All of the magazines are available on the Church’s website for free; subscriptions are available for the printed versions. 

Members of the Church eagerly anticipate each issue of the Ensign and Liahona.  Both magazines publish the same content, but the Ensign only in English, whilst the Liahona is made available throughout the world in 61 langauges (‘Making Church Magazines’, Ensign, Jul 2008, pp. 64–69).

Ensign and Liahona issues always begin with a message from the First Presidency (the governing body of the Church consisting of the Prophet and two counsellors).

Messages from the Twelve (Apostles) are included in all magazines, as well as articles written and submitted by ordinary Church members and magazine staff.

Because the periodicals are authorized by a member of the Seventy and Twelve (ibid.), Church members accept anything written in the publications as scripture.  In fact, anything which a Prophet says officially, in the name of the Saviour, is considered considered scriptural: it is direct revelation from God.

The makeover is in preparation for the integration of FamilySearch’s many websites popularly used by Church members and the general public.  One of these is FamilySearch Indexing (www.familysearchindexing.org), where millions of genealogical records which are currently only available on microfilm are being transcribed by volunteers.   The project is revolutionary: the world-famous records in the granite vault in Salt Lake City are being placed online by people who work at home for a few minutes every week.

FamilySearch Indexing already has its own tab on the newly designed FamilySearch website.

New FamilySearch (new.familysearch.org) has already become a sensation amongst Church members.  A worldwide database of family trees is being stored on this site, allowing members to collaborate and submit names for Temple ordinances quickly.  The Church is currently implementing the system in temples around the world.

NFS has not been given a link on the original, revamped, FamilySearch page, but provision for it is being made.

The Triple Combination is a volume of scriptures unique to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and is published in order to conveniently place The Book of Mormon, The Doctrine and Covenants and The Pearl of Great Price in one book.

The Church is currently working on place about two dozen languages of the Triple Combination online.  Prior to this announcement, English, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese and Italian versions were available.

The Combination can be accessed at scriptures.lds.org.

See:

• Statement from the Church

Members of the Church will now be able to submit names for ordinance work themselves and will no longer have to wait days before the names are ready.  A simple printout, the Family Ordinance Request, which can be done in a few minutes, is all that is needed.  This is then taken to the Temple staff, who will the print ordinance cards which one then takes through to do the actual ordinances.

For more information on this story, see the Post’s article ‘Alive with New FamilySearch‘.

The Teddington Post (the original edition found at teddington.wordpress.com) brought you exclusive news on Thursday that the New FamilySearch website had just become available for Southern and Central African members’ registration (see teddington.wordpress.com/2008/07/03/breaking-news-johannesburg-temple-district-members-can-register-on-new-familysearch).

The availability comes as the Johannesburg Temple is making preparations to ‘go live’ with the Church’s new system on Tuesday.

This website was envisaged by President Gordon B. Hinckley, mainly to stop the large amount of duplication occurring in Temples around the world. Because members could not centralise and share information easily, they subsequently worked on and submitted names without knowing that ordinances had already been done for.

Now, members will all contribute to a centralised database, which will eventually link all of humanity, supposing that the databank remains through the Millennium.

Millions of names the Church has held for years, such as Temple work done, extraction programmes, Church membership records and Ancestral and Pedigree File, are all online already. When members sign on for the first time, they can choose to either upload their family history from another genealogy program (such as PAF) and then sort through all the names, checking for duplicates from the above-mentioned databases; or they can start from scratch and search for and add those names that already exist in the said databases.
Eventually, a chain will emerge and members will find it easy to contact others working on their lines.

The process for doing ordinance work is also much more simplified. Members now need only to reserve the names they wish to do, print out a sheet called a Family Ordinance Request and give it to the Temple staff, who then print cards that are taken to the ordinances. Instead of waiting for weeks after submission before an ordinance can be done, members can now decide on the day.

New FamilySearch (NFS) is still in its rolling-out stage, with 44% of Temples across the globe presently online. Another 27% are in the preparatory stages, Johannesburg included until Tuesday. Once all Temples have been linked up, the website will be opened to the general public and the old FamilySearch site (www.familysearch.org) will be decommissioned.

The FamilySearch organisation, which is operated by the Church, has also galvanised 104 000 people to voluntarily index millions of names from records currently held in the granite vaults in Salt Lake City. This will mean that records currently only available through microfilm or government archives will be digitised and placed on FamilySearch for anyone to search, free of charge. 50 million names have been indexed so far.

