This morning I was studying the story of Joshua and falling of the walls of Jericho in Joshua 6 and I came across this quote by Elder James E. Talmage in the Old Testament Student Manual that I thought was great!

“Some of the latest and highest achievements of man in the utilization of natural forces approach the conditions of spiritual operations. To count the ticking of a watch thousands of miles away; to speak in but an ordinary tone and be heard across the continent; to signal from one hemisphere and be understood on the other though oceans roll and roar between; to bring the lightning into our homes and make it serve as fire and torch; to navigate the air and to travel beneath the ocean surface; to make chemical and atomic energies obey our will—are not these miracles? The possibility of such would not have been received with credence before their actual accomplishment. Nevertheless, these and all other miracles are accomplished through the operation of the laws of nature, which are the laws of God.” (Talmage, Articles of Faith, pp. 222–23.)”

It is not a far stretch from this quote to say that the things that we do every day with technology is a miracle. Building applications, publishing to a worldwide audience instantly… pretty amazing!

So you remember those weekly reports you had to send to your mission-president while you were on a mission. You know… “I just love this area President, and my companion is awesome. We are doing just great… ” Yeah, I know that is exactly what they sounded like. Well apparently the church is testing out electronic weekly reports from missionaries… Great idea!

Finding Answers from Conference - April 2008 Ensign

Several stories about how Conference has helped people receive inspiration and guidance in their lives. - Receiving Answers - Implementing their Counsel - Serving Again - Learning His Will - Filing the Hungry - Helps for Home Evening

• “Pray that one of the messages at conference will give you the personal revelation you need.” I knew that prayers could be answered through conference, but it never occurred to me to pray for the speakers in advance. Deciding to follow that advice, my wife and I specifically asked the Lord to direct our path through the conference speakers. We prayed for weeks as we eagerly awaited conference.
• To my amazement, the very first conference talk, Elder Richard G. Scott’s “Using the Supernal Gift of Prayer,”1 gave me the answer I so desperately sought. During his talk I recalled several impressions I had
• That experience really solidified my testimony of conference and prayer. The talks we hear during conference truly are the words of the Lord, and if we put our trust in Him and earnestly seek Him in fervent prayer, He will guide us in our decisions.
• After watching the Saturday sessions of April 2007 general conference, I began preparing for Sunday by implementing what the Brethren encouraged us to do
• During this time, the missionaries invited me to attend October general conference. What stood out most from the messages was not the content but my feelings
• I felt in both my mind and heart that I was listening to a prophet of God. I felt inspired and strengthened in my convictions; I also felt peace.
• Helps for Home Evening
  • We got a great idea from a friend of ours. We have small children and it is constantly a struggle to get them to listen at conference. We have tried coloring and reading, but we end up spending most of our time telling the kids to be quiet. Well, this past Monday night at FHE we taught our kids the story of King Benjamin and focused on the tents all the families brought and how they faced their doors to the temple. We then decided that we would set up our tent in our house and let everyone come inside and watch General Conference out the door. We talked about making our tent a temple and what it meant when we entered the temple. To help us out, our 6 year old made steeples for our tent with an angel Moroni on the top. They will take off their shoes before entering our sacred temple. I am very hopeful that this will help them understand the sacredness and importance of Conference. comment by Jeff VanDrimmelen

This is a video posted by SethAdamSmith a while ago… I just watched it and couldn’t help thinking of my dear children. I would do anything for them. As I see these pictures my heart just goes out to them. I feel like there is little I can do for them, but there is something I can do for mine. I can love them.

Note: You probably don’t want to watch this with your kids. There are a couple scary pictures of kids that are hurt.

This is Seth’s introduction:

This film is dedicated to the real victims of war, hatred and unforgiving hearts: Children.

This serves as but a part of my prayer for those who have suffered at places such as Columbine, Africa, Virginia Tech, Chechnya and other war-torn, hate filled places. Though we may not be able to cause the wars abroad to cease, we can cause the wars within our hearts and homes to end. Forgive and love others. Truly these small and simple steps can eventually cause great and powerful strides in the world.

Lyrics:

“The Prayer of the Children” by Kurt Bestor and Sam Cardon

Can you hear the prayer of the children?
On bended knee, in the shadow of an unknown room
Empty eyes with no more tears to cry
Turning heavenward toward the light

Crying jesus, help me
To see the morning light-of one more day
But if i should die before i wake,
I pray my soul to take

Can you feel the hearts of the children?
Aching for home, for something of their very own
Reaching hands, with nothing to hold on to,
But hope for a better day a better day

Crying jesus, help me
To feel the love again in my own land
But if unknown roads lead away from home,
Give me loving arms, away from harm

Can you hear the voice of the children?
Softly pleading for silence in a shattered world?
Angry guns preach a gospel full of hate,
Blood of the innocent on their hands

Crying jesus, help me
To feel the sun again upon my face,
For when darkness clears i know you’re near,
Bringing peace again

Dali cujete sve djecje molitive?
(croatian translation:
‘can you hear all the children’s prayers?’)
Can you hear the prayer of the children?

So I have long been in search of a program to mark up the web. I love to read online and have even gone as far as creating my own copy of the scriptures in a wiki form, but it never seems to get it all there for me. Well, Diigo get’s pretty close for me, and it has nice social features as well…

Scripture Study

Diigo allows has four basic functions that I think are useful in scripture study.

• Bookmarking
• Highlighting
• Commenting
• Tagging (for organizing your bookmarks and comments)

Social Features

Diigo also allows you to make your highlights/comments public. If you do, then anyone that goes to this page with the Diigo Toolbar installed will see your annotations and be able to comment on them.

In addition to this, you can also create public and private groups where you can collaborate on resources. This could be fun for a family to collaborate on a talk someone is preparing, or a class to work on a lesson. Because it is different some students (think seminary/institute) will be more apt to play with it. You could do a class project annotating resources from the church’s amazing resources! Here is a clip from this month’s First Presidency Message from President Monson:

In addition to this there is a nice dashboard that allows you to see new annotations in a group.

LDS Groups

I was suprised this morning when I couldn’t find any LDS groups to join… so I created one: LDS Study and Resources Group. Upon further analysis… it appears the search engine is broken. I still can’t find my group in search, or any other LDS groups… hmmm… Any other Diigo users out there? Come and join… perhaps we could make a LDS Tech group for technologies that we are working on. Good for commenting online with stuff… What do you think?

I am just touching on some of the functionality of Diigo… there is a lot of extra tools and widget’s. Good Web 2.0 technology! What other uses can you forsee?

So our Lindon Utah based friends at Footnote have been getting a lot of press this week for their work in putting the Vietnam memorial online and indexing all of the names. It is a fantastic project. Check out this video:

I read about Footnote a while ago and even checked it out, but haven’t been back. They really are doing some good work there. I got back on and decided to do a search for my surname. I figure if they have anything with van Drimmelen in there… they are good… well, they have two entries… both from some immigration office in New York from the early part of the 20th century… one for a John and one for a Jasper… awesome!

Unfortunately these images are considered premium content so to see the whole thing I have to pay… but still… awesome! Maybe the footnote guys would hook a blogger up with a free membership if he wrote about them every once in a while…