MormonDaddyBlogs – 2011 May

Remembering

May 30, 2011 By Dennis

It’s a day for remembering. Remembering those who put their lives on the line to protect us. Remembering loved ones who have gone before us. Here is a pair of posts that remind us to remember.

Band of Brothers

The Art of Manliness turns its attention to the men of World War II’s Easy Company, just one company of many who sacrificed much to preserve our freedoms.

AofM’s post features a series of motivation-style posters capturing the voices and images of some of the men of Easy Company, who still have much they can teach us today.

Read Motivational Posters from the Band of Brothers.

The Men Behind the Crosses

If you live in Utah, you may have driven by them many times. And you may have heard about them in the news, as they have attracted considerable legal attention. But Scott Taylor recently stopped to learn more about a pair of crosses he drives by regularly.

He learned that this particular pair of crosses marks the location where two Utah Highway Patrol officers had fallen 40 years apart. He dug deeper to learn their stories, which he shares briefly on his post, but also provides links where you can learn more about the men behind the crosses.

Read They Died 40 Years Apart…A Memorial.

Filed Under: Featured, General Tagged With: Art of Manliness, Brett McKay, Scott Taylor

Richard Tait

May 28, 2011 By Dennis

By day, Richard Tait is a mild-mannered analyst for the Department of Defense in Maryland. On nights and weekends, however, he dons his superhero writing cape and becomes the Mormon Third Eye.

The Mormon Third Eye strives to see and document from alternate angles both the humorous and inspirational aspects of life serving as a faithful brother, husband, father, and member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Between regular Sunday blog therapy sessions, he prefers to talk politics and religion with his wife, and spend time worrying about how his two YSA children are spending their time. He bleeds BYU blue — he warns his babies that “they can attend college wherever they want to, but their tuition is going to BYU.”

Filed Under: MDBer Tagged With: Mormon Third Eye, Richard Tait

Fighting Against the Unimaginable

May 28, 2011 By Dennis

When we speak of protecting the family, sometimes we think of struggles at the ballot box or in the courtroom.

But far beyond that struggle is a place where those of us who associate turning 8 with a beautiful child dressed in white cannot bear to imagine: child slavery.

In his guest post in Modern Mormon Men, John Burger describes how he and his wife became involved in the fight against child slavery after coming across a video called “Imagine” (note: if the link to the video on the blog post doesn’t work for you, you can also find it here).

“I share this for two reasons,” writes John. “One, to raise awareness of this particular issue. Two, to hopefully inspire you on a similar journey. It may not be specifically for this cause, but there are a lot of evil things in this world and opportunities to serve. Yes, life is busy. It’s a juggling act between family, work and church service. Throwing abolitionist work into the mix makes things a little crazy and usually means sacrificing some sleep. But, doing this has helped me appreciate and love my family even more. It’s helped me in my job and my church callings. I have had chances to share my testimony of the Savior with others and work with great people of a variety of faiths. It doesn’t get much better than this. Whatever the cause or the opportunity to serve, you can make a difference.”

John and his wife live in Dallas, where they are raising their three children. Read John’s full post, How I Started My Abolitionist Journey.

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: AbolitionistJB, John Burger, Modern Mormon Men

Aaron Quist

May 26, 2011 By Dennis

Aaron Quist returned home from his mission in 2000, which has given him plenty of time to contemplate being an RM. He decided to start a new blog to not only ease, but maximize the transition back to civilian life for recently returned missionaries. It’s called The RMTC, or Returned Missionary Training Center.

Makes perfect sense. We have plowed the wisdom of generations of missionary work into our Missionary Training Center, but when our youth return home after their service, we give them a handshake and wish them all the best. Maybe what we really need is a post-MTC. But until then, at least there’s the RMTC blog.

Originally from Arizona, Aaron now lives in Southern California with his wife and two children, where he practices law.

Filed Under: MDBer

Prom: Better Late?

May 26, 2011 By Dennis

Geoffrey Sagers is just a regular Mormon dad who blogs (in Chronicles of Geoff) about whatever project he is working on, be it home improvement, self improvement or family outings.

But more than a decade after his wife didn’t get asked to prom, Geoff did something pretty extraordinary. When it comes to prom, maybe late isn’t just better than never, maybe it’s just plain better.

Geoff even let his wife tell the story in her blog. We can learn a lot from Geoff. (Let’s hope our wives don’t see this.)

When Geoff isn’t working on earning husband of the year honors, he is busy being the father of five. His oldest daughter has special needs. “She is my incentive to live right,” says Geoff.

Welcome Geoff to MDB by starting with his link to his wife’s post in Prom 2011.

Filed Under: Featured, General, Parenting, Relationships Tagged With: Chronicles of Geoff, Geoff Sagers

When She Pops the Question

May 25, 2011 By Dennis

Not that question. The question before that question. The question that can pave or pre-empt the way to the big question.

“What are you going to be when you grow up?”

Once that question was an opportunity to let your imagination soar with limitless possibilities, before the grown-up would chuckle at your answer and send you on our way with a pat on your head. But to the recently returned missionary on a first date, that question is loaded.

