as in Day Planners) and partner in Franklin-Covey

• Ina Coolbrith - California's first poet laureatte

• Ivy Baker Priest - U.S. Treasurer, whose signature appeared on U.S. currency from 1953 to 1961

• J. Edwin Seegmiller - helped develop amniocentesis, to learn about the health of fetuses

• J. Willard Marriott - hotelier

• Jack Anderson - Washington muckraker; Pulitzer prize winner

• James T. Fletcher was appointed twice to be Director of NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration) by Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan

• Jean Westwood - first woman to serve as chairperson of the National Democratic Party

• Jim Parkin - pioneered artificial ears through cochlear implants

• John Bennion - English professor and author; "Burial Pool"; Breeding Leah and Other Stories

• John Dixon - pioneered laser surgery

• Johnny Miller - PGA golfer; won 24 major tournaments; in golf Hall of Fame; Designs golf courses

• Jon Huntsman - billionaire industrialist

• Joseph F. Smith - 6th President of the Church

• Joseph Fielding Smith - 10th President of the Church

• Kathleen Burton Clarke - first woman director of the Bureau of Land Management

• Kieth Merrill - Latter-day Saint filmmaker and early IMAX pioneer

• Kim L. O'Neill - patent in 1997, monoclonal antibody that quickly, accurately and inexpensively detects cancer at early stages, by measuring Thymidine Kinase 1 (TK1)

• Laraine Day - actress

• Marie Windsor - actress; a director of the Screen Actors Guild for 25 years; founder of the Screen Actors Guild Film Society

• Marriner S. Eccles - Banker; helped create World Bank and International Monetary Fund as well as structure the Federal Reserve System; Federal Reserve Building in Washington, D.C., is named after him

• Martha Hughes Cannon - first woman elected as a state senator in the United States

• Mary Lythgoe Bradford - author and essayist

• Melvin Cook - development of slurry blasting agents which have replaced dynamite

• Michael Austin - literary critic; teaches Eighteenth-Century British Literature, World Literature, and Rhetoric at Shepherd College in Shepherdstown, West Virginia; has written about Mormon literature

• Milton Wadsworth - new methods for the beneficiation of minerals

• Mitt Romney - director of SLC Olympics and Candidate for Governor of Massachusetts

• Nephi Anderson - (1865-1923) the most prominent fiction writer of the "Home Literature" period of Mormon Literature. Author of Added Upon (1898); Dorian; John St. John; Marcus King, Mormon, more

• Orson Scott Card - writer

• Paula Hawkins - first woman senator from Florida

• Pete Harman - co-founder of Kentucky Fried Chicken

• Randy Bachman - rock musician, of Bachman-Turner Overdrive and Guess Who

• Raymond F. Jones - popular Campbell-era science fiction writer

• Reva Beck Bosone - (1895 - 1983) first woman member of U.S. Congress from Utah

• Rhonda Fleming - actress, philanthropist

• Richard Dutcher - filmmaker

• Richard Rich - animation director

• Richard Thomas - head of the National Academy of Science Committee on Toxicology

• Sarah Melissa Granger Kimball - (1818-1898) Early suffragist and women's rights activist

• Scott Woodward - selected by the Egyptian government to study the DNA and lineage of Egyptian mummies

• Sheri Dew - CEO of Deseret Book; member of Relief Society First Presidency

• Sterling Van Wagenen - filmmaker and film teacher; co-founder of Sundance Film Festival

• Suzanne Bransford Emery Holmes Delitch Engalitcheff - socialite

• Terry Moore - actress; USO star; wife of Howard Hughes

• Terry Tempest Williams - environmentalist, writer

• Tracy Hall - synthesis of diamonds

• Tracy Hickman - fantasy author; co-author of the popular Dragonlance series

• Waldemar Young - Hollywood screenwriter

• Wayne Quinton - developing artificial kidneys

• Wilbert L. Gore - Developed waterproof fabric Goretex.

• Wilford Woodruff - 4th President of the Church

• Willam F. Christensen - Ballet choreographer and company director; founder of Ballet West; choreographed more than 50 ballets, including the first "Nutcracker"

• Yuki Saito - Japanese singer/actress

• Four BYU music students invented LAN or Local Area Networking which spawned Novell becoming an international leader in networking software

