Dialann | Issue 8, October 2012

ISSUE 8 OCTOBER 2012

‘The worth of souls is great in the sight of God’ A CHURCH TALK ON RESPONDING TO BULLYING

ISSUE 8 OCTOBER 2012

table of contents 6

THE JOURNAL

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Susan: Fiona turns two

As usual, we went to the beach. But this time it was on the Google Wallet Express.

COLOPHON Our family Susan Jane Hibdon Joyce Dustin Tyler Joyce Fiona Claire Joyce

4 Dustin: Of junk & memories

Dustin finds that sorting through his stuff is a great source of memories—and trash.

6 Fiona: My first days at school

Fiona reflects on starting preschool.

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HERE & THERE

8 April–September 2012 10 Dustin’s stuffed animals

Dustin remembers the stuffed animals he had growing up.

OUR TIMES

12 London hosts the Summer Olympics 12

By Alan Abrahamson | nbcolympics.com The United Kingdom hosts the XXX Olympiad. Or so we hear—we didn’t actually watch any of it.

BOOK REPORT

14 American prophet

By Dustin | Dustin review’s Richard Lyman Bushman’s “cultural biography” of the Prophet Joseph Smith, Rough Stone Rolling.

WE BELIEVE IN CHRIST

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16 ‘The worth of souls is great in the sight of God’

By Dustin | All of us will be touched by bullying at some point in our lives. As disciples of Jesus Christ, we are his hands in lifting up those affected by it.

23 Dustin’s priesthood line of authority

Like all priesthood holders, Dustin can trace his priesthood authority to the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.

On the cover Front: Fiona on the bridge in front of Grand Central Terminal during Summer Streets, 18 August 2012.

Photo by Susan.

Back: Fiona climbs rocks on the beach, Long Branch, New Jersey, 14 July 2012.

Photo by Dustin.

Sans serif text is set in Hypatia Sans Pro. Serif text is set in Adobe Text Pro. The motif color used in this issue is C=30, M=59, Y=87, K=44 This issue was designed on a Dell Inspiron ONE2305 desktop, with 4 GB of RAM, a 1 TB hard drive, and an AMD Athlon II X2 240e processor with a speed of 2.8 GHz. The software used includes InDesign, Photoshop, and Illustrator in Adobe Creative Suite 5.5, as well as Microsoft Word 2010.

The operating system was Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit.

Dialann—Irish for “journal”—is published quarterly at New York, in January, April, July, and October. dialann@seoighe.net youtube.com/DialannTV Published by Seoighe 646.397.0403 New York 202.643.0403 Washington, D.C. seoighe.net Printed by Blurb | blurb.com

Did you know? U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps won more medals during his Olympic career than any other athlete in history— and more than 154 nations, including Morocco (21 medals), Chile (13), and Vietnam (2), which have fewer all-time medals. SEE PAGE 12

THE JOURNAL SUSAN

Fiona turns two. And, as usual, we go to the beach. But this time it was on the Google Wallet Express.

Fiona’s tiedye cupcake

PHOSPHORESCENT!

TASTY! Susan’s peanutbutter-cup cupcake

TASTY! Dustin’s red velvet cupcake

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14 July 2012

T

his year, Fiona reached the big ohtwo. We decided to go to the beach again, which, I suppose, means that we will be going to the beach for her birthday for the rest of her life. Which will be just fine as long as all of the birthday beach trips are as awesome as this one!

The one downside of the trip—which I will mention first, to get it out of the way—was the unfortunate bathing suit situation. We hadn’t been to a pool all summer, and therefore hadn’t bought Fiona a new bathing suit. So two days before the big event, I took her to a few stores that I felt certain would have a reasonable selection. Some of them did not have a single bathing suit. That did not bode well. Since I was already frustrated, I didn’t want to go all the way to Target only to discover that they also had a lousy selection that late in the season, so I tried JCPenney. The only true one-piece suit that they had in her size had a nice pink and green floral pattern … and also a big pink tutu. How embarrassing. I planned to take it off, but didn’t have time, and she seemed to like it. I guess I can’t win them all.

A week or so before Fiona’s birthday, Dustin read somewhere that Google Wallet was organizing a travel package to the beach at Long Branch, New Jersey, on Saturday, 14 July, which was perfect timing (Fiona’s birthday is 15 July). Apparently they would be giving out tickets to people who went and saw a demonstration. I thought we were going to have to install Google Wallet on our phone*—it’s some sort of app that allows you to use your smartphone like a credit card—and they would give us a sales pitch before giving us one free ticket (since we only have one smartphone). Nope. All we had to do was go to Penn Station and stand in the New Jersey Transit concourse, and people in Google Wallet T-shirts came over and said, “Do you want to go to the beach for free? Okay, let me show you how this works on my phone!”

They used their own phone and gave us three free round-trip tickets, plus beach admission. It was great. And they weren’t just any old tickets: Google had actually chartered a train! Everyone on the train was wearing Google sunglasses (free), there were Google Wallet beach balls on all the seats (free), the Google people came around with snacks (free). It was awesome. And, since they chartered it, it was a direct route with no stops after New York and Newark. Fiona loved it. We blew up every beach ball near us, and she used them to fill a nearby area for stowing luggage. She hammed it up when the Google

people came by to take pictures.

The beach was also great, of course. This time around, Fiona was much more aware of what one does at the beach, so she wasn’t mad when we suggested she leave the sand and go play in the water. We went out and played in some real waves, which she loved. She found a few mussel shells, but she wasn’t as interested in them as I thought she might be.

We found a bakery that sold some delicious and/or lovely cupcakes, and brought a few back to our spot on the beach after lunch. Dustin and I both chose cupcakes whose taste we thought we would like, but for Fiona we picked one whose looks we thought she would like: a “tie-dye” cupcake whose frosting can best be described as neon. It was tricky to light the candles we had brought, since it had gotten rather windy, so Fiona and I sheltered the flame by huddling under our huge red towel, and she was able to blow out the candle herself (without help from the wind). Sure enough, she loved the cupcake and ate it much more daintily than she did last year’s cupcake-on-the-beach. She didn’t finish it, though, so Dustin and I both had a taste.

It was pretty lousy, as one might imagine of a fluorescent pastry.

After eating our cupcakes, it was time for one more dip in the ocean to clean off the frosting that was smeared all over Fiona’s legs, arms, and face, and then we packed up our things and went to the showers to get slightly cleaner. We wrapped her in a towel when she was done with her shower, and I carried her out to the sidewalk as she called weakly to passersby for help. I guess she didn’t really like being wrapped up like a sausage.

Predictably, Fiona fell asleep in her stroller on our way back to the train station, still in nothing but a diaper and a beach towel. She slept most of the way back to New York, but she did wake up in time to entertain some Jersey girls on their way to the city for a night out on the town.

The next day, a few friends from church joined us for a real cake (not overpriced, and definitely not neon and fluorescent) and, after blowing out her candles all by herself, Fiona had three small slices for dinner. After all, you only turn two once. d * dustin’s note: Our phone—which uses Google’s Android operating system— actually came with Google Wallet installed.

Our now-traditional trip to the beach for Fiona’s birthday was awesome this year.

But it did have one downside: the only one-piece bathing suit Susan could find for Fiona had nice pink and green floral pattern—and a pink tutu. Despite our best efforts, Fiona seems really to like pink, and she liked the tutu. Which goes to show that, now two years old, she has become her own person.

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PHOTOS TAKEN BY DUSTIN

THE JOURNAL DUSTI N

Of junk & memories.

