Mormon Life Hacker

The New Mormon (Life) Hacker! - coming soon

2010-05-13T15:20:00.000-07:00

Hi, my name is Tevya Washburn. I was able to get in touch with Brett, the original creator and author of this blog, about reviving it. He kindly agreed and turned it over to me. I registered some domains, created a logo, and am now waiting for some logistical things to take place, before the full resurrection of Mormon Hacker will occur. As you might've noticed in the title graphic, we've changed the name slightly to Mormon Life Hacker. That may be subject to change and I appreciate any input on the matter, but I'll get to that in a bit, more important stuff first:

Writers/Contributers Wanted

When Mormon Hacker fully relaunches in a few months, I'm hoping to have several editors/writers on board. If you are Mormon and love lifehacker.com and/or The 4 Hour Work-Week and/or are just interested in learning (then sharing) shortcuts, tips, and advice, for the unique aspects of our LDS lifestyle, please contact me by emailing tevyaw[at]gmail[dot]com.

Currently there are no plans that would allow you to be compensated for your time/efforts, except the thanks of readers as they read and implement your lifehacks. If readership reaches a point where it makes sense to implement a revenue-generation model, the authors/editors who have put in the most time and effort will receive the greatest compensation. Also, even without the site making any money, there will be some opportunity to promote your own websites/businesses through Mormon Life Hacker.

My hope is to have writers/editors that are committed to one article per week or one article per month. So when you contact me, make sure you let me know which you feel you could commit to, starting around Sept. 1, 2010.

Name Change

If you hate "Mormon Life Hacker" but loved "Mormon Hacker" let me know in the comments. But don't just say you love or hate whatever, tell me why. And as a hint, I like logic. Also, sorry that all comments have to be approved by me first, but there's a lot of spam in the site currently (as you may have noticed), and a bug in blogger is preventing me from deleting them once they show on the blog.

Just so you know, I decided on "Mormon Life Hacker" with three separate words because I wanted to make it clear that its about lifehacking, not just hacking, which are really quite different, though related. I also chose to separate life and hacker because I didn't want the site to seem like just a Mormon version of lifehacker.com, because we're in no way affiliated with them, and will have a distinctly LDS flavor of lifehacking articles and information. If you think we should go ahead and just call it "Mormon Lifehacker" let me know, and why. That's the option I'm most open to.

Please Share
Please share this post or blog (most common online sharing tools in the sidebar), so that whether you are interested in becoming a part of the Mormon Life Hacker team or not, other people who would be, will get the word. Thanks for contributing to what I'm sure will be an awesome team!

Use Google Alerts to get Latest Church News

2007-02-26T06:48:00.000-08:00

Want to know what's going on with the Church or members of the Church in the news? Head on over to Google Alerts. With Google Alerts you can enter in search terms that Google will use to scour news and blogs all over the world for articles relating to the Church. Just type in "LDS", "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints", or "Mormon." Google will give you news updates anytime something is posted with that keyword. Pretty nifty. Requires a Google email account.

Make the Sacrament Less Noisy

2007-02-24T06:53:00.000-08:00

This hack comes from back when I was a teacher preparing the Sacrament. Many chapels use the little plastic cups as opposed to the paper cups for serving the water. Ever notice how the plastic cups can make a pretty loud "click" when they hit the bottom of the tray? With lots of people taking the sacrament, the clicks can make a lot of noise that distracts from the the sacrament.

To silence these clicks, just before you put the top on the water tray, line the bottom with paper towels. Now, when the cup hits the bottom, the towel muffels the noise. Additionally, it makes clean up a breeze. The towel soaks up the water so there's less drying.

Now, if only we can figure out how to make babies stop crying.....

Date Hack by Elder Oaks

2007-02-24T06:35:00.000-08:00

In May 2005, Elder Oaks gave a talk to young single adults giving an apostolic smackdown on the proliferation of "hanging out" as opposed to good old fashion dating. He partly blames the elaborate dates that young Mormons do, like having a picnic on the street median. If that's what you have to do take a girl on a date, no wonder men aren't asking women out.

Elder Oaks offers this nice little date hack.

Gone is the clumsy and inexpensive phone call your parents and grandparents and I used to make. That call went something like this: “What’re ya doin’ tonight? How about a movie?” Or, “How about taking a walk downtown?” Cheap dates like that can be frequent and nonthreatening, since they don’t seem to imply a continuing commitment.

Simple as that pick up the phone and ask someone for ice cream. No fancy picnics. No planned kidnappings. Just pick up the phone and call.

Track your Goals with Joe's Goals

2007-02-20T04:35:00.000-08:00

Joe's Goals is a neat little web app that allows you to keep track of your goals. You set out the goals you wish to accomplish and put a check by the one's you do. If you set a goal not to do a particular thing, every time you do it you put an "x". Checks give you points and x's deduct points. At the end of the week you have a tally to see how you're doing with your goals.

This is very similar to Benjamin Franklin's virtue tracker. I'm glad to see someone take this old technique and adapt to the modern world.

Joe's Goals is free to use.

Entertain your kids with Ze Frank

2007-02-19T05:01:00.000-08:00

I stumbled upon Ze Frank the other day. It's a guy with a blog, but he also creates cool flash based games that are great for wasting time at the office or keeping young children entertained for hours

Here's some of my favorites.

The Flake Maker
Matrix
Puppets. A puppet dancing to Beastie Boys. Classic.
SNM#1. I thought this was the best kid game out of all of them. Let your 2 year old pound on your keyboard to create noises and visual effects without worrying he'll delete something.

Check out more games under "interactive toys" on Ze Frank's site.

Dear Elder

2007-02-16T09:38:00.000-08:00

Dear Elder is an excellent service to get messages to your missionary quickly. You write a message at the site and send it. Dear Elder will then e-mail those messages to your missionary's respective mission. The Elders in the office will print them out, put them in an envelope, and deliver them to missionary.

It's pretty convenient. The only draw back that I noticed on my mission is that because the Elders in the mission office are the ones who stuff the envelopes, there isn't much privacy. So, don't plan on writing a Dear John to your missionary using Dear Elder, unless you want the entire mission to know.

Homemade Instant Oatmeal

2007-02-14T07:30:00.000-08:00

Instructables has a demonstration for DIY instant oatmeal. Stop buying the prepackaged stuff and start saving money. This would be a good way to use the oats you need to rotate out of your food storage.

Technology Fast

2007-02-13T09:30:00.000-08:00

We live in a world where information comes and goes at the speed of light. While this is a blessing, it can also become a curse of information overload. Often, important things get lost in the glut of information coming to us through e-mail, television, blogs, and magazines.

A great way to combat this information overload is to take a technology fast. Many people in the computer world are starting to take breaks from technology. They call it "unplugging." Mark Glaser, a journalist who blogs at Mediashift, wrote a post on the importance of our society to learn how to unplug.

