Camille Lynn Jaque

To become more intelligent is to perceive reality more fully - to understand truth, consequences, relationships, moral value... more clearly Why do we do evil? Is it not because we fail to see reality properly? We choose some apparent good (pleasure, power, revenge, security, status, relief) without properly weighing the suffering of others, the damage to our character, the long-term consequences, the higher goods... We sin because we are retarded Am I on to something?

On the morning of February 8, 2021, sanitation workers Dion Merrick and Brandon Antoine were doing what they had done countless times before, collecting garbage along their regular route in St. Martin Parish, Louisiana. Just hours earlier, an AMBER Alert had been issued for 10 year old Jalisa Lasalle, who had disappeared from a relative's home in nearby New Iberia. Authorities were searching for a silver 2012 Nissan Altima, believing the little girl was in immediate danger. As their garbage truck rolled down Burton Plantation Highway, Merrick noticed a silver Nissan sitting alone in a field. Most people would have driven past. Instead, he remembered the AMBER Alert. The two men immediately parked their garbage truck in a way that blocked the Nissan from escaping. At the same time, Merrick called 911, convinced they had found the missing girl's vehicle. They stayed there, keeping the suspect boxed in until police arrived. Within minutes, officers reached the scene. Jalisa Lasalle was rescued alive and unharmed. The suspect, 33 year old Michael Roy Sereal, was arrested without incident and later faced charges including aggravated kidnapping. When Jalisa was safely taken from the car, Brandon Antoine said she quietly thanked them. It was a moment neither of the men would ever forget. They never called themselves heroes. They said they simply paid attention, trusted their instincts, and did what they believed was right. That ordinary workday became the day two sanitation workers helped save a child's life, proving that courage isn't always found in a uniform. Sometimes, it arrives in a garbage truck, driven by people who refuse to ignore something that doesn't look right.

The faith and sacrifice of the pioneers are not merely part of our history. They are part of our heritage as a covenant people.  Today we honor those faithful Latter-day Saint pioneers who established homes, communities, and temples in the mountain West—including those who labored for 40 years to build the Salt Lake Temple. Their efforts were motivated by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and trust in His promises.  As we celebrate Pioneer Day, we express gratitude for all who have helped build the Lord's kingdom, both past and present. Their examples remind us that discipleship requires faith, sacrifice, and steadfastness in keeping sacred covenants.

A good reminder about heritage and individual commitment to the gospel of Jesus Christ: "When I arrived in the United States last year, one of the things that had the biggest impact on me was seeing the spiritual strength of many faithful Saints—multigenerational gospel families of pioneer descendants who continue to walk the covenant path. Most inspiring is that their faithfulness depends not only on their spiritual heritage but on their personal decision to follow the Savior." Christ—Author and Finisher of Our Faith #p_og6jX" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-…

I’ve never felt like a second-class citizen from people in The Church in my short life time. The only people who have tried to make me feel this way have been from black non-LDS or white ex-LDS; ironically.

@the_jake_bastow I can see how seeing murder or abuse could be a reason. I had a companion go catatonic for almost a week. I think "encouraging all" is the problem. RMs should have a meeting with a Spiritual Leader and if it seems needed, it should be offered.

Every returning full-time proselyting missionary should be proactively offered - and encouraged to participate in - up to 12 months of mental health therapy after their mission.

Leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have been involved in every step of the Salt Lake Temple renovation and now the celebration that will take place. Watch Richard Sutton from the Church’s Temple Department, Elder Brent H. Nielson and Sheri Dew on the Church News podcast on our YouTube channel.

Jesus died at 33. The human spine has 33 vertebrae. The same structure that holds us up is the same number of years He held this Earth. We have 12 ribs on each side. 12 disciples. 12 tribes of Israel. God built His design into our bones. He wrote Heaven into our anatomy. The vagus nerve runs from your brain to your heart and gut. It calms storms inside the body. It looks just like a cross. That’s the power source running through us. Every time your body heals, every time your heart slows in prayer, every time peace shows up when it shouldn’t…that’s Him. Jesus rose on the third day. Science tells us that when you fast for 3 days, your body starts regenerating. Old cells die. New ones are born. Healing begins. Your body literally resurrects itself. That’s not coincidence. That’s design. And it keeps going. Your heart has an electrical rhythm. Your brain lights up when you pray. Tears contain different chemicals depending on if you're crying from joy or grief. The blood speaks. The bones store memory. The body worships whether you realize it or not. We are fearfully and wonderfully made. We are walking prophecy. Walking tabernacles. Dust and divinity in one. God didn’t just create you. He carved Himself into you. You don’t need to look far to find Him. You just need to look inward. He’s been in the design since the beginning.

