How many member read lds.org --- of the 60% who are don't speak English? I know a few dozen Hungarian member who speak English. None of them read that site. None. I repeat: none.
Polygamy-Porter wrote:Are Jewish kids also required to attend summer concentration camp ...?
Your parallel is saying!
zeezrom wrote:On my Cambodian speaking mission, I remember trying to explain to members how much trouble the pioneers went through. It was a tough sale given what they had personally endured during the Vietnam war and reign of Pol Pot.
People around the world have their own problem in their past.
Who cares some handcarts one and a half century ago on the other side of Earth...
- Whenever a poet or preacher, chief or wizard spouts gibberish, the human race spends centuries deciphering the message. - Umberto Eco - To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous as to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin. - Cardinal Bellarmine at the trial of Galilei
zeezrom wrote:On my Cambodian speaking mission, I remember trying to explain to members how much trouble the pioneers went through. It was a tough sale given what they had personally endured during the Vietnam war and reign of Pol Pot.
Just wondering why you would be talking about American history (and a small part at that) during a religious discussion?
zeezrom wrote:On my Cambodian speaking mission, I remember trying to explain to members how much trouble the pioneers went through. It was a tough sale given what they had personally endured during the Vietnam war and reign of Pol Pot.
Just wondering why you would be talking about American history (and a small part at that) during a religious discussion?
Because of an American religion...
- Whenever a poet or preacher, chief or wizard spouts gibberish, the human race spends centuries deciphering the message. - Umberto Eco - To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous as to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin. - Cardinal Bellarmine at the trial of Galilei
zeezrom wrote:On my Cambodian speaking mission, I remember trying to explain to members how much trouble the pioneers went through. It was a tough sale given what they had personally endured during the Vietnam war and reign of Pol Pot.
Just wondering why you would be talking about American history (and a small part at that) during a religious discussion?
Good question!
Once, I was asked to give a talk in sacrament meeting on the pioneers and their sacrifice. Every person in the audience had personally experienced atrocities beyond belief so when I tried to express the hardships of crossing the plains, it was a little anticlimactic. Mostly because I was speaking about people from a different era in a different language and what these people experienced was 10 times worse.
There were other times when I felt the need to empathize with them during discussions. Consider this: I'm a young kid from Utah who could never even begin to understand what they endured, trying to empathize with them by explaining that pioneers crossing the plains 150 years ago had a hard time in the snow? Really?
I feel so dumb about it now. I was so damn naïve.
Oh for shame, how the mortals put the blame on us gods, for they say evils come from us, but it is they, rather, who by their own recklessness win sorrow beyond what is given... Zeus (1178 BC)
PROVO — From 1847 to 1868, Mormon pioneer babies traveling across the Plains were safer — yes, more likely to live — than infants in the general U.S. population, according to a dynamic new study.
The infant mortality rate on the plains was 9 percent, while the general infant mortality rate in 1850 was above 15 percent.
"I think we have this misperception every July 24th" — the Pioneer Day holiday in Utah — "where we dwell on the suffering in the Willie and Martin handcart companies," said Mel Bashore, a retired LDS Church history librarian who fathered the study. "But I can't look at the Mormon Trail movement as really anything other than a success."
In fact, the report found the mortality rate for Mormon pioneers who crossed the plains was 3.5 percent, not much different from the 2.5-2.9 percent mortality rate of the general population in 1850.
"I always thought that people were dying left and right," said Aaron Smith, a BYU student who graduated in April after working on the research team. "But in reality, it wasn't much different than the general population. If you randomly select 100 people in America at that time, you'd expect 2.9 to die. If you randomly select 100 pioneers, you'd expect 3.5 to die. Crossing the Plains was more dangerous, but it was a small difference."
I guess the faith promoting narrative of "The Pioneers suffered excruciating hardship because the Church was true" to "The Pioneers were well looked after because the Church was true".
That said, with the Book of Mormon, we are not dealing with a civilization with no written record. What we are dealing with is a written record with no civilization. (Runtu, Feb 2015)