The benefits of technology fasts are tremendous. It feels like a haze leaves your mind. You think clearer and you're not as moody. You start to appreciate nature more. Technology fasts are a wonderful way to reconnect to your spirituality. It's much easier to listen to the Spirit when you don't have iPod buds in your ears or checking your e-mail every 2 minutes.

Start your technology fast today. Pick the amount of time you're going to go with out your digital toys and do it. I suggest a week in order to get the full benefit of clearing your mind. If you HAVE to use technology for work, then do it. Stay unplugged as much as you can the rest of the time. One idea may be to cancel your cable and internet for a month. That way the temptation is not as strong. Not only do you get the benefit of less technology in your life, you'll save some money. Perhaps you could take a percentage of what you saved on cable and make a "fast donation" to the Perpetual Education Fund.

LDS Audio

2007-02-12T07:18:00.000-08:00

Looking for some quality LDS music, but don't know where to find it? Look no further than LDS Audio. LDS Audio is the LDS equivalent to the iTunes store. For as little as .99 you can download an mp3. LDS Audio has a very large selection of traditional and contemporary LDS music. They also have a nice selection of talks. Check them out today.

The Idea Door

2007-02-09T04:47:00.000-08:00

The Idea Door is an excellent site for members of the Church. They have lots of resources that members can use to help them in fulfilling their Church responsibilities. They've divided the site into different categories like Home teaching handouts, Family Home Evening, and Young Men and Young Women. My favorite was their section of "printibles." It's just a bunch of little quotes or things you could hand out during class or visiting teaching. You could, if you wanted, shrink them and turn them into a hipster PDA card.

Check them out today.

How to meditate

2007-02-08T07:00:00.000-08:00

President David O. McKay said this about mediation:

In our worship there are two elements: One is the spiritual
communion arising from our own meditation; the other,
instruction from others. . . . Of the two, the more
profitable . . . is the meditation. Meditation is one of
the most secret, most sacred doors through which we
pass into the presence of the Lord.

Thus, meditation is an important activity if we are really wanting to draw close to the Lord. But how do you meditate?

Philip McLemore, a retired LDS Air Force Chaplin, wrote a fantastic article in Sunstone entitled "Mormon Mantras: A Journey of Spiritual Transformation." What brother McLemore does is show members how they can incorporate "Mormon Mantras" in their meditation to help them in the process. Individuals who practice Eastern religions as well as those who practice Catholocisim often repeat a mantra while they are meditating. The repetition helps people focus their thoughts, so that their meditation is effective.

Brother McLemore offers ideas for different LDS Mantras taken from the scriptures.

“Be still and know that I Am God” (Psalm 46:10).
“Love as Christ loved” (John 13:34).
“Afflictions are consecrated for my growth [or
enlightenment]” (2 Nephi 2:2).
“Forgiveness, with love and tolerance, accomplishes
miracles” (Gordon B. Hinckley, “Forgiveness,”
Ensign, November 2005).
I am in your midst (D&C 29:5)

Some members will probably say this vain repetition. I argue it's not. As long as you sincerely mean what you say as you meditate, the repetition is not vain- it's just repetition. Read the article to day and start your spiritual expansion with meditation.

Apostolic Hipster PDA

2007-02-02T07:05:00.000-08:00

In his October 2003 Conference talk entitled "Three Choices", Elder Joseph Wirthlin of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles talked about his apostolic hipster PDA.

"Each night before I go to bed, I take out a small card and write a list of the things I need to do the next day in order of their priority.

When I arrive at the office in the morning, I check my card and put all my efforts into the first item on the list. When I accomplish that item, I move on to the second and so on. Some days, I finish every item on my list. On other days, some tasks are not completed. I don’t become discouraged, however, because I’m focusing my energies on the things that matter most."

How cool is that? An apostle of the Lord uses a modified hipster PDA!

How to pay tithing with multiple strings of income

2007-02-01T06:02:00.000-08:00

Paying tithing used to be easy for me when I had one source of income. I just looked at the pay stub, and wrote a check for 10% of my income. Like many people, my wife and I earn money from several places: my wife's job, online surveys, investments, ect. (Don't get the impression that we're rolling in the dough. The money we make from all this stuff is pretty much pennies. But every little bit helps!) How does one keep track of all this?

Over at the Darnit Blog, there's a great post that attempts to solve such a conundrum. He presents several scenarios that might occur for a family earning money from multiple strings of income. He then shows some possible solutions to keeping track of your tithing in these different situations.

New Look at LDS.org

2007-01-30T08:39:00.000-08:00

The Church's official webpage recently got a face lift. It looks much more clean and intuitive to use. Check it out.

Attention Church History Buffs: Use Footnote to tag primary source documents

2007-01-30T06:55:00.000-08:00

Footnote is a neat web service that allows you to access millions of historical original documents and add tags to different parts of the document. It uses Flash so the presentation is really slick. The powerful tool on this service is the tagging feature. Say you're looking at an original journals of Wilford Woodruff, you can look at the actual document and add tags to every time you see Joseph Smith's name written. Next time someone looks up Joseph Smith on Footnote, they'll be referenced to your tag in Wilford's journal. Footnote is essentially, del.icio.us for primary source documents.

The only drawback with Footnote is the service isn't free. You can get unlimited access for $10 a month.

While the site has millions of documents scanned in to the system, I didn't find too many Church related stuff. Perhaps all you Church history buffs could fill this need.

Sunday Fashion Tips for Men at Nine Moons

2007-01-29T07:13:00.000-08:00

For my readers who don't frequent the Bloggernacle, Rusty at Nine Moons has a great post full of Sunday fashion tips for men.

My favorites:

21) Regarding ties: no clip-ons or cartoon characters for anyone over the age of 12 and no bolos for anyone who doesn’t herd cattle for a living.
12) Black shoes with black suits. Brown/caramel shoes with navy suits. Other colors can be mixed and matched with a little more freedom.
7) Ties should end just above the belt.
22) Regarding socks: absolutely no white socks (church is neither a gym nor the temple); sport socks are not church socks, you know the difference; colors and patterns are great as long as they compliment your shirt/tie.

Missionary Hack: 5-minute shoeshine

2007-01-27T09:25:00.000-08:00

When you're on your mission, you're supposed to shine your shoes everyday. At least, that's how it was in my mission. This could often take several minutes and on your mission, you don't have time to spare.

Slacker Manager shows how to stream line the shoe shinning process to less than 5 minutes. Check it out.

LDS Blog: Families.com

2007-01-26T10:00:00.000-08:00

LDS Blog from families.com offers some nice posts on gospel living. They have tips on how to help your local missionaries and posts on Gospel Doctrine classes. Other categories include: Health and Fitness in the LDS faith, family home evenings, and church callings. They post several times a day, so there's plenty of content to look through. Check it out today.