Sorting through my stuff has been a great source of memories—and trash.

I

f moving to New York a little over a year ago—our first move as a family—taught us anything, it’s that we have a lot of stuff. Too much stuff. So much stuff that I would be

embarrassed to accept anyone’s help on our next move if I didn’t take some time to sort through it, organize it, and toss out the stuff I no longer need or want. After all, we moved a number of boxes fully knowing that we would be tossing out much of their contents. We couldn’t ask for someone’s help moving trash again.

Susan and I had spent years—decades, really—collecting

this stuff. I found worksheets of mine dating to the first grade, meaning they were at least 23 years old. (I was in first grade in 1988 and 1989.) Among the (somewhat) more recent items was virtually every sheet of paper that crossed my desk in high school. That’s not hyperbole.

I had Scantron answer sheets that are useless to me now not only because of their age but because I didn’t have the test papers on which the questions and multiple-choice answers were written. So I may see that I got a 95 on a test in my fifth-period Algebra 2/Trigonometry class in ninth grade, and that I got one question out of 20 incorrect, but in some instances I couldn’t even tell which answer was wrong. And even if I could, I don’t know what the question was, because I don’t have the test. More importantly, I don’t really care. I packed all of my papers from ninth grade away at the end of the school year in 1997, and I hadn’t looked at them in the 15 years since until I started sorting. I guess the biggest O C TO B E R 2 0 1 2

disappointment was having another reminder of how smart I was in high school and how much I have forgotten since. Remedial math—and science, and social studies, and English, and virtually every other class I took—here I come!

That’s not to say I saw fit to throw everything from high school out. I kept longer pieces I wrote, such as essays for tests or my senior exit project, which may end up in later issues of this magazine. I also kept a few examples of my work just to remind myself of the care I took in meticulously writing and crafting almost everything from notes in class to homework assignments. (I’ve always taken pride in my penmanship.) These pieces reminded me that, for example, I would quickly jot notes down in quick (meaning sloppy) handwriting during class to make sure I recorded everything, and then I would recopy them—in my neater manuscript early on in high school, later typewritten—both so they would be neater and to allow me to review them. Man, I was such a good student.

I kept the stuff from high school because I thought it might come in handy later. (It hasn’t.) Other items I kept just because I was a packrat. Yes, I can admit that I was a packrat. It’s a habit that I had begun to break, but that moving—and my newfound fear of becoming a hoarder—broke me of once and for all. I guess that not having a lot of opportunities to go to different places growing up meant that each such experience took on heightened importance to me, and I felt the need to hold on to everything I could that would remind me of these experiences later. Take, for instance, my trip to Québec with my eighth-grade French class. In addition to the hand-painted watercolor of Québec City and the Château Frontenac that I bought, along with a few books and way too many postcards from Montréal, I also kept sugar packets from restaurants we ate at. Yes, sugar packets. And napkins, and some cups from the plane, and the long, strange plastic thing—a stirrer for alcoholic beverages, I suppose?— from a drink (a Sprite, as I recall) I had at the revolving restaurant at the top of the hotel where we stayed, the Loews Le Concorde. I also kept

 Trash: The brochure for Miss Caroline’s Country Wedding Chapel in Maggie Valley, North Carolina.

newspapers (though I did throw those out during the move) and the magazines and the SkyMall catalog from the flight. All in the trash. Well, recycling bin.

Some of the stuff has been pretty fun to find. In a pile of cards from friends and family congratulating me on my graduation from high school, I found cold, hard cash—some $60 or $65 of it. Whoops! Guess I didn’t look through those cards closely enough when I first received them.

Another source of good finds was my trips to the Great Smoky Mountains with a friend and her family. Most of the brochures and fliers I had picked up and held on to during these trips were pretty mundane, but one was worthy of Facebook: a pamphlet for Miss Caroline’s Country Wedding Chapel in Maggie Valley, North Carolina. Susan and I couldn’t believe that we had spent so much on our wedding when we could have had such a classy affair at this place starting at $99. That was for the Gazebo Bliss package, a “lovely traditional wedding ceremony set in a 12′ gazebo with a minister and recorded music.”

This place had everything. The chapel seats 20 to 25, with overhead beams and “ruby red” carpet. Now, a red carpet is fancy, but a ruby-red carpet is unquestionably fancier. There are also realistic-looking silk flowers, honeymoon lodging packages, and lots and lots of facial hair. LOTS of facial hair. Oh, and check out the upper-middle-

aged woman displaying her garter.

Amazingly, it appears that this place has survived into the twenty-first century. It even has a website, misscarolines.com. Of course the website has music; websites for places like this always have music. The photos appear now to be all digital, but they still display an awful lot of facial hair. If I had gotten married there it certainly would have been “the memory of a lifetime,” as the brochure promises—the sort of thing you can just never forget, no matter how hard you try.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that my life will end up being more interesting than I thought, so there’s no need to keep so much stuff from every trip I take and every experience I have. But I didn’t feel I could sort through this stuff and throw it out without sharing much of it with at least one other person first. Once I shared the object and the memory with Susan, I felt free to toss it out and move on. Of the things I did decide to keep, I figured if they were worth keeping they were worth organizing and storing properly, and the things that are most worth keeping, such as photos, I have been working to digitize.

Which, it occurs to me, is probably a good way to ensure that I don’t look at them for another two decades. d

 Not trash: A friend gave me this print of a woodcut she made in one of her classes.  Also not trash (opposite page): In German class we were assigned to write a vocabulary quiz to give to another student. I did quite well on this quiz written by a classmate, though I remember very few of these words today.

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THE JOURNAL FIONA

My first days at school.

Fiona reflects on starting preschool.

O C TO B E R 2 0 1 2

 With her backpack on, Fiona is ready to head out the door for her first day at school, 13 August 2012.

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ne day in the summer, Mama and Daddy started talking to me about school. They said I would be going to a place with some other kids, and I would get to play and sing and take a nap there, and then at the end of the day I would come home again. It sounded kind of cool.

Before I could go, though, Mama said I would have to learn to use the potty.

So we spent a few days hanging around on the floor in the Stube reading books and practicing keeping my underwear dry. It wasn’t so tough, really, and I got to eat a graham cracker every time I used the potty, so I couldn’t complain. After a few weeks Mama and Daddy seemed to have conveniently forgotten about the crackers and stickers that they used to give me, and now I sometimes just feel like going to the bathroom is a huge inconvenience. They’re always interrupting my playing and telling me to go use the potty.

What a pain!

But the good news, of course, is that I could go to school once I knew how to wear underwear. The first day was pretty great.

Mama and Daddy woke me up and got me dressed, then put me in my stroller for the ride to school. Once we got there, I went straight to playing with the pretend kitchen and I didn’t even notice when Mama and Daddy left. When the other kids got there, we had breakfast and played and read books and took a nap, just like Mama and Daddy said. Then Daddy came to pick me up.

The second day was a little tougher.

I was tired from the day before, so it was harder to be in a good mood, especially with all those kids I didn’t know, and all those rules

 Fiona picks out a pumpkin during her first field trip, to Green Meadows Farm in Queens on 26 October 2012.

Before I could go, though, Mama said I would have to learn to use the potty. So we spent a few days hanging around on the floor in the Stube reading books and practicing keeping my underwear dry.

