Core Beliefs 

There is a God.

He is aware of us and loves us.

We are his children.

He has a plan to let us be as hapy as we allow ourselves to be.

The Family is central to God's plan for us.

God rules in the temporal affairs of Men.

History is directed by God according to his foreknowledge.

This does not abridge our agency.

The Constitution of the United States is inspired by God.

The United States of America, (and any other nation) will prosper as long as they obey the God of the land, who is Jesus Christ.

I respect the right of others to disagree.

ANCESTORS

  

My Aunt Rainie had come to visit. She brought her geneaology with her. I remember the smell of old paper. I had seen four generation charts before. Quite a few members of our church seemed to have at least a partially filled four generation chart, showing at least some of their great great grandparents. But Rainie had an extended generation chart with her. It was not just the standard legal pad size piece of paper, rather it folded out like a roadmap into eight or ten generations.

I was intrigued. When I was younger our family lived in a rented house on Beck Avenue in Cody, Wyoming. The owners had left a trunk of books in the basement. The books had that same smell of old paper. It is an intoxicating scent. It speaks of ages long past, of the clash of battles so far away that they only whisper and sigh. Frederick the Great was in the books and Napoleon and others and though the words were bigger than I could easily read, the engraved pictures kept me occupied for hours. I daydreamed of long ago strife and glory.

Now some of the Germanic sounding names as I had seen in the History Books were on Rainie’s genealogical road map. I wondered about the people behind the names. Who were they? What did they do for work or for fun? Did they have to go to war? How did their children come to be in the western United States, as my ancestors?

I decided to start copying down the names. But there were at least a couple hundred names and I ran out of time. Rainie left and took the chart with her. I had been bitten by the bug.

I wanted to have all the names Rainie had. I wanted to know who they all were. I wanted to see the sights they had seen and do the things they did.    I knew that I belonged to these people and I really wanted to know more about them.

Rainie had also brought a four generation chart, but it was not like the others I had seen.
Instead of names in the blank spots there were photos of my family members. Their eyes gazed out at me from another time. Did they still exist? Did they know about me? Did they care?
If I tried to honor them would they honor me?

A few years later, I took a class in geneology at BYU.   One of the assignments was to go to the library and research  one of our ancestors on the census records.    I chose my Mother's grandfather,  Anthony Meredith Sharp.  The family legend was that He and his brother, Jeff, had come west to Montana looking for their Father, Abraham who went west and said he would send for the family.  He never returned and they never heard from him again.

I got help from a reference librarian who situated me at a microfilm reader, and set me up with a roll of microfilm from the Kentucky 1850 Census, for Russellville, Kentucky.  I began to turn the crank on the reader and the blurred negative images began to glide past my gaze.  They were in a difficult scrawled hand and were at first hard to make out, but after a few minutes I began to get the drift and was able to read most of the  entries.  Over an hour passed.  No sign of Anthony.  I began to get a bit droopy and unmotivated.  The movement of the film had an almost hypnotic effect. 

Suddenly I was shocked awake from the stupor.  The family name Sharp was before my eyes.  The head of houshold was a woman of 63, named Elizabeth,  there were two ten year old boys, Anthony and Jefferson.
It is hard to describe the feeling of meeting a great grandparent.  I was surprised to realize that my eyes were stinging.  I surrepticiously  wiped at them, embarrassed by the sudden emotion.

Now Grandpa Anthony and I are old acquaintences.  I have taken his line back many generations.  One of his Grandfathers is Charlemagne.  My addiction to Family History has only grown since then.  I don't know everything about my ancestors, but I know they still exist.  You don't feel love from something that no longer exists.

