Several months ago I felt like the internet was starting to consume my life and my mind. I was constantly writing blog posts in my head, I had to check my email and blog at least 5 times a day, and couldn’t wait for everything in my life to get out to the way so I could delve into “blogger land”. It was getting bad enough that when Elder Bednar gave his fantastic talk entitled “Things As They Really Are” in which he warns about letting virtual things get in the way of the most important things in your life, my husband made me watch it and then read it… twice. I took the hint. I realized that while my internet obsession could not be classified as an “addiction” it was definetly taking me away from what was most important in my life and what was real.

One of the things that stood out the most to me in Elder Bednar’s talk was this,

”

Satan also strives to entice the sons and daughters of God to minimize the importance of their physical bodies. This particular type of attack is most subtle and diabolical…one of his most potent tactics is to beguile you and me as embodied spirits to disconnect gradually and physically from things as they really are. In essence, he encourages us to think and act as if we were in our premortal, unembodied state. And, if we let him, he can cunningly employ some aspects of modern technology to accomplish his purposes. Please be careful of becoming so immersed and engrossed in pixels, texting, ear buds, twittering, online social networking, and potentially addictive uses of media and the Internet that you fail to recognize the importance of your physical body and miss the richness of person-to-person communication.

… I am not suggesting all technology is inherently bad; it is not. Nor am I saying we should not use its many capabilities in appropriate ways to learn, to communicate, to lift and brighten lives, and to build and strengthen the Church; of course we should. But I am raising a warning voice that we should not squander and damage authentic relationships by obsessing over contrived ones. “Nearly 40% of men and 53% of women who play online games said their virtual friends were equal to or better than their real-life friends, according to a survey of 30,000 gamers conducted by … a recent Ph.D. graduate from Stanford University. More than a quarter of gamers [who responded indicated that] the emotional highlight of the past week occurred in a computer world.”

It was that last statistic that really got to me. I realized that for the last several months my “emotional highlight” of the week had occurred on-line. I realized that I knew more about the lives of my blogging friends than I did the woman next door, the women I visit taught, or even my younger sister. My contributions to conversations at the dinner table almost always involved something I had read or seen online or something from someone’s life I read on a blog. I also realized that I was also starting to compare my life and my children to other women’s lives and children that I didn’t even know and whose pictures and lives had been Photo Shoped and edited. I was judging myself and my family by an illusionary standard and sometimes it just made me miserable. True, I was doing a lot of good for the women I associated with online but I was also neglecting the people around me who also needed me. By allowing myself to get sucked into the internet I was, like Elder Bednar warned, disconnectiong from my physical body and the physical world and gradually loosing sight of things as they really were.

One night when I was explaining my dilemna to my husband he suggested that we just cancel our interent for awhile– to give me some time to “come back to reality” so to speak. So we did. There were still things I needed to do online and so we set aside a few nights a week when I could go to the library and use the internet to write for my blog or other projects that I’d felt God had directed me to. It was amazing to me how once the internet was gone I felt like a fog had been lifted from my eyes and I saw things in a clearer light. During that break I also realized that blogging was deeply satisfying for me and that I loved to write, I loved the friendships I had made and strengthened through blogging, and I loved having a creative outlet in which to express my ideas and thoughts. I also felt like God had given me an assignment and stewardship online through my Women in the Scripture Blog that he wanted me to continue. It was clear to me that if I was going to keep blogging it needed to be something that would enhance and enrich my life but not to consume it. These questions from Elder Bednar’s talk have helped me evaluate how I spend my time on the internet and give myself boundaries. He said,

” I offer two questions for consideration in your personal pondering and prayerful studying:

1. Does the use of various technologies and media invite or impede the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost in your life?
2. Does the time you spend using various technologies and media enlarge or restrict your capacity to live, to love, and to serve in meaningful ways?

You will receive answers, inspiration, and instruction from the Holy Ghost suited to your individual circumstances and needs. I repeat and affirm the teaching of the Prophet Joseph: “All beings who have bodies have power over those who have not. The devil has no power over us only as we permit him.”

I love that last quote by Joseph Smith– that we are beings with bodies who have the power to act and to choose and have power over those who do not. Satan doesn’t have a body and he will never have one. He wants to do all he can to make us miserable like him. In today’s world of rapidly changing technology Satan is finding many ways to disconnect us from our physical bodies and act like the disembodied spirit he is. He may entice us to disconnect from our bodies and the world around us through the internet, video games, texting, music, drugs, medicines, movies, book, magazines, television, extreme sports, and in a thousand other ways. I am grateful for the clear counsel to be especially on guard for any sort of procedure, product, image, or service that disconnects us from our physical bodies, our physical feelings, and our physical world. We need to increasingly rely upon the spirit to know what is real and what is not.

