I have a crying headache right now. Did someone die? Did my heart get broken? Is there trouble at home or abroad?
Nope. I just saw Despicable Me. Any movie about kids = TEARS. Shout out to Aimee, who wept with me. 
This picture was taken in a hurry.
As I've written before, abortion is an unsettled issue among libertarians. There's been a very good debate between Walter Block and Jakub Wisniewski on Block's theory of "evictionism", and whether or not it's compatible with what libertarians call the Non-aggression Principle (NAP). I thought I'd share the links for your reading pleasure:
Deseret News 2011 Church Almanac
This post details World LDS Membership Statistics.
Last week I obtained a copy of the Deseret News 2011 Church Almanac. There is a lot of information packed into it’s 624 pages. My favorite is the membership statistics that are itemized country by country.
All these membership numbers are all very fine but they would be a lot more useful if they were in an online sortable table. It is the comparison that is interesting — seeing the growth in many countries and the stagnation in a few others.
So I put the world’s LDS Church membership statistics in a sortable table. I added the change in membership from 2007 to 2008 (2008 Δ) and 2008 to 2009 (2009 Δ).
By sorting on the “2009 Δ” column I found that 11 countries out of 168 had a decrease in membership during 2009, though they were small amounts. I discovered that the five biggest increases came from the United States (84,866), Brazil (42,118), Mexico (39,337), Peru (18,463), and the Philippines (17,300).
The largest LDS populations by percentage are in Tonga (45%), Samoa (31%), American Samoa (22.5%), Niue (19.1%), and Kirabati (11.9%). The United States comes in at 14th with 2%, tied with Palau.
The countries with the most members are the United States (6,058,907), Mexico (1,197,573), Brazil (1,102,674), Philippines (631,885), and Chile (561,920). The most temples are in the United States (75), Mexico (12), Canada (7), Brazil (6), and Australia (5).
The most districts are in the Philippines (86) but there are 13 countries with only one stake. However, there are 15 countries with a 2% or more Mormon population.
You can count on finding many more permutations. Try it.
Related posts:
Daniel in Vancouver
I was happy to receive a call on Thanksgiving day from Bayarsaihan. She is a native Mongolian that met her husband at BYU Hawaii and moved to Vancouver several years ago. I knew that she lived here, but despite all my efforts to contact her, I was never successful.
She was told by a missionary serving in her ward that I would love to talk to her. On Saturday I called her and talked for 10 to 15 minutes in Mongolian and she invited us to her house to have some buuz (Mongolian food). I was so happy that I was able to understand still and that I hadn’t lost it all with the 8 months of not speaking to a native.
Today is very exciting because we are going to her house and enjoying some food and my companions get to see how wonderful the culture is. It truly has made me very happy. I look forward to meeting more Mongolians in Utah as I hear there are many there.
Thanksgiving dinner was great. We had tons of food and pie. And then we had more food and pie. Followed by some more pie. Then we just had some pie. The next day we had Zone Conference. President had all missionaries at Zone Conference for the first time stand up and had their companion introduce them. It was fun introducing two.
I bore my final testimony to all the missionaries there and enjoyed the things I was able to learn. I was asked how I achieved success throughout my mission and how was I able to do it. I said simply, “1. Rely on the Spirit and the Lord 2. Work hard! There is no substitute.” It was great to be seen as a great missionary to others, even though I have so many things I can improve on.
We continue to work and find people to teach. We set a date with Phillip for his baptism on Jan. 15. That was very exciting to see him make that step of commitment. His dad and step mom are Mormon and call him on the phone and follow up with the lessons we teach him. He was referred to us back in September and has been very busy, but now is making great progress.
I am also happy with the progress my companions have been making. I need to get them to a point where they can take over the area and be each other’s first companion past their trainer. It is such a crazy situation, but has been going great.
As it so happens my zone’s temple day is next Tuesday and I’ll be going to the temple again the following Tuesday in Kennewick with President and Sister Greer before my flight. I am really looking forward to spending some extra time there. It will be a great time for reflection.
I know this is the work of God and that it continues forward. He truly loves all of His children. Thanks for all the support and good luck with the wedding plans.
Love, Elder Willoughby
Elders Willoughby, Mendoza, and Powell at Thanksgiving
Elder Daniel Willoughby is serving in the Washington Kennewick Mission. If you want to communicate with Daniel, write in the comments or use one of these addresses.
Related posts:
My roommates and I spoke for two hours last night about the Holy Ghost and ended on one last question we could not answer. So I offer it to anyone who maybe has heard the insight we are missing:
What is the true purpose of the Holy Ghost within the Godhead? Why can’t Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ fill all the needs the Holy Ghost has?
