Just to recap, I asked the HT's to start teaching the church essays. Last month was nauvoo polygamy and this month was the first vision.

My TBM wife was surprised to hear about the different versions. Specifically the 1832 account written by Jospeh himself. I'll have her read it later tonight and get her thoughts on that version vs. The official published version.

I always like to hear the HT's give the standard reasons why this or that happened. I find it comical when people state Joseph was "uneducated" and only had a 3rd grade understanding of things and that's why his 1832 account differs from the other versions.

Next month, book of Abraham. I'll return and report.

Brilliant -- using church-aproved materials to slowly collapse the shelf.

That's such an awesome thing you got going. Hopefully it will open the minds of your wife and hometeachers.

Funny that your wife never heard of the different versions.

If JS only had a '3rd grade understanding' does that mean he didn't understand the different 1st level, 2nd 3rd & 4th level truths properly?

... and why there are thousands of changes to the BoM?

And Smith's obsession with buried treasure, ghost stories, adventure stories, war themes...

And that his maps, buried treasure... made him feel entitled to behave like a pirate with women and teens...

Even a third grader could count how many people appeared.

Just for kicks, I asked my kindergartener how many people are in the room. He correctly counted four. My four year old just correctly counted too.

Neibaur that God had Blue Eyes...

Levitcus:

How do you think your HT's are taking this information so far?

I can't wait to hear about the lesson on the BoA. That info is what brought my shelf crashing to the ground. One minute I was TBM, the next minute I wasn't, and knew I never would be again.

I will be very interested to hear how they handle that information.

They have both stated the essays have been interesting and contained information they did not know before. In both lessons they have defaulted to pretty generic TBM excuses. It gives me an opportunity to challenge their TBM reasoning with minimal conflict. As an example, In the polygamy essay they said God needed polygamy in the last days to raise up a righteous seed and it would be impossible to have the 15 million members we have today without polygamy. I quickly fired back the seventh day Adventists have 18 million members and as far as I know didn't practice polygamy.

I can tell it's challenging their conventional understanding a little. I don't anticipate either will lose their testimonies over it, although you never know what might cause someone's shelf to collapse. One was the bishop a few years back and the other is on the high council.

Did you already share what happened with the polygamy essay (regarding JS marrying other men's wives...) what did your wife say about that? (Or is that addressed in a JS essay?)

Mormons don't seem phased that polygamy was illegal/that prophets lied about not participating WHILE participating in breaking the law of the land.

Good for you... great idea.