For me learning to overcome my internet obsession and learning how to discern what is real from what is no real has been a powerful experience for me. I understand more fully what Nephi means when he explains that all men and women “… are redeemed from the fall they have become free forever, knowing good from evil; to act for themselves and not to be acted upon…” (2 Nephi 2:26) I am a being of power and it is my body that gives me the power to act, to choose and not to be acted upon. How I use that power, how I value and use my body, will determines who I am and where I will go. My body is precious and I can’t afford to loose sight of the real world to live in satan’s illusionary world– there is too much the Lord needs me to do.

Heather is the wife of one wonderful man, the mother of two beautiful children and has 12 chickens. When she isn’t snuggling a baby or chasing chickens you can find her working on a book about the gift of pregnancy and giving birth or writing on her her blog Women in the Scriptures.

I looked out the window and what did I see?
Popcorn popping on the apricot tree.

Spring has brought me such a nice surprise
Popcorn popping right before my eyes.

I can take an armful and make a treat.
A popcorn ball that would smell so sweet.

I wasn’t really so, but it seemed to me!
Popcorn popping on the apricot tree.

Spring is coming! Today I found some things online that had the same effect on me as my neighbor’s budding tree. They are videos about four different Mormon Women who are sharing with the world how the Gospel of Jesus Christ impacts their lives.

This first video is about Shannon, a Mormon woman with cerebral palsy, who served a mission for our faith in New York. Thanks to Seth Adam Smith for this video.

Next is a video featured at Mormon.org about a mormon mommy blogger named Shawni who loves photography.

And here is Rochelle, an LDS mother in Texas, who is raising four beautiful children, two of whom have special needs.

And finally here is a Mormon.org video about Daisy, a resource manager, and convert to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

I hope you enjoy these videos as much as I did! Now you don’t have to wait for spring to come to your climate see something that warms your heart.

I was born in 1949 in northern California and raised in Alaska. I married young, after high school graduation, and was a single mom at the age of 23. At 25 I moved to Salt Lake City, and determined to return to school, I took classes at the University of Utah.

It had always been my dream to go to BYU Hawaii and so the following year after being accepted, I sold everything I owned, bought plane tickets, and in July 1976 flew with my children to Hawaii. We returned the following year, and I worked in Provo as a teachers-aide while taking classes at Brigham Young University.

In June 1978 I met my husband-to-be, Larry, a single father and professor at BYU in Provo, Utah. We worked hard to put our lives together with children, finances, ex-spouses, etc. but our love was strong and we were married in the Provo Temple in Dec. 1980. We had 3 more children together, making a total of 11 children, and now have 33 grand-children and 3 great grandchildren.

My main accomplishment is family. But I co-authored a book with my husband in 1979 about step-parenting, and I also wrote a book in 1987 about motherhood. My husband and I have also written various columns with the local newspapers in Utah. In 1990 at the age of 40, I finally graduated from BYU in psychology.

My interests include a love of God and family, a love of nature, a love of good books, (especially biographies and inspirational) and poetry. I also enjoy writing, traveling, bicycling, good music and discovering winter retreats! I would describe myself as an optimist and in love with life.

You can also read a few posts at our site about this topic:

First Person: Testimony of Tithing

We Believe: Tithing

First Person: One Coin in Ten

How has tithing blessed your life?

Well, unlike every other Mormon that I’ve ever known since then, he didn’t immediately launch into a discussion of that. He kind of took a step back, and he looked at me, and he said, “Well, why do you want to know?” And I said: “You know, that’s a really good question. I’m not really sure. I only know one other Mormon, and there’s something very different about the way you and this other person live and conduct your lives. And I want to know if it has anything to do with your church.”

Although Anne says she didn’t believe a word of what he said at the time, the impression these two men had on her (and others) had stuck with her, enough that she decided to “have a little experiment” by going to a Mormon church service. The humor with which she describes the first moments of her experience is delightful, but what I want to share here is what happened to her spirit that day.

I walked into the chapel, which was another surprise. No cross, no priest or minister in the robe. No candles. Just a very plain chapel where people were dressed in ordinary clothes. Up on the podium there were men and women, men in business suits, kids, and they basically did the whole worship service.