FOR TODAY – November 30th 2010
Outside my window… my eyes are feasting upon the most beautiful sight of exquisite pure white snow which blankets our yard. I am witnessing the handiwork of God and appreciating His works.
I am thinking…that instead of blogging I should be in decorating our Christmas Tree. However, I love to blog and this is my very first Simple Woman’s Daybook Entry and I am enjoying this moment of my time.
I am thankful for… numerous blessings. My short list of blessings include that I know that I have a Heavenly Father and my Savior Jesus Christ who loves me. I have as my eternal companion the most wonderful man in my universe. I have children who I know love and follow the Lord and our Prophet. I have many grandchildren and each one of them I cherish and love with all my heart.
I have many friends that add so much to my life; including those in blogger land. I am blessed to work in the temple; which is a incredible blessing.
From the learning rooms…(if this applies) I am constantly reading good books and I especially love the scriptures. However, I love a good Christmas Novel and I need to go out and purchase a new one. If any of you have a suggestion let me know.
From the kitchen…I find that the fudge I made to send to someone; is slowly disappearing so I will need to make some more. My husband is home and we are both being drawn into the kitchen for a morsel of chocolate.
I am wearing…It is now 2:00pm and I am still in my white and pink bathrobe and black slippers. I so need to get dressed for the day.
I am creating…this blog and it is my first Daybook entry; so I am having fun with this. I also will need to create some more fudge today.
I am going…to start Christmas decorating. I love this time of year and can hardly wait to get the decorations up and then enjoy sitting in our living room in front of our fireplace and having a cup of Hot Chocolate with my hubby.
I am reading…a book called Holding Fast by Robert L. Millet. He is a favorite author of mine and I just started the book this morning.
I am hoping…to get my decorations up today and then I will tackle my cleaning projects in the next couple of day.
I am hearing…my dear husband playing with our dogs. He is working at home this morning and we have met in the hall a few times for a hug. I love it when he works at home.
Around the house…I have boxes of Christmas Decorations to put up and once up I will be so happy.
One of my favorite things…to do is read. I just completed a book by Toni Sorenson called; “Being Defined By Christ”. I would highly recommend it. In fact, I know that it will be on my list of best books I have read. Just think about the title; Being Defined By Christ, it means don’t let others define you. See yourself as Christ sees you; this is what it is all about.
A few plans for the rest of the week: Visit my 97 year old Aunt Della whom I love and treasure the time spent with her.
Perhaps some Christmas Shopping
Activity Day activity with my Primary Girls – We are having a Daddy Daughter Sports Night
Serving in the Temple on Saturday and of course enjoying a quiet Sabbath Day with my dear husband.
Yesterday my husband and I went out and played in the snow – Here are a few pictures of our adventure.
Well, I’m here to tell you about this really awesome holiday that we just had. It’s called Thanksgiving, and I sure am thankful for it. One reason – I love turkey:
Gobbling up the turkey with Grandpa and Bryson
No, not Grandpa. The food. Although it was fun to spend time with Grandpa as well.
LDS.org has just been upgraded. The release follows a successful 3-month testing period wherein tens of thousands of users accessed the site under the name of new.lds.org. The site has a new visual design, many new sections of content, an upgraded search engine, and translated content. The new site is designed to focus on helping Church members learn, live, and share the restored gospel.
To make the transition to the new site easier, the old LDS.org is still available at classic.lds.org if you want to refer to old content that is not yet part of the new LDS.org. The development of parts of the new LDS.org will continue for many months. Therefore, as you navigate through the site, you may find sections that refer you back to classic.lds.org to find content that has not yet been rebuilt in the new design.
Watch videos that introduce the new tools and sections of LDS.org.
Below are a few highlights of what is now available:
Prophets and Apostles Speak Today
The section Prophets and Apostles Speak Today chronicles the ministries of living apostles and prophets, providing access to the Brethren’s messages and insight into their ministry. It includes stories about and interviews with members of the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
Prophets and Apostles Speak Today also provides links to general conference and First Presidency messages, The Family: A Proclamation to the World, The Living Christ: The Testimony of the Apostles, and “classic” addresses by apostles and prophets that remain relevant today.
You can reach the site from the prominent link on the LDS.org home page or from the Study section in the menu.
Calendars
The calendars have been restructured to be easier to use and more useful for wards, stakes, branches, and districts throughout the world. You can now have as many separate calendars as you need. For example, you can have a calendar for Ward Activities, Scouts, Relief Society, Elders Quorum, and Bishopric. Members can control the type of events they see.
When you first log on, you’ll see instructions for transitioning to the new calendars, including an Import Wizard that lets you import events from your existing calendar at stakes.lds.org (or ward.lds.org). The new calendar has a few bugs and will continue to be enhanced during 2011, but it is already better in many ways than the old calendar. Further enhancements in January 2011 will make the interface much more intuitive, so you may want to wait until the January release before widely adopting it in your wards and stakes.
