CULTURALLY SPEAKING

ON THE DRIVE up to Fort Collins with Cody as we passed through the mountains swallowing Silverton and other quaint towns Cody made a comment that Brigham Young must have passed the beauty of Colorado searching for more, got to the Salt Lake Valley and said "That's it! No more! That's as far as we're going!".
I WAS SILENTLY pleased that Brigham Young did pass it up if the humorous quip made by Cody was truth. I would hate for Colorado to be another Utah. Not that Utah is bad, it is just its own world; its own culture. I like that! I also like to observe and learn about a more liberal Colorado.
REALIZING THE POINT of mission work as being conversion...REALLY THOUGH?! How terrible would that be if the entire worlds sole religion was Mormonism? Not terrible on a moral level but a cultural level. So much of culture hinges on religious belief. To take away from the ceremony and ritual of other cultures would be educationally and culturally devastating.
THERE IS A lot I agree with concerning the LDS church, most actually, but one thing I don't or have a lack of understanding for is the seperation of souls based on conversion refusal.
SHARING THE MORMON culture is a wonderful wonderful thing that I hope is more accepted one day as that...a respectable religion and foundation of a beautiful culture. But I sure hope that one day when I travel to Ireland; land of both sets of my ancestors that I wont learn about Joseph Smith. Instead I hope to breath in the differences between the Native Irish Catholics and the British-sponsored Protestant immigrants and the blood spilt fighting for a belief they felt just as strongly to be the truth as Mormons feel Mormonism to be. Respectfully.