• Zenna Henderson - early female science fiction writer

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Smith; Joseph Fielding Smith; Joseph Smith III; Joseph Smith Jr.; Joseph Smith Sr.; Julie Stoffer; Junior Ione; Justin Wilcock; Karl Maesar; Karl-Heinz Schnibbe; Katie Herman; Keith Clearwater; Keith Russell Head coach; Kelly Downs; Ken Hubbs; Ken Hunt; Ken Jennings; Kevin B. Rollins; Kevin Curtis; Kieth Merrill; Kimball Kjar; Kristen Rasmussen; Kyle Farnsworth; Kyle Turley; Kyle Whittingham; L. Tom Perry; Larry H. Miller; Larry Nelson III; Larry Scott; Laurel Thatcher Ulrich; Lavina Fielding Anderson; Lee Johnson; LeGrand Richards; Leonard J. Arrington; Les Hulet; Lewis Field; Lorenzo Snow; Luis "Louie" Gomez; Luke S. Johnson; Luke Staley; Lyman E. Johnson; Lyman Wight; M. Russell Ballard; Maggie Germane; Makoa Freitas; Marc Wilson; Maren Ord; Marie Osmond; Marion G. Romney; Mark "Mad Dog" Madsen; Mark E. Petersen; Mark Hofmann; Mark Pope; Mark Schultz; Marriner W. Merrill; Martin Harris; Marvin Goldstein; Marvin J. Ashton; Matthew Cowley; Matthew Modine; Matthias F. 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Webpage created (but not posted) 28 January 2002. List posted online 11 August 2005. Last modified 14 August 2005.

Church - What It's Good For

What’s church for?  Worship you say?  Hahahaha I laugh.  That too, of course, but who is kidding who?

God knows it’s for a lot of things. He’s been watching us, you know.   

A new item is texting. An old one is good old chatting. Showing off new duds is fun. Daydreaming, arguing, wishing, hoping, planning, scheming. Writing new blogs happens.  I asked the bishop on Sunday to excommunicate Joyce Cusick because she said I looked like a pumpkin, but I was really kinda kidding.  Really.  

Folding the program is always a good activity except for airplanes which is always forbidden in our home after one of our sons threw one during Sacrament Meeting years ago. I still fold flea catchers for old times sake.  

Then there are color books and crayons, of course, but graduation to the big-time -- drawing!  That’s when you get good.  All you need is a notebook and a pencil and within a few minutes you have a startling likeness of Uncle Ben as you see above done by Ali Aukschun!  

Church grows great citizens, varied worshippers, wonderful friends, artists, authors, speakers, musicians, cooks, campers, thinkers and granddaughters.  

i think we are who we are because of church.  Maybe some of it was not as focused as it could have been, but probably won’t improve much in the future.  But we’ll still keep showing up since we likely are better because of it anyway, and it’s not so bad anyway, is it?

Mormon Church Makes the News In a Positive Way!

Mormons, along with Jews, were named to be pretty smart about religion -- right behind atheists.  If this were not true, then everyone is really sleeping in church.  We joke about it and we actually do it sometimes, but the revolving door of four years through the Old Testament, New Testament, Book of Mormon, Church History/Doctrine and Covenants plus Seminary/Institute has got to be doing something don't you think? 


If it's not amounting to something, let's just set up cots in the Cultural Halls throughout the Church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday-Saints, that is) or just fold up the tent (pulling up the stakes) haha, haha and trudge off into the night.  


The Church is true.  I can't imagine any other Church getting people to sit through three hours of of those manuals year after year.  This is spoken with solid testimony with only a tiny bit of sarcasm slapped in.  Thank you, Lord.  Thank you, Heavenly Father.  I'm sincerely thankful.  


http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2IluDB/motherjones.com/blue-marble/2010/09/atheists-know-their-religion

Happy Birthday, Sweet Girl, I Only Wish I'd Known

What do you do when it’s too late?

Cristi Buffenbarger and I were about all there was when we lived in Bolingbrook, Illinois.  

We lived across the lawn from each other when our children were little.  Ben was three when we moved in, her Stephen was two, Brad was one and her Suzie was a baby.  

She came over and held Brad in cold water when he was running a fever while I was reading to Ben and Carl was working and I was desperate.  I babysat for her and she babysat for me.  We spent hours together, laughing and talking.  We were kindred.  Neither of us had a car, both of us loved to laugh, and hardly the day went by that we weren’t together, outside in the summer, inside in the winter.  She was so funny, so kind, so dear to my heart.

She was raised in Chicago, I was raised in Utah, and we had much to share.   

One day, I borrowed a thermometer and broke it.  She told me not to worry because she had another, but I replaced it anyway.  She thought that was a remarkably honorable thing to do.  It was really nothing, but a long story made short, she investigated the Church and became a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints -- a Mormon.  

It’s hard to relate how much I love her.  

Yesterday I went on Facebook to wish her a Happy Birthday and things were strange there.  People said they’d miss her.  Then someone said she’d make a great missionary in the Celestial Kingdom.  I Googled her name and there was her obituary.  She’d died on June 10 of this year after a three-year battle with breast cancer.  I’d known she was sick.  But I thought she’d beaten it.  I’d not talked to her in so long.  I am crying.

