activities – Temple Study

FollowTheProphet.net website launches!

November 24, 2009 by Bryce Haymond 3 Comments

FollowTheProphet.net logo, a portrait by LDS artist Ken Corbett of President Thomas S. Monson. Used with permission. KenCorbettArt.com

My brother and I are pleased to announce the launch of our latest project—the FollowTheProphet.net website! This new website has been in design and development for the past month, and we are happy to finally be able to announce today that it is available.

FollowTheProphet.net is a website that allows members of the Church to follow the living prophet more closely. We go from General Conference to General Conference often not hearing or knowing what the prophet is doing, saying, or teaching. Not long ago, the activities of the prophet were much more well known among the membership of the Church. The prophet and members lived very close geographically, and members could even meet personally with the prophet. Today, with over 13 million members scattered worldwide, the activities of the prophet are much lesser known. Members who don’t live in Utah may only know what the prophet is doing every six months at General Conference.

FollowTheProphet.net helps to fill that gap of knowledge. With advances in search technology, we are able to aggregate all public information we find about where the prophet is, what he is doing, saying, teaching, visiting, etc., and post it all in one central place at FollowTheProphet.net. Any talks or speeches he gives, we will post links to his words. Any trips he goes on, we will post information about his visits. Any temples he dedicates, we will inform you about the events. Hopefully this will help you feel a closer connection with God’s living prophet, and stay up-to-date about his activities and his counsel. We believe that in these turbulent times, we will be safe if we stay close to the living prophet of God and heed his word.

More information about the new website can be found on the About page at FollowTheProphet.net, such as the ability to “follow the prophet” via Twitter, RSS, email, or Facebook.

We are excited to bring you this new service, and hope you will enjoy it! Please give us any tips, suggestions, or feedback that you may have that would help us improve the site.

Using Google Wave in the LDS Church

October 10, 2009 by Bryce Haymond 12 Comments

Google Wave

Anyone who has been following this blog for some time knows that I love new technologies, and most particularly how those new technologies might be used to benefit the Church and the work of the kingdom of God on the earth. Last week I received a nomination to the “preview” of the new Google Wave service from a friend on Twitter (thank you!). Last night I finally received my invitation to join the service and test it out. I quickly hopped on board and began exploring.

I’ve only used the tool for a few hours, and its only available in a very limited preview release at the moment, but I’m already wondering how this cool new technology could be used in the Church to help the work roll on. For those who are not familiar with the service, it is being touted as the ultimate collaboration tool, an amalgam of email, instant messaging, wikis, social networking, document collaboration, picture/video sharing, and much more. Many are still not sure what exactly its potential is, or if it will even catch on. But from my limited encounter so far, it does seem like a powerful tool for working on things together, and I think it will be of use to many.

So the question that’s been rolling around in my head then is, how can we use Google Wave in the Church? How could it facilitate those things we already do in the Church to make them better? How can we harness its power to help the threefold mission of the Church accomplish its ends in a quicker, easier, or simpler way? [Read more…]