The Coming New Year
During this end of the year reflection time, it’s important to look at the past, but it’s also important to look forward to the coming year and your potential to make very positive changes in your life. This certainly is the case right with me.
I am looking forward to the coming year. I have some very good things planned and I am hoping that I am able to build this blog into an important stop on the information superhighway.
I have other plans as well. I am releasing my first social networking site sometime in January. It will be a small site, but it’s my hope that it can be successful. I am also focusing on some of my webmaster tool sites in an effort to help others become even more successful.
What kind of goals do you have for the coming year?
Merry Christmas
I would like to wish each and every reader of this blog, a very Merry Christmas. It’s during this time of the year that we begin a reflection of our year that has passed by. It’s also an important time to reflect upon the atoning sacrifice of our Savior, Jesus Christ. May you and your family have a very Merry Christmas.
The True Meaning Of Christmas
I was asked to give a talk this last Sunday on the true meaning of Christmas. With a lot of prayer and research, I wrote the following talk. I decided that instead of just putting it away and letting it collect dust after giving the talk, I would post it here on my blog. I hope all of you will get a little edification from this.
I’ll be honest with all of you. Before I prepared this talk, I could honestly say that I didn’t like Christmas, ba humbug. It’s all about crowded malls, with people spending money that they don’t have on video games, name brand clothes, perfumes, colognes, jewelry, and other treasures of this world. It’s about indulging ourselves. Getting fatter. Not surprisingly, it’s a time of increased crime and a time of marital discord. Thinking back to when I was growing up, I can’t remember a single Christmas season where my parents didn’t have a significant argument about money.
How can a holiday celebrating the birth of our King, the Prince of Peace, bring so many bad things? This has always been a tough and perplexing problem for me and something I could never understand. As a new latter day saint, I am wondering how should my family celebrate Christmas. Thank God that we have prophets to guide us in this day and age.
As I looked through many different articles on lds.org, many things began to clear up. We all know the story of the first Christmas and how the three wise men gave gifts to Jesus. As I pondered that, I had an epiphany. Christmas has always been about giving gifts to Jesus Christ. Maybe that is what we need to do to celebrate Christmas?
This became even more clear when I read part of a article entitled the Gifts of Christmas by Elder John A. Widtsoe of the Council of the Twelve.
“Christmas gifts should be in memory of the divine gift, the life of Jesus Christ. His gift gave us eternal life; our gifts should enliven with joy those who receive. His gift was the sacrifice of his earthly life; our gifts should represent personal sacrifices on our part.
It is easy to give to our own, those whom we love. Their gladness becomes our joy. We are not quite so ready to give to others, even if they are in need, for their happiness does not seem so necessary to our happiness. It appears yet more difficult to give to the Lord, for we are prone to believe that he must give and ask nothing in return.
We have foolishly reversed the proper order. Our first gift at Christmas should be to the Lord; next to the friend or stranger by our gate; then, surcharged with the effulgence from such giving, we would enhance the value of our gifts to our very own. A selfish gift leaves a scar upon the soul, and it is but half a gift.”
I started to ponder how we can give gifts to Jesus Christ and then I remembered some verses in Matthew. Jesus told us in Matthew 25:34-40 that:
” 34 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:
35 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:
36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.
37 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?
38 When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?
39 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”
As gifts, these are “the gift of peace, the gift of love, the gift of service, the gift of self, and the gift of faith” in the words of Elder James E Faust.
I’d like to read just one more paragraph from Elder Widtsoe’s article:
“The desire and the effort to give to the Lord, born of the surrender of man to the plan of salvation, stamp every Christmas gift with genuine value. They who identify themselves with the plan, who do not resist it, who earnestly seek to tread the path of the plan, are true givers to the Lord, and their gifts to men come with the flavor of heaven. The Lord and his plan must have place in our Christmas celebration.”
This Christmas is the first Christmas where I am going to truly celebrate Christmas. I will celebrate it as a latter day saint. Through the promises of Heavenly Father, I know that this will truly be a joyous Christmas and my gifts truly will have the flavor of heaven.
I leave all of these things in Jesus Christ’s name, Amen.
Five Of My Favorite Tech Gadgets
I love technology and the gadgets that can change our lives. I love how a little electronic gadget can help us get more work done or be able to accomplish things that easier than ever before. I am sure we all have our own list of favorite gadgets, but I decided to make a list of my 5 favorite gadgets, only these are focused on simplicity.
1) My Motorola L6. It’s a simple phone and it works. It’s durable. I have my GMail on it so I can check and send email no matter where I am. It sure beats lugging around a blackberry. If I pair it with my laptop, I can literally work the net wherever I am/
2) My Creative Zen Mp3 player. It’s small and easily tucks aways so I can listen to music whenever I want, or even the radio.
3) My Casio Wristwatch. How can a watch be a gadget? Well, they were the original gadgets. 
It’s durable and it’s exactly how I like.
4) My Casio Scientific Calculator. I always need a calculator at work, so I just whip it and it handles everything easily and without a lot of flair.
5) My HP IPaq. It’s only a base IPaq and I mainly use it to read ebooks that I carry when I go out and do any kind of traveling.
What are your 5 Favorite Simple Gadgets?
Global Warming Or Global Cooling?
Just to switch gears a little bit, I have been hearing much to much of late concerning global warming. I don’t if it is because I was out of the US for so long or if it is because of recent data, but it sure sounds like the chorus is getting deafening. Could it be that recent data is questioning the idea of global warming?
For example, the last 6 year has seen flat growth in temperatures and now, it has begun to digress with temperatures falling. It seems like I can bring up some interesting facts that I have begun finding.
- Arctic Ice expanded during the last winter making up much of the losses that were so dire not long ago.
- The arctic seal hunt is running into trouble because of heavy ice.
- The scale of temperature increases is much less than even 600 years ago. Do you remember reading about farming in Greenland?
I think the jury is still out on global warming or maybe it is not and the powers that be are doing one last desperate gasp for attention.
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