“Because young men and young women ages 12 through 18 are a vital part of hastening the work of salvation, please invite and encourage them to attend the Saturday evening sessions of the stake conferences in 2014.” Thus the First Presidency was quoted regarding the schedule for our upcoming stake conference in March.

A couple months ago when an employee of the Church’s Research Information Division asked me and others of my ward what the Church could do to help families prepare youth for mission, I said a more coherent message was desirable. Is the great value of 18-year-old missionaries that they are simple (19-year-olds not being simple enough), or is it that they are prepared despite their youth? If this is the answer, I like it.

I now have to come up with a babysitter, though. Maybe the neighbor gentile girl will be available. Thinking about it, maybe I will stay home with the younger Mansfields. My thoughts are conflicting. The adult evening session has always been the more insiderish part of stake conference, for people willing to go to church on a Saturday night. I want the youth to be part of that, but can it remain that with a bunch of teenagers dragged along by parents? In particular, I fear an overdose of focus on the youth of the noble birthright during the inauguration of this change that I wouldn’t mind missing.

Christian gentleman and friend of the blog Arakawa is mulling humor in heaven.
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“At the beginning of that 40-year period [1890 to 1930], bread was the country’s single most important food and 90 per cent of it was baked in homes by women. By the end of the period, bread was still the country’s number one food, but 94 per cent of it was baked outside the home by men. With the exception of a few, mostly rural, households, bread production had been almost entirely displaced from the realm of women’s work and the space of the home.”

From “White bread bio-politics: purity, health, and the triumph of industrial baking” by Aaron Bobrow-Strain, quoted by Steve Sailer.

Fer mah gift, I was durn pleased to unwrap a hootin’, tootin’ sure nuff SpaceX pillar o’ fire. Yeehah!