It wasn’t so tough, really, and I got to eat a graham cracker every time I used the potty, so I couldn’t complain. that they have at school about when to sit down, when to play, when to sleep, and not fighting over toys. I wanted to go home, but I couldn’t go by myself. When Mama finally came to get me, I was ready for her to carry me home. I just wanted to rest my head on her shoulder. We went home for a little while and then I went over to my friends’ house so Mama and Daddy could go see a movie.

There were a few weeks in between those first two days and the first “real” day of school, as Mama called it. I was kind of sad whenever Mama and Daddy left me alone, like in Nursery at church, because I never knew how long it was going to be, and that second day at school had been kind of overwhelming. When I went back to school, it was okay until the very end of the day. We were sitting at the door with our shoes and backpacks on, and then some other kid’s mom PHOTOS TAKEN BY DUSTIN

walked in to pick him up. Then they left, and another kid’s mom came in. I was so worried because I couldn’t find my Mama, and I didn’t know if she would remember to come get me.

Fortunately, Mama came in just a minute or two later and said she had heard me crying outside. On the way home, I told her how nervous I had been, and she told me that either she or Daddy would always be there to pick me up after school. That was a relief, but it was still hard to get used to.

It took me a few weeks to settle in, and now I love going to school. I’ve made some friends there. We have music classes, we do art, we go to the playground, and we even ride in a school bus sometimes to go on field trips. I’m glad to go every day, but I’m also glad when Mama comes to pick me up and take me home to see Daddy. d 7

Hello, Brooklyn 30 APRIL 2012

The NBA’s Nets, formerly of New Jersey, became the Brooklyn Nets after announcing their move to the Barclays Center near Downtown Brooklyn. They plastered the borough with ads and billboards sporting the name and their new (avant-garde, or just uncreative and low-budget?) colors, black and white. But could someone please teach them that “hello” and “Brooklyn” need a comma between them?  A billboard with the Nets’ new name and colors hangs from a subway station. (We’re not sure, but this looks like the Marcy Av station, which is the one closest to where we go to church.)

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Supreme Court strikes down upholds individual mandate

Oops… Fox News’s and CNN’s bad

WASHINGTON, D.C. | 28 JUNE 2012

In a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court upheld the requirement that individuals purchase health insurance or pay a tax penalty mandated by the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama’s signature piece of domestic policy. (Susan and Dustin attended the House debate 21 March 2010, the day the House passed the bill, though we ended up going home before the vote was taken and watched the vote online.) In a surprising decision, conservative Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the court’s four liberal justices to uphold the act.

Originally, supporters of the individual mandate claimed Congress had authority to create such a requirement under the Constitution’s Commerce Clause, which gives Congress authority to regulate interstate commerce. The majority opinion, authored by Mr. Roberts, found that the mandate was not a valid exercise of congressional authority under the Commerce Clause, but it was a valid exercise of Congress’s authority to tax. In another interesting statement, Mr. Roberts stated that the court’s precedent is to seek to uphold the constitutionality of congressional acts rather than find reasons to rule them unconstitutional.

France Télécom retired Minitel, France’s trailblazing precursor to the Internet and a symbol of the country’s technological leap in the mid-twentieth century. It was launched in 1982, part of, as Time noted, “a wider modernization  Minitel terminal drive that included the from 1982. Note the launch of the high-speed AZERTY keyboard.

TGV train in 1981. In a nation that had a mere 5 million telephones in the mid-’70s—and where enduring the long wait to have a line installed was no guarantee it would actually work—the Minitel was an iconic part of France’s successful transformation from an underdeveloped communications and information-technology country into a cuttingedge innovator.”

QUOTABLE | JAMES ON LONG ISLAND

“It’s up to the demonstrators to show the country that dissent and differing opinions don’t have to be coupled with burning cars and smashed shop windows.”

In a reader’s comment on the online version of an article in The New York Times about protests expected during the 2012 Democratic National Convention; the DNC took place in Dustin’s hometown, Charlotte, 3–6 September and renominated Barack Obama for president of the United States.

Sweden bombs Belarus— with teddy bears MINSK | 4 JULY 2012

On Belarus’s independence day a Swedish plane flew over the country’s capital city and dropped 879 teddies “bear”ing prodemocracy messages such as “We support the Belarusian struggle for free speech.” For some reason the country’s totalitarian government didn’t like it and recalled its ambassador to Sweden.

MINITEL TERMINAL: PHOTO BY TIEUM, CC BY-SA 3.0 EN.W IKIPEDIA.ORG/WIKI/FILE:MINITEL1.JPG

30 JUNE 2012

SUPREME COURT CORRIDOR: PHOTO TAKEN 3 NOVEMBER 2011 BY THE ARCHITECT OF THE CAPITOL, PUBLIC DOMAIN FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/USCAPITOL/6309909998

French bid adieu to Minitel

BROOKLYN NETS BILLBOARD: PHOTO COURTESY OF BROOKLYNTROLLEYBLOGGER THEBROOKLYNTROLLEYBLOGGER.BLOGSPOT.COM/2012/07/BKN-NETS-RIVALRY-VERUS-KNICKS-FINALLY.HTML

April–September 2012

TEDDY BEAR: PHOTO TAKEN 8 NOVEMBER 2012 BY LONGZIJUN, CC BY-NC 2.0 FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/46990836@N03/8324409218

HERE & THERE

Temples update AS OF 31 OCTOBER 2012

Operating 140 Under construction 14 Announced 14 Announced 6 OCTOBER 2012

Tucson Arizona Arequipa Perú Ground broken Provo City Center 12 MAY 2012

Tijuana Mexico 18 AUGUST 2012

Indianapolis Indiana 29 SEPTEMBER 2012

Dedicated

TEMPLES: PHOTOS COURTESY THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS NEWSPAPER: FRONT PAGE OF THE TIMES-PICAYUNE, 31 OCTOBER 2012, COURTESY OF THE NEWSEUM, WASHINGTON, D.C. TEMPLES.LDS.ORG NEWSEUM.ORG

Kansas City Missouri 6 MAY 2012

Manaus Brazil 10 JUNE 2012

Massimo Vignelli’s iconic map of the New York City Subway turns 40 In 1972, a graphic designer introduced the public to a bold new way to map the labyrinth that is New York City’s rapid-transit system. Throughout the system’s history, maps of the subway vacillated on the spectrum between geographical accuracy and diagrammatic simplicity. But none had ever been so austere, nor had any distorted the city’s geography so much. New Yorkers didn’t like it, and in 1979 the MTA returned to the more geographically-true (though still distorted— Manhattan is not that big) form of today’s subway map. Mr. Vignelli’s map is now celebrated as a classic piece of mid-twentieth-century graphic design, and an updated version lives on in The Weekender feature on the MTA’s website.

SIGN OF THE TIMES

New Orleans becomes largest U.S. city without a daily newspaper 29 SEPTEMBER–1 OCTOBER 2012

Battered by the loss of readers and advertisers to online media, The Times-Picayune and its sister newspapers in Alabama—The Birmingham News, the Press-Register in Mobile, and The Huntsville Times—ceased daily circulation.

Each paper is now printed three times a week, with daily updates online.

Now the question is: which city and paper will be next?

Brigham City Utah 23 SEPTEMBER 2012

Calgary Alberta 28 OCTOBER 2012

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Dustin’s stuffed animals Earlier this year, Dustin, age 30, made the difficult decision that it was time to send his stuffed animals to a new home.

So, one evening early this fall, he, Susan, and Fiona carried them to Goodwill on West 8th Street in Manhattan and donated them. But before bidding them farewell, Dustin had a little photo shoot with them so he could always remember them. This is one of those photos.

