DiscussMormonism.com

On my mission my Zone Leader (he's now a professor at BYU-I but at the time he was my spiritual leader and the Lord's representative over me a greenie) taught me some lyrics to the Book of Mormon song in honor of our southeastern USA investigators who oftentimes got their minds filled by their friends, neighbors, pastors and others with what we believed were lies about the fulness of truth. Get out your Primary sheet music and sing along ;)

Anti Mormon stories that my preacher tells to me
All about the Mormons and their polygamy
Blood atonement sacrifce and Adam-God theory
We'll be Gods if we live Righteously.

Many investigators in my mission were given some nasty anti-Mormon literature which caused many of them to stop investigating the true church and those foreclose their opportunity for exaltation in the Celestial Kingdom. That's why I was so excited in late 1999 when I thought about the opportunities that the internet could provide to help people finally overcome all this evil crap by getting honest answers in full-context as they would read/ponder the gospel's restoration and all the teachings of the Lord's church. As a web developer I was excited about how I myself could possibly make a difference with my own website called something like "Resolving Concerns" because I knew that when people would read/ponder the full truth that they'd get the right answer through the Spirit when they prayed. And that was the beginning of my own amateur career as a Mormon apologist. My planned approach was similar to that of the Missionary Guide with part 1 called "Discovering the Concern", part 2 called "Discuss the Concern", and part 3 called "Help Resolve the Concern" with links/recommendations therein to other sites/contacts where people could get the truth.

We actually had the trinity (egg) milkshake made by our ZL's replete with instructions in the very good likeness of the voice of Julia Child.

"Now crack that Holy Ghost!"

It was very funny.

So, did you end up creating a web site using your planned approach? Have you had any success in leading souls to the fulness of the gospel?

The apologists' normal answer on this is that the scribes must have gotten it wrong. The problem for me with this answer from the get-go was that these same scribes were also the ones who wrote down so many of the revelations in the D&C. It would be difficult to just say that the scribes were wrong on the Kinderhook Plates in my opinion unless you attack the D&C. My research quickly turned up other questions/concerns that really began to weigh down hard on my very TBM self. Thus my research ended up focusing on the "Discovering the Concern" section where I put together lists of questions/information needing answers. To this day I haven't seen any official answers/guidance on the top 15-20 of these concerns so there's really not much to discuss or help others to resolve in my opinion. As a result my testimony evolved into one that I just don't think would be well-received in a F&T meeting. I frankly have as special a place in my heart for President Monson now that the Penn State community has for former President Spanier and how he handled the Jerry Sandusky matter over the years. by the way this special place for President Monson is for precisely the same reason as Spanier. Not all members would like to hear me share this special testimony in their F&T meetings so I don't. But if subpoened to testify in a lawsuit (such as be getting sued for slander/libel) then I will sing like a canary.