Andrew Wells

@Angee_Bee_Rom @VVenerabilis What a great idea!

@andrew___wells @VVenerabilis They are index cards. These are the cards my hubby still has.

We had an exmo in church today. He got up to bear his testimony about how he left the church 7 years and did so very angrily. But its okay, because hes not angry anymore, and he has found God in another church. So parents with wayward kids, dont persure them too hard, dont push them too hard, they might find God somewhere else. He closed in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. And the whole ward said "amen". I just can't

@Angee_Bee_Rom @VVenerabilis What kind of cards are these?

@VVenerabilis Our bishop carded three testimonies today. I appreciate that our ward has done this as long as I could remember. My husband then pulled out the cards he made when he was in the bishopric. I thought it was funny that he still has them in his folder.

@Molson_Hart Families are not so hard! I've never trained for a race in my life, I work a regular 40 hours a week, and I have seven kids at age 40. My wife is an amazing stay-at-home mom, but any couple who want to can have 2-3 kids at least.

There are only 2 types: A. Start a family + obsessed with work + training for something B. Disappeared Starting (and maintaining) a family is so difficult today that the only way to do it is to obsess about work and be the type of person who trains for something.

@Ch_JesusChrist @RonaldARasband I met Elder Rasband at Primary Children's Hospital once and found out he used to live in the married student housing at the U of U, directly below what would later be my apartment. Servants of God can be called from anywhere.

The University of Utah bestowed an honorary doctorate on Elder Ronald A. Rasband of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles on Thursday, April 30, 2026. Elder @RonaldARasband attended the University of Utah in the 1970s but left before completing his degree after Jon Huntsman Sr. offered him a senior marketing position at his company. Reflecting on his path, Elder Rasband admitted he has occasionally joked about being a “college dropout,” but noted that a small part of his heart always felt that side of his life was “deficient.” “This is very humbling,” he said. “For the University of Utah to offer me an honorary doctorate means so much because I had to leave when I was within sight of getting my degree.” Learn more on Church Newsroom. newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/elder-…

@Kits541 Congrats!

We have 8

@bprintco Grandparents living in a big house can work if they open it up to their kids. My parents took in my sister's family when she had a house fire, my brother's family when he couldn't sell his home and the new one wasn't built. Then they bought the house next door for my other sister

Let me lay out a scenario that’s happening all over the country with housing… Older generation is living in the 4500+ square foot homes they bought 20 years ago. Their kids moved out long ago and can’t buy even just a small house to raise their young families in. They’re cramped and struggling, even with good jobs. Meanwhile, their parents have homes with 4 empty bedrooms, 3 other rooms that never get used, and they haven’t opened the door to their finished basement in 10 years. Their parents call property maintenance companies to come help them maintain their huge houses and big lots because their kids are working so much that they stopped coming to help. This is why property maintenance services are a great business to be in right now.

@TeeplesCY Unfortunately, our fertility rate is slipping quickly. Some estimate is is under replacement for the whole church and barely over replacement for active members. President Oaks addressed the trend in Oct General Conference. My wife and I have 7 kids, so we are doing our part!

In a 60 Minutes interview, Ben Sasse notes that Latter-day Saints are among the only groups of people with a fertility rate above replacement.

@jakozloski Have you researched the Mutual app? It is for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I understand that you can filter by intent--marriage, fun, etc. I have heard mixed reviews from my students, but I also know several who found their spouse there.

Women on dating apps face a structural problem: men swipe with mixed intent (short-term and long-term simultaneously) and the apps don't filter for which is which. Every woman on a mixed-intent app is dating into a market where she can't tell who's hunting for what — or who's hunting her for what.

@athenaeumbc I've read all of these except The Count of Monte Cristo. Is it a great classic?

If the schools and universities refuse to teach the great books, we will do it ourselves. We are about to start our 12th book together at Athenaeum — our first Dostoevsky novel. Crime and Punishment begins tomorrow. Join us!!

@athenaeumbc From "On Learning in War Time." We just read it in the BYU-Idaho C. S. Lewis Academic Society!

C. S. Lewis’s take on human nature... perfection.

@ChHouseBooks Anything by C. S. Lewis!

What are some of your favorite classic books? What about your favorites from when you were a child? What are some of your children’s favorites?

@miles_commodore I inherited my parents' set from 1988 and I have my kids use it when they want to look something up. My 10-year-old son has especially loved it, looking up animal facts and ancient alphabets to use in writing his own codes.

When I was 12 years old, this was my internet.

@dodgeblake Yes, but it's not the DINKs either. The birth rate for married couples is barely down. 75% of the decrease in US births since 2007 is from fewer marriages, not fewer children per married couple. Make marriage great again!

I am so over this completely dominant and unchallenged lie. Finances 👏 aren't 👏 responsible👏 for 👏 the 👏 fertility 👏 crisis 👏. That's why, even in countries (Denmark) with extremely generous social support, including state-sponsored IVF, the fertility rate is still pitiful. Some of the fertility decline is because teenagers aren't having as many kids anymore. That's great. But another category of affluent, mature couples — across Western affluent countries — are CHOOSING "double income no kids" (DINK) lifestyles. Or believing the lie that they can wait until their late 30s, come to find out, after failed fertility treatments wreck their marriage and their savings, that it's too late. You don't have to blame individuals and their individual choices to see that the pattern *itself* is symptomatic of sad, damaging, individualistic, striver-y cultural rot.