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dolphin

polar bear

I don’t remember what I called this dolphin, but I do remember that my Aunt Linda bought him for me during one of my trips to Florida with her.

I also don’t remember what I called this bear, but I remember getting him during a trip to the North Carolina Zoo with my family and a family friend.

Tigger

Guy Smiley

I really liked Tigger growing up. I believe my mother and grandmother bought me this Tigger, for no special reason, during a visit to The Disney Store at SouthPark mall in Charlotte.

One day while we were living in Tulsa, Oklahoma, my mother surprised me and my brother, Daniel, with matching teddy bears wearing T-shirts with a slightly modified version of her employer’s advertising tagline: “Like a good neighbear, State Farm is there.” Inspired by the “smile” tag on his ear, I named my bear after the Sesame Street character.

mini Tigger This mini Tigger came with a videocassette of Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too given to me by a family friend.

Penelope Penguin & dragon Unfortunately, I don’t remember the dragon’s name. But I received these in the mail from my grandmother while we were living, I think, in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

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OUR TIMES

By ALAN ABRAHAMSON NBCOLYMPICS.COM

Monday, 13 August 2012 We didn’t watch any of the XXX Olympiad, though we did keep up with the medals count, hoping the United States would beat China in the standings.

It did—but the home contingent, Team GB, was the one to watch: 29 gold, and 3rd overall in the standings.

Athletes participating 10,820 Nations represented 204 First time all 204 nations sent female competitors Events 302 in 26 sports Women’s boxing debuted as an Olympic event

London hosts the Summer Olympics LONDON even years ago, at an assembly of the International Olympic Committee held in Singapore, London won the 2012 Olympic Games. The XXX Olympiad itself ran for 17 days, from 27 July to 12 August. Plainly put, London 2012 organizers set new standards for what a Games should be in real time and what’s next.

Just one example as everyone starts going home Monday: left behind is the largest urban park in Europe created in 150 years, and no white elephants.

Reviews of these games will be especially good in the United States. The American team won the medals count, overall and gold, with 104 and 46; at the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games, the U.S. team won the overall count, with 37.

Team GB, relentlessly and fervently cheered on by the home crowd, won 65 medals, 29 gold, its best performance in more than a century. A particular highlight: three gold medals in 45 minutes on the first Saturday at the track, highlighted by Jessica Ennis’s gold in the heptathlon, the noise seeming to shake the stadium. Queen Elizabeth II said Sunday of the British team, “Their outstanding performance will, I am sure, have inspired a new generation,” echoing the 2012 Games’ official slogan.

Michael Phelps won six more medals, four

S

gold, lifting his career total to 22, 18 gold, both the most ever.

Usain Bolt became the first athlete to win both sprints at consecutive Games and then anchored the Jamaican 4 × 100 relay team to a world record; persnickety track officials even let him keep the baton.

David Rudisha not only broke the world record on the track in the 800 meters—he lifted the other seven guys in the race to new heights.

It was the singular performance of the Games, according to London 2012 chief Sebastian Coe.

South Africa’s Oscar Pistorius ran on carbon-fiber blades. He didn’t win. The important thing was simply that he ran.

These were Games at which women athletes starred, over and again.

Women’s boxing made its debut; Katie Taylor of Ireland may well have been the best boxer, male or female, in London.

Kerri Walsh and Misty May of the United States won their third straight gold in beach volleyball, and at what was probably the coolest venue at London, Horse Guards, near the prime minister’s residence.

The U.S. women’s soccer team survived a semifinal overtime thriller against Canada, and then defeated Japan—before more than 80,000 spectators—for gold. At Wimbledon, American

Medals awarded 962 total 302 gold 304 silver 356 bronze World records broken 32 in 8 sports 8 swimming records set China, Great Britain, and the United States each set 5 world records Cost £10.8 billion (around $17 billion) O C TO BE R 2 0 1 2

Olympic Stadium, London, at night.

PHOTO TAKEN 2 AUGUST 2012 BY GERARD McGOVERN, CC BY 2.0 FLICKR.COM/PHOTOS/INKIBOO/7700627264

Serena Williams won gold in women’s singles and then teamed with sister Venus for gold in doubles.

Back at the pool, 17-year-old Missy Franklin of the United States won four golds; another American, 15-year-old Katie Ledecky, won the 800 meters.

For the first time, all 204 nations sent female competitors. Saudi Arabia’s Sarah Attar, competing in a white headscarf, long-sleeved green jacket and black leggings, ran in the heats of the 800 meters, finishing last, 43 seconds behind the winner of the heat. Again, it didn’t matter. She ran.

The crowd at Olympic Stadium cheered for her—just as they cheered everyone. Attendance at the stadium in particular proved amazing, with 80,000 on hand for even the morning heats.

London—like Los Angeles in 1984—seemed to have been transformed by the Olympics.

Linda Grant, writing a few days ago in one of the British newspapers, The Independent, put it this way, observing the scene in the upscale St. John’s Wood neighborhood where a South Korean Olympian had come in for take-away coffee and a Mongolian and a Belarusian archer were enjoying a couple beers together outside: What has happened to London is that, in the space of a few days, it has become filled with hordes of individuals and families who are happy. Who are delighted to be in London, delighted to watch their sport played the very best it can be played, delighted to wave a national flag with the enthusiasm that comes of knowing that, unlike our English football squad, we’re actually going to win something. The last time so many people were enjoying themselves as much in London must have been VE Day.

This was what British organizers had said all along was the goal. After the weight of history that was Beijing in 2008, they sensed that the Olympic movement needed a refresher in great sport and big fun.

Or, as American track stars DeeDee Trotter and Francena McCorory put it Saturday at a late-night news conference after winning the 4 × 400 relay, Trotter saying first, “London is off the chains! And that’s putting it mildly.” She added, “Was it chaos? Yes. Was it good chaos?

Absolutely!”

McCorory then said, “We just wish we could pay for everything in U.S. dollars instead of pounds!”

The 2012 Summer Games, arguably the best ever, came to a close Sunday night, 12 August, amid a big party at Olympic Stadium, a rock-androll show that reminded everyone everywhere PHOTO OF MEDALS: LONDON 2012

The medals count: The top 10

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

United States China Great Britain Russia South Korea Germany France Italy Hungary Australia

 Ugliest Olympic logo ever? While the overall look of the London Olympics was excellent— Olympiads generally have a very high quality of design—let’s hope that this little seizure-inducing ugly duckling isn’t the sign of things (and Olympic logos) to come.

USA CHN GBR RUS KOR GER FRA ITA HUN AUS

46

29

29

104

38

27

23

88

29

17

19

65

24

26

32

82

13

8

7

28

11

19

14

44

11

11

12

34

8

9

11

28

8

4

6

18

7

16

12

35

GOLD

SILVER

BRONZE

TOTAL

that for all the solemnity and the gravitas, the Olympics are games and games are fun.

Such a simple concept. Such a remarkable premise. This, among so many extraordinary notions, is likely to be one of London’s farreaching legacies.

They promised a party.

They delivered.

“These were happy and glorious Games,” International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge said in his remarks Sunday night to the thousands who jammed Olympic Stadium.

Added London 2012 organizing committee chair Seb Coe, “We lit the flame and we lit up the world.” Moments afterward, the cauldron was extinguished.

All that was left Sunday night—beyond the handover to Rio 2016, which kicks off in 1,452 days—was the three-hour dance party. The Spice Girls did their thing. What else to say?