She’d not even had a funeral.  She was cremated.  If I’d only known I’d have been back there before she died.  Why didn’t I know?  She’d been divorced for so long and her children wouldn’t remember me so who would have told me?  I guess it would have been her, but was she too sick?  I should have stayed closer.  I should have done something.  I should have known somehow.  Maybe she thought that would be too much to ask for me to come see her.  It wouldn't have been.  No way.  Not for Cristi.  

God give us strength.  God preserve our love.  God fill the in blanks.  God, thank you for those we love and still have in our midst.  God help us.

Where Are the Fire Extinguishers?

This whole business of burning the Koran for whatever reason makes me heartsick.  Of all people, we members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints know what it’s like to be assaulted for what we believe and to have our scriptures belittled.  

However, I was pleased the other day when the Church issued a statement (September 8, 2010) through a spokesman which said, “A key tenet of our faith is to accord everyone the freedom to worship as they choose. It is regrettable that anyone would regard the burning of any scriptural text as a legitimate form of protest or disagreement.”

The Church is definitely not defending the actions of the church in Florida or the one potentially in Kansas which are threatening to burn the Koran.  It is merely defending their right to do so.  

Does that leave us to allow such disgraceful behavior to take place on our country’s soil?  Certainly not.  Nor does it leave us vulnerable, as says General Petraus, to retaliation against our troops who are serving in Muslim countries.  

I have a former student, Nathan Dalley, who is shown in the picture above, who was killed on November 3, 2003 in Iraq.  He was as fine a person as I’ve known.  Among other things, he was Senior Class President at Brighton High School in Salt Lake City which shows the value other students placed on him.  He was a great kid.  He was respectful, loved the Lord, was bright, was a fun, joyful boy who loved everyone.  He is missed to this day.  I, and many others, don’t want to run the risk of losing anyone else if we don’t have to.  

So do we put our hands in our pockets and say, let anyone just go ahead and do anything they want regardless of how it might impact on the rest of us?  Of course not.  That’s not what the Lord meant when he inspired the eleventh Article of Faith which is:  “We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may.”

He also taught us to teach, preach and to pray to bring upon ourselves and our families, friends, and our detractors his greatest blessings.  And these we need so badly these days.  He also taught us to be courageous and to take heart.

We can’t forget this because of fear, despair and in our forgetfulness of one of the greatest scriptures of them all:  Luke 1:37,  “For with God nothing shall be impossible.”  

"I Was A Prisoner, and You Took Me In . . . "

The entrance to the Oquirrh Facility

Went back to prison yesterday and it was wonderful.

Ed Leary is in the Bishopric of the Oquirrh Facility Branch and he asked me to come and talk at a Fireside knowing I had been their Sunday School teacher for three years about five or six years ago.  

I jumped at the chance because I remember how wonderful it felt being out there before.  

The Spirit is so strong there.  Matthew 25:36 says "I was in prison and you visited me," and the promise is reciprocated.  Rare is the Sacrament meeting on the outside where the Spirit is like that and I suspect one reason is it's because those men read their scriptures constantly.  I mentioned that yesterday and asked for a raise of hands and I would say that two-thirds, three-fourths of them read their scriptures in groups daily.  I mentioned that I was reading the Book of Mormon for the fourth time this year and one man afterwards said in a very sweet, humble way that he was on his fifth way through.  

Another reason is the humility of those men. They are so remorseful.  They are sick with sorrow for what they've done.  Many are in daily religious classes, they are prayerful, they are in miserable surroundings with nothing but television, each other and boredom.  Nothing distracts them but their situation and what brought them there.  And many of them are sober for the first time in a long time.  Many are addicts.  And in their sobriety, they are turning to God and hoping and praying that they can stay that way when they get out.

And many are working hard on Genealogy, doing service as best they can, hours and hours hunched over a computer.  Look at the following link:  http://www.ldschurchnews.com/articles/59796/A-rescue-from-bondage-Family-history-center-at-Utah-State-Prison-thrives.htmlhttp://www.ldschurchnews.com/articles/59796/A-rescue-from-bondage-Family-history-center-at-Utah-State-Prison-thrives.htmlhttp://www.ldschurchnews.com/articles/59796/A-rescue-from-bondage-Family-history-center-at-Utah-State-Prison-thrives.htmlhttp://www.ldschurchnews.com/articles/59796/A-rescue-from-bondage-Family-history-center-at-Utah-State-Prison-thrives.html  These are our boys, Carl's and mine.  Carl used to go out and spend Thursday nights with them at this center.  It was amazing what they could do.  They did my genealogy back to the kings and queens of England.  I've never been able to duplicate it since. 