                  West Virginia Memories

 

                                                  I have always loved history. My Mom and Dad fed this love by buying me many good books and I still remember the thrill of opening a book on the Civil War and being transported to another place and time. I dreamed of visiting the places I read about. I knew so much about Gettysburg and other battlefields that I could be a guide.
For years I made various plans that never seemed to come to fruition to visit these places. Finally, several years ago. Luisa and I were able to make this trip of a lifetime. We flew to Philadelphia and visited Independence Hall and saw the Liberty Bell. We saw where Washington crossed the Delaware River and won the Battle of Trenton on Christmas day of 1776. We headed south and saw the "Star Spangled Banner" waving proudly in the breeze over Fort McHenry, in Baltimore. We toured Washington D.C.; the Capitol, the Snithsonian and Mount Vernon.
We headed south into Virginia. We saw the stone wall at Fredricksburg and Stonewall
Jackson’s death site. We saw the House at Appomattox Courthouse where Lee surrendered to Grant to end the Civil War.
A rainy Sunday Morning found us in Harrisonburg Virginia, in the middle of the Shenandoah Valley. We attended church in the morning and were going to stay in Charlottesville that evening. We had the afternoon to explore.
I had learned from Mom and from Loralee about our West Virginia relatives. I knew that Mary Flinn was born in Pendleton County, West Virginia. I had studied and learned that there was a Bland Hills Road somewhere in Pendleton County. I knew that Mary’s mother, Mahala Raines, was born in Bland Hills. So I had planned to drive over the mountain from the Shenandoah Valley to Pendleton County to look around a bit.
It was still raining heavily as we headed west over the Blue Ridge Mountains. The trees were beautiful, green and dense. The only respite from woodland was an occasional farm clearing. The rolling hills were suitably mysterious peeking in and out of the clouds. We felt as if we were entering another time. The rain slowed and then stopped. Sunshine warmed the fields and meadows and woodlands of Pendleton County. We arrived in Riverton, West Virginia and slowly drove through the small town. I realized that everything was closed because it was Sunday. I thought it was going to be difficult to find anyone who could point me in the right direction. We passed a funeral home. There was a man and a woman sitting on the porch of the funeral home drinking lemonade. I had driven two or three blocks before the Spirit said, "If you wanted to know where the cemeteries in Pendleton County were located who might you ask?"
I turned the car around and returned to talk to the funeral director who was very kind and directed me towards the North Fork Valley. He said, "There are literally hundreds of family Cemeteries in Pendleton County, but there is a more recent Cemetery on the North Fork that has some of the names you mentioned."
Back in the car we drove north over the next range of hills. As we reached the summit a beautiful valley lay beneath our gaze. We stopped, supposing that there were probably not may other such vistas unblocked by trees, and took some pictures. Several hundred yards down the hill a road sign pointed us to "Bland Hills Road". We turned right down a narrow 1 ½ lane road that steeply curved downward around hairpin turns. As we passed farmhouses we looked for names on mailboxes that were Flinn, Bland or Raines with no results. There was one small family cemetery with a stone marking where Arley Bland, who died in World War I, was buried.
At the bottom of the hill there was a memorial to a long forgotten battle of the Civil War where two local men died. One of those men was Eli Parry Bland. We felt like we were getting warm.