Just this, from judo gold medalist Kayla Harrison of the United States: “This has been the highlight of my life.” d

13 The text and order of this article have been edited from the original.

BOOK REPORT

By DUSTIN

American prophet

W

Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling

by Richard Lyman Bushman Published by Alfred A. Knopf, New York 2005

* Earlier this year Dustin saw Brother Bushman in the baptistry of the Manhattan temple, where he was serving as a witness while Dustin assisted missionaries in our branch in taking some recent converts to the temple for the first time.

O C TO BE R 2 0 1 2

ho was Joseph Smith, really? This is the basic question Richard Lyman Bushman attempts to answer in Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling, a “cultural biography” of the first president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The answer Mr. Bushman—a member of the Church* and an emeritus professor of history at Columbia University here in New York—gives is, in many respects, rather simple. Mr. Bushman paints a portrait of an honest, straightforward man who earnestly strove to fulfill the mission that he believed God had called him to complete.

It is hard for the reader not to sympathize with Mr. Bushman’s Joseph Smith. Any reports or anecdotes that would bring into question the Prophet’s character, especially from his early life in western New York, were, at best, misunderstandings. At worst, they were slanderous rumors calculated and perpetuated to defame a man that his detractors feared perhaps really was a prophet of God. Indeed, Mr. Bushman is able to twist some of the most persistent accusations against Joseph into proofs that Joseph’s divine call was executed in a manner that early-nineteenth-century frontier Americans—including Joseph himself—were looking for. He was a golddigger? Of course he was! But treasure hunting was practically a pastime for early Americans, who fully believed treasure and records, including religious texts, left by the continent’s ancient inhabitants, would be found in the ground. Finding such a record— on valuable gold plates, to boot—was perhaps vital to Joseph’s acceptance of his own prophetic mission. And Joseph used a couple of rocks to translate that record? Of course he did! But many early Americans also believed that divine communication would be received via a physical medium. Perhaps the only way God could get Joseph to listen to divine communication at first was to provide a medium, a receiver for that communication, a crutch he gradually gave up as he grew more accustomed to divine revelation via the inaudible whisperings of the Holy Ghost to mind and spirit. Any misperceptions of Joseph Smith’s character or behavior as a prophet, the coming forth of the Book of Mormon, priesthood and Church organization, or temple ordinances

and other practices and doctrines, can all be explained, Mr. Bushman would seem to have the reader believe, so easily that the answers are practically obvious. While at times Rough Stone Rolling feels like an apologist’s defense—see the proofs Mr. Bushman offers on why Joseph Smith couldn’t possibly have written the Book of Mormon himself—at other times it feels like a treatise on common sense.

But simple does not mean flat. All humans are full of contradictions, and this Joseph Smith is no exception. He was a rough-hewn frontiersman who swore on occasion, but he was not vulgar—he was, after all, from Puritan New England. He promulgated the Word of Wisdom—Mormonism’s prohibition on alcohol, tobacco, coffee, and tea—yet he was known to have an occasional glass of wine with dinner throughout his life. He masterfully built—indeed, was obsessed with—an enduring ecclesiastical organization, but he lacked business acumen and died a debtor. He believed he saw God the Father and Jesus Christ and was visited by angels and received continual revelation, yet he was always unsure of his standing before God.

And there is perhaps no greater contradiction in the character and work of Joseph Smith than the issue of plural marriage, which Mr. Bushman finally gets around to discussing in depth in the final chapters of the book (even though the book is largely chronological, and there is evidence Joseph himself began practicing plural marriage as early as 1835). Joseph’s lifetime work was to build a religion not just of doctrine and ritual but one that embodied an entire code of high morals—high enough to elevate all of human society. Yet he introduced a practice that was so contrary to the morals of the day— even the seemingly loose morals of the roughand-tumble inhabitants of the wild frontier in Missouri—that his followers then were severely persecuted. And his followers today generally profess to be repulsed by this practice. Emma, his wife, whom he appeared to love deeply and who was ever loyal to Joseph and supportive of his work, was of course furious when she learned of the first of Joseph’s plural wives; he hid his later plural marriages from her. And, yes, it does appear that at least some of these marriages

“[Joseph’s] journal entries, usually five or six lines jotted down casually when he had a spare moment, reveal a striving young man uncertain of his standing with God, yearning to be worthy, grateful when he finds peace.”

RICHARD LYMAN BUSHMAN JOSEPH SMITH: ROUGH STONE ROLLING, PAGE 234

had a sexual element to them, despite Emma’s descendants’ attempts in the late nineteenth century to prove that they were merely “spiritual” marriages. The result is that after reading some 450 pages about this thoroughly earnest follower of Jesus Christ—and even those who don’t believe Joseph was a prophet would surely find themselves on the verge of admiring him at this point in the book—the reader is left feeling confused, almost betrayed by this examination of Joseph’s doctrine of plural marriage. One can’t help but wonder if he had started to lose it by the end of his prophetic ministry. Even a believing reader may pause to ask if perhaps his martyrdom on 27 June 1844 was, in part, God’s way of cutting Joseph off in the dangerous path he had started down.

Rough Stone Rolling is an impressive, thoroughly-researched volume—see the 155 pages of endnotes and works cited at the end of the book. There is the occasional editing lapse in typography or grammar, but that’s to be expected in a tome of 561 pages. Mr. Bushman’s writing is sharp and compelling, and I don’t know that I’ve read another writer who is better at offering a true concluding sentence for each individual paragraph. On the whole, the believing reader comes away with a deeper understanding of the Prophet Joseph Smith, if not a deeper testimony.

Reading Rough Stone Rolling is an intellectual experience, not a spiritual one. The rough stone that was Joseph Smith has his sharp edges worn off—except for the plural-marriage issue—as he rolls from New York and Pennsylvania to Ohio to Missouri to Illinois, even if he never becomes a polished piece. Perhaps Mr. Bushman’s larger message is not that greatness is possible in spite of weaknesses and foibles but that occasionally an individual achieves greatness because of his imperfections. d  Statue of the Prophet in the lobby of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building at Temple Square in Salt Lake City.

PHOTO TAKEN 24 DECEMBER 2004 BY BOBJGALINDO, CC BY-SA 3.0 COMMONS.W IKIMEDIA.ORG/WIKI/FILE:JSMB_INTERIOR.JPG

15

WE BELIEVE IN CHRIST

‘The worth of souls is in the sight of God’

By DUSTIN

All of us will be touched by bullying at some point in our lives.

As disciples of Jesus Christ, we are his hands in lifting up those affected by it.

T

here is nothing quite like being a parent that heightens your awareness of what goes on in the world. You particularly notice the bad stuff that happens, and you personalize it, hoping that nothing like that ever happens to your child and wishing that there were something you could do to prevent it—to be 100% certain that your child will never experience a physical, spiritual, mental, or emotional wound. The fact that those people you hear about on the news were once children just like your own suddenly becomes more real to you. You remember that many of those whose stories of sorrow and sadness make it into news reports had parents just like you who cared deeply about their child’s welfare and worried about his/her future, just as you do for your own child, and that everyone—victim and perpetrator alike— came into this world an innocent baby with limitless potential.

Perhaps nothing arouses these senses so acutely as the endless tales in the news in recent years of bullying.

