Hi Folks!! Today I’m blogging you from Salt Lake City, Utah — where I’ll be participating in the Sunstone Symposium! Anyone who is in town and wants to get together, please email me: chanson dot exmormon at gmail dot com.
Today is a special day in Utah, though so far I’ve seen very few posts about it in Outer Blogness.
However, our own pioneers this week have written about their journey through Mormonism! We’ve got some new exit stories and a BEL (big exit letter). Our first William Law X-Mormon of the Year wrote his story, see also Andrew’s review of it. Makes you wonder what causes people to be religious.
Plus folks have started some new blogs (note: I’ll be adding the backlog of new blogs to Outer Blogness as soon as I get back to Switzerland). One of the September six accepted rebaptism, apparently without receiving any kind of apology from the CoJCoL-dS. Meanwhile the church is losing loads of members in Sweden.
In other Mormonisms, there were some fun hymns. Diana argues for allowing faithful Mormons to have their say. Yet, Mormonism is not without its side-effects. And one of the all-time worst talks strikes again!
This week’s grab-bag contains two topics: Fear of living up to stereotypes and lessons learned from the recent movie theater shooting.
The best laugh of the week? The 11 Most Unintentionally Hilarious Religious Paintings (hat tip). These Mormon memes are pretty funny too!
And let me close with everyone’s favorite topic: my adventures!! My cousin posted about her experiences at our recent family reunion, and I got to visit Camp Quest in conjunction with this year’s competition for Team Awesome Underdogs (see here, here, here, here, here, and here) to re-beat PZ Myers!
If you’re currently in SLC, I hope to see you soon!! And, if not — have a great week anyway!
I wish I was in SLC, but only to visit you.
All of my sibs are finally done with BYU and BYU-I, and so I only have to enter the state by choice, not because we are doing our vacations there, so that a pregnant sisters or sister-in-law doesn’t have to travel during their last trimester. Yes we are more spread out and don’t see each other that often, but when we do see each other IT. IS. NOT. IN. UTAH!
I know there are nice people who live in Utah, the skiing is great (I don’t ski) and that the hiking is fabulous in the spring and fall (I Love to hike!) and that there is a dinosaur museum. Oregon also has great people, I live half way up Mt Hood, which is 20-30 minutes from Timberline Lodge (if you ski you know where on Mt Hood that is), and I have 15+ hiking trails that I can get to in 10-15 minutes.
So, I admit that I would much rather have you all come visit me (we have extra rooms with beds) than travel to Utah or Idaho.
Now that I have rambled, how are you enjoying Utah?