A right turn and four or five miles brought us to the North Fork Cemetery. There were Flinn’s, Bland’s and Raine’s buried here but all had died after 1960. Dark Clouds floated above us and thunder rumbled across the valley.
We were about to turn back, but a saw a sign advertising Seneca Caverns, five miles north. I thought perhaps they would be open on a Sunday and I might be able to borrow or buy a phone book from them to locate family names. I supposed the Lord might overlook my Sabbath indiscretion if I were doing family history research. We came to Seneca Caverns which was, indeed open. I went to the Gift shop and inquired about a phone book. The clerk said, "You would have to check with our manager, Steve." I asked her to call him and said I was searching for family who had lived in the valley in the 17 and 1800's, I said the names I was looking for were Flinn, Bland and Raines. The clerk looked amused, "Then you will definitely want to talk to Steve. His Mama was a Bland and his Daddy was a Raines. Steve Raines was happy and excited to talk to me. He introduced me to two of my cousins who were waitressing at the restaurant. "Who you really need to talk to is Guy Bland. Jes go back the way ya come. Jes the other side of the road from Bland Hills Road is Guy Bland Road cuz Guy lives on it. Pass the old trailer house, ain’t no one lives theah,. and the old Bland Cemetery, drop down intuh the holler. Guy lives by the red and white pick-up."
We followed Steve’s directions and came to Guy Bland’s house. It looked like it could have belonged to Jed Clampett. Guy was pleased to see us. He was in his 80's. He said, "Who ya really need ta see is Ruby Swadley. She knows all ‘bout the family. I’ll give her a ring fer ya." He picked up the phone, dialed, waited and then said, "Hey, Ruby, they’s some nice folks from Utah ‘ud like to talk to ya ‘bout the family. Kin I send ‘em over? Great, they’ll be right along." As we left Guy told us, "Y’all come back now."
Ruby Swadley lived in the second house on the right down Bland Hills Road. We had passed it an hour or so before. Ruby Swadley, born Bland is Loralee’s 3^rd Cousin. She was living in a house build by her Great Grandfather Enoch Bland, Son of Thomas Bland, Loralee and my common 4^th Great Grandfather. We had a wonderful talk. She knew about the church and worked with some LDS people on family history. She said this land was the original Bland Homestead. And that Thomas and Rachel Shoulders were buried just up the hill. She said that the overlook we stopped at and took a picture from overlooked the Germany Valley which was also called the "Old Flinn Place". The rock formation just above the overlook was called "Old Tom" because it looked like Thomas Bland reclining in profile. She said that it was probably too cloudy to see, but later, as we left and stopped at the overlook, the sun was out and we got a 2 good photo of "Old Tom".
I parked the car and walked up the hill through the tall wet grass and weeds. The sun came out and the vegetation glowed in the haze. I was wet up to my thighs and later I wondered if there were snakes or chiggers, but I was floating in a happy cloud. I was walking on land that my 4^th Great Grandfather had owned. He had walked here and chopped wood here and had children here. He lived and died here. I looked down on the graves of he and Rachel.
When I returned home, I began to search the internet. ( www.familysearch.org  is a great place to start..)  Based on the information I had received. Now I know that we are related to probably 80% of Pendleton County. It has become a home place. We have found well over a thousand of our West Virginia Relatives.

