October 1, 2018

Hi Jon! I hope you're doing well. Are your red shoes getting worn out? Let me know if you need some money to buy some new shoes.

This week I focused a lot on programming. I've been waiting for one of the people from Adobe to get back from a trip to Asia so things have been moving slowly. In the meantime I went to crossfit for 5 days in a row! My old body feels like I got hit by a truck.

I bought a new kayak a few weeks ago and I've been trying to figure out how to do a combat roll - where you get flipped upside down in the river for whatever reason and then you have to get your side rightside up without help.

The whitewater club at BYU rented the pool at Provo Recreation center a couple weeks ago and they guys there gave me a few tips about how to do the roll. But it was really hard and I got tired before I ever really nailed it. So then I thought maybe I practice more in in a friend's pool like the Heatons or the Pestanas. I needed a 2nd person to help me so I kept putting it off but finally this Friday I went to the Heaton's pool with Aimar and I practiced a lot. I did like 2 or 3 successful rolls out of 20+ but I couldn't really say what I did right when it worked or what I did wrong when I failed.

So then the BYU club rented the Provo Rec pool again this Friday night. Mom went with me and I started practicing again. I knew I was doing something wrong but couldn't figure out what until this one guy - one of the more experienced guys from the club - came over and told me what he thought he saw that was wrong. As soon as he told me this thing, it all clicked and then I did more than 50 successful rolls in the pool that night.

Well, Saturday was a really warm day - like 90 degrees which is rare for the end of September - so I took Aimar and Heber kayaking down the Provo river up near Vivian Park. I was trying to get up my courage to do a roll in the moving water of the river for the first time but I just didn't have the courage plus the river was really shallow and I thought I was going to hit a bunch of rocks with my head. But then at one point I just started rocking back and forth to get a better feel for how flexible my kayak was - and on my third rock I felt myself going too far and presto I was in the water upside down completely on accident. It worked out okay though because I got into my roll position and was able to get upright just fine all by myself. My first time doing a roll in a real river! For the rest of our run, Heber would get ahead of me and test the water depth using his paddle and tell me where I could safely do a roll. I ended up doing 11 rolls on the river. Then we dove off prophet rock and we floated down to the diversion dam and jumped off the bridge a few times.

On Saturday night we went to John Pestana's man cave to watch BYU football lose to Washington. Mom, Nate, Aimar, and I hung out in the hot tub until 11pm - long after everyone else went home just talking and telling stories. Nate told us about how you would sit on Javi and make him watch while you blew up his elaborate buildings he worked for hours to build on Minecraft. Then Javi would run upstairs crying. Good times.

On Sunday I took the opportunity to talk with Javi about other boys who had mean older brothers including Nephi, Joseph in Egypt, and even Abel. Don't worry - we also talked about repentance and forgiveness and that people change. Javi said that you got a lot better when you got older.

OK that's all for my update this week. Now I want to give you a spiritual thought.

One of the most insightful things I thought about at Education Week was about "source amnesia" and visual learning. Source amnesia is when you know something but you can't exactly remember where you learned it or who you learned it from. It's extremely common because we've been taught the same principles from primary through seminary, missions, Elders Quorum lessons and Sunday School, and even things like going to Education Week and General Conference. Imagine if one of your early primary teachers told you that picking up the sacrament tray using your first and third fingers was the only right way to do it. Then 20 years later someone asks you why you believe that to be true and you can't remember exactly where you learned it. This is source amnesia.

Now combine source amnesia with visual learning. Most of us are visual learners. If you read a chapter in the scriptures 10 times and look at one image or painting of it, you'll remember the image a lot better than you'll remember the words you read. But imagine if the picture was wrong. Now you're remembering the incorrect image instead of the correct words and your understanding of the Gospel gets a little warped.

But why would a picture be wrong? Because artists NEVER focus on historical accuracy or doctrinal accuracy, only "message accuracy". Imagine in your mind the second coming of Jesus Christ. Do you see him descending in a cloud dressed in a white robe surrounded by angels? That's what the painting looks like that you see in all of our church buildings, magazines, and temples. The problem is that D&C 133:48 says the Lord will be wearing red clothes, not white. So why does the painting show white? Because the artist tried it in red and it was too distracting. The red robe was distracting viewers from the real message which was the glory of Christ descending from Heaven! Can the viewer FEEL the Savior in this painting? Then who cares what the color of His robe is?

Now think about the sons of Helaman. What do you picture? Do you imagine these incredibly handsome and buff guys carrying spears that look like a group the BYU football team would be afraid of playing against? That's not what the stripling warriors were. They were your average Teacher's quorum - scrawny, pimple-faced, and awkward. The dictionary from year 1828 says stripling means "barely adolescent". Like barely out of primary. So why did the artist paint the stripling warriors like 7 foot tall bodybuilders? Because he wanted viewers to admire and respect the stripling warriors, to see their spiritual strength so they used the metaphor of  physical strength. In this case I think it backfires a little because it minimizes the miracle. I think showing a Teacher's quorum that fought a huge battle and nobody died would highlight the miracle that it really was, more than showing a bunch of buff guys who won a battle.

Finally, think of Joseph Smith translating the Book of Mormon. Do you think of Joseph staring down with his finger pointing at something on the plates and his other hand up near his temple as if he is studiously trying to figure out what the ancient characters mean? That's not how translation happened. How it really happened is Joseph put the seer stones or spectacles in a hat and then pressed that hat up to his face to block out light so he could see the stones better. Have you ever put a t-shirt over your head in the car or at the beach as you're trying to watch a movie on your phone in order to block out the light and see the screen better? That's what Joseph did. Then he would see one line of text and read it out loud. The scribe would hear what Joseph said and then write it down and say "written". If the scribe did it right, the text on the seer stones would go to the next line. If not they would stay the same and Joseph had to read the same line again until the scribe got it right.

So why are there no images of that in the Ensign while there are 55 issues with images of Joseph translating while staring at the plates? The first reason is that artists tried painting Joseph with his hat pressed into his face and viewers unanimously said that it looked like Joseph was throwing up into his hat. So while historically accurate, it failed to be "message accurate".

My point is that due to a combination of source amnesia and visual learning and inaccurate images, a lot of us in the church have misconceptions about what really happened in church history. We might read the real truth in the D&C or History of the Church but the words don't make as much of an impression on us as seeing a painting. So try to remember what source amnesia is and always try to remember where you learn things. And be patient with others when their understanding is a little be different than your understanding because they are probably dealing with source amnesia too.

Love,

Dad