Last night, I talked to them about hope.  That's what these men need more than anything.  I'm not talking about all prisoners.  I'm talking about these forty or fifty men who work hard to qualify for the privilege of coming over to the Oquirrh Facility Religious Center and worship as best they can and feeling the gentle persuasions of the Spirit to soothe their aching souls.  Hope.  We all need it, but they need it so much.  

I feel so privileged for having been allowed to spend one hour again giving a little hope to some of God's children.  One hour in a long sentence isn't very much, but it's something.  

But it meant a lot to me.  

Evening With A General Authority - Henry B. Eyring

We saw Henry B. Eyring on Friday Night and it brought me back to my years in LDS Church Education in a way that nothing else could have.  The man is as great a joy to me and a representation of the love of God as almost as anyone could be. 

He was the Church Commissioner of Education when I joined Church Education in 1983  and I loved him instantly.  The first time I heard him talk, I believe, he was awaiting the birth of his last daughter, and his glorious, sonorous voice and beautiful choice of words, phrases, illustrations and stories always kept me amazed.  How did he do it?  When they called him into the Presiding Bishopric, I felt personally robbed.  

He spoke of thirty-three years ago at just such an “Evening with a General Authority” where he first spoke, where they walked across to the Hotel Utah for some refreshments when he knew most of the attenders.  I had been there probably twenty-eight years ago and remember the intimacy of that time.  Now, he says, there are 40,000 of us in 100 countries watching in the Tabernacle, on the Internet and on closed circuit.  Wow.

He spoke to teachers today, though we as retirees and spouses were also invited to the Tabernacle,  He said “Your students were taught in the Spirit World when others were not.”  “Qualify for and claim your gifts.”  “Always Remember his love for you.”  “I am grateful to be a teacher of the Gospel with you.”  These were the kinds of comments he made.  The Spirit absolutely filled the room.  

His focus mainly was on The Charted Course, a classic talk given by J. Reuben Clark on August 8, 1938, in Aspen Grove which we as teachers read many times in CES which encouraged us to always teach straightforwardly and directly.  It says in part:  

“The youth of the Church, your students, are in great majority sound in thought and in spirit. The problem primarily is to keep them sound, not to convert them.

      The youth of the Church are hungry for things of the Spirit; they are eager to learn the gospel, and they want it straight, undiluted.”

But President Eyring quoted it extensively which touched my heart so deeply and I must write much of that all here as well.  please read:

“In all this there are for the Church and for each and all of its members, two prime things which may not be overlooked, forgotten, shaded, or discarded:
First: That Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the Only Begotten of the Father in the flesh, the Creator of the world, the Lamb of God, the Sacrifice for the sins of the world, the Atoner for Adam's transgression; that He was crucified; that His spirit left His body; that He died; that He was laid away in the tomb; that on the third day His spirit was reunited with His body, which again became a living being; that He was raised from the tomb a resurrected being, a perfect Being, the First Fruits of the Resurrection; that He later ascended to the Father; and that because of His death and by and through His resurrection every man born into the world since the beginning will be likewise literally resurrected. This doctrine is as old as the world. Job declared: "And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God, whom I shall see for myself and mine eyes shall behold, and not another." (Job 19:26, 27)
The resurrected body is a body of flesh and bones and spirit, and Job was uttering a great and everlasting truth. These positive facts, and all other facts necessarily implied therein, must all be honestly believed, in full faith, by every member of the Church.

“The second of the two things to which we must all give full faith is: That the Father and Son actually and in truth and very deed appeared to the Prophet Joseph in a vision in the woods; that other heavenly visions followed to Joseph and to others; that the Gospel and the holy Priesthood after the Order of the Son of God were in truth and fact restored to the earth from which they were lost by the apostasy of the Primitive Church; that the Lord again set up His Church, through the agency of Joseph Smith; that the Book of Mormon is just what it professes to be; that to the Prophet came numerous revelations for guidance, upbuilding, organization, and encouragement of the Church and its members; that the Prophet's successors, likewise called of God, have received revelations as the needs of the Church have required, and that they will continue to receive revelations as the Church and its members, living the truth they already have, shall stand in need of more; that this is in truth the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; and that its foundation beliefs are the laws and principles laid down in the Articles of Faith. These facts also, and each of them, together with all things necessarily implied therein or flowing therefrom, must stand, unchanged, unmodified, without dilution, excuse, apology, or avoidance; they may not be explained away or submerged. Without these two great beliefs the Church would cease to be the Church.”

This also is my Testimony.  

Please read the entire Charted Course if you can:

http://www.schoolofabraham.com/chartedcourse.htm