Ladies: Turn your husband's dress shirt into something cute

2007-01-25T07:21:00.000-08:00

This one's for the ladies. Every Mormon family has a plethora of white dress shirts. I'm sure some men have shirts they haven't worn in awhile. Ladies, why not put those unused shirts to use by hacking it into a cute cap sleep shirt. Whip Up has a link to a step by step tutorial that shows you how to turn any man's dress shirt into a cap shirt. Impress your hipster friends with your ability to be fashionable, yet frugal at the same time. Warning: requires sewing.

Use Foonz to conference call your next meeting

2007-01-24T07:00:00.000-08:00

Foonz is a service that provides free conference calling. You sign up for your free account at the site and add your contacts that you want to include in your conference calls. Foonz will will issue you an access number.When you dial the number, Foonz will send a text message or an IM to your contacts inviting them to the conversation. They dial the number and presto! conference call.

This could come in handy for different types of leadership meetings in Church. Often members live extremely far from the chapel, so having weekday meetings or meetings later in the evening on Sundays can be burdensome. If you don't have to be at the chapel to have the meeting, then doing it on a conference call can work just as well. Do it like any other meeting, just over the phone. Start off with a prayer and spiritual thought, and get to business.

Practice for Exaltation

2007-01-23T08:34:00.000-08:00

This is really cool. If you've ever seen Minority Report, you'll probably remember how Tom Cruise used his hands in an orchestral fashion to manipulate his computer monitor. I remember seeing this and being blown away by it.

Well, someone has come up with a DIY Google Earth Hack so you can manipulate the earth with your hands. They're called Atlas Gloves. With a wave of your hands you can rotate the earth or zoom in on your house The setup looks fairly easy and cheap. It uses ping pong balls, LED lights, a web cam, and free program that allows for the interface.

I wonder if this how it's like for God. Maybe this is what the celestial kingdom will be like. We just wave our hands around and we can zoom in on the worlds we've created. Hmm... well, if it is, this gives us something to practice with.

Track your food storage with Trackmyfoodstorage.com

2007-01-22T07:07:00.000-08:00

Thanks to an anonymous tipper, t rackmyfoodstorage.com was brought to my attention. Trackmyfoodstorage.com is an online food storage inventory tool. They offer two types of services: basic and premium. The basic service is free and allows you to inventory your food storage and well also help you establish food storage goals. The Premium site has some nice features like a rotation helper, alerts and notifications, and shopping coupons. 1 year premium membership is $15; three yeas is $40.

Overall, it looks like a nice little app. It would be nice if they would just offer the premium services for free like many other web 2.0 companies are doing. They could make money advertising. Maybe that will change in the future.

Notes from 20/20's Special "Flat Broke"

2007-01-20T05:58:00.001-08:00

This is a post I did on my other blogs, The Frugal Law Student. I thought people in the bloggernacle would be interested considering the focus by our leaders to get out and stay out of debt.

20/20 did a special tonight on America's debt crisis. The broke it down into three parts: Spenders and savers, debt collecting, and cyberbegging. Here's some of the highlights of the show.

Spenders and Savers
This segment focused on two families living on opposite ends of the financial spectrum. The Peterson Family are big spenders. They've racked up over $60,000 in credit card, hundreds of thousands of dollars in time shares, and a few mortgages on their house. Despite their money problems, this year the family has gone on more vacations than any time in their marriage. They're on the brink of bankruptcy.

In order to help them, 20/20 brought financial planner Robert Pagliarini, author of the book The Six Day Financial Makeover. He set up a plan for the Peterson family that included selling their house and time shares. I wonder if the family will follow through with it.

Watching this family, I couldn't believe that people could just rack up debt like that. They never regretted a single lavish purchase they made because they figure they'll probably be dead tomorrow. I don't get it.

Lesson from the Peterson's: DON"T USE CREDIT CARDS! Cut the darn things up (don't cancel them; it hurts your credit score) and start paying with cash. Take it easy on the big purchase items. If you can't afford it, don't buy it. Duh.

The Economides are the cheapest family in America. At least that's what they titled their book. They earn less than $35,000 a year, have seven kids, a few cars, but no debt. They've accomplished this by buying everything used and planning grocery store trips so they're as economical as possible. They carry around walkie talkies in the store to report on the good deals to each other. They also buy expired lunch meat. They're hardcore.

Lesson from the Economides: PLAN, PLAN, PLAN. Take advantage of coupons; every cent counts. Buy whatever you can used.

Debt Collectors
This segment was a perfect torts hypo for Intentional or reckless infliction causing severe emotional distress by extreme or outrageous conduct (See? I learned something in law school). They interviewed a former debt collector about the techniques he and others like him used to get money from people. Tactics included persistence calls with death threats, threats to reveal their debt to neighbors, and just plain emotional abuse. It was heartbreaking to see the crap that some of the debt collectors could drag people through.

Of course John Stossel had to bust out his libertarian stick to show that we should be thankful for debt collectors. He points out that the bad debt collectors are a minority. The tactics they use are illegal. He then goes on to argue that if it weren't for debt collectors, prices would go up because companies would lose money on default payments. He also made a point that most of the clients of debt clients are small businesses. I always figured debt collectors were for big companies. Overall, I think Stossel made some good points. At least he got me thinking about things.

Lesson learned from debt collectors: keep only two credit cards, negotiate lower rates, and if for some unfortunate reason you become the victim of thug debt collectors, contact the FTC, your lawyer, and tape the culprit berating you.

Cyberbegging
Cyberbegging is a hot topic, especially in the blogsphere. Paypal donation buttons are popping up on blogs everyday. One law student started a blog to raise money to pay for his student loans. (However, one should note that he's converted the site into way of raising scholarships for other students and raising awareness about student debt.) Cyber Beg is a popular site where one can list their financial need like they would list an item on craigslist. The crazy thing is that people give money.

The segment discussed how an admitted shopaholic, Karyn Bosnak, got herself out of $20,000 worth of designer handbag and belt debt by asking complete strangers on the net. It worked. She wrote a book about it and made even more money. A movie deal is forthcoming.

They also discussed how Dustin Diamond (aka Screech from Saved by the Bell) used cyberbegging to save his house. His sex tape, "Screeched", has been picked up by a major porn distributor and he's raking in the dough. (That makes two former Saved By the Bell alum who've gone on to make porn. Don't do it Lisa Turtle! Resist!)

My first reaction is disgust. These people have no shame. Both Bosnak and Screech say what they did is creative, not shameful. Right... when was the last time you heard someone praise the creativeness of panhandlers and bums? That's right, never. Screech and Bosnack... you're bums. Jason Ryan Dorsey, author of My Reality Check Bounced: The Twentysomething's Guide to Cashing In On Your Real-World Dreams, discussed how Screech's and Bosnak's attitudes are common among twenty somethings. They're not responsible with how they spend money, so they don't want to be responsible for paying for their debts.

