Anyway, I was so excited he did this because I had not yet had time to play with these websites, and had yet to unlock their potential. Did you know that on the new website you can download complete audio files of the scriptures for your ipod or smatphone? Did you know you can access the Friend online and play cute and educational games? Did you know you can find out what the Humanitarian Aid is doing and how you can help? Did you know you can search through a massive database and find a mormon who is your same gender, age, race, has the same interests, or has been in a similar situation, and find out about that person's life, opinions and testimony? That means I can instantly find other vegetarian mormons and read about they deal with ridiculous relief society lessons. Oh, I love it.
One of my favorite things is the ability to log in. If you log in, and you're a church member, you can access an online ward directory. That means three things: Since it's online, you don't have to keep the paper ward directory around to clutter up your house. You can instantly get the phone number of someone new to the ward, or updated information if someone just changed callings or their phone number, and the church is going to stop printing paper directories to save trees! Isn't that wonderful?!
It was a great meeting. I think my favorite part was when the bishop showed off the page for teenagers and talked about how is has a lot of youtube videos, and then went on to explain that "YouTube is a video sharing service where you can upload videos and watch videos made by others." I giggled. Sometimes I forget that some people have never used Youtube, or Google, or (gasp) Blogger.
I've actually heard some pretty compelling arguments lately for not taking your Smartphone to church. That said, I've had the audio scriptures downloaded for a year and love having them on my iPod. My favorite thing though is the General Conference podcasts. Oh yes my friend. It does not get awesomer than listening to the words of inspired men and women as you are going to sleep.
ReplyDeleteI think the find-a-Mormon thing is weird. What is that supposed to be, like, an online semi-dating service for our single members? Eesh.
I wish they had the teenager website when we were younger. I googled Mormon teenage messageboards 5 million times when I was in YW. Curse my relative oldness.
I use the directory all the time. It's nice because it's up to date the minute someone's records come in, while paper directories are outdated so fast.
ReplyDeleteAnd I have done all the find a picture activities out of the Friend, studied scriptures and entered my thoughts in a notebook, found a local ward for myself and others, and printed many a nursery coloring sheet because the ward library always gets them crooked with the coils showing. Not to mention ordering things from the distribution center, including church magazines.
Anthony has the scriptures on his iPod. Missy L told her daddy one day that she wanted to go to church with us because "Grandpa lets me read the scriptures on his iPod."
Well, yeah, and if she's real good during the Sacrament time, he lets her play games on it for the rest of the meeting. Kevin thought that was hilarious.
As a nursery leader, I think it would be awesome to be able to text parents when their child needs a potty or diaper change, rather than having to traipse around the church, leaving the other kids short a leader.
I have to admit I have not used "find a mormon" but it might be great for activity planning. Find a Mormon in Iowa who is a square dance caller, a motorcycle repairman, an expert on internet safety....