October is National Bullying Prevention Month. Bullying is an important topic for us to discuss in church not only because each of us in this room will be touched by bullying at some point in our lives—either personally or through someone we know—but because our actions and attitudes toward others are at the very heart of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

In discussing how we will be affected by bullying in our lives, we can divide ourselves into three audiences: one, those who bully; two, those who are bullied; and three, those who know someone who bullies or is bullied.

O C TO BE R 2 0 1 2 PAINTINGS PAGES 16–20 COURTESY THE ONLINE MEDIA LIBRARY OF THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS, MEDIALIBRARY.LDS.ORG ABOVE: JESUS TEACHING IN THE WESTERN HEMISPHERE BY JOHN SCOTT

THOSE WHO BULLY I will speak first about those who bully. Most of us in this room are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We became members of this Church through baptism. When each of us was baptized, we entered into a covenant with God: we promised God that from that time forth we would act a certain way. When the prophet Alma in the Book of Mormon described this covenant or promise, he primarily spoke of it in terms of how we act toward others: And … now, as ye are desirous to come into the fold of God, and to be called his people, and are willing to bear one another’s burdens, that they may be light;

Yea, and are willing to mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort, and to stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places that ye may be in, even until death, that ye may be redeemed of God, and be numbered with those of the first resurrection, that ye may have eternal life—

Now I say unto you, if this be the desire of your hearts, what have you against being baptized in the name of the Lord, as a witness before him that ye have entered into a covenant with him, that ye will serve him and keep his commandments, that he may pour out his Spirit more abundantly upon you?1

During his mortal ministry, Jesus Christ himself simply and beautifully summarized this covenant in these instructions: A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.

By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.2

As members of the Church who have entered into the baptismal covenant, we, too, are disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore this commandment to “love one another” as the Savior loves us very much applies to each of us.

Many of us in this room also hold the priesthood. Think about the significance of that. What is the priesthood? It is the power and authority of God delegated to man to act in his name.

It is the authority under which we were baptized and the power that makes families eternal. The Aaronic Priesthood, which many of the young men in our branch hold, was restored in 1829 through John the Baptist3— the same John who baptized Jesus Christ. The Melchizedek Priesthood, which I hold, which our branch president holds, which many of the men in our branch hold, and which is the authority by which our prophet today, President Thomas S. Monson, receives revelation and guides our Church, was restored a few weeks later by Peter, James, and John, the apostles the Savior called to lead his Church anciently. It is an amazing power.

The prophet in our dispensation through which the Aaronic and Melchizedek priesthoods were restored, Joseph Smith, gave instructions on using the priesthood—instructions which are applicable to each of us, priesthood holder or not, no matter the situation we find ourselves in:

A CHILD OF GOD

Each of us is a beloved son or daughter of God with unlimited potential.

17 PHOTO TAKEN 22 SEPTEMBER 2012 BY DUSTIN

THE BAPTISMAL COVENANT At the Waters of Mormon the prophet Alma taught the covenant we enter into when we are baptized:

And … now, as ye are desirous to come into the fold of God, and to be called his people, and are willing to bear one another’s burdens, that they may be light; Yea, and are willing to mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort …

MOSIAH 18:8–9

Behold, there are many called, but few are chosen. And why are they not chosen?

Because their hearts are set so much upon the things of this world, and aspire to the honors of men, that they do not learn this one lesson—

That the rights of the priesthood are inseparably connected with the powers of heaven, and that the powers of heaven cannot be controlled nor handled only upon the principles of righteousness.

That they may be conferred upon us, it is true; but when we undertake to cover our sins, or to gratify our pride, our vain ambition, or to exercise control or dominion or compulsion upon the souls of the children of men, in any degree of unrighteousness, behold, the heavens withdraw themselves; the Spirit of the Lord is grieved; and when it is withdrawn, Amen to the priesthood or the authority of that man.

Behold, ere he is aware, he is left unto himself, to kick against the pricks, to persecute the saints, and to fight against God.

We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion.

Hence many are called, but few are chosen.

No power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood, only by persuasion, by long-suffering, by gentleness and meekness, and by love unfeigned;

By kindness, and pure knowledge, which shall greatly enlarge the soul without hypocrisy, and without guile….4

The Prophet states “by sad experience.” The experience of the early members of this Church was one of continual persecution—lies, namecalling, discrimination, and, often, outright violence. In short, “persecution” is bullying on a massive scale. Joseph Smith and the early Latter-day Saints knew what it felt like to be bullied, and the Prophet was unequivocal in his instruction that such behavior had no place among Latterday Saints or in how we treat others.

In short, we who are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints, who hold the sacred priesthood of God, and who are disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ should never, ever engage in bullying or any behavior like it. Period.

18 ALMA BAPTIZES IN THE WATERS OF MORMON

BY ARNOLD FRIBERG

THOSE WHO ARE BULLIED Now I turn to those of us who may find ourselves on the receiving end of the bully’s abuses. When you say the word “bullying,” for many people the first image that comes to mind is of something that happens among young people, at school, or at the playground, or on the street. All of which is, unfortunately, part of the reality of bullying. But it is not and should not be a “normal” part of growing up, and it should not be dismissed as “just something kids do.” And it does not just occur among young people. It can occur at any age, and we may encounter it in any number of places, particularly the workplace.

To those of you of any age who suffer bullying or intimidation of any sort in any location, I know that words are insufficient to assuage the sorrow and heartbreak you feel. But please know this: you are not alone. One of the great blessings of the restored gospel of Jesus Christ is a fuller understanding of the true breadth of our Savior’s atoning sacrifice. We know that not only did he suffer for our sins, but he also has endured every pain and every affliction—physical, spiritual, mental, and emotional—that we will suffer in this life. As Isaiah wrote: He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.5 I testify to you that our Savior knows your pain and that you can always rely on him. Through the Atonement of Jesus Christ, you, too, can be healed.

Remember also that you have a church family to turn to for support. This is a family bound together by the baptismal covenants I described earlier, covenants which enshrine love and brotherly kindness6 as the ruling principles of our lives as Church members.

So, what to do when confronted by a bully? First, remember that the bully is wrong: his or her actions are wrong, and what he or she may be saying to you or about you is wrong. You are a child of God, and as such you have limitless potential both in this life and eternally. Through the Prophet Joseph Smith we are reminded to “remember the worth of souls is great in the sight of God.”7 That includes your soul, too. You are of inestimable worth to God and to others, even if those around you don’t acknowledge it. Your life has a purpose!

Second, confidently walk away and get a teacher, administrator, church leader, or other adult or authority figure and ask him or her to intervene.

Most schools and other facilities you will find yourself in have strict rules against bullying. In fact, here in New York not only is bullying against school rules, it is against the law. Teachers and other authority figures have both a moral and legal obligation to act and to intervene if necessary.

If you are being bullied in the workplace, discuss the situation with your supervisor and firmly request a specific course of action. Certain types of bullying and harassment—particularly sexual harassment—in the

HEALED BY HIS STRIPES

The Atonement of Jesus Christ can heal the pain and sorrow of you who are bullied. But here’s the remarkable thing: that same Atonement that is open to you is also available to those who bully you, on condition of their repentance. The worth of their souls is great in the sight of God, too. God’s love for you is infinite enough that it extends to them, too.

19 JESUS PRAYING IN GETHSEMANE

BY HARRY ANDERSON

workplace are not just wrong but also against the law. Bullying in the form of discrimination based on your “race, national origin, color, sex, age, disability, or religion”8 is a violation of federal civil rights law. Bullying or intimidation based on your weight or sexual orientation is also prohibited

by New York state law.9 For your sake and for the company’s sake, your employer will want to immediately stop any bullying in the workplace.