I guess one could make an argument that ad's or pay per post are a form of cyberbegging. That's what Bosnak tried to argue. Her site is full of content. She figures the donations were in exchange for the content But the difference between begging and posting ads are different. With posting ads, you're providing a service (putting a company's ad on your site) in exchange for money. With cyberbegging, it's just people telling us about their life and then asking for money so they can pay off debt or buy a handbag. It's like justifying panhandling by saying if the panhandler tells us about his cute dog or what he thinks about Lindsay Lohan and then asks for money, it's OK.

Lesson learned from cyberbeggers: Get a real job!

Conclusion
Overall, it was a good show. I thought they could have spent more time disusing the frugal family. Check out the 20/20 site for more details.

Official LDS Tech Web Site

2007-01-19T07:53:00.000-08:00

LDS Tech is an official site of the Church. It basically allows members to see what the Church IT department is doing to use technology in furthering the Kingdom of God.

Their are profiles of the people working for the Church IT department as well as information on careers with Church IT.

I think this an excellent idea and am looking forward to the information LDS Tech will be posting.

Send your hometeaching route to your cell phone

2007-01-19T06:56:00.000-08:00

Over at Lifehacker there's a post on Yahoo!'s Driving Directions. Driving Directions allow you to text message a link to your cell phone which will then take you to cell phone enabled web page with the directions.

This could come in handy for home or visiting teaching. I often get lost trying to find my families. It would be nice to have the directions right on my cell phone.

Build your family tree with Gini

2007-01-17T17:05:00.000-08:00

Over at Lifehacker, they've done a write up about a great online family tree collaboration site called Geni. (It also looks like Sustaind has picked up on it to.)

How it works

You start a branch and include an email address of people you want to invite to collaborate on the family tree. They can provide information that you may or may not have about your family. They can build branches of people directly related to them.

The app is flash based so it's really easy and slick to work with.

What makes this site powerful is the social aspect of it. The power of the collective is amazing. This is one of the benefits of Web 2.0: the ability for several people to collaborate on a project. I think genealogy can especially benefit from online collaboration. Eventually, you'll be able to see how many people you're connected to both livig and dead. Pretty cool.

Start a free account today and invite your family!

Learn the Scriptures While Harnessing Your Inner Geek

2007-01-17T06:22:00.000-08:00

Chapter and Verse has created a collectible card game like Magic the Gathering or Yu-Gi-OH based off the scripture mastery. Right now it's in beta. They're hoping to get feedback from users so they can refine it.

It looks pretty cool. Each card is a verse of scripture instead of some imaginary monster. Each verse has different action, light of knowledge, looking to the heavens for guidance, ect. points. So, one scripture verse could beat another verse of scripture depending on the point values. The cards are played in color groups to form "books." The first player to get three completed books of scriptures in their libraries win.

This is a really good idea for seminary teachers to use with students to learn the scripture mastery. It could also be nice substitute for Pokemon or Yu-Gi-Oh on Sundays. Check it out today!

The Book of Mormon- Disneyfied

2007-01-16T06:43:00.000-08:00

I ran across Liken It's page while looking at the schedule for the LDS Film Festival. They make movies taking stories from the Book of Mormon and the Bible and turning them into Disney type movies complete with song and dance routines. I guess the goal is to present the scriptures in a kid friendly medium. I can see this being a nice substitute for High School Musical or the Lion King on Sundays.

Currently, they have films about Alma and King Noah's Court, Ammon & King Lamoni, Nephi and Laban, Samuel the Lamanite.

I'll have to be honest. I thought this was a joke when I first started watching some of the clips. They have Nephi and his brothers doing an N*Sync routine, King Noah singing disco, and the Nephite Archery Core that shot at Samuel the Lamanite doing what looks like a scene riped right from Men in Tights (My question is why Mesoamerican archers look like Robin Hood and his merry men.) I laughed out loud as I watched these clips, but then I realized they were actually wanting me to take this seriously after watching Nephi and his mom sing this tear jerker of a song called "Thy Arms." (Check out the media center. You have to see them to understand what I'm talking about.)

I don't know what to think of these movies. They look hilarious. What makes them even funnier is that they're trying to be serious. However, I think if Liken It's goal was trying to get people to appreciate the scriptures more, they haven't done a very good job at it. Quite the contrary, I think they're just trivializing the scriptures. Haven't we learned from the Book of Mormon Movie that film makers should just leave the Book of Mormon alone?

Conclusion: Watch Liken It videos for some side bursting hilarity; read your scriptures to liken them unto you.

How to Put Your Ward Directory on Google Earth

2007-01-14T21:08:00.000-08:00

I've read on several blogs about members putting their ward directory on Google Earth. Some of the possible benefits of doing this include:

Helping stake and ward leaders develop new boundaries.
Planning home teaching and visiting teach routes.
Getting instant directions to a members house
It's tons of fun seeing your ward from outer space.

Creating a ward Google Earth does take a little computer know how. However, I hope to break the steps down clearly enough so that anyone could do this. Here goes!

Download and install Google Earth 4- It's free!
Go to your membership directory under "Stake and Ward Websites" on l ds.org- you have to register with your ward site to do this. You'll need your membership number to do so.
At the top of the directory there's a link that says "csv." This stands for comma separated value and is a type of file. You'll need it. Click and download. It will save as an Excell spreadsheet (or whatever spreadsheet program you use.)
You'll have to convert your csv file into kml file so you can plot the ward members on Google Earth. The quickest way that I have found to do this is using Batch Geocode, an online csv to kml file converter. Go to it.
Open up your saved csv file in Excell. You're going to have to mess with it a bit. Above the column that says "addr1" type in "Street" as the heading. Above the column that reads "addr2," type in City, State and Zip. Note: Many people have been reporting that they have to split up the city, state, and zip into three different columns for this to work. I haven't had to do this, but I would suggest doing it. Use the spreadsheet "fill function")

Copy the entire directory from Excell and paste it in Batch Geocode.
Click "Validate Source"

Under Location Fields on Batch GeoCode select "Street" for Address and "City, State, Zip" for the rest.

Click "Run Geocoder"- What the application does is turn the addresses into co-ordinates for Google Earth. This part can take awhile if your ward is especially large.
Scroll Down in Batch GeoCode and click "Download to Google Earth (KML) File

You're done. Each dot represents a family in your ward. Bring your mouse over the dot and the name of the family will appear, their address, and phone number. You can also chose to get directions to or from this direction.

This is a kind of quick and dirty way to do it. It is possible to include some neat features by manipulating the csv file, like color coding for different organizations, less actives, ect. I'll save that for another post. Until then, enjoy.

