How can God help strengthen family relationships?

One of the most important beliefs of the mormon faith is that God can strengthen family relationships.

How does this work though?

Well, it starts with the belief that families are forever, and that at death the relationships we build in this life continue. With that view, it changes how you see those who are closeist to you. Marriage is also something that can continue after death, if a couple are joined together in the temple of God.

In adition to the view that these important relationships continue after death. There are things that you can do that build these relationships stronger. Simple things such as something mormons refer to as "Family home evening" where one night per week (Usually a monday) During this evening you spend time as a family, leaving everything else out of the way. Start with a prayer and reading from the scriptures than you do stuff together to build relationships like play a board game or watch a movie together.

Other ways are regularly having meals together as a family. I find it important to think that it does not really matter how much money you spend on a person, what is important is the time you spend with them. When you lose out on time together you miss devolping a more important relationship with that person.

When Jesus Christ visited the people in The Book of Mormon, he told them to pray always over their families (2 Nephi 18:21) This to me points out just how important the family is to our savior Jesus Christ and how God wants us to involve him more in our families. and also in Genesis 12:3 God promises Abraham that all of the families of the world will be blessed through him.

The family is important and involving God more in our families will strengthen any family. The simple act of praying together, and spending a little more tim in each other's company will make a huge difference.

Why do bad things happen in the world?

So, One questions missionaries get asked are questions along the lines of "If God is there, why do bad things happen?" or "Why do bad things happen to good people."

It is true that alot of bad things happen in the world even to people who do alot of good in the world. And if God is so loving why does he allow these things to happen. There are several reasons why this happens which can be answered by principles of the Gospel.

The first being something we call agency, or Our ability to choose what we do. Everyone on the earth makes decisions, God will judge each one of us based on the decisions we make with the understanding of right or wrong that we have. God will not force anyone to do anything because if he did, he would be taking away the only thing that is ours which is our freedom to act for ourselves(2 Nephi 2:26).

God has given us the way to live in harmony with eachother, and this can be found in the scriptures which is the commandments. By following these commandments the world would be a happier place where people get along together. There are many people who ignore God's commandments and because of this people suffer. This suffering is caused by people and would be fixed if we all tried our best to follow what God has asked us to do.

There is a lot of suffering however that is not caused by people. There is Illness, natural disasters and all kinds of things that cause distress for people, So Why does God allow these things to happen?

When God put us here on the earth, He placed us here to learn and gain experiances for ourselves. Some of the most important things we learn come through the more difficult things we experiance in this life. The difficulties we face in life are hard, and everyone experiances difficulties. What is important is how we deal with these difficulties.

The story of Job in the Bible teaches this principle. Job was a man who had a good life. He had many worldly treasures and most importantly a belief in God. God allowed satan to tempt Job, To take away everything he has except his life, to see what Job would do.

When Job lost everything his friends beliefs that he was cursed of God and that he had done something wrong, This was not true. God allowed these things to happen to see if Job was willing to do what God wants him to do even when things are not going his way. He stayed faithful dispite the terrible things that he faced.

When facing the many difficulties in life, there are two things to keep in mind, The first being the promise from God that we will never be given trials that we cannot handle (1 Corinthians 10:13) And the second is that the difficulties we face in this life will not compare to the reward that God has in store for us in the next life. (Romans 8:16-18)

Do mormons use the Bible?

So, in adition to The Book of Mormon, we believe in other scriptures, primarily The Bible (Both Old and New testaments) The Doctrine and Covenants and The pearl of Great price. We reffer to these as "The Standard works"

As the 8th article of faith teaches  "8 We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly; we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God." 

It can be a litttle confusing that we believe the Bible as far as it is translated correctly. It makes sense though, If you look at the Bible now there are hundreds of different translations. All of these translations have a slight variation on what it translates into, and in some verses the different translations have a very different meaning.


Because of all of these slight variations on translation we believe that we need to try to keep as close to the original text, You could say We believe in the Bible when it came from the pen of the original writer, and before man applied their own view on what the Bible teaches.

