WE AREN'T MORMONS ANYMORE (8/22/2018)

Hey everybody,

So did you hear? "Mormon" and "LDS" are no longer applicable terms in referring to church members. Lots of people are wondering if/how this is different from previous counsel, because the church has always (as far I know) discouraged the use of anything but the proper name of the church. After all, apostles have spoken on this very subject before, like President M. Russell Ballard:

"...The Lord makes clear that [the name of the church] is not only a formal title but also the name by which His Church is to be called. Given His clear declaration, we should not refer to the Church by any other name, such as 'Mormon Church' or 'LDS Church.'

"The term Mormon can be appropriately used in some contexts to refer to members of the Church, such as Mormon pioneers, or to institutions, such as the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. Church members are widely known as Mormons, and in interactions with those not of our faith, we may fittingly refer to ourselves as Mormons, provided we couple this with the full name of the Church."

So whereas before the church was supposed to be called by its proper name only but members could be called LDS or Mormon, now referring to members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as anything other than "members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" or just "Latter-day Saints" is discouraged. We aren't Mormons. We're members of Christ's true church. Of course as President Nelson has said it's gonna take a lot of effort to change this, and it sounds like the media is having a heyday with the alleged "change". But it is God's will, so we will do it. We are Latter-day Saints!

This week was interesting. For one thing, it was my last week in Westerville. I found out this morning that I'm getting transferred to Ashland, Ohio. My companion will be Elder Miller. I look forward to seeing a new place! Looks like the pattern of me having one companion per transfer will continue, haha. I learned a lot from Elder Cichoski (mostly about my own flaws!), a lot from this area, and a lot from this ward, but I guess it's time to see a new place and new people. I am excited!

On Monday we had a little crisis. Modern missionaries, as some of you may or may not know, use this handy-dandy app called Area Book Planner. Paper planners are a relic of the distant past (in most missions). We do everything with area book: planning, recording, navigating--everything. But on Monday, Area Book was suddenly gone, vanished from our devices. This was, as far as I can tell, a worldwide occurrence. Without an area book we pretty much went around blindly knocking doors. Luckily I had taken a screenshot of our schedule before the app vanished and knew how to get to most of the people on the schedule, but it was crazy. Felt like we went back in time. I almost started teaching the old discussions and talking about President Kimball's new revelation on the Priesthood. The embarrassing thing is we actually found two new people to teach that day without area book where before we were hardly ever finding any new people to teach. Oops. They fixed the problem by the next morning and now we're back in good old 2018.

Attached is my goodbye picture with Elder Gorze, who's flying home today. I'm gonna miss this guy. He was a great elder, a great movie quoter, and a great friend. RIP dude. (The angle in the picture makes us both look smaller than we really are...I promise...)

Love,

Elder Gallagher