While Obama, Hillary, and Panetta were at Andrews AFB on September 14, 2012 putting on the dignified transfer show for our brothers… The Annex team and DS team was still in Germany. We got left there on purpose so we couldn’t be at that ceremony. When we landed at Ramstein, the USO was waiting on the tarmac. They knew we left everything behind in Benghazi, so they had clothes, shoes, socks, and toiletries set up for us. The Tripoli Embassy people who had all their luggage and plenty of time to pack went through the line first. As we sat there just watching, they took every last damn thing. Socks, Underwear, Pants, Toothpaste, Toothbrushes, Mouthwash, all of it. Looked like flies hoarding on a fresh pile of shit. They couldn’t get to the stuff fast enough. Nothing left for the guys who still had blood on their boots. As the whole team from Benghazi just sat there looking at these flies, the @The_USO team came up, talked to us, and asked if we were the guys from Benghazi. They left and came back with a couple hundred bucks each on a card so we could go buy clothes and toiletries the next morning, thank GOD! We got debriefed again in Germany and asked if we wanted to talk to the FBI. We looked at each other this was a terrorist attack. The military should be handling it, not treating it like some criminal case. We learned about the ceremony and had to watch that whole thing from Germany. Then once their ceremony was over, they came to us and said, “You can go home now… but you got to find and buy your own plane ticket back.” We watched the whole “it was a video protest that turned into a riot” lie from Germany as well and knew every word of it was bullshit. That’s what we were doing while they put on the show. Never forget.
Never stop telling the truth. #alwaysmoveforward #benghazi #tig #13hours

He won't remember one minute he spends on an iphone, but he'll remember this for the rest of his life.

A thought came to me this morning as I was doing my morning reading. I hear fellow saints, especially my fellow brothers in Christ, complain about the Church's lack of a structured program for the young men, and a lack of the General Priesthood Session. The thought that came to me was this... Different measures for different times. Now is the time to fathers to step up to the plate and take charge of teaching their sons. Then, I saw a video of a father and his little boy fishing from a boat. The boy caught a fish and the father helped bring it in. I then thought, this is exactly what the Spirit was teaching me this morning. Being old, and no longer having children at home, I then thought about my talents and skills. I'm more than happy to share those with the young men in my ward. So, I plan on letting the YM leaders know of what I can share. Let's step up to the plate, brethren.

On the top floor of a enemy-infested house in Fallujah, Sergeant Samuel Guardiola dove across two wounded Marines, shielding them from a grenade tossed into the room. When the grenade failed to detonate, Guardiola scooped up one of the combat-loaded Marines onto his shoulder, carried him down three flights of stairs, clearing rooms one-handed with his pistol along the way. The President of the United States of America takes pleasure in presenting the Silver Star to Sergeant Samuel Guardiola, United States Marine Corps, for conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action against the enemy as Section Leader, Mortar Platoon, Weapons Company, Third Battalion, Fifth Marine Regiment, Regimental Combat Team 1, FIRST Marine Division, U.S. Marine Corps Forces, Central Command, in support of Operation IRAQI FREEDOM on 23 December 2004. While searching for enemy weapons caches, Sergeant Guardiola's section was ambushed by insurgents occupying well-fortified positions. Realizing that they were trapped in the impact zone, he exposed himself to intense enemy fire in order to reorganize and consolidate his Marines. Upon discovering two of his Marines were isolated inside a building, he gathered an assault force to recover them. Sergeant Guardiola used the adjacent rooftop to access the building and reach the Marines inside, while constantly under small arms and grenade fire. Once inside, he found his fallen comrades and immediately planned their evacuation. As the enemy assaulted with a fragmentation grenade, he covered the Marines with his own body to shield them from the enemy grenade, which did not detonate. Despite intense enemy fire, Sergeant Guardiola carried one fallen Marine down three flights of stairs, clearing rooms along the way with his 9 millimeter pistol. Although exhausted and dehydrated, he continued to carry his comrade to the evacuation point. By his bold leadership, wise judgment, and complete dedication to duty. Sergeant Guardiola reflected great credit upon himself and upheld the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and the United States Naval Service. Isn't this a remarkable account of extraordinary courage and leadership under fire?

Thank you for all the good wishes as we settle into life as a family of six. 🩵 Meet Alec — and enjoy these attempts at taking a decent family photo with four kids!

