Sacrament Meeting Talks Worth Rereading

I recently learned a bit about an old Japanese art form known as Kintsugi - the repairing and mending of broken and damaged pottery. It’s kind of like putting the broken pieces back together like a puzzle — fitting the pieces together and then putting a protective coat over them to seal them together. Only in Kintsugi, this sealing is done with lacquer mixed with gold - and the results are amazing. The name itself means “golden joinery." Pieces repaired by Kintsugi will stay in families, or even museums for generations. As an art form, Kintsugi values the history of something that has been broken and then restored or made whole again, not to hide the breakage, but to emphasis it. The repaired piece contains both the remembrance of what has been before and what is now. What results from piecing together broken pottery with gold are objects that are not only more valuable, but more beautiful than they were before. Every break is covered, and the surface is highlighted with veins o...

I have been asked to speak today about an obscure topic. The topic given to me was “Women in the Book of Mormon and the New Testament.” On face value, it doesn’t sound that obscure, but once I started researching I realized just how obscure it is. Let’s take the Book of Mormon, for example. There's only six women mentioned by name in the Book of Mormon and three of those are referencing the Bible (Eve, Sarah, Mary). Out of the three remaining women, one is a prostitute, so probably not appropriate to talk about on Mother’s Day [ Editor's Note: This talk was given on Mother's Day.] , and then I am left with Sariah and Abish - Great women, but my pickings are fairly small as far as stories to tell. (source: http://eom.byu.edu/index.php/Women_in_the_Book_of_Mormon ) When women are mentioned generally in the Book of Mormon, there are a few cool references ("we do not doubt our mothers knew it”), but there's also quite a few times where women are mentioned as sex sy...