Those wishing to help in this massive indexing effort can register at www.familysearchindexing.org. Indexing can be done at home, through batches of images previously scanned in Salt Lake being sent to one’s computer. One then transcribes the images and sends back the data.

Those collections already indexed are being made available gradually on search.labs.familysearch.org.

The issue of Church members using blogs, comments on news stories, media sharing sites and other forms of communicatory media has received massive attention since a graduation ceremony address to Brigham Young University-Hawaii students by Elder M. Russel Ballard of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

In his statement, he urged students to ‘join the conversation by participating on the Internet to share the gospel and to explain in simple and clear terms the message of the Restoration’.

But Elder Ballard warned that heated arguments about our and others’ beliefs must be avoided, as ‘contention is of the devil.’

His talk has now been published in this month’s edition of Ensign and Liahona, increasing the scope of his counsel to the entire adult membership of the Church.

Clearly, Elder Ballard was not speaking for himself, but this admonition is coming from the Church leadership and bearing one’s testimony seems to be one of the things the leaders want us to do: ‘Most of you already know that if you have access to the Internet you can start a blog in minutes and begin sharing what you know to be true.’

Leaders also wish members to prudently respond to incorrect reporting and questions posed by non-members.

The Church’s Newsroom site (newsroom.lds.org) has added features which help members to become blogging news agents.  They give members rights to use information from the Newsroom:

‘Newsroom.lds.org is the Church’s official Website for the news media, opinion leaders and the public, including bloggers and others using new media. The Newsroom Website is a great resource to find content that you can reuse in your own blog, video, social networking page, etc.’

And Church members will doubtless begin heeding their leaders’ words.

See:

• Ensign Article
• Newsroom Guidelines

Church members are used to members of the public incorrectly identifying them as polygamous.  Indeed, the Church officially stopped polygamy in 1890 and now, members who involve themselves in such marriages are excommunicated.

The view of the Church concerning this is very strict.  In South Africa, many native African people still practise polygamy as part of their culture.  Jacob Zuma, the President of the African National Congress and soon-to-be President of South Africa, has multiple wives.  Notwithstanding the cultural condoning polygamy has in this country and the previous condoning of it in the Church over a century ago, those already involved in polygamous relationships may not join the Church until only one wife is married to the investigator.

According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLDS), the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was formed when the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints renounced polygamy.  Through a series of defections and rivalries, splinter fundamentalist movements were formed.  Crime, racism and power struggles have riddled the sect.

The LDS Church, of which I am a member, is the largest of what is apparently known as the LDS Movement.  I bear my testimony that it is the true Church on the face of this Earth, a fact I know.

Allow me to deviate somewhat first.  Latter-day Saints are, like Israel was during Old and New Testament times, a covenant-making people.  Our spiritual progression is largely determined by the making of covenants, or sacred promises to the Lord, in return for which we are promised glorious blessings.

The first covenant a member of the Church makes is known as the baptismal covenant, or the covenant made at baptism.  Members promise to take the name of Jesus Christ upon them, to always remember Him and to keep His commandments.  Basically, they promise to try their utmost to follow the Lord’s will and be like Him.

Male members who are worthy will then make the Oath and Covenant of the Priesthood when they have the Melchizedek Priesthood conferred upon them.  Essentially, they covenant to discharge their duties to the greatest degree possible and to (again) follow all the commandments given to them.

The preceding two ordinances are performed in meeting houses, homes or wherever they can be.  The covenants they next take out are so sacred that they can only be performed in temples.

The Temple is the House of the Lord.  It is an intensely sacred place, where the Saviour Himself walks the corridors and where His servants go to perform the most sacred acts of Mormonism.

Only the worthy Latter-day Saint may enter the Temple.  For that purpose, Bishops and Branch Presidents (leaders of congregations) must interview a prospective visitor before he or she may enter.  A recommend is then issued, which is valid for two years and which is used as a qualifying ticket to enter any temple in the world.

There are five essential ordinances (of which I am aware, at least) that occur in the Temple.  They are baptism, confirmation, Initiatry, the Endowment and Sealings.  When a member is at least 18 years old (in practice, a bit older), he or she may enter the Temple to ‘take out’ his or her own endowment. 