Fortunately, there is a new blog on the scene to help recently returned missionaries not only answer that question, but to help with the overall transition back to civilian life. It’s called the RMTC, or Returned Missionary Training Center, and it makes perfect sense. We have plowed the wisdom of generations of missionary work into our Missionary Training Center, but when our youth return home after their service, we give them a handshake and wish them all the best.

In addition to articles on how to RM (for example, this post on why we’re a mess for awhile after our missions), the blog includes a list of stuff the returning missionaries missed while they were gone (royal weddings, Adele, etc.).

While many of those who participate here at MDB are beyond being considered a recently returned missionary, we still want to help spread the word about the RMTC blog in an effort to help them get those fine young men to the point where they are candidates for Mormon dads, and therefore participants of MDB.

Thanks to Aaron Quist, one of the “faculty” members at the RMTC, for bringing this blog to our attention. Aaron is a practicing attorney. He and his wife are raising two children in California.

Enjoy Aaron’s post, The Pre-Astronaut RM.

Filed Under: Featured, Relationships, Teachers Tagged With: Aaron Quist, the rmtc

The Manly Switch of Physicality

May 23, 2011 By Dennis

It was a post I started reading with great anticipation. The introduction describes a series of five switches that, when left in the “off” position, leave us feeling restless, angry, and apathetic, but when switched to the “on” position make us feel “alive, invigorated, motivated to be our best, and just plain manly.” Best of all, these switches would require only “small and simple” changes.

Sign me up.

I confess the more I got into Brett McKay’s post on the first switch, physicality, the more I realized two things: 1) this particular switch may not be as small and simple to implement as I had hoped; and 2) Brett was probably right on the money.

Writes Brett: “When seeking to activate the deeply encoded parts of primitive masculinity, there is no better place to start than physicality. Primitive man used his body all day every day: building, hunting, walking, dancing, fighting. For modern man, these activities have been replaced with sitting.”

Time to get out of that chair? Don’t miss The Art of Manliness’ first installment in the series The 5 Switches of Manliness.

Only four switches to go…

Filed Under: Featured, General Tagged With: Art of Manliness, Brett McKay

Enraptured by the Rapture

May 21, 2011 By Dennis

Some end of the world predictions catch on better than others. For some reason, radio evangelist Harold Camping’s prediction of today, May 21, 2011, leads the pack and may not be surpassed for a long time (if there will still be more time).

It’s even captured the fancy of the MDB community as well. Here is what a few of us had to say about that.

Linescratchers, a group music blog for and by LDS musicians and those who love them, came up with their Music Bucket List: Rapture Edition, featuring concerts and albums they must re-experience at least once before they die, such as: “I think I’d listen to Abbey Road for sure. Now that’s a farewell album if I ever heard one.”
Saint Mark is graduating Sunday from law school in Boston. Sadly, that is a day after rapture. “I ran into a parade of May 21st believers. I tried to make a deal with one of them: I’ll read your brochure on why this Saturday is the day of judgment if you will take this pass along card and call the number on it on Sunday, if Sunday happens.” Find out what happened next in Judgment Day or Just Another Day of Judgment?
Michael Lyons prefers to stick with Matthew 24′s take on the timing of the Second Coming. Still, he wonders if he can “use the predicted rapture as a way of getting out of the Fathers/Sons overnighter tonight?” Read more in No Man Knoweth – I Think I’ll Stick with That.
Middle-aged Mormon Man brings us his revised to-do list based on the rapture date, including the following section from Friday:

~~Pay car payment.~~
Taco Bell for lunch.
~~Tell wife about speeding ticket.~~

Get the full list here in A Rapturous To-Do List.

Filed Under: Featured, General Tagged With: Into the Lyons Den, Linescratchers, Michael Lyons, Middle-aged Mormon Man, Modern Mormon Men, Saint Mark

Wife Yelling

May 18, 2011 By Dennis

Apparently, yelling at our wives isn’t as verboten as one would think, even for the good Mormon dads that we are.

In fact, there are two times when we can raise our voices, one of which is prophet sanctioned, the other scripturally sanctioned.

Special thanks to Richard Tait for bringing these occasions to our attention in his recent post in Mormon Third Eye, I See… When it’s OK to Yell at Your Wife.

Filed Under: Featured, Relationships Tagged With: Mormon Third Eye, Richard Tait

The Father-Son Journey

May 15, 2011 By Dennis

It’s clear Seti Matua loves this journey called life. Indeed, he’s chronicling his in a blog called Le Folauga, Samoan for The Journey.

You’ll find a lot of passion on his blog about everything from his strong feelings about adults who screw up sports for their kids (he’s against that) to diaper bag thievery (he’s against that, too).

In addition to being a rugby coach, Seti is a former editor for a number of publications and is now a free-lance writer. He writes frequently on sports as well as the Pacific Islander/Polynesian community. He especially loves to write about when those two worlds combine to produce the likes of NFL stars Troy Polamalu, Haloti Ngata, Jonathan Fanene, Ray Feinga, Rey Maualuga and Aaron Francisco.

But perhaps nowhere is his passion more evident than in his love of his family, as evidenced by this post about his recent experience interviewing his boys in Father-Son Time Gets to the Heart of the Matter.

Seti and his wife, Jennifer, live in Utah, where they are raising their five sons. Welcome to MDB, Seti.

Filed Under: Featured, Sports, Writers Tagged With: Le Folauga, Seti Matua