How have you all been creating kml overlays for Google Earth? Anything easier than the way I've done it?

Update: Some people have voiced concerns about privacy issues. This is done with Google Earth, not Google Maps. This won't be published on the net or anything like that. It's all done on your computer, not on the web. So, there shouldn't be any concerns about privacy issues.

Firefox Profanity Filter

2007-01-13T09:32:00.000-08:00

If you use Firefox for your web browsing you can install a script that will convert profanity on a web page into ****. Before you can install it, you'll need to install Greasemonkey into your Firefox extensions.

This is great, especially if you have little kids using the net.

Thanks Lifehacker!

Parent Hack: Put food on a stick

2007-01-12T10:15:00.000-08:00

Parent Hacks posted a genius idea. If your kid is a picky eater, put the food on a stick. I don't have kids, but this makes perfect sense. For some reason little kids will eat almost anything if it's on a stick. When I was little, I hated tomatoes. But if it was part of shish-kabob, the stick made the tasty factor of the tomato go way up. I'm definitely going to do this when I have kids.

ChipIn to Raise Mission Funds

2007-01-12T05:06:00.000-08:00

Alright, this is probably going to get the stink eye from many people, but I think it's a pretty cool idea. There's a new start-up called ChipIn that allows users to collect money from individuals all over the internet.

How it works:
It's basically a glorified "Donate" button on that you see on many blogs. Signing up is free. You can decide to receive your money through PayPal or check. After filling out the sign up info, you create your ChipIn projects. It can be anything from saving money to buy a domain name or raising money to fight breast cancer. You set how much you want to raise, when you need it by, and how you wish to collect funds. Your project will be posted on the site and people can decide if they wish to donate to your cause. You can also create a widget that can be placed on your blog or MySpace page which allows people to donate. Usually donations are small, but with the collective of the internet, small amounts can add up fast.

Over at Profy, they ran a test and were able to raise $1,000 in a week. Pretty impressive.

I'm sure people are going to think "Dadgummit. You gotta work to save for a mission. If you don't work, you won't receive the blessings." I'm not suggesting that one should only use ChipIn to raise mission funds. I think it would be helpful when potential missionaries come up short on funds. And who are we to deny gentiles the blessings of donating to building up the kingdom?

My concern is how does this site avoid scams? Because it seems pretty scamable. I guess it just works on trust. Some people are going to get burned, though. Check it out.

Become an Early Riser

2007-01-11T05:26:00.000-08:00

Cease to be ^aidle; cease to be ^bunclean; cease to ^cfind fault one with another; cease to ^dsleep longer than is needful; retire to thy bed early, that ye may not be weary; arise early, that your bodies and your minds may be invigorated.
D&C 88: 124

This year, one of my goals is to become an early riser. The scriptures counsel us to do it and all the successful people I've known or read about seem to be early risers. However, I haven't been able to consistently wake up early since my mission.

For those of you like me who find it hard to wake up early, head on over to Steven Palvina's site. He's got a great post on how to become an early riser. The trick it seems is not to go to bed and wake up at the same time everyday, but rather just wake up at the same time. You only should go to bed when you're actually sleepy. Some days you'll be sleepy at 10 PM, others at 12AM, but you still wake up at 5 or 6 AM.

I've been doing it this past week and it seems to be working. It's been really nice. I've been able to get much more done during the day by waking up a few hours earlier. Let's see if I can keep it up.

Letterpop for Ward and Family Newsletters

2007-01-09T10:03:00.000-08:00

Lifehacker did a post on a nifty little web-app called Letterpop. Letterpop allows you to easily create slick looking newsletters complete with photos. All that it requires is for you to be able to drag and drop things. It's that easy. When you're done creating your newsletter online, you have the option of posting online with a url that Letterpop provides you or to print it off.

Letterpop would be very useful in creating professional looking ward or family bulletins. Check it out.

LDS Yahoo Widgets

2007-01-08T13:46:00.000-08:00

Yahoo! has a program that that is free to download that allows users to put widgets on their computer desktops. Widgets are small programs that can be designed to do a variety of things such as give you the weather, update you on the news, or tell you when your favorite blog has a new post- all without opening your web browser.

There are a few LDS themed widgets in their widget gallery. My favorites are the LDS quotes and BYU Radio widgets.

One of my favorite widgets in the gallery is the photo frame widget. You can set the frame to a Flickr.com feed and get different pictures of the temple or other church art directly sent to your desktop.

Google Maps Hack: LDS Temples

2007-01-08T07:02:00.000-08:00

Google Maps and Google Earth are one of the best ideas that Google has come up with. What makes them so great is that Google allows anyone to mess around with the script so they can adapt the map for their needs. In other words, they are very hackable.

Someone has used Google Maps' open source scripting to create a tour of all the temples in the world. You can zoom in and see the Washington D.C or Mexico City temple from outer space! Pretty dang cool.

It's fun and allows members to gain an appreciation that we have in the modern church to have such easy access to temples.

Kate's Calendars

2007-01-07T20:34:00.000-08:00

My wife has a side business she's running called Kate's Calendars. They're personalziable advent calendars geared towards an LDS market. They're perfect for families that have a missionary in the field. Get a calendar, write some inspiring messages, and your missionary can open up a little door each day to get a new message. Here's the back story on how my wife came up with Kate's Calendars:

My wife wrote me the during my mission. One of the creative things she did was make homemade advent calendars for me. They were by far one my favorite pieces of mail that I received while I was on my mission. It's was nice to open a door each day for a month to read a message from Kate. After we married, I talked about how much I enjoyed those homemade personalized advent calendars that Kate sent me and how my companions were often jealous that they didn't have anything like that. We thought it might be neat if we could take my wife's idea and some how produce it so that anybody could make a personalized advent calendar for their missionary. Thus, Kate's Calendars was born.

I guess you can say Kate's Calendars is kind of a Mormon hack. Instead of having to wait until P-day to get a message to your missionary, you can get on to him/her everyday for a month. It would also be good for missionaries in the field to use with their investigators. They can make a calendar with scriptures and inspiring messages while an investigator prepares for baptism. Check it out.

DIY: Mission Slide Show

2007-01-07T09:20:00.000-08:00

If you went on a mission, you probably have a albums (or if you're a more recent missionary, mega bytes) of photos. Instead of just leaving them in your box (or hard drive) bring them to life by making a slide show with Windows Photo Story.

You can make a professional looking slide show for absolutely free with Windows Photo Story. (The download is free.) Photo Story makes making professional looking slide shows a cinch. You pick which photos you want, put them in the order you want them, add cool special effects (my favorites are the Ken Burns documentary style panning and zooming), and add background music.

Here's my slide show that I made from my mission using Photo Story. (It's kind of long.)