Well, as I sat there, I began to feel something that I’d never really felt before. It was a sense of recognition, I suppose, and it made me feel so uncomfortable that as soon as that meeting was over, I got up and left. And I went out into the parking lot, intending to get into my car and drive off and never go back again. And as I did that, a voice inside my mind said, just as clearly and as distinctly as I’m speaking now, it said, simply, “Anne, turn around and go back.”

And go back she did. That day, she attended a Sunday School class. She was invited to dinner by the class teacher. She accepted his invitation to have missionaries come to her house. First, it was church members who had a volunteer assignment (calling) as stake missionaries. But it was the simple testimony of a young, inexperienced full-time missionary who helped her really open her heart to the message of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ.

[H]e would kind of forget what it was that he was going to say at about every third of fourth sentence. He would look me straight in the eye, and all the innocence and lack of intellectual sophistication, and he would say, “Sister Osborn, I know the Gospel’s true.”

And the oddest thing happened: Somehow, all of the intellectual arguments that I’d marshaled — which were also, of course, intellectual defenses — melted away, and this young elder helped me open my heart and my soul to the influence of the spirit. And I really knew that what he was saying was true. And I felt to the very core of my being that it was something that I hadn’t discovered so much as I recognized. And it was something that I had seen, or somehow heard — somewhere some-when, someplace — these things. And they struck that resonance in my heart, and I felt that, in a way — an incredibly significant way — that I’d come home.

We’ve only shared snippets of Dr. Poelman’s conversion story. We highly recommend that you read more in the interview done for the 2006 PBS special called “The Mormons”. In this interview she also talks about her feelings about Mormon the intellect and the spirit, about women and the priesthood, and leaps of faith.

Sister Poelman spent many years as a single woman, and has written an articles about the topic of being single and Mormon (she was single for several years after her conversion at age 25):

“The Single Years: A Burden or a Gift” (also can be found in this Ensign Mormon Journal entry…scroll down to find the article “The Ecstasy of the Agony: How to Be Single and Sane at the Same Time“)

Read more from Dr. Poelman in this article about an LDS Life Sciences Symposium where she was a speaker: “No ‘believing gene,’ just faith and work, says LDS doctor, scientist

You can also read about her at the blog Fruits of Mormonism in the following article “Mormon Women – Dr. Anne Osborn Poelman”

Hear more about her remarkable professional accomplishments as a neuroradiologist in the following video:

Dr. Anne Osborne Poelman (a neuroradiologist), Dr. Phil Low (a Purdue biochemist) and others share some thoughts on faith and science in this article (a report of a LDS Life Sciences Symposium): “No ‘believing gene,’ just faith and work, says LDS doctor, scientist

Dr. Larry St. Clair (Ph.D from the Department of Environmental, Population, and Organismic Biology at the University of Colorado) focuses his whole Mormon Scholars Testify entry on the question of “Faith and Science as Ways of Knowing: Dealing With the Ostensible Conflicts” (included in his essay are thoughts on evolution and the age/creation of the earth):

In all honesty, I have never encountered any idea or theory in science that threatened or challenged my faith. Why? Because there are a few things that are central to my testimony and I diligently protect and sustain them with my faith. For example, I know that God lives, and I know that His Son, Jesus Christ, is both the Creator and Savior of the world. These are gifts given to me and regularly renewed for me by the Holy Ghost. With this knowledge firmly in place, I find that I am free to explore and examine any combination of spiritual and/or temporal questions. There are times when I think I might have reached a plausible conclusion about an issue or question, but I carefully protect myself from the tendency to deal in absolutes. I am always open to more data and more revelation as I seek to refine and purify my knowledge. I am also perfectly willing to leave the resolution of some issues to a future “celestial classroom” where “perfect knowledge” will surely abound and where “perfect love casteth out all fear.”⁵

Dr. Milton Lee (Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry from Indiana University) talks of the pursuit of truth as a scientist and as a Mormon:

As a scientist, I seek for truth, and as a believer in Jesus Christ and a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I seek for truth. I believe that these two efforts are not exclusive of one another, but should come together when absolute truth becomes known. In fact, I have found that one enhances the other in a number of ways. For instance, the allegory of the seed told by Alma in the Book of Mormon (Alma 32) follows the pattern of the scientific method. -Dr. Milton Lee

(Speaking of the scientific method, here’s another post, The Scientific Method, that explores similar thoughts: “In a science experiment you would use statistics to determine if your hypothesis can be rejected, something any statistician will tell you that you can never know for sure, but rather only with a certain level of confidence. Instead, when seeking answers to spiritual hypotheses, you have to receive your answer from the source of spiritual knowledge: God himself.”)