Before the Endowment is taken out, he or she must first go through Initiatry, where certain vital ordinances are performed.  I shall forebear to divulge too much information here.  All that can be revealed, I think, is that Initiatry is also known as ‘washings and anointings’.

After going through Initiatry, the member will ‘take out’ his or her Endowment.  This ordinance involves being taught about the Plan of Salvation and a review of history as well as the making of certain covenants, such as to be chaste, give of time and means to help build up the Church, et cetera.

After this, the member may return whenever he or she wishes (provided a current recommend is held).

Before I explain the other three ordinances performed at the Temple, allow me to explain something first.  Latter-Saints are charged to research their family lines in order to identify their ancestors.

Because so many people have died without ever knowing of the true Gospel and without being baptised, confirmed and (in the case of men) given the Priesthood, the Lord has provided a glorious way in which we can assist our kindred dead.  Through the principle of vicariousness, living members may act as proxy in ordinances for those who are dead.  For example, I have been baptised vicariously for my grandfather, who died without really knowing about the Gospel.

The dead do have a choice, on the ‘other side’, whether they will accept the ordinances performed, but through this glorious principle, those who died without the privileges of the Gospel may be given the same opportunities as we.

Now, vicarious ordinances for the dead may only be performed in a Temple.  Therefore, whilst living members may be baptised, endowed and given the Priesthood anywhere, proxy ordinances must be performed within the walls of a Temple.

Members of the Church are busily doing genealogical research, so that they can have their ancestors baptised, confirmed, taken through Initiatry, endowed and sealed.

Sealings are the greatest blessings of the Temple.  Two types of sealings occur: those for entire families and those for marriage.

Traditional marriage ceremonies have no power after death.  Marriages are ’till death to you part’.  Therefore, the death of one spouse immediately annuls one’s marriage.  Also, what authority have we to tell God who will be with whom for eternity.  Nowadays, one can be married by a civil officer in two minutes!

For Latter-day Saints, marriage is more than an earthly coupling; it is eternal.  When we get married, we have our ceremonies performed within the Temple, in a sealing, where the couple is literally bound together for time and all eternity.  There are covenants associated with this, naturally.  They are marital commitments.

Children born to sealed parents are automatically sealed to their parents.  Thus, the family is bound together, by the Holy Spirit, for eternity.

Through conversion, of course, and when doing work for the dead, there are children who were born to parents who were not sealed.  They must then be sealed as a family in a sealing ceremony as well.

Latter-day Saints love their temples!

A number of sources have confirmed to me that the Johannesburg Temple has received this, the date of its going live with New FamilySearch.  It appears that family history staff in our temple district have been informed; family history blogs have obtained the information as well and are reporting it.

Concerning going ‘live’, the Ancestry Insider (ancestryinsider.blogspot.com)says:

‘Registered family history consultants and leaders are notified when their temple districts are about to change to NFS [New FamilySearch]. … The initial notification usually gives an approximate time frame of 3 or 4 months for the NFS release, but not a specific date. A final notification gives the date to stop using TempleReady, the date all temple district members can access NFS and the date the temple will begin using NFS.’

The same blog provides information that on 8 July, members will be able to print cards for temple ordinances using a Family Ordinance Request.  This system makes use of the New FamilySearch website, available at new.familysearch.org.  Apparently, members will be able to register on and access the site about three days prior to the activation (about 5 July 2008), early in the morning.

With this announcement, Renee Zamora, on her blog ‘Renee’s Genealogy Blog’ (rzamor1.blogspot.com), says that 56 temples are now live and 34 are in the process of going live.  That leaves only 37 which have not been announced.

This is a most exciting development for members in our region.

For those of you who know are thoroughly confused by the above, the Church has been introducing an incredible new system called New FamilySearch.  The website’s predecessor, FamilySearch (www.familysearch.org), is one of the largest family history research websites in the world.

News agencies across the United States, including Mormon Times, are reporting that the First Presidency has sent a letter to all units in California, urging members to ‘do all [they] can’ to support a constitutional amendment that would prohibit gay marriage in California indefinitely.

This is not the first time the Church has entered the political arena in support of the sanctity marriage.  Now, Church members will be galvanised into voting for this amendment.

The admendment is in response to a Supreme Court ruling that overturned a referendum on the subject.  Gay marriage is now legal, but the amendment would define marriage in the Constitution as between a man and a woman.

The letter states: ‘Our best efforts are required to preserve the sacred institution of marriage.’