Stendahl's Three Rules

 

These are three excellent rules for having a substantive and civilized dialogue about religion:

Truman Madsen, now retired as Richard L. Evans Professor of Christian Understanding at Brigham Young University, relates an instructive anecdote about a great New Testament scholar, Krister Stendahl. Stendahl, who taught at Harvard for many years and served as the dean of Harvard Divinity School, also spent a few years as the Lutheran bishop of Stockholm.
During Stendahl's tenure there, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints built a temple nearby. As commonly happens when Mormons build a temple, there was complaining, puzzlement, and some opposition among the local people. Bishop Stendahl, who has Latter-day Saint friends and had visited Brigham Young University, reacted dramatically and quite unexpectedly.
He called a press conference, and held it in an LDS stake center. There, among other things, he outlined to the Swedish press three principles that he thought should govern our discussions of the religious beliefs of other people. Prof. Madsen, who was there, summarizes them as:

(1) If you want to know what others believe, ask them. Don't ask their critics or their enemies.
(2) When looking at the religious faith of others, compare your best with their best, not their worst with your best.
(3) Always leave room for "holy envy."

Some explanation and examples will make these three principles clearer.
The first should be fairly obvious. Enemies of a religious faith are unlikely to present it as its believers would. They are, in fact, quite likely to distort it and caricature it -- unwittingly if they are honest, deliberately if (as all too often happens) they are unscrupulous and seek only a cheap and easy victory. This does not necessarily mean that there is no place for critics, or for listening to them. But if we really want to understand another religion, they should not be our first resource.
The second principle is "When looking at the religious faith of others, compare your best with their best, not their worst with your best." We commonly hear people contrast the loving ethics taught by Jesus in the New Testament with the acts of self-proclaimed Islamic terrorists. But it is not at all fair to compare our seldom-achieved moral ideal with horrid crimes that are, despite their prominence in the newspapers and on television, still relatively rare among the world's hundreds of millions of Muslims. The butchery of the "Christian" crusades would be a more appropriate comparison to Islamic terrorism. And the death decree against Salman Rushdie should not be compared to Mother Teresa of Calcutta, but to the Inquisition and the burnings of heretics that punctuated the history of the West and lack real parallel in the Islamic East.
Stendahl reminded his Swedish audience of the human element that unavoidably affects even the most pure beliefs. If a religion is revealed, it is nonetheless revealed through fallible mortals. Alluding to the explanation on the title page of the Book of Mormon that "if there are faults they are the mistakes of men," this eminent Lutheran theologian commented that such frankness increased his confidence in the book, rather than decreasing it [Italics added].
Finally, Stendahl counseled his audience to leave room for what he termed "holy envy." We can learn greatly from faithful practitioners and believers of other faiths. The loving, joyous reverence of Orthodox Jews for the Sabbath -- far from the cold, mechanical legalism of the stereotype -- challenges us whose observance of the Lord's day is often routine and perfunctory. Likewise, we can profit by reflecting upon the Jewish passion for religious learning, the simplicity and service of the Mennonites, the heroism of Protestant missionaries under terribly difficult conditions, and the social idealism of Dorothy Day and her Catholic Worker movement.
Regarding Mormons and their temples, Stendahl suggested baptism for the dead as an object of "holy envy." We do nothing for our dead, he said. It is as if we have forgotten them. In contrast, he observed, the Latter-day Saints seek to bring the blessings of Christ's atonement even to the dead.
At a minimum, observing Krister Stendahl's three principles would eliminate much of the religious strife in a world that is growing ever smaller and more interdependent and that can no longer afford such conflict.

Shakey was a dog

(A Re-blog from 2007)

Posted by Mike Bennion on Tuesday, August 07, 2007 1:32:59 AM

     When my kids were small we got a dog named Rusty.  He was too rough for them and we gave him away.
    After this fiasco, every time the kids asked for a dog Mom said, "No".  This went on for about ten years.