@SoulCultivated I love Shakespeare, but Antony and Cleopatra is too long and slow. I always recommend The Winter's Tale, it has a mad king like King Lear, a jealous husband like Othello, tragedy and regret, forbidden love like A Midsummer Night's Dream and magic and redemption like The Tempest.

Want to read Shakespeare? Start here: 1. Macbeth What does ambition cost? Short, violent, unforgettable. 2. The Tempest What do we do with loss and power? One of his last plays. Small in scale, rich in meaning. 3. Much Ado About Nothing What happens when wit tangles with love? Fast and funny. Some of his best dialogue. 4. Hamlet What happens when a man cannot act? Grief, hesitation, action. His most influential play. 5. Antony and Cleopatra What happens when love collides with empire? One of his grandest plays. Cleopatra steals the show.

@tillwehvfaces I don't know this quote. Where is it from?

Surely we are permitted doubt; but not forever

@romanhelmetguy It's almost all #1. Married fertility rate is still above replacement.

I’m convinced that all these guys who come up with proposals to “fix the fertility rate” have never talked to a woman. They treat it like an economics problem they can optimize, or even worse they just tell women to have kids to “save civilization.” If you actually spend time with women who aren’t having kids, you’ll find they almost all fall into one of five buckets: 1. Dating problems. They were in some 5+ year relationship (or a series of relationships) that stole their youth and left them so jaded that they’ve given up on finding a man who could be a good father. 2. Family problems. They come from such a dysfunctional home that their own childhood holds few happy memories, and they’re terrified of recreating those conditions with their own children. 3. Health problems. A ton more women than you think have conditions like endometriosis or PCOS or other health complications that can affect fertility and make having kids more dangerous or harder to do. 4. Career goals. They’re convinced that they have something huge and unique to contribute to the world either professionally or creatively, whereas “every woman can have a kid,” and so to them, having children sounds like a waste of their potential, like giving up. 5. Lifestyle goals. They’re really into traveling and being independent and getting into “adventures,” they want to explore the world and experience everything, and the idea of giving all that up to sit at home and raise kids makes them want to die. If you really want to fix the fertility rate, and you’re not addressing at least a few of these, your solution is useless.

@HerndonforIdaho Hot take: property taxes are good, especially for older people. The tax incentivizes older, richer retirees to sell to young families that really need houses. ifstudies.org/blog/cutting-p…

You can pay off your mortgage. The bank is done with you. The property tax bill never stops. Miss enough payments and the county seizes your home — the home you paid for. Idaho collects $2.3 billion in property taxes every year. The state budget tops $14 billion. We can replace every dollar of local property tax with state revenue. That is not a talking point. It is math. Eliminating property taxes is my number one priority. #PropertyTax #HerndonForIdaho

@Sheum_Search These are great words of wisdom. My wife and I have seven children, and they bring us so much joy and fulfillment.

@bethanyshondark This is not a chart of education but of immigration. The states with more illiterate people are those with more foreigners.

We can and must have a conversation about the failures of our public education system. But we also need to have one about the failures of millions of American parents to do the most basic work of their job raising their children.

@Handre The answer is BYU-Idaho, with tuition for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints priced at $3000 per semester and only $6000 for friends of other faiths. BYU Pathway is even cheaper, with online and in-person options all over the world!

College tuition has exploded 1,200% since 1980 while wages rose just 213%. In 1963, a student could work a minimum-wage summer job and pay for a full year at the average public university. Today, that same job covers roughly one month of tuition. The culprit isn't corporate greed or underfunding. It's government intervention distorting every price signal in higher education. Federal student loans created artificial demand that universities exploited ruthlessly. When government guarantees endless credit to teenagers with zero income or assets, colleges face no market constraint on pricing. Why charge $3,000 per year when students can borrow $30,000? The money flows regardless of educational quality or job prospects. Universities responded predictably: they jacked up prices and hired armies of administrators to capture this guaranteed revenue stream. Easy credit always inflates asset prices, whether houses in 2005 or degrees today. Free market economists warned this would happen, just as they predicted the housing bubble. When you subsidize demand without increasing supply, prices skyrocket. Colleges simply absorbed every dollar of increased lending capacity into higher tuition, fancy dorms, and bloated bureaucracies. The 1950s model worked because students paid real prices with real money; either their own or their parents'. This created immediate feedback between cost and value. If Harvard charged too much, students went elsewhere. Today, that price mechanism is completely severed. Students don't feel the true cost until years later when loan payments hit, and by then universities already pocketed the cash. Every additional dollar of federal aid generates roughly 60 cents of tuition increases. The government created this monster, feeds it annually through increased lending limits, then acts shocked when colleges behave exactly like the rent-seeking cartels they've become.