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This was a rough week this week. We had three major events that all brought out the crowds on the sub. 1. Our prophet passed away. 2. A man drove into a meetinghouse in Michigan, set the building on fire, and opened fire on congregants. 3. BYU faced chants of “F-word the Mormons” at a football game.

Obviously these are not equally important, but all three brought various crowds to crow or troll or mourn to the sub, so activity was just really, really high this week.

When kayejazz (our fearless leader) heard that the church had been attacked she said, “Jesus come quickly.” Kayejazz has no fear over Christ returning, and neither should any of us.

Jesus will return one day. The only affect this should have on our lives is to give us hope and purpose. It is a wonderful thing. But it doesn’t change anything at all about how we should act. It changes nothing about our covenants. It changes nothing from a practical standpoint.

We are commanded to love God and love each other. What about that changes because Christ might return in the clouds in our lifetime, or we might die before his return? We are covenanted to care for each other. Lets care for each other.

Lets go directly to what is in the lesson:

As He taught His disciples on the Mount of Olives, Jesus revealed the signs and conditions that would precede His Second Coming. The Savior declared there would be false Christs, false prophets, wars, rumors of wars, famines, pestilences, earthquakes, iniquity, and signs in the heavens.

People have been worrying about false Christ’s, false prophets, wars, famines, pestilences, sin, signs, and natural disasters for 2000 years. I am not saying Christ is not returning. I am saying that declaring that bad things will happen before Christ returns is relatively meaningless as a signal if bad things are going to happen anyway.

Here is a prophecy for you – I guarantee it will occur. There will be wars, pestilences, famines, earthquakes, before the election of our 50th president. That is somewhere between 10 and 20 years away from now. Guarantee it will come true. Wait and see. Does being correct about that make me a prophet? Of course not! It is just stating the obvious.

We read of the parable of the 10 virgins. The general analogy is that we are to be prepared spiritually to receive Christ when he returns. But shouldn’t we also be prepared spiritually to return to Christ at death? From a practical standpoint, what is the difference between how we should spiritually prepare to see Christ when he comes in the clouds, and how we should prepare to see Christ when we die? I declare there is no spiritual difference in how we should prepare ourselves to see Christ, or at least I cannot see one, and thus there is no benefit to worrying ourselves about the difference. Just prepare spiritually.

I had to fix a radio last week. It wasn’t my radio, or even my unit’s radio, but it had been down for 4 months and they just needed new eyes on it. It took me maybe 5 minutes to fix it. The default noise floor of the radio was set really high and they didn’t know to lower it to the measured noise floor. (A noise floor is the normal level of ambient radiation caused by solar and interstellar radiation, and decay in the Earth.) I dropped the noise floor where it needed to be and suddenly the radio worked.

I think that is sort of what living a life where you are worthy to enter God’s presence (or as close as us humans can get) does. It cuts out the noise that would normally drown out the Spirit of God.

Another thing that can drown out a radio signal you are looking for is competing signals. I saw this quite a bit in the oilfields of West Texas in the 900 MHz spectrum.

The 900 MHz spectrum is wide open – totally unmanaged by the government. That means you can transmit and receive on any of those frequencies without a license granted by the FCC. The end result is that everyone steps on each others’ frequencies. When you have two people transmitting at the same frequency different data, they interfere with each other and neither work well, unless one pumps their power up really high.

We know the Spirit of God is a still, small voice – it isn’t trying to compete with the world. It is trying to make us still people who are not distracted by the world. If we don’t tune out the world we will never hear it.

Today is the kiddo’s first day of school. Finnick is going into 2nd grade, Phillip into 8th, and Felicity is a senior this year. Today is also picture day. I can see it both ways. One one hand, if you make the first day of school picture day you might be less likely to have to fight dress-code problems on the first day of school. On the other hand, isn’t the first day of school already busy enough?

I am quite upset over the busing situation. Felicity is now 17 and Finnick 7. The official policy of the base is quite clear – 17 year olds are allowed to care for siblings, even overnight. I spoke with base legal, family advocacy, and the school. All agree that Felicity is legal to take Finnick off the bus. But the transportation office just doesn’t care. Check this image – it shows the walk they will have to make, and where the bus stop is. I’m kinda heated about this.

Edit – just spoke with school transportation on the phone. He asked the same questions of the same agencies (different people in the same office) and they gave him contradictory guidance. That is so frustrating.

This week’s reflection in the BYUPathway class REL250A is to summarize in my own words the teaching of Christ.

Christ taught two things: Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand, and take care of others, especially the poor, needy, marginalized, prisoners, widows, immigrants, sick…

He gave the two greatest commandments which so greatly reflect these two teachings: Love God and Love each other.

That is it.

But he went farther. He told us **how** to love God. When he asked Peter if he loved him and Peter responded three times yes, of course, his response was, “Feed my sheep” (Take care of others!).