I downloaded the punk version of "Called to Serve," as well as the acoustic version of "Come Thou Fount" from LDS Audio. They have a large selection of LDS themed music. Downloads are .99 each. The song "Faith Like a Child" came from on of my wife's Jars of Clay albums. (Yes, that's right. Jars of Clay. The Christian rock band. I've always been suspicious of Christian rock music, but these guys are surprisingly good. Check them out.)

Making my photo story took me a few hours because I had to scan all my mission photos. However, after I finished the scanning, actually creating the slide show took less than an hour. So, this isn't a hard project.

Bottom line: photo story is a great and easy way to share the best two years of your life with your friends, family and posterity. You can also use it as a missionary tool by e-mailing it to your non-member friends or by posting it on MySpace and YouTube. Make your mission slide show today.

Google Calendar for Bishop Appointments

2007-01-06T06:12:00.000-08:00

One of the nice features about Google Calendar is the ability to share with other people. This feature can come in really handy for bishops and Ward Executive Secretaries. The way the current system is set up, members call the executive secretary to make an appointment with the bishop. The secretary then has to call the bishop with all the appointments.

A possible alternative is for the bishopric to establish a Google Calendar for the various interviews that members need. As soon as the secretary or other member of the bishopric gets the appointment from a member, they can enter it into the calendar and make an assignment on who's going to cover it. You can set Google Calendars up so that everyone gets an e-mail or a cell phone text message when the calendar has been updated.

Some of the possible benefits include saving time, making sure appointments don't get forgotten, and better time management. Start your Executive Council Google Calendar today.

DIY Planner

2007-01-05T05:49:00.000-08:00

A new year means new planners. Instead of forking over your dough, save it and visit DIY Planner. They provide hundreds of templates for all your planner needs. You can download the Classic Planner Kit that includes dozens of variations on daily, weekly, and monthly calendars. You pick which ones you like and print them off.

In addition to your run of the mill planner, DIY Planner includes several Franklin Covey and Getting Things Done inspired templates.

The files come in PDF format. All you do is download the kit or template you like and print off the planning pages you want to use. Get your DIY planner today!

Put a link to mormon.org in your email signature

2007-01-04T09:24:00.000-08:00

Mormon.org has lots of great information about the Church for people don't know much about it. Why not help in the missionary work by linking to it from everyone one of your e-mails. Most e-mail services and programs allow you to set up a signature (a phrase that is included in everyone of your emails). You can set it up so it has a link to Mormon.org.

I would suggest only doing this with your personal e-mails. I'm sure most businesses have policies against proselyting or discussing religion at work. So use this with discretion.

Use Google Maps in Genealogy

2007-01-03T07:46:00.000-08:00

Map Your Ancestors is a neat service that integrates Ancestry.com and Google Maps. You can make plots on Google Maps that show where your ancestors have lived. You can also include photos in the Google Maps plots to show what the area looked like when your ancestor lived there.

It's cool being able to see how your family migrated across the globe or United States. Check it out today.

Scripture Study Techniques

2007-01-02T09:21:00.000-08:00

About LDS guide, Rachel Woods, presents a great list of different scripture study techniques. Her list runs the gauntlet. She covers:

color coding
footnote referencing
marginal notes
spiritual journals
post it notes

Under each technique she gives a brief description on how to implement it. Check it out today.

Organized LDS Family

2006-12-29T14:03:00.000-08:00

Organized LDS Family is a neat little site full of Excel spreadsheets and check lists to keep LDS families organized. They have templates for budgets, Scout tracking, and 72 hour kits. They have section dedicated to mission preparation that includes a list of things a missionary should do from the time he gets his call until the time he enters the MTC.

Thanks to Shannon for the link!

LDS RSS Feeds

2006-12-29T13:31:00.000-08:00

Here's a page with a nice list of different LDS RSS feeds you can subscribe to. It includes feeds from lds.org, lds.org News Room, BYU Speeches, and much more. It has links for Feedburner, MyYahoo!, Google Reader, Bloglines, Newsgator, and MyFeedster.

For those of you who don't know what RSS feeds are, it stands for Real Simple Syndication. It allows people who subscribe to a site's RSS feed to find out when the site has been updated without ever visiting the site. It makes keeping track of blogs and news much easier.

In order to take advantage of RSS feeds, you'll need to subsribe to an RSS feed service. My favorites are Bloglines and Google Reader. Subscription is free. After you sign up, all you have to do is type in the websites you want to get updates on, or you can just click on the button at LDS RSS feeds of your respective feed aggregator. After you sign up, all you have to do is visit a single page (your feed aggregator) to read all the new posts from your favorite blogs and news sources.

Sign up with these RSS feeds to stay up to date with Church News.

About LDS

2006-12-27T12:51:00.000-08:00

About LDS offers members and non-members useful information about the Church. Rachel Woods, the LDS About guide, does a bang up job of organizing and presenting information about living the gospel. She's divided the page into several sections, including Beliefs and Doctrines, Family and Family Home Evening, and Scriptures. My favorites so far are the sections on scriptures and missions. They're full of awesome tips.

If you're interested in learning more about the Church or are looking for some great tips on making the gospel more fulfilling in your life, lAbout LDS is a great place to check.

LDS Webguy

2006-12-27T09:33:00.000-08:00

LDSWeb Guy is a blog by the director of internet cordination group for the Church. Basically, he's in charge of all the stuff the church does on the internet, like lds.org.

His blog is pretty interesting. He keeps members up to date about what the Church is doing on the net, as well as what other members are doing. He also post on general technology topics.

The Golden Plates Comic Book

2006-12-26T13:32:00.000-08:00

My wife got me the first volume The Golden Plates for my birthday last week. It's the story of the sword of Laban and the Tree of Life put into comic book format. Michael Allred is the creator. He's famous for his Madman comic series.

Michael did a surprisingly good job incorporating the story of Lehi into a comic book. The text of the comic is basically verbatim from the Book of Mormon. The illustrations are amazing. They're not cheesy or over the top.

I think this would be the perfect gift idea for a young person who's not that interested in reading the scriptures. I think the new format could help spark an interest in the scriptures for someone in whom it is lacking. Brother Allred has taken something that is usally seen as dull and turned it into something hip and exciting while maintaining respect for the scriptures.

You can find The Golden Plates on Amazon.com. Price is about $6.

Merry Christmas!

2006-12-23T12:40:00.000-08:00

I hope you all are having a delightful holiday. The celebration is beginning early for me because today is my birthday. So I'll be signing off until Tuesday. Until then, have a very Merry Christmas.

Put holiday gifts in a laundry basket

2006-12-23T11:25:00.000-08:00

Over at Parent Hacks they have a great post on keeping things somewhat organized among the chaos of Christmas morning. They suggest giving each member in the family a basket so they can put their stuff in it after they open their presents. That way nothing gets lost and clean up is a breeze.

