If you're new here, read more about the More Good Foundation. We help members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormon church) share their beliefs on the Internet. Learn more about what Mormons believe or talk with Mormons at LDS.net.

In partnership with Chris Knudsen whose idea this is, one of our latest projects is LDS News Watch. The site will publish links to interesting news articles about the Mormon church from around the world.

LDS News Watch will also call out newspaper editors and writers who report inaccurately about the Church. This will give interested Church members the opportunity to submit polite clarifications to those newspapers. We hope this will encourage accurate reporting about the Church while showing the civility and graciousness of Mormons even when misunderstood.

L’ Italia e’ un bellissimo paese dove la Chiesa Mormone e’ ancora poco conosciuta o, in molti casi, conosciuta per le cose sbagliate. Molta ignoranza riguardo la Chiesa di Gesu’ Cristo dei Santi degli Ultimi Giorni fa con che le persone stiano lontane dai missionari mormoni e quei pochi italiani che diventano membri della Chiesa spesso soffrono una certa rigezione sociale da parte della loro famiglia e amici.

Per chi abita in Utah sembra impossibile pensare che questa sia la realta’ della Chiesa in Italia, e senz’ altro le cose stanno lentamente migliorando, ma moooolto lentamente.

Quando decisi di battezarmi in Italia nel 1985 l’ Internet non esisteva e varie persone mi dissero di andare a vedere che cosa dicevano varie enciclopedie riguardo la Chiesa Mormone. Putroppo non dicevano molte cose buone ma erano estremamente tendenziose. Nel mio caso la disinformazione dell’ enciclopedia non servi’ a farmi desistere, ma in molti altri casi brave persone hanno avuto paura e hanno deciso di non seguire gli insegnamenti del Vangelo di Gesu’ Cristo. La colpa non e’ tutta loro. Possiamo fare qualcosa di piu’ per aiutarli.

Oggigiorno penso che se qualcuno cerca di dissuadere un amico dal diventare mormone probabilmente non suggerisce di andare a leggere una enciclopedia ma suggerisce di andare a vedere nell’ Internet.

Da un parte questo sembra peggio, perche’ nell’ Internet ci sono molte cose negative e contro la Chiesa, ma d’altra parte forse e’ meglio, perche’ mentre e’ quasi impossibile convincere quelli che pubblicano una enciclopedia a cambiare quello che dicono nei loro libri, l’ Internet e’ aperta a tutti e quindi tutti possono scrivere e far sapere quello in cui credono.

Ci sono pochi website in Italiano che parlano della Chiesa in una maniera appropriata. Qui di sotto faccio una lista (incompleta) come punto di partenza (non ci sono tutti ma non ce ne sono molti altri)
Per chi vuole contribuire esiste la mormonwiki.com in italiano

Per chi ha interesse nella storia della Chiesa in Italia c’ e’ il website Bella Sion

Un altro bel sito e’ quello di Massimo Franceschini, Mormoni.com

Poi ovviamente c’e’ il website ufficiale della Chiesa in italiano, e la versione italiana di Mormon.org.

Ci sono poi i mormoni di Palermo e alcuni blogs (per esempio il mio a http://blog.giuseppemartinengo.com o www.mormonismblog.com in varie lingue incluso l’ italiano.

Finalmente ci sono i websites come wikipedia e open site a cui tutti potrebbero contribuire.

Insomma, qualcosa c’ e’, ma non e’ sufficiente. Se sapete scrivere in italiano, pure male…. (meglio di no), ma insomma se avete qualcosa di buono da dire riguardo la Chiesa Mormone in italiano… ditelo nell’ Internet usando un website come la wikipedia o la mormonwiki, o create il vostro blog (come Maria) o un website come Massimo.

I futuri conversi italiani e vari membri vi ringrazieranno.

Atlantic magazine recently published a list of the 100 most influential figures in American history, and coming in at #52 is Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon church. The Church’s official site about Joseph Smith can be found at JosephSmith.net, but there are several sites with good information about the Prophet. Here are just a few:

• Joseph Smith Jr. at LightPlanet.com
• Fulfilled Prophecies of Joseph Smith at JeffLindsay.com
• Joseph Smith at MormonWiki.com
• ProphetJosephSmith.org
• The Testimony of the Prophet Joseph Smith at LDS.org

Glenn Beck is the 3rd most listened-to talk show host in the U.S., has a new TV show on CNN, and is also a Mormon. In the following video he talks about how the friendship and example of Mormon friends helped him decide to convert, what honoring the Sabbath means to him, and how he loves his wife. We need more videos like this.

It would be great to hear from Steve Young, Gladys Knight, and other famous mormons. Donny Osmond has several Gospel presentations.

But you don’t have to be famous to share the Gospel online. If you’d be okay with sharing your thoughts about the Church for a few minutes through video, please contact us.

Via: LDSWebGuy.com

A few improvements have been added at beta.lds.org:

For example, the navigation and organization of the content have been enhanced. To help people to find different format options (audio, video, PDF full layout, printer-friendly format, etc.), a format bar has been included directly above the content area of each page.

Also, people can now search for content in the whole Gospel Library or in just parts of the Gospel Library (scriptures, magazines, lesson manuals, or general conference). The search feature also allows to search “all Church content,” which will search all Church Web sites.

More information at the Mormon (LDS) Church Website

Newsweek and the Washington Post have just launched a new multi-faith blog to promote “respectful conversation” among religions and “constructive conversation about the things that matter most”. The blog, entitled On Faith, will be staffed by a variety of world religious leaders, scholars, and journalists.

How can people engage in a conversation about faith and its implications in a way that sheds light rather than generates heat? …we believe the first step is conversation–intelligent, informed, eclectic, respectful conversation–among specialists and generalists who devote a good part of their lives to understanding and delineating religion’s influence on the life of the world. The point of our new online religion feature is to provide a forum for such sane and spirited talk, drawing on a remarkable panel of distinguished figures from the academy, the faith traditions, and journalism. (About “On Faith”)

The Mormon church has selected director of media relations Michael Otterson to represent the Church on this blog. Alongside the other On Faith panelists, he will discuss various aspects of his faith — his first article is entitled Engaging Without Rancor — in a group blog that’s bound to be a powerful instrument for promoting religious tolerance and a great read.

Esta’ na hora de escrever algo em portugûes neste website da Fundação para o Melhor. Eu vou começar simplesmente dizendo a todos os que podem escrever em portugûes que a gente tem muitas coisas para fazer.

Segundo a wikipedia, portugês é a língua oficial de Angola, Brazil, Cabo Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Portugal and São Tomé and Príncipe, e é também a língua co-official com o Chinese in the Chinese S.A.R. of Macau e Tetum in East Timor.

Então a gente precisa fazer mais nessa língua tào bonita.

Aqui vem a primeira sugestão: ajude-nos em criar mais conteúdo para a Mormonwiki em portugûes. Se não souber como fazer isto, seguam os tutorials.

Se precisar de mais ajuda, pode me escrever: gmartinengo@moregoodfoundation.org

If you are interested in writing an article on the Mormonwiki and you don’t know how to do it, consider