The Bible is priceless, The Old testament teaches many prophicies of our savior Jesus Christ and the New testament teaches of the fulfilment of these prophicies. It was written by inspired men and teaches about the importance of following God's commandments. And the New testament teaches about our saviors Earthly Ministry, there is nothing more important than the life of Jesus Christ.

The Bible and The Book of Mormon are equil in my eyes. Both will invite the spirit into your life and bring you closer to Jesus Christ. But if you want to know if The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is realy from God, you need to read The Book of Mormon, Because it is unique to the church, If it is the word of God than this church was established by God, If it is not than this church is just another church teaching their own view on who God is.

Understanding mormon words.

So there are many words that are used in The Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints that are quite unique to our church, and so understanding what these mormons are talking about can be difficult if you dont know what any of the words mean, so here is a list of some of them that I will briefly explain what they mean.

Ward - A ward is the word we use when we mean congrigation when someone refers to their ward they mean the local church they attend and the people who are a part of it.

Branch - A branch is just a smaller version of a ward with fewer members.

Stake - A stake is several wards who come together and support eachother. Kindof like if each ward was a village, a stake would be those villages working together like a county.

Stake Centre/Stake house - This is not where you go to eat food. It is usually the largest chappel in a stake and is where the members of a stake gather together once every few months or have larger social activities.

Sacrament - A sacrament meeting is the sunday worship service. where we take bread and water in order to remember our savior Jesus Christ.

Covenant - A covenant is an agreement between us and God kindof like a contract where God sets the terms and conditions and we agree to live it, We are than given promises from God for example when we are baptized we are promised we can live with God again after this life.

Atonement - The word atonement is what we use to discribe the sacrafice Jesus Christ made for us. It represents us becoming more in line with what God wants us to become. Through the atonement all of our sins can be taken away and all the wrongs that hit us in life will be taken away in the next life.

Standard works - The standard works of the church refer to what we also call the scriptures, this includes The Holy Bible, The Book of Mormon, The Pearl of Great Price and The Doctrine and Covenants.

General Conference -General Conference is where every 6 months the prophet and apostles give speaches and anouncements to the church world wide, It is broadcast over the internet and recorded on the churches website so people can access it at any time (Gc.lds.org)

Doctrine - This is used when refering to the beliefs held within the church, For example we believe that Baptism by immersion and proper authority is essential to our salvation, This would be doctrine.

"YSA" - Young Single Adults, It is a programme run by the church for 18-30 year old people who are not married like a big world wide social club for young people, they hold regular activities and parties and dances.

Family Home Evening -Family home evening is held every week, Usually on a monday where a family gets together and do fun activities together and read scriptures, this builds realy good relationships within the family.

"Motab" -The Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

"LDS" - is an abreviation for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

Mutual - A weekly activity for the yough ages 12-18 where they play games or do various activities together. Like a youth club.

"EFY" - Especially For Youth, It is a week long camp for the youth of the church to get together and learn and strengthen their faith together.

Relief Society -A Women's only organisation that is run by the women within the church, The main purpose is to provide help and support for each family within the ward and the community.

Institute - Institute is basically a bible study held usually once per week at the stake house. They do an in depth study on any of the standard works of the church It is usually only the YSA who attend.

Seminary - Seminary is for the youth of the church to teach them about the standard works of the church and helps them to understand them much better.

So, That is all the words I could think of, If there are any I have missed please post them and I will explain what they mean!

Why do so many momons go on missions?

A missionaries responsibility is to preach the gospel to the world. Both men and women serve missions within the church, For men (Elders) it is a two year service that they can go on from age 18 and older. For women (Sisters) They can serve for 18 months from the age of 19.

From an outside view, there would be no real reason for serving a mission, Dedicating two years of your life, where your soul purpose is to to knock on people's doors or talk to them in the street with the goal of bringing other people closer to God and find more peace in their life.