Scripture Mastery MP3

2006-12-23T05:50:00.000-08:00

At the CES website, they have all the scripture masteries on MP3 for free. If you're more of an audio learner, this is a great idea for memorizing. Download them and put them in your play list today.

How to answer tough questions about the Church

2006-12-22T07:46:00.000-08:00

Why did Joseph Smith look into a hat to translate the Book of Mormon? What's with that blood atonement thing? Why did your church not give blacks the priesthood for so long? Why did Joseph Smith have 43 wives? What's up with that book Mormon Doctrine? Is it really "mormon doctrine"?

At one time or another, I'm sure many of us have been asked tough questions by our non-member friends about the Church. And I'm sure many times members don't have the answers to these questions. As a consequence of the lack of answers, non-members go to the internet to find them on their own, only to find sites that give an anti-Mormon spin to these questions.

Thankfully, there are several Church friendly sites out there that can serve as resources to help give members and non-members answers to tough questions about the Church or the gospel. Here are a few of my favorites:

Jeff Lindsay- he's a member that has done some outstanding work in the field of Mormon apologetics. He has some great stuff about Book of Mormon evidences. His site really helped my wife out as a new convert when she was having doubts about the Church.
FAIR LDS- FAIR is a group of LDS scholars who dedicate themselves to responding to anti-Mormon attacks. They're topical guide runs the gauntlet of tough issues like the historicity of the Book of Mormon, the evolution of the temple ceremony, and early LDS history.
By Common Consent- this is a group LDS blog that covers a variety of aspects about Mormonism. However, it's a great resource to find out answers to tough historical and doctrinal questions. J. Stapley, has done some great posts (footnotes included) about early Church history. Yes, the early members had some odd beliefs (like Brigham Young's blood atonement or his belief that little men that looked like Quakers lived on the moon), however, Stapley has done a great job putting these ideas into the historical and cultural context of the early member's time. As a result, it doesn't seem so odd. Kevin Barney is an attorney who moonlights as an ancient studies guru. The guy knows like five different ancient languages. He has some great posts in which he uses his knowledge of ancient texts to give some great insights to the scriptures. (If you click on J's and Kevin's names it will take you to a list of all their posts)
Mormon Monestary - this is done by a member who has studied Near Eastern languages and history. Like Keven Barney from By Common Consent, the Monk uses his knowledge from the history of the ancient Middle East to give some great insights to LDS doctrine. He has also put together an amazing list of articles and resources that members can use to help explain temple worship to those who are preparing to go for the first time or for non-members who may have questions.
FARMS- FARMS stands for the Foundation of Ancient Research and Mormon Studies. I guess you would say it's the "official" Church apologetic organization seeing that it is sponsored by BYU. They have some great papers from several scholars covering a wide variety of topics. It's a great resource for those tough questions.

There's a site out there called Ask Gramps. It's done by a member who is an ex-mission president. People can submit any question relating to the gospel and Gramps will answer it. While he means well, I wouldn't use it as your main resource to help answer tough questions. His answers are often pretty speculative and sometimes completely wrong. For example, when asked about Joseph Smith using seer stones in a hat as part of the translation of the Book of Mormon, Gramps denied it ever happened despite the fact that we have journal entries from those involved in the translation process that said that's how Joseph Smith did it. Even Elder Nelson in a talk in the Ensign discusses that this was ONE (emphasis on one. The Urim and Thumim was used as well) that Joesph used to translate the plates. (If that seems odd to you, check out the resources above for some great explanation about the translation process).

Additionally, there are several books out there that do a great job in helping members out with those tough Church question. I'll be posting on those later.

Missionary Hack: Mesh garments for baptizing

2006-12-21T15:29:00.000-08:00

All you future missionaries, listen up. While you're on your mission, you'll be doing some baptizing. (Duh.) After you perform the ordinance, you're left with a bunch of sopping wet clothes that can get messy. (Duh again.) In order to mitigate the mess, have a pair of mesh garments so you can baptize in them.

While I'm not a big fan of the mesh material, I wish I would have known this while I was on my mission. Wet clothes can get heavy, and when you don't have a car, carrying a big bag of wet clothes can get tiring. So help yourself out by getting a pair of mesh garments today.

DIY: Emergency Kit

2006-12-19T10:40:00.000-08:00

Our leaders have counseled us to have 72 hour kits on hand in case an emergency happens. You can buy these from different companies, but they often cost a pretty penny. Additionally, they don't seem that great. We're going to show you how to make your own.

Get some big plastic paint buckets. Not only are they great for carrying your provisions, but they can double as a chair if needed.
Collect you provisions. We suggest the following:

Flashlight
First Aid Kit
A mess kit for cooking
A flare
Ponchos
Tolietries (deoderant, soap, toothpaste, sunblock, female hygene products, ect.)
Matches
Food

Ramen noodles
tuna fish
beef jerky
canned fruit cups
nuts
trail mix
instant oat meal.
peanut butter

Put the food in plastic bags.
Place provisions in buckets.

Scripture Tag

2006-12-18T10:14:00.000-08:00

Scripture Tag is a neat social bookmarking site (think Flickr or del.icio.us) for the scriptures. The creator put the entire standard works on-line. Users then can then go in, find a particular scripture and place a "tag" (a word that they associate with that scripture) for others to see.

Here are some screen shots, so you get an idea how it works.

Notice the tags to the right. It's interesting to see what ideas people associate with different scriptures. With 1 Nephi:1 people have tagged it with parents, teaching, and language.You can also use the tag cloud to see what scriptures people associate with different scriptures. When you click on atonement, you'll get all the scriptures that people have put that tag on.

Check them out today.

Use Facebook to share the gospel

2006-12-17T11:09:00.000-08:00

Most young people have a Facebook account. It allows people to stay connected know what's going on in other people's lives. I think it's a valuable social tool that can be used for good. Unfortuantely, most people use it to share drunken photos of them selves. More Good Foundation suggests using it to share the gospel. Today, we hope to give you some ideas how you can.

Under religious views put "Latter Day Saint- Christian
Under websites put links to Mormon.org, lds.org, or to other LDS blogs
In your photo album put pictures of a recent Church activity or temple trip
Under quotes put your favorite scripture or quote from a leader
Join LDS groups on Facebook and invite your non-member friends to join as well

These may be small steps, but every little bit helps when preaching the gospel.

Missionary tag Christmas tree ornament

2006-12-17T10:09:00.000-08:00

Most return missionaries have old name tags sitting around doing nothing. Why not put them to good use by making a tree ornament out if it. It's simple and it's a nice way to remember an important part of your life.

Just get some ribbon, slide it in the name tag, tie it in a bow, and whola- instant Christmas tree ornament.