Look at your paycheck: after hours; overtime; health, retirement, and other benefits; Medicare and social security; and federal, state, and local income taxes, there is no place for bullying. Bullying, harassment, and discrimination should never be a part of your job. If your supervisor is the one doing the bullying, then go to his or her supervisor. If you are a member of a union, there is probably a union representative in your workplace who can help you access assistance and resources available to union members in responding to and ending bullying. If these methods of recourse fail you, turn to the appropriate regulatory agency in the local, state, or federal government and file a complaint. State and federal laws require that immediate action be taken if discrimination or sexual harassment is occurring.

Now, you may fear getting your bully in trouble. However, remember that bullies often have multiple victims. There are possibly others who are being bullied or harassed by this same person, so by protecting yourself you may be protecting others.

Third, let me return to a scripture that I mentioned a few moments ago, the one about the worth of souls being great in the sight of God. The verses after that state: LIFTING UP OTHERS As we lift up those affected by bullying, we can come to know the breadth of the Savior’s Atonement. The prophet Isaiah wrote:

Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows … he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

ISAIAH 53:4–5; MOSIAH 14:4–5

For, behold, the Lord your Redeemer suffered death in the flesh; wherefore he suffered the pain of all men, that all men might repent and come unto him.

And he hath risen again from the dead, that he might bring all men unto him, on conditions of repentance.

And how great is his joy in the soul that repenteth!10 As I mentioned earlier, the Atonement of Jesus Christ can heal the pain and sorrow of those who are bullied. But here’s the remarkable thing: that same Atonement that is open to you is also available to those who bully you, on condition of their repentance. The worth of their souls is great in the sight of God, too. God’s love for you is infinite enough that it extends to them, too. They may be—and likely are—suffering from a broken home, mental or physical problems, or lack of self-confidence that you can’t see and they unfortunately are responding by bullying and intimidating others. The Lord instructs us: Wherefore, I say unto you, that ye ought to forgive one another; for he that forgiveth not his brother his trespasses standeth condemned before the Lord; for there remaineth in him the greater sin.

I, the Lord, will forgive whom I will forgive, but of you it is required to forgive all men.

And ye ought to say in your hearts—let God judge between me and thee, and reward thee according to thy deeds.11 The Savior set the example for us when on the cross he asked, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”12 Do not allow yourself to remain your bully’s victim by harboring a grudge or other hard feelings. Do not allow your bully to have power over you to change you in such a way!

Your healing will be complete when you forgive those who have bullied you.

20 JESUS BLESSING JAIRUS’S DAUGHTER

BY GREG K. OLSEN

WARNING SIGNS HELPING OTHERS All of us know someone who is being, or has been, or will be bullied. We may also know someone who bullies. Be aware that many bullying victims suffer in silence, unwilling to speak of their suffering even to parents, close friends, or others. Because of this, it’s important to look out for signs that a child, classmate, or colleague is being bullied, harassed, intimidated, or discriminated against. Lists of signs to look for in both the bullied and those who bully is to the right. These are not complete lists, and not everyone who bullies or is bullied exhibits warning signs. But if you suspect someone is being bullied, try to help.

How do you help? If you are in school and you see someone being bullied, go get a teacher or other adult immediately and ask him or her to intervene. If you are able, you can help someone being bullied to get away, but do not fight the bully yourself, physically or verbally. If you fight, you risk getting injured yourself or getting in trouble. Do not give a bully an audience—don’t stand staring, laughing, or supporting such behavior. Set an example yourself. It can be hard, especially if you’re the only one doing it.

But standing up against bullying needs to start somewhere, and it might as well start with you.

Adults, how can you help? If you see a child or a colleague or loved one who is being bullied, there are a number of things you can do to help. ÎÎ You can listen. Give advice as appropriate, but remember that sometimes people just need someone to listen and care, not to respond or give advice. ÎÎ Assure them that the bullying is not their fault. Do not blame the victim for being bullied. Even if he or she somehow provoked the bullying, no one deserves to be bullied. ÎÎ Do not tell a child to physically fight back against the kid who is bullying. It could get the child hurt, suspended, or expelled. ÎÎ Parents should resist the urge to contact the other parents involved. It may make matters worse. School or other officials can act as mediators between parents.

Also be aware of the need to support bystanders who witness bullying behavior. The government reports that even youth who merely witness bullying—but do not engage in it themselves and are not victims—can suffer consequences, including missing or skipping school; increased use of tobacco, alcohol, or other drugs; and increased mental health problems, including depression and anxiety.

There is a lot more guidance out there beyond what I’ve noted. I would encourage you to take a look at the website of PACER’s National Bullying Prevention Center at pacer.org/bullying. (The PACER Center is an organization that supports children with disabilities.) I would also encourage you to look at stopbullying.gov, produced by the United States Department of Health and Human Services and where I got a lot of the advice I’ve mentioned here.

In the end, what both bullies and the bullied need is to more fully feel God’s love for them. And with that I turn to the words of Mormon, recorded by his son Moroni in the closing chapters of the Book of Mormon. These words echo those of Paul the Apostle to the Corinthians in the Eastern

Signs a child is being bullied ÎÎ Unexplainable injuries ÎÎ Lost or destroyed clothing, books, electronics, or jewelry ÎÎ Frequent headaches or stomach aches, feeling sick or faking illness ÎÎ Changes in eating habits, like suddenly skipping meals or binge eating. Kids may come home from school hungry because they did not eat lunch ÎÎ Difficulty sleeping or frequent nightmares ÎÎ Declining grades, loss of interest in schoolwork, or not wanting to go to school ÎÎ Sudden loss of friends or avoidance of social situations ÎÎ Feelings of helplessness or decreased self-esteem ÎÎ Self-destructive behaviors such as running away from home, harming themselves, or talking about suicide

Signs a child is bullying others Kids may be bullying others if they: ÎÎ Get into physical or verbal fights ÎÎ Have friends who bully others ÎÎ Are increasingly aggressive ÎÎ Get sent to the principal’s office or to detention frequently ÎÎ Have unexplained extra money or new belongings ÎÎ Blame others for their problems ÎÎ Don’t accept responsibility for their actions ÎÎ Are competitive and worry about their reputation or popularity Source: http://www.stopbullying.gov/at-risk/warning-signs/index.html

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

ÎÎ stopbullying.gov ÎÎ pacer.org/bullying 21

THE PURE LOVE OF CHRIST

But charity is the pure love of Christ, and it endureth forever; and whoso is found possessed of it at the last day, it shall be well with him.

MORONI 7:47

Hemisphere: ... charity suffereth long, and is kind, and envieth not, and is not puffed up, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, and rejoiceth not in iniquity but rejoiceth in the truth, beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

Wherefore, my beloved brethren, if ye have not charity, ye are nothing, for charity never faileth. Wherefore, cleave unto charity, which is the greatest of all, for all things must fail—

But charity is the pure love of Christ, and it endureth forever; and whoso is found possessed of it at the last day, it shall be well with him.

Wherefore, my beloved brethren, pray unto the Father with all the energy of heart, that ye may be filled with this love, which he hath bestowed upon all who are true followers of his Son, Jesus Christ; that ye may become the sons of God; that when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is; that we may have this hope; that we may be purified even as he is pure.13

NOTES 1.

Mosiah 18:8–10 2.

John 13:34–35 3.

Doctrine and Covenants 13 4.