They do not get paid, there is no qualification at the end of the two years infact missionaries are asked to save money to support themselves for these two years. The average day starts at 6:30 when you get up, eat breakfast shower and exercise ready to begin two houds of study at 8AM till 9PM when you return to the flat and plan for the next day. The day ends at 10:30 when you go to bed.

You can literally be sent anywhere in the world (Provided the country allows missionaries into that country and is not under war conditions. From Africa, to Alaska you can literally go anywhere. You get asigned to a speciffic part of the world (For example I am in England London south which covers the south of england all the way up to London.

Most towns and cities have a congrigation to attend and the missionaries are asigned to these congrigations on average you stay there from 6 weeks to 6 months, Sometimes it can be longer depending on what the mission president (The man who is in charge of a speciffic area of the world) feels you should do.

So that covers the basics of what a missionary does. The reason why we do this, is to serve others and bring other's to their savior Jesus Christ. Sharing personal experiance we have gained and helping other's to find their own faith in God.

It is a great privilage to serve God, and for myself I can definately say that I have come to know God better and my relationship with Him has grown far more than it would have done if I had not come out. You also get to meet many people from all kinds of backgrounds and make friends all over the world.

The best answer tho comes from the individual however. If you want to know why a missionary is out there knocking on your door, ask him or her and they will tell you.

What happens inside Mormon Temples?

So, Inside the temple there are three main things that happen. Baptisms on behalf of those who are dead a ceremony called an Endowment and Marriage for Eternity.

1 Corinthians 15:29 "Else what shall they do which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? why are they than baptized for the dead?"

Baptisms for the dead is something that was practices in the days of Jesus Christ, It comes from that First Baptism is required for everyone to enter into the Kingdom of heaven, and second that salvation is available to everyone who has ever walked on the earth.

What happens is members of the church go into the baptismal font and are baptized on behalf of those who have died. Members can do this when they reach 12 years old or if they have been baptized a couple of weeks. The people who are baptized are baptized on behalf of someone who has passed on, Usually an ancestor of that person. The person who has passed on than gets to choose, weather they accept Jesus Christ and are washed clean through baptism. Or they can reject Jesus Christ. They still have that freedom to choose. So if they do not want it, they just reject it.

The Endowment is a ceremony that new members of the church take part in after they have been in the church for about a year. Here we learn more about the creation of the world, and make covenants with God in addition to the ones we make at baptism. To Endow someone means to give a gift, And that is really what the ceremony is, It is a gift from God. There to give us guidance and strength to deal with the challenges of life.

After the endowment comes the sealing room. Here couples and families kneel down together at the alter and make a vow to stay loyal to each other and support each other, not just in this life but forever. There are two mirrors on the walls in this room, opposite each other they reflect each other over and over, symbolizing that this is something that lasts forever. It is a very beautiful thing to see.

And that basically is what happens, The temple is God's university, as we go through we learn thing all the time and receive guidance and personal answers from God. I find it wonderful that each temple has on it the words "Holiness to the Lord, the house of the Lord" because this is the house of God on earth.

Do Mormons Celebrate Christmas?

In short, Yes we do celebrate Christmas.

The first Christmas recorded in history was held a few years after the first Nicene creed was established by The Church of Rome (Roman Catholic church) in 325AD. Since it was introduced at about 354AD it has been used to celebrate the birth of our savior up until recent times when the giving of gifts has become the most dominant factor on Christmas.

In the recent years Christmas has drifted very far away from what the original intent was, But to me, Christmas is all about spending time with family and celebrate the birth of the most important and holiest man ever to walk on the face of the earth.

It is a time for people to think of each other and give gifts to those who they love and care for, It causes people to think more on those who do not have as much as they do. It is also something that lifts peoples spirits in one of the darkest times of the year.

Ultimately I believe Christmas brings people closer to God, because it causes us even if it is just for a short period of time to give and to love one another.  Here is a video that I like that teaches what Christmas should be about.