A-Z Challenge 12: Latter Day Saints

I’ve been to Utah 3 or 4 times, mostly to see the nature, and the great national parks, such as Arches and Bryce Canyon.  Once I also spent a week in Salt Lake City, the capital of the Latter Day Saints, the Mormons.

I went to see the Temple Square and the Tabernacle (they won’t let you into the Temple, unless you’re an LDS of high rank).  A young woman came over to me and asked where I was from, and which language I spoke.  She said they could do guided tours in 150 languages. Not bad. 

The woman on Temple Square also gave me the Book of Mormon. I have read a fair part of it, but It didn’t work the way it was supposed to. The more I read, the less I believe. The same happened when I read the Bible and the Quran. 

I find the Mormons’ religion a little bit odd. It’s like they wanted to correct God’s misunderstanding of putting Abraham, Jesus and the Holy Land in the Middle East. The almighty God should have known better; America is the center of the world. That’s were religions should be initiated. Dear God, just give it a restart, in the right place this time. Joseph Smith is ready down on the beach. Just send him some gold plates, like you did with Moses.

One day I visited the Mormon Museum. In the gift shop I bought a book: The Basic History of the Mormon Church. I read it with great interest. I’m not too impressed by the Mormon’s religion, but I’m impressed by the way they have organized things. Here are two examples:

When Joseph Smith had been lynched in Indiana, the Mormons decided to move westward to Utah, to be able to live in peace and safety. They had a winter camp in Nebraska. When spring came they started a huge operation, led by Brigham Young. They first sent a pilot team, with craftsmen, engineers and scouts. They built camps along the route across the Rocky Mountains, one camp for each day-trip. When everything was ready, they sent a scout back to Nebraska to initiate the main trek. In this way they got thousands of people across the Rockies in one summer.

When the Mormons settled in Utah, they basically invented sustainable development, a hundred year before anyone else. To be able to survive in the dry desert of the Salt Lake Valley, they made rules for how much timber each family could take out of the sparse forest, and how much water they could take from the rivers (you can’t drink the water from the Salt Lake).

Hey guys, what the Hell are you doing? You’re sharing things! This is socialism. In America, you’re supposed to do things the capitalist way; competition and maximum profit. No wonder the Mormons were taken to be communists in the McCarthy era in the 1950s.