Dr. Angela M. Berg Robertson (Ph.D., Harvard University, Organismic and Evolutionary Biology) shares her conviction that God knows “infinitely more” than we ever could.

“’[M]an doth not comprehend all the things which the Lord can comprehend,” not only applies in research. I find great comfort in knowing that God understands what I do not. He understands how we can live again after we die. He understands how we can be bound forever to our families. He understands how the suffering of Jesus Christ paid for my mistakes. He understands infinitely more.

Dr. Lynn H. Slaugh (Ph.D., Chemistry, University of Washington)

It was never intended that we should prove scientifically the existence of our Savior and our Father in Heaven. Nevertheless, there are numerous observations that certainly proclaim a divine creator. Many have observed and marveled at the amazing ORDER and complexity of living things, especially man, and have taken this to be a strong indicator of a divine, all-powerful creator.

Read more thoughts from more Mormon scientists and Mormons in other professional specialties at Mormon Scholars Testify.

This essay on Mormon Science and Scientists looks at these questions with an historical perspective.

You can read numerous profiles of Mormons who are also scientists at Mormon.org

For example, Kenneth (a Mormon who has a Ph.D. in chemistry) says: ‘[D]espite all my schooling and secular knowledge, I know God is real and lives. Indeed all the science I understand shows to me The handiwork of a divine creator, God.”

Jon says: “I am a chemist who works at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and love being both a scientist and a Mormon, because the ultimate goal of both is truth. I have absolutely no problem reconciling science and religion.”

See more about the faith of more Mormons who are scientists at Mormon.org

Kathleen has a master’s degree in physics and is working on her Ph.D. in astronomy (and is thinking about medical school!)

Suzanne has a Ph.D. and teaches chemistry and biology

Chantel has a Ph.D. in genetics and is doing postdoctoral work

Kirk is almost ready to retire from his career in biometerology

Jen is a conservation biologist

Laura is an environmental scientist

Jillian is working on her Ph.D. in biomedical science

Michal has a Ph.D. with a focus on microbiology/infectious disease

You can find many more profiles by going to “Meet Mormons” at Mormon.org and searching on ‘scientist’ in the search bar.

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Image courtesy of -grimbart- at Wikimedia Commons

Grateful for the reprieve, I drive carefully; no radio. The thermostat in the van reads 48 degrees outside. Warm! I wonder if it will snow before Christmas.

I feel the temple before I see it, dozens of people coming and going. Because of the timing of day, I find a parking space easily. I slip out of the car, leaving my cell phone behind. I walk up the sidewalk and notice, with grateful alarm, the large life-size statues of the Nativity. I make a mental note to stop on the way out to see it better.

Entering the doors of the Provo, Utah Temple, I walk to the front desk. Handing over my temple recommend, an older gentleman behind me mistakes me for someone else. I smile as he hastily apologizes. The recommend desk worker smiles and welcomes me by my married name. I thank him and walk into the sitting area just beyond the desk. I sit down. I wait.

It only takes about a minute; my good friend arrives with smiles and hugs. We walk back to the women’s locker room. We sign up to do Initiatory work. Washings and Anointings. The step before the Endowment. Having received my own twelve years ago, I am here to do it for other people. For more women –my sisters –who have passed from this life.

We sit, we wait, we talk quietly. There are a lot of women here today; the thought makes my heart sing. I wonder who these women are, waiting with us. Do they have young children at home? Did they also have to find a sitter? Do they come often, or not often enough –like me? I also wonder about the women we are doing ordinances for –were they mothers? Aunts? Did they die old? Young? The temple workers call my name.

The feeling I receive when I do temple work is hard to describe. Peace is the closest word. Joy is next. I feel selfish when I go –I may do it for other women, but really, I do it for me. I do it so I can remember. Remember my covenants. Remember my blessings. Remember my joy.

My friend and I leave the temple happier than when we came. We sit on a bench across from the life-size Nativity. We talk of LDS missions as we watch missionaries from the nearby MTC (Missionary Training Center) coming and going to the temple. I comment on their youth. She reminisces on her own mission to South America. Time passes too quickly and it is time to leave.

We part and go back to our lives. We are both mothers; we are both tired. Driving back, I leave the radio off again. I hit every green light but arrive at my neighbor’s house fifteen minutes after I told him I’d be back. His graciousness is evident; he doesn’t mind. His own son had fun; my sons did, too. Hugs, shoes, coats, and we walk across the street home.

I stay in my dress all day. I don’t want to forget.