One day I got a phone call at work.  It was Luisa, my wife.  there was tenderness in her voice,  "There are puppies here!  The principal of the school where she worked had a dog who had puppies. 
    That evening, just over fifteen years ago,  a small cream and yellow bundle of joy wormed his way into our hearts.  He was wiggly and had sharp little puppy teeth, and had that wonderful puppy smell.  He was part Golden Lab and part Cocker Spaniel.  He had Lab ears with a semi-pug spaniel nose and a docked tail.  the Movie, "Beethoven"  had been out for a few years.  We opted to go literary instead of musical, and he was named "Shakespeare".  This worked well because when we came home he would meet us at the door with great enthusiasm and his docked tail would go a ile a minute.  He shook all over with excitement,  so we called him "Shakey"  for short.
    When Shakey came to live with us we already had tow cats, Tigger and Tasha.  Tigger whipped the young pup into shape and they soon all became great friends.  They all slept together in a contented heap.
    We were living in California when Shakey came to be part of our family, but soon moved to Southern Utah.
We had no fence at the new house so Shakey lived in the Garage for a few weeks while I was at work and the family hadn't come to Utah yet.  I would walk Shakey everyday when I came home form work and this became a habit.
    There was a pasture near the house.  the first time Shakey smelled a horse he came to attention and looked at me as if th say, "What in the heck is that?"  We went down the street everyday to a wash. and Shakey would explore.  One day we met a skunk in the dark.  Shakey wanted to be friends.  the skunk was not sure.  We got Shakey out just in time.
    Shakey soon learned that he loved cheese.  His nickname became "cheesedog".  The slightest crackle of plastic wrap at the fridge would bring him running.  He learned to do tricks for cheese.  He would give paws, Sit, lay down, speak and dance.  Liesel was a great drill sargeant, putting Shakey, through his paces.
    Kal-Erik teased the dog unmercifully and they would chase each other around the room.  Shawn was our trumpet player and Shakey would "sing along" with him, or with the TV.  Especially if he heard the Tabernacle Organ.  When the door bell rang on TV he would run barking to the door.
    The kids grew up and left hime one at a time.  Karl-Erik went for two years to serve a mission for our Church in the Philippines, where he was fed dog.  Shakey must have known because he bit Karl-Erik when he came home.  Shawn went to Argentina on a mission and Shakey bit him when he came home to be an "equal opportunity" biter.  He never bit Liesel.
    The cats left us one at a time. Tasha first.  Then Tigger, got cancer, shrank to skin and bones, and jsut went away one day.  Shakey was devestated and confused.  He looked around the house for days.  He took to going in and out of the house every half hour or so.   When we moved to Nevada we bought a doggy door.
    Several years ago Shakey was run over.  He suffered a collapsed lung and a broken pelvis and went deaf.
We thought we were going to lose him, but he bouced back and became hale and hearty again.  He never recovered his hearing, however, and the singing stopped.  He only barked in his sleep now.
    Shakey loved our walks in Henderson.  We had one dog down the street who jumped as high as the block wall and we always tried to sneak past.  He loved to greet all the other dogs, tail doing a little dance as he got acquainted.
    A few months ago Shakey got a tumor.  He was operated on and began to recover.  Then he came down with pancreatitis, and wouldn't eat.  The vet treated him and he became our "1,500 dollar dog".  At first he seemed to be getting better, but then started refusing dog food, His weight dropped drastically and we started seeing his ribs underneath the fur.  We tried to give him chicken and pedialite.  He despise the pedialite, and tolerated the chicken, but then wouldn't eat that.  Luisa had to go north to look after Liesel and Blake,  (our daughter and son-in-law) as Blake gets ready for open heart surgery this Thursday.
    I fed Shakey beef and he ate it at first but started refusing it two days ago.  this morning he was wobbly on his feet.  He had been breathing shallow and rapidly for same weeks.  He was moaning today when I came home.
     I took him out for a last walk.  He sniffed at the scents that the breeze gave him, but he walked so slowly with a limp, dragging his hind feet.  I put him in the car and drove to the vet's.  I picked him up and hugged him tightly, then handed him to the Vet, and he was gone.
    But he will live agian, and in the mean time, he is no longer old and tired.  I expect to see him again some day.
    Karl-Erik wrote a song about Shakey.  I called him tonight and asked him to sing it to his kids .
   
