Phoenix -- what an amazing place! Especially while its so cold in Wisconsin right now that we put ice cubes from our freezers into our boots for toe warmers.

Yesterday I had time to do a session at the beautiful and historic Mesa Temple, where I met Martin van Hemert, a professional photographer working on some temple photographs. Very kind and interesting person. Thanks for taking the time to chat with a photographer wannabe!

I had the privilege of staying Saturday night with my first missionary companion in Switzerland and attending his ward today, the Arcadia Ward of the Scottsdale Arizona Camelback Stake. (Don't know if he wants his name here yet - so I'll slightly protect his privacy by not giving it. But he's a supremely awesome Latter-day Saint with an amazing family. What great people!) In that ward, I met a former Chief Justice of the Arizona Supreme Court, a former mayor of Phoenix, and learned that the ward has five former mission presidents and quite a few other notables (well, they're all notable, you know).

Tonight I was able to attend a presentation on the beautiful Arizona State University campus at the impressive LDS Institute, where Dr. Steven Bay of BYU spoke on his work based on using multispectral image analysis to bring out text from damaged scrolls. Amazing work with lots of valuable insights into ancient documents and even some insights into the scriptures. I was especially happy to hear one bit of info that came as an aside from Dr. Bay: the story in John 8 of Christ and the adulteress whose life He saves with the word, "Let him who is without sins cast the first stone," is found repeatedly on very early manuscripts and is not in question as an authentic biblical story, as I read elsewhere sometime ago. Whew! I'm glad about that because it's one of my favorite stories and is something I fancied as too wise, loving, and characteristic of Christ to have been made up or of questionable origins.

While at the lecture/fireside, I met Corey, who kindly let me know about the event, and several other interesting people. I was amazed at how many people were there - 400 is my estimate. Filled a chapel and much of the cultural hall at the Institute, which also serves as a stake center for the university/single adults stake.

Oh, to that bright ASU student who I talked with after the fireside, the one interested in a scholarly book on the Urim and Thummim, the author is Dr. Cornelius Van Dam of the Theological College of the Canadian Reformed Churches. I discuss his book, The Urim and Thummim: A Means of Revelation in Ancient Israel (Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 1997) on my blog post, Cornelius Van Dam on the Urim and Thummim.

Now it's almost time to get down to business....
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