Hipster PDA

2006-12-16T08:10:00.000-08:00

With the new year coming, many people are considering buying a new planner/agenda. Others are thinking about forking over a couple of hundred bucks for PDA they will never use.

This year, instead of buying a traditional agenda/planner/PDA, I suggest going with the hipster PDA. What is a Hipster PDA (hPDA)? 43 Folders described it as:

a fully extensible system for coordinating incoming and outgoing data for any aspect of your life and work. It scales brilliantly, degrades gracefully, supports optional categories and “beaming,” and is configurable to an unlimited number of options. Best of all, the Hipster PDA fits into your hip pocket and costs practically nothing to purchase and maintain.

The reason why a hPDA costs practically nothing is because you make it yourself. Here's how you do it.

get a bunch of 3"x5" file cards
clip them together with a binder clip
there is no step 3

What's great about the hPDA is that you can arrange it anyway you want. You can have cards for to-do lists, a calendar card, a card to count calories, and a card with contact numbers. If Getting Things Done is your thing, over at DIY planner, they've created templates for GTD hipster PDA.

Here are some examples of different hPDA's.

If you go to the tag "Hipster PDA" at Flickr.com, you'll find tons of photos of different hPDA's.

We'll be posting templates that will hopefully be useful to members of the Church. So stay tuned. Until then, get some index cards and a clip, and start your hipster PDA today.

Getting Things Done

2006-12-15T12:52:00.001-08:00

GTD Setup
Originally uploaded by Mormon Hacker.

My wife and I recently discovered, Getting Things Done by David Allen. We've decide to implement his system into our lives. We just started, but so far we're happy with the results.

GTD is about collecting the stuff that fills our lives and putting it in a system that allows stuff to get done quickly and effectively. Instead of having to remember all the stuff you have to do, my wife and I just write it down on a note card. If we can do the action quickly we do it. If we can't we file it for later.

There are several sites dedicated to GTD. It's kind of become a sub culture among hipsters and geeks. 43 Folders is a great site for all things GTD.

With all the stuff members have going on in their lives (home teaching, work, callings, family stuff, ect.) GTD is something that I think can help members out a lot.

Click on the image above. It will take you to my photo album of my wife and I's GTD setup.

Use Gmail in your scripture study

2006-12-15T08:18:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, we posted on how you can use Gmail for journal keeping. Another great way to use gmail is keep track of your thoughts while reading the scriptures. Using Gmail's awesome category system, you can create a category for different principles such as faith, charity, obedience, ect. When ever you read a scripture with that principle, you can make a gmail entry under that category. Put the scripture reference under Subject. Now, when you're preparing a talk you can bring up scriptures, along with person insights, that you can use.

Set up your labels. Click on settings and then create labels. Some ideas include faith, Christ, Plan of Salvation, Baptism
Read your scriptures.
When you find a passage that is related to one of your labels, compose a new message to yourself.
Put the scripture reference in the subject line. Type your insight on that scripture in the main message box
Send the email.
Give the scripture the appropriate labels.
In order to keep your in box clear, you can archive your scripture messages.

I'm sure you can also use Gmail's filter system to automate this even more. I'll work on a bit more to see what I can come up with.

LDSTeach

2006-12-14T13:40:00.000-08:00

I stumbled upon LDSTeach today. It provides resources for home and visiting teaching. I'm going to be honest. I'm not a big fan of home teaching. Like most people I'm busy. Home teaching can suck up your time. You have to co-ordinate schedules not only with your partner, but also with your families that you teach. Then you have prepare a lesson. After that there's the visit. Most H/T's intend on only staying just a few minutes, but then somehow you get sucked in for an hour. Then you have to make your reports. The reporting part can be especially time consuming if your the home teaching or visiting teacher coordinator. People hardly ever call to make their reports, so you have to call them.

Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of home teaching. I think it really teaches members to be selfless and it can really change the lives of members who need it. I just think we often don't take full advantage of it. Also, I know that lots of members have a hard time home teaching or don't like doing it for a variety of reasons. (They're shy, they don't think they're good teachers, they're too bust, ect.)

I think LDSTeach has some great ideas to make home and visiting teaching much more easier and much more effective. If home teaching has been your weak spot, check them out today.

Modified Tie Rack

2006-12-14T11:38:00.000-08:00

Over at Instructables, there's a post on a cool modified tie rack.

I wish I knew about this when I was on my mission. I just hung my ties on a single hanger. The result was that they all were ruined. For all you soon to be missionaries, this is a great idea. Keep it in mind as you get all your stuff together for you mission.

Use Gmail as a journal

2006-12-14T08:05:00.000-08:00

We're supposed to keep a journal. That's what the prophets both anciently and today have said. People have different preferences: some like the feel of pen and paper, others like to do it digitally. If you're one of the latter types of people, then you might enjoy this post from Lifehacker on how to use your Gmail account as a journal. With Gmail's categorizing system, you can create labels for different entries. You can have a label for blessings, work, family, ect. Thus, if you just wanted to read certain types of entries, with a just a click you can.

Mormon Hacker Manifesto

2006-12-13T21:15:00.000-08:00

During last General Conference, Elder Ballard gave a great talk on simplifying and being innovative in our church responsibilities. This is what Mormon Hacker is all about. Thus, "O Be Wise," is officially the Mormon Hacker Manifesto.

In his talk, Elder Ballard warns about people putting too much emphasis on the programs of the Church, and not on the people. Members often "complicate their service with needless frills and embellishments that occupy too much time, cost too much money, and sap too much energy."

He gave six points which, if we as members focus on, can make church much easier and much more enjoyable.

Focus on people and principles—not on programs.
Be innovative.
Divide the work and delegate responsibility.
Eliminate guilt.
We need to thoughtfully allocate our resources of time, income, and energy.
Give callings that help members grow in the church, not ones that overwhelm them.

These six points will be the guiding principles of Mormon Hacker, especially #2 and #5. Check out the full text of Elder Ballard's talk here.

Welcome to Mormon Hacker

2006-12-13T19:35:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Mormon Hacker.

This blog was inspired by Lifehacker, a site dedicated to bringing people tips, tricks, and ideas to make their lives easier and more simple. My wife and I are HUGE fans of the site.

We started talking about how Mormons need something like this. For years our leaders have admonished us to make our lives more simple. Yet, it seems like the general membership has not gotten the message. People complain because the gospel is a burden or that they aren't getting much out. We think the problem stems from the lack of knowledge on how to maximize the resources we have right in front of us.

This is where Mormon Hacker comes in.

Each day, we'll bring you Mormon Hacks: shortcuts on how to utilize the internet, computers, as well as other resources in order to make living the gospel-from food storage to home teaching, from frugal living to planning lessons-more fun, easy, and fulfilling. We hope you enjoy.