long ago ideas

“When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago." - Friedrich Nietzsche. Long ago, Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery conquered false claims that the Book of Mormon was fiction or that it came through a stone in a hat. But these old claims have resurfaced in recent years. To conquer them again, we have to return to what Joseph and Oliver taught.

Wednesday, March 18, 2020

Good news despite everything

Utah just experienced a significant earthquake. Because we're living on a farm near Palmyra, New York, we have only heard about the earthquake from friends and the media. We hope everyone in Utah is fine.

Here's a map: https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/uu60363602/map

Here's a map of aftershocks.

I was just about to post a message about good news, too. Figures.
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Everyone is understandably obsessed with the news about COVID-19. Consequently, I haven't posted anything for a while.

On the other hand, many people have more time on their hands than usual. This could be a good time to learn more about Church history and the Book of Mormon (as Church leaders have encouraged us to do). Next week I'll resume posting with some important observations, but for now, I want to mention something about the virus.

Most readers here know that we were living in China last fall. We left January 3 for a trip to Laos, Myanmar and Sri Lanka, but then we returned to China for about 10 days for a conference and tour of southern China.

I mention this because we were about one day ahead of the virus everywhere we went, meaning authorities closed down public places the day after we left. We went to Vietnam, and then Australia, just a day or two before Australia closed to people who had been in China. We spent two weeks in Australia (hence the clean bill of health) before going to Singapore, Bali, New Zealand, and finally the U.S.

Driving in the Northern Territory
While driving through the Outback, I recorded some videos that I'll post when I get time to edit them.

We attended church regularly the whole time, but never in the same place more than once. Since December, we've attended Church in China, Macao, Laos, Sri Lanka, two wards in Australia, one in NZ, one in Utah, one in NY, and one in NJ. We would have attended last week in Oregon except church was cancelled.

All of this has left me with great optimism for the future. President Nelson has also expressed his optimism and confidence. https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/president-nelson-message-covid-19
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Regarding the virus specifically, for those interested in positive news, here's an awesome description of how things will be better on the other side of the emergency:

video:

audio:



The CDC has an important web page about the virus.


There is also a useful webpage here, provided by China Daily.


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