There and Back Again

Disclaimer: My mission in this post is not to vilify, isolate, or shame any member of the LGBT+ community. In my experiences both as a member and ex-member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I have seen an abundance of misrepresentation of the church's views on homosexuality and eternal marriage. It is only my intention to shed a bit more light on the church's perspective and highlight the underrepresented truth. While the language I use in this post will be blunt and straight forward, it is not written with a disrespectful spirit. Furthermore, any comparisons made between the homosexual experience and more menial experiences are made simply to educate, or illustrate a point, and not to belittle or suggest that they are equally painful.         As someone who has existed in and out of the church, I've had the opportunity to view many different perspectives on whether or not the church is moral in its teachings about homosexuality and g...

        The worldwide devotional for young adults was held today and I loved every second of it! If you haven't watched it, definitely take your time to do so! So much wisdom was shared. This event paired with the BYU devotional with President Nelson and our upcoming general conference on the first weekend of October is exciting and so overwhelming (in the best way). I'm grateful for the influx of inspired messages that the world needs to hear today. I just don't know how I'll ever keep up! The devotional today held a lot of wonderful truths, some of which I wanted to take some time to dive into.        Families are so important. They are the units within which we will spend most of our time learning about Heavenly Father, Jesus Christ, the nature of mortality, the commandments, temptation, gifts, anger, love, and so much more. Who we choose as our eternal companion is important. Obviously, we want to choose to walk this life with someon...

       If you didn't know, I'm a student at Boise State University studying English Education. I'm currently beginning my second semester after starting over completely on my education, and it is a blast! I am a proud bronco. This semester I have the opportunity to take an upper-level English class (World Literature) thanks to special permission granted to me by the professor, who happens to be my most favorite professor ever. To kick off the first unit, we dove into "great flood myths from around the world", picking at pieces of the Epic of Gilgamesh, Manu and the Fish, Turtle Island, and of course, Genesis. To say I was excited to read these would be an understatement. I've probably read Gilgamesh in its entirety four or five times, Genesis countless times, and the others were completely new. To be able to explore a piece of the old testament in an academic setting-especially this one-ooh! I was over the moon!         I expected t...