The calendar on LDS.org is available in 10 languages: Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.
Directories
The directory has also been enhanced. In addition to members’ names and contact information, the new directory includes a place to upload pictures of individuals and families and allows members to edit their information.
The directory on LDS.org is available in 10 languages: Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.
You can reach the directory by clicking Tools. You can also go directly there at lds.org/directory.
Church News and Events
This is a source of official news of the Church online. It also brings together headlines from each of the Church’s official news sources, including the Public Affairs Newsroom (newsroom.lds.org), Church magazines (magazines.lds.org), Mormon Channel (MormonChannel.org), and Church News (ldschurchnews.com). The old Around the Church site on classic.lds.org and its associated e-mail and RSS feed will no longer be updated.
Church News and Events works closely with these outlets to cover news and events of interest to Church members and provide a global perspective. Articles can be filtered by topic to help you quickly find information that’s important to you.
Search
The search experience has also been improved. The search box at the top of each page now gives you a list of suggested search terms as you type, instead of giving a list of Recommended Results. This should help you form more precise searches. Upon selecting one of the suggested search terms, or continuing to type your own terms, the completed search will lead to a more user-friendly results page that includes both hand-picked recommended results and results returned by the search engine algorithm. You can narrow your search by collection (magazines, scriptures, general conference, etc.) or by language.
Secured Website for Church Leaders
This is a secure site at lds.org/leader for stake presidencies and bishoprics, including clerks and executive secretaries. It provides membership and organization information, leadership training resources, reports, announcements, the Official Communication Library, and other Church applications to help these leaders fulfill their callings. It was announced in a notice dated October 1, 2010.
Church Handbook and Worldwide Leadership Training
Text, audio, and video of the Worldwide Training meeting held November 13th is online in 40 languages. The new Handbook 2 is online in English, accessible by clicking the feature on the Serving in the Church page. Handbook 1 is also available online, accessible by bishops and stake presidents when they log into the leaders’ site at lds.org/leader.
Languages
In addition to English, much of the site is now available in Spanish and German. Portuguese is scheduled to launch in coming weeks. Over the next few months, the site will be available in seven more languages: Cantonese, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, and Russian. To view the website in a certain language, choose from the drop-down menu labeled “Languages” found in the upper-right corner of any page.
Redirects
Existing bookmarks and links to LDS.org should still work. The development team has been diligent in identifying the new pages and setting up redirects so that your links will go to the new pages. If the new LDS.org doesn’t have an equivalent page to an old LDS.org page, then the redirect will take you to a page on classic.lds.org or to the new home page.
Study Tools
The new online study tools allow you to read and annotate magazines, manuals, and conference talks. As you read, you can highlight, tag, and take notes on paragraphs, verses, or whole pages. All this is added to your secure My Study Notebook, where all your notes are stored. Soon, all these actions will be synchronized between LDS.org and the Gospel Library mobile application so notes taken on a mobile device will be accessible through the website and vice-versa. As you use these tools, the notebook becomes your personal collection of quotes and notes that are searchable through your tags.
In December, My Study Notebook will be enhanced further to allow for separate entries that can be controlled completely within the notebook itself. These journal entries—which might function as personal history entries, thoughts in a study notebook, or even lesson plans—are contained within your own personal, private notebook independent of content from LDS.org.
Sharing
You can share the information, videos, and articles you find with your friends and family. Throughout the new site, buttons allow you to share Church messages with others through Facebook, e-mail, Twitter, and other channels.
Future Releases
Developers are still working diligently on enhancements to LDS.org, such as the following:
Youth Site
Youth.lds.org is being redesigned to be more appealing to youth and bring new content to the forefront when it is published. When the site is completed within a few months, it will house videos, articles, quizzes, polls, and music downloads created especially for youth. It will also include pages highlighting basic doctrines of the gospel and standards from For the Strength of Youth. New content will be added to the site every few days. The site also has a mobile application for the iPhone so youth can access the videos and articles from their mobile device. Versions for the iPad, Android, and other devices will also be developed.
Family
A whole new section will be dedicated to the family. When it becomes available, this section will have pages dedicated to happiness in the family, family history, youth, and children. Family Home Evening resources will be housed in this section to assist parents as they teach gospel principles in the home. These resources will include lesson topic ideas, activities, and Church-produced videos, music, and art.
Media Library
A new media library is also scheduled to launch on the new site soon. When complete, this section will contain a comprehensive collection of Church rich media resources, including video, audio, and images.
For More Information
For more information about the new LDS.org, see the following:
It’s full-swing Christmas here in the North Mexico, peeps!