                                                                "Shakey was a dog
                                                                   a very good dog
                                                                   a very good dog
                                                                        Shakey".

Miracles

 (Note:  I am migrating some old posts from a previous blog to this site note the dates published below. As you can see, Blake is doing very well.  Finishing Law School this next week.)

 

Posted by Mike Bennion on Tuesday, August 14, 2007 2:22:10 AM

     Six weeks ago I was on a hike in Zion canyon with my daughter Liesel and son-in-law Blake.  We were climbing a steep, sand covered ridge, into a box canyon.  I wanted to show them the incredible echo.  A shout there bounces off the red sandstone cliffs and echoes 11 or 12 times.  One shouted song becomes a choir of angels.
    My slightly over middle aged lungs were protesting fiercely as we climbed two steps forward, only to slide back one, in the sand.  But  I was determined to reach the top.  Liesel finally said:  "Dad, we're tired,   we'll wait here."
I pushed on, reveling in my superior strength.  I had just walked two 20 somethings into the ground!
    Two weeks later Blake was in the doctors office, having a cinder removed form his eye after a 4th of July fireworks show.  He and Liesel mentioned to the doctor that Blake was short of breath alot.  Everyone thought he had asthma.  The doctor thought maybe that was the problem too, but at their insistence , he listened carefully to Blake's heart for ten minutes and finally said, "I think I hear a murmur, we'd better get an EKG."
The EKG confirmed that there were indeed serious problems with Blake's heart.  Further tests confirmed that
Blake's had mitral valve stenosis, a blockage of the mitral valve, probably caused by an undiagnosed case of rheumatic fever, as well as an aortic valve that was regugitating 50 percent of the blood that should flow through it.  Blake and Liesel's lives changed abruptly that day.
    My smugness about our hike turned into deep concern at the news.  My wife left to go to them to help prepare for the surgery that needed to follow.  I was left home to care for a dying dog (see "Shakey was a dog")
and finish up some projects at work, and to worry.  Friends of many religious persuasions prayed for our kids.
    I left last wednesday, to go north.  Blake was to have surgery on thursday morning.  Upon arriving in Provo, Utah where the kids are attending school, at BYU, Luisa and I went to two softball games that Blake and Liesel participated in.  Blake played like there was no tomorrow.  He would come in from running the bases, white-faced and gasping like an octogenarian.  I hoped he wouldn't have a heart attack on the spot.  He left the game with abrasions on his shins from sliding into base, and the team ready to play in the finals the next day.
But Blake would have a final of his own the next morning.
    A worried dream-shattered sleep ended at 4:30 a.m. on Thursday morning.  We drove to the Hospital by 6:00 a.m. and met Liesel and Blake's mom and grandma.  Liesel had just bid goodbye to Blake as he was wheeled through the doors of the surgical section and out of her sight.  She looked pale and drawn.
    We were shown to a waiting room.  We went and found some breakfast and soon a kind nurse in scrubs came to take us to a private waiting room and to explain that she would be our information source.  She said that she would come hourly or as circumstances required to give us updates on the progress of the surgery.
With that she left and we began the long wait.
    Perhaps an hour later I left the waiting room to stretch my legs.  I walked through the revolving doors out into the bright sunshine of an August morning.  I stood by the sculpture of a father playing with his two sons.  Suddenly I was warmed by an inner sunshine.  I felt a profound sense of peace descend on my mind and my heart.  I knew as surely as I have known anything that we had nothing to fear.  The surgery was going to be successful.  I returned to the waiting room, now accompanied by the continued warmth of this knowledge.
    I hadn't been back more than a few minutes when the nurse, returned with an update:  "They have opened, and they have him on the Heart/Lung machine" she said, "and they have started to work on his heart."
Tears sprang to Liesel's eyes.  She told me later, that the whole absract concept of Blake's surgery had suddenly become horribly real.  In her mind's eye, she saw her husband, of  less than eight months, senseless, on the operating table, with his chest pried open and his heart stopped. 
    A quiet voice inside my heart said, "You have a gift to share with your daughter,  you have peace.  Give her some.  I laid my hands on her head and gave her a blessing.  I told her that God had told me that everything was going to be "wonderful"; that Blake would come through this trial and live and recover.
    Good friends provided company, empathy and food throughout the day.  The kind nurse came hour after hour with increasingly good news.  Then the Surgeon came and spoke with Liesel.  He was tired but very pleased.  Things had gone as well as they could have possibly gone.  They were able to repair, rather than replace the scarred mitral valve, and the aortic valve was replaced with a cadaver vlave, rather than a mechanical valve. This meant the Blake would not have to take Cumidin (sp), the blood thinner that would have limited his physical activities.  The Doctor said that the aortic valve was "a perfect fit--like it was custom made for Blake."
    A nineteen year old boy died in a car accident this week.  His parent's brave decision to allow their son to become an organ donor, gave Liesel and Blake a second chance at life.  There aren't words enough in my language and warm thoughts of thanks enough in my heart to tell those good people, who are grieving while we rejoice, what it means to us that they made such a courageous choice at a devastating time.
    Later in the afternoon Blake's family gathered around his bedside in the ICU.  He looked like he had been run over by a truck, and the nurse said he was probably in more pain than he had ever felt.  But the nurses said that in comparison to most of the patients they saw in ICU, Blake looked very good.  They said it was a pleasure to take care of someone so young and otherwise healthy.  Blake's Uncle Evan and I placed out hands on Blake's head and gave him a blessing.  God told Blake that he would only have the pain required for him to learn what he needed to know, that he would "run and not be weary and walk and not faint"  and that he would live to see his grandchildren and great=grandchildren.
    Twenty-four hours later he was out of ICU.  Today,  four days after open-heart surgery, that his doctors described as a "once in a career surgery", Blake was released form the hospital.  Yesterday, I watched with joy as he and Liesel looked adoringly in each other's eyes and kissed.  Their soft ball team won the intramural championship on the evening of Blake's surgery, and brought Championship Tee-shirts to the hospital.  The shirts were hard won, but represent a far greater victory.
    We had friends who spontaneously dropped everything, to give us a place to stay, food to eat, and words to comfort us.  they cried with us, laughed with us, prayed for us, and rejoice with us.  And they are just one wonderful part of the miracles, that point us to the greatest miracle of all:  Eternal life, the greatest of all the gifts of God.