What else does “In as much as you do unto the least of these you do to me” mean?

Those who want to put up some sort of barrier between the first and the second commandment as if they could **ever** be in contention one with the other are missing the point.

Christ said the second is “like unto” the first. We fulfill the first by fulfilling the second. We love God by taking care of each other. That is what repentance is. A change. The broken heart. The conquering of our selfish wish to take care of ourselves and putting others first.

I get a lot of questions on what I actually believe. Many wonder whether I actually believe at all, as I am not the most orthodox Mormon.

So I’m not going to go into everything that I don’t think necessary to believe to be a Christian or a member of my particular flavor of Christianity. And I’m not saying that the things I believe are necessary for either either. But this is what I believe.

I believe in God.

I believe in a just God.

I believe my idea of justice has significant and serious deviations from what God believes is just.

I believe if I put my ideas of justice onto God, then I make a god out of myself. That is pride and idolatry.

I believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the promised Messiah. That he was born of Mary by the Spirit as written in scripture. That he taught us to Love God and Love each other. He was killed for that teaching.

I believe he rose from the dead and lives on the right hand of God.

I believe the young prophet Joseph had an encounter in a grove. I’m not going to say what happened in that grove, but I believe it happened.

I believe that scripture is given for us to learn from.

That is enough for now.

Today I read a quote in my PathwayConnect curriculum that really hit me hard.

The Lord knows that you have more to do than you have time for. The real test in this life is what we choose to spend our time on. It’s a question of priorities.

I don’t know that I had ever thought of this life as a test of how we spend our time. Of course everyone knows our time is limited. We all will die. But I think we almost always, for those of us who believe, say that this life is a test of whether we will choose to follow the commandments of God, or choose to make and keep covenants.

And there is nothing wrong with that phrasing.

I just realized that phrasing it differently helps me to think of it differently. When I get home today I will be hot and sweaty from the bike ride home. It is about 4 miles straight uphill. The ride to work is pleasant, the ride home less so.

And that is another thing I spend less time on than I should – physical health. A 4 mile bike ride uphill shouldn’t wipe me out.

But I digress – I will be hot and sweaty and I will walk around for about 20 minutes while my body cools down, then take a shower, and then lay down in my bed. I am scheduled to cook tonight, so I won’t lay down long, but I will lay down, then cook, then eat, then lay down for the rest of the night.

Or at least that would be what I normally do. Tonight I will be productive until I go to sleep.

Because the real test of this life is what we choose to spend our time on.

This weekend I threw away our 2012 iMac. I bought this mac for Märia in 2012 when it was brand new, top of the line. It cost $2,381 including tax. It replaced a 2005 Mac Mini G4. That computer cost less than half what the iMac cost, but only lasted us 7 years. It is really hard for me to throw away computers for some reason. Even now, I am kicking myself for throwing this one away. For a while I put Ubuntu on it and let Finnick use it, but it just wasn’t stable. I don’t know what was up, maybe some bad ram or an SSD that was going out. In any case, it just didn’t work like it should.

We got a solid 13 years of use out of it. That is enough, right? Throwing away things should make me so sad, but it does. Before we moved here in January of 2024 I threw away some other computers. I threw away a 2010 MacBook Air that I bought to take to Afghanistan with me. Pretty sure it cost exactly $1000 plus tax, but I couldn’t find the receipt for that one. It was this tiny little 11″ laptop and I really liked it a lot. I wish someone still made tiny laptops. And tiny phones. I want my gadgets tiny.

When we moved here to Italy Märia and I had this mantra we would say multiple times a day. “I can throw things away.” We threw away so much. I think I threw out 2/3s of my electronics stuff, including my closet rack with switches and routers and servers, minus one server which I migrated everything to and now sits in Jason’s closet. Thank you Jason! I still have boxes of cables and old stuff, and it is overwhelming. What do I throw away? I **know** there is stuff in there I will never use again, but I just can’t make myself throw it away.

Just an example – I have almost all the little mini consoles that were all the rage during Covid. The tiny little NES, SNES, Genesis, Comodore, Atari, and more. They are tiny and cute and totally functional. But I have all those games and thousands more on my Steamdeck and a couple other Retroid and Anbernic handhelds and I hardly play them there. I haven’t hooked up any of my mini consoles in the years that I have lived here, and I don’t know if I ever will. But I can’t let them go. I also have a Dreamcast, Gamecube, Wii, WiiU, and probably some other consoles all shrinkwrapped in boxes that may or may not ever get played again, and I just can’t let them go.

Broken in the head. But hey, I’ve got cool stuff. =)

During Finnick’s well-child checkup we learned he needed surgery. It was a surprise but we had plenty of time to prepare him for it. Finnick had surgery on the 17th of June in Vicenza. It went well and he did a great job! It is never easy to have surgery, but it’s especially difficult when you’re only 7 and only a few of the hospital staff speak your language.

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