Can I just begin to say how much easier it is to pull off Christmas when I am not violently ill with the fruit of my womb? I feel like a Tibetan running a marathon at sea level! Also, could be the pink bev!
For the next while on ElPasoRepresentYo (which is the way you should pronounce it, while making gang signs) we are talking about traditions. Not your traditions, because this is not your blog, but MY traditions. (Although you can talk about your traditions in the comments. Because I am a giver.)
I have a highly regimented, multi-stepped approach to Christmas. I am, as the youth of today say, a Holiday Nazi. But I am trying to mellow out.
But I am not trying very hard.
Step one? The Christmas Card!
I am a firm believer in the tangible Christmas card. I appreciate that people are embracing this whole “green” fad, and want to send “e-cards.” To these people I say, NO. And then I soften up and say, “Go ahead, if you want to ruin Christmas. As long as YOU are happy.” I love sending them, I love receiving them. I view it as a literal count of how much I am loved. It fuels my self-esteem issues.
Now, I know that some people feel like the photo card is tres gauche. Some people also have lots of money to spend on individual letter-press and don’t like Emmett Otter’s Jug band Christmas. Some people are douches. As for me and my house? We love the photo and the letter.
This year we are using Shutterfly for our holiday cards. I have been using them for my photos and photo books for a few years, and have been overwhelmingly thrilled with their quality, speed, and cheap price. Their cards are no different–they have over 800 fresh designs that make me feel fancy and important (since 80% of my family chose the same Costco design as we did last year). They are very affordable, and will even mail them if you are not a huge control freak like I am. Shutterfly also has other photo products like calendars and mugs and things, too, which makes gifts for great-grandmothers nice and easy. .
But back to the cards. Here are the templates from which I have narrowed my choices:
Because it is the truth, yo.
Because I like the colors
It will probably come down to which best matches the picture I choose. My criteria this year is which one makes me appear less fat. Because baby weight is no joke. And neither are my bazooms. And if there is one thing I am sure of, it is my vanity.
So here is the neat part: If you are a Blogger, and you blog about using Shutterfly for your holiday cards, they will give you fifty free cards. This rules. Seriously. Especially because I was going to use them anyway! Disclaimer! Win Win! Franklin R Covey! Nice List! Herkie!
If only I knew some bloggers…
Next up? Crafting the letter…
What would you do with more than a GALLON of homecooked pumpkin puree?
Hello family,
wow this week was incredible!! I am so lucky to be a missionary. I will not lie, i love being out of the office alot, as a leader i feel i can accomplish alot more being a good example, instead of preparing a training or something like that, so i am really happy. This area is amazing. I love the members already and the investagators that we have, the lord is really blessing us alot. This week we saw one of the best baptisms on our mission. Brother Wesley and his whole family were baptized on saturday, what a special family!!!! the have the cutest kids in the whole world, the have baby twins, that are 1, and also have a daugther that is 8. WOW! the baptism was amazing. President Martins (a man in our ward, he is AMAZING!! ex mission president, fantastic member of the church) he baptized the dad, i baptized the mom and my companion baptized the daughter. it was awesome. The dad wesley went to his baptism in a suit and tie, he was just really prepared to be baptized. They were confirmed members on sunday, it was awesome. We are working A LOT, i cant remember ever working so hard in all of my mission, but the Lord sure is blessing us. We had 13 investagators at church on sunday!!! 2 full families, and a lot more people as well. This week we are really blessed, we will have 6 baptisms this saturday. Jose and Aladia are amazing. they are a older couple, the oldest i will ever baptize. they are 77 and 75. they have been going to church for ALONG time, but nobody seemed to be able to mark their baptism. Well they really liked us, so the first time we went to their house they accepted baptism for this saturday, they are awesome, they gave us lunch today, the wife has cancer, and she is going through kemo threapy right now, but she is strong enough to be baptized. We also have Adilson, Rosangela and Leticia. They are another family, their son was baptized about 6 months ago, but the parents didnt want to at the time. Well we have really been blessed to touch the hearts of alot of people in these 3 weeks here, all 3 accepted baptism for this saturday as well. We also have a Anielly, she is a young women, a member’s sister, she is going to be baptized as well. We are really excited and really happy. The ward members are excited to see so many families entering into the ward, so we are planning on recieving a lot of referals from the members. I am so thankful for this great opportunity to serve the Lord. I want to baptize alot more people before my mission ends. I have to reach my goal. The Lord will bless me. I am so thankful to be here, I couldnt imagine doing a more important thing than working in the Lord vinyard. I love this work, I love this gospel, i love helping these people.
Have a great thanksgiving!!!!
Elder OLSEN!!!!