Doctrine and Covenants 121:34–42 5.

Isaiah 53:3–5; Mosiah 14:3–5 6.

2 Peter 1:7; Doctrine and Covenants 4:6, 107:30 7.

Doctrine and Covenants 18:10 8. http://www.stopbullying.gov/laws/federal/index.html 9. http://www.stopbullying.gov/laws/new-york.html 10.

Doctrine and Covenants 18:11–13 11.

Doctrine and Covenants 64:9–11 12.

Luke 23:34 13.

Moroni 7:45–48 14.

John 3:16 15.

Matthew 5:14 16.

Matthew 5:16 17.

Matthew 9:12 (9:10–13; see also Mark 2:14–17, Luke 5:27–32)

22

I testify that each of us is a beloved son or daughter of God made in his image. He loves us each unconditionally and infinitely, so much so that he sent his Only Begotten Son to live and die for each of us.14 None of us is beyond the reach of his love.

But the primary way we will feel His love is through others. As disciples of Jesus Christ, we are commanded to be “the light of the world”15 and to “[l]et [our] light so shine before men, that they may see [our] good works, and glorify [our] Father which is in heaven.”16 We are commanded to share his love throughout the world.

During the Savior’s mortal ministry, his disciples were asked why he associated with sinners. Christ responded, “They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.”17 While all are in need of our Father in Heaven’s love, there are those among us who are the sick of whom the Savior spoke, who are in particular need of his love and our love. I invite us all to reach out to them and to stand on the front lines in the battle against bullying. All human beings deserve to be treated with dignity, respect, and kindness—as the children of God that they are—and we who are Christ’s disciples should lead the way. d This is based upon the text I prepared for a talk I gave in the sacrament meeting of the Bushwick 1st Branch on 28 October 2012. That was the weekend before Hurricane Sandy hit. A member of the stake high council—whose name I will allow to be lost to the annals of history—was also supposed to speak that day. However, he ended up canceling at the last minute, so we needed to fill up the time in sacrament meeting. The branch presidency asked me to invite a few people to speak, and we ended up filling up the time better than we had expected, which left me with only about 5 minutes to give a much-abridged version of this talk.

Dustin’s priesthood line of authority The priesthood is the power and authority of God, delegated to worthy male members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to act in God’s name and perform priesthood ordinances, including the ordinances of salvation (baptism, confirmation, priesthood ordination for men, the endowment, and temple marriage). The priesthood also carries with it the responsibility to live a life of service to others, through administering blessings and other ordinances, in serving as a home teacher and in church callings, and in all aspects of life.

As God’s authority, He, through His Son, Jesus Christ, is the ultimate source of that authority. During his mortal ministry, Jesus Christ ordained others to the priesthood. Three of those, Peter, James, and John, who led the Church anciently, returned in 1829 and bestowed the Melchizedek Priesthood upon the Prophet Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery. From there it has spread throughout the world.

All of my current priesthood authority comes through my ordination as an elder—for example, when I pass the sacrament, I do so as an elder, not under the authority given to me when I was ordained a deacon. But I have retained a copy of the line of authority given to me when I was ordained a deacon, and I reprint it here purely for the interest of it.

—dustin Melchizedek Priesthood conferral and ordination to the office of elder

3 September 2000

ORDAINED BY BIRTHDATE DISPLAYED IF DECEASED

OFFICE HELD

Randall Lavon Blue, Jr.

elder

Carson Taylor Blue

high priest

25 August 1974

Ronald Kay Brown

high priest

13 April 1964

Harold Flake Rogers

high priest

21 September 1947

Marion George Romney

high priest

20 April 1935

Joseph Fielding Smith

apostle

7 April 1910

Joseph Fielding Smith

apostle

1 July 1866

Brigham Young

apostle

14 February 1835

The Three Witnesses Oliver Cowdery David Whitmer Martin Harris

Called by revelation and set apart by the First Presidency to choose and ordain the Twelve Apostles

14 February 1835

Joseph Smith, Jr.

apostle

1829

Peter, James, and John who were ordained apostles by the Savior during his earthly minstry

apostle

see John 15:16

16 August 1916

19 September 1897

19 July 1876

13 November 1838

1 June 1801

23 December 1805

PROVIDED BY THE MEMBER AND STATISTICAL RECORDS DIVISION OF THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS 16 MARCH 2010 DETAIL OF DEPICTION OF THE RESTORATION OF THE MELCHIZEDEK PRIESTHOOD FROM THE ONLINE MEDIA LIBRARY OF THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS, MEDIALIBRARY.LDS.ORG

DATE ORDAINED

27 May 1979

Like all priesthood holders, Dustin can trace his priesthood authority to the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.

Deacon ordination line of authority DUSTIN TYLER GREEN was ordained a deacon in the Aaronic Priesthood 9 January 1994 by William Frank Leatherbury.

WILLIAM FRANK LEATHERBURY was ordained a high priest 14 March 1982

by Elmer R. King, Jr. ELMER R. KING, JR., was ordained a high priest 14 April 1968 by John A. Taylor.

JOHN A. TAYLOR was ordained a high priest 24 November 1958 by Mark E. Petersen.

MARK E. PETERSEN was ordained an Apostle 20 April 1944 by Heber J. Grant.

HEBER J. GRANT was ordained an Apostle 16 October 1882 by George Q. Cannon.

GEORGE Q. CANNON was ordained an Apostle 26 August 1860 by Brigham Young.

BRIGHAM YOUNG was ordained an Apostle 14 February 1835 under the hands of the Three Witnesses, Oliver Cowdery, David Whitmer, and Martin Harris.

The THREE WITNESSES were called by revelation to choose the Twelve Apostles and on 14 February 1835 were “blessed by the laying on the hands of the Presidency,” Joseph Smith, Jr., Sidney Rigdon, and Frederick G. Williams, to ordain the Twelve Apostles (History of the Church, Volume 2, pages 187–188).

JOSEPH SMITH, JR., and OLIVER COWDERY received the Melchizedek Priesthood in 1829 under the hands of Peter, James, and John.

PETER, JAMES, and JOHN were ordained Apostles by the Lord Jesus Christ (John 15:16).

23

LAST LOOK

SUM M ER 19 92

Carowinds left to right: Dustin’s Uncle Gary; brother, Daniel; Aunt Linda; Dustin; cousin Daria; and mother.

O C TO B E R 2 0 1 2

It used to be that staff at the amusement park near Charlotte, Carowinds, would take a photo of visitors as they entered and then try to sell them keychains with viewfinders attached and the photo inside. Apparently my family bought one of those keychains while visiting Carowinds in summer 1992, and I have somehow held on to it all these years. I captured this image by holding the viewfinder up to the lens of our camera and taking a photo. —dustin

SEE “FIONA TURNS TWO,” PAGE 2

IMAGE IN COLOR BAR ON NAMEPLATE TAKEN 2 MARCH 2007 BY DANIEL SCHWEN, CC BY-SA 2.5 COMMONS.W IKIMEDIA.ORG/WIKI/FILE:GOE_PLATZ_DER_SYNAGOGE_DETAIL_2_NOCA.JPG

Sand, waves, cupcakes—and rocks.

Sounds like a perfect birthday celebration for Fiona. For the second year in a row we took Fiona to the beach for her birthday. But, one year older and one year wiser: she didn’t get mad when we took her from the sand to play in the water. And, much to our chagrin, she really seemed to like the pink tutu on her swimsuit. Oh, well. Just goes to show that she is definitely her own person.