Had one of the coolest experiences this camp. We have a sister in the ward who has decided to pause her discipleship. She has a daughter who chose to come to camp and has been to church a few times because of friends. I have never heard her talk about Jesus before! Well the second night after ward prayer, she sprinted up to me and asked if she could say the prayer before bed for everyone. I happily gave her my blessing but then she added “I’ve never really prayed before though. How do you do it?” So I gave her instructions and let her know that I would remind her tomorrow. Before that happened though, we had testimony meeting. She was the second girl to stand up and bear testimony. She spoke of how she saw the light of Christ in the girls because they made her feel a sense of belonging. She shared that she recognized the love of the savior for the first time and was grateful for girls camp because it helped her feel that connection to Christ. After we finished testimony meeting, she closed with a prayer. I offered to hold her hand if she needed, but she asked if I could just stand with her. She gave a beautiful heartfelt prayer and needed the prompt to close her prayer, but it was one of the most beautiful and genuine prayers I have ever heard. Hope this brightens your day like it did for me. Witnessing it was such a blessing. Girls camp changes lives!

It's not personal, its strictly business. #MormonMafia

We are SO excited for some of the new hymns that dropped today. The 9 year old's favorite primary song (it wasn't in the songbook at the time) has been The Miracle for years now and it's been added to the new hymnbook! But they added a third verse and when we were singing through it I was immediately brought to tears. "I know He will walk beside me And heal my wounds and calm my troubled heart, Always there to bless and guide me- My song at night, my bright and morning star. His love and grace will never end; each day they bless anew. My name is graven on His hands, and yours is too." My name is graven on His names, and yours is too. Holy moly. 🥹

“I’d like to welcome everyone to tonight’s meeting of the Mormon Mafia. We’ll begin with a spiritual thought from Brother Jones, followed by Sister Macey leading us in ‘Scatter Sunshine.’ Brother Adams will then offer the invocation. Afterward, we’ll proceed with the evening’s business: discussing ongoing community service projects and coordinate our upcoming Secret Santa in July deliveries. As always, remember that what happens in the cultural hall stays in the cultural hall. Oh, and please stay after the meeting to help put away chairs."

Spencer W. Kimball: "Jesus perfected his life and became our Christ. Priceless blood of a..." azquotes.com/quote/440018

My mormons, "You are not a member of an organization. You are a member of a people, and you forget the difference at your peril. An organization has employees and customers and a mission statement. A people has martyrs. A people has graves it can point to, ground soaked with its own blood, stories that begin with "your fathers" and mean it. The world will tell you that Mormonism is a religion you happen to hold, a set of beliefs you could set down tomorrow and remain exactly who you are. The world is lying. You cannot separate the faith from the people who bled for it, because they were never two things. The pioneer past is not the backstory of Mormonism. It is the body of it. Carthage is not history you learn. It is inheritance you carry. The handcart companies are not an episode in a manual. They are your dead, your line, your tribe, and the covenant that binds you to God binds you just as surely to them. This is the thing the modern Saint has forgotten, and the forgetting is a kind of orphaning. We speak of "the pioneers" as though they were someone else's ancestors, figures in a diorama, a heritage month. They are not someone else's. Whether your blood crossed the plains or your baptism grafted you into the vine last spring, they are yours now, fully yours, because that is what it means to be sealed into a covenant people: their story becomes your story, their martyrs become your martyrs, their dead become your dead. The convert from Manila and the seventh-generation rancher from Cache Valley stand in the same line, heirs of the same graves. Joseph and Hyrum did not die for an institution. They died for a people that did not fully exist yet, a people they could see only by faith, and you are that people. Their blood is in your spiritual veins. When you take the sacrament, you take it as one of them. When you enter the temple, you enter on ground their sacrifice purchased. You cannot claim the gospel and disown the tribe that carried it, because the gospel came to you inside that tribe, wrapped in its stories, paid for with its suffering, handed down grave by grave until it reached your hands. And a people who know they are a people cannot be broken the way scattered individuals can. This is why the world works so hard to convince you that your faith is private, personal, just one option in the marketplace of beliefs. A lone believer can be picked off, worn down, embarrassed out of his convictions one awkward conversation at a time. A member of a tribe with martyrs cannot, because he does not stand alone, and he knows it. He stands in a line that runs back through the valley and the plains and the frozen rivers to a jail in Illinois, and the line stands in him. So claim your people. Say "my martyrs" and mean it. Say "my dead" and feel the weight of it. Take your children to the graves of the pioneers and teach them that these are not strangers, these are ours, this is who we are and what we came from and what it cost. Because the day you understand that you belong to a people, the mockery of the world loses its power over you entirely. They are laughing at your tribe. And your tribe buried its children in the snow and kept walking, and outlasted every mob and every extermination order and every laughing generation since. You come from the unbreakable."