Tag: church

Welcoming Difficult Questions Personal / Spirituality

Welcoming Difficult Questions

by Jun 24, 2014 14 Comments

If you’re connected at all with Mormonism, you may have heard about the recent situation in which LDS church leaders have sent letters warning of excommunication to about a dozen members who are publicly asking difficult questions about church history, policy, and doctrine. The two most well-known individuals include Kate Kelly, founder of the Ordain Women movement, which raises questions about gender inequality in the...

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Why I Can’t Leave the Church Alone Personal / Spirituality

Why I Can’t Leave the Church Alone

by Mar 31, 2014 24 Comments

It’s been almost four years since my family and I decided to leave the LDS (Mormon) church, and almost three years since I published my document about Why I Left the Mormon Church. This letter has since been read by tens of thousands of people, and still prompts almost weekly emails from readers, mostly people thanking me for the comfort and courage it provided them on...

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Why I Left the Mormon Church Personal / Spirituality

Why I Left the Mormon Church

by Jan 14, 2012 113 Comments

There have been some rumors floating around that we have left the Mormon church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints). Perhaps you’ve seen the pictures of Jen in sleeveless dresses, or you’ve noticed from my tweets the absence of any mention of church for almost a year, and you’re wondering what’s going on. Some people have approached us about it privately and others...

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Jen and Brandon at the Temple Costa Rica

Getting Settled

by Feb 14, 2010 6 Comments

We’ve been living in our house in Grecia, Costa Rica for over a week now and are starting to feel more settled. The plumbing issues have all been fixed, our Internet is working, and we’re starting to get into more productive routines. Now that we’re “living” here, more than “vacationing”, we’re finding ourselves settling into many of the habits we had before we left (ie....

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More House Hunting Costa Rica

More House Hunting

by Jan 17, 2010 4 Comments

We’ve looked at a lot of houses for rent this week, in the small towns of Costa Rica, and have gone from excitement to discouragement and back again. Now we’re just confused. We’ve seen everything from a luxury estate with an infinity pool, jacuzzi, and million dollar view, to tiny, run-down Tico houses that would be more claustrophobic than comfortable. Yet, we’re still not sure...

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Grecia rental view $1100 Costa Rica

A Little Update

by Jan 10, 2010 4 Comments

I just wanted to keep everyone up to date on what we’ve been doing the past four days since we arrived in Costa Rica. We’re in the perfect location for exploring the town. We’re in walking distance of everything, and we have been walking a lot! It actually gets fairly hot during the day here, and we’re not used to this much walking, so we...

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Dinner at Hotel Bambito Bocas del Toro

Flying to Bocas

by Mar 03, 2009 11 Comments

I’m now writing from our very relaxing house on Bastimentos island in Bocas del Toro. I have a few days to catch up on, so let me just say we went to dinner at Cafe Essencia in Volcan on Saturday, and it was not good! (The first “bad” food we’ve had in Panama). The bread was very stale, and fell apart on our sandwiches and...

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Volcán

Sunday in Volcan

by Feb 23, 2009 1 Comment

On Sunday, we went to the Volcan LDS branch – what great and kind people! We even got invited to dinner this week by a sweet retired couple who maintain this website of pictures of Volcan. We may be seeing other members this week as well. Emily went to primary without a problem today, but Marie was too shy to go. During Relief Society, Jen...

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El Valle de Antón

Sunday Driving

by Feb 16, 2009 3 Comments

On Sunday, we planned on going to the Penonome branch for church, about a 2-hour drive from El Valle. Fortunately, church started at 12pm (we thought), so we had time to get ready. We left a bit late, and really didn’t know how to get there, but we left anyway, and made our way to Penonome. We got to the city right about noon, but...

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Panama City

Sunday in the Bella Vista Ward

by Feb 08, 2009 7 Comments

Today we went to church at the Bella Vista ward. It was quite different from the ward we went to last week near the Temple. This ward was comprised almost entirely of Spanish speakers, so obviously, everything was in Spanish. The past few days, Emily has been very distraught after getting dressed in the morning, saying that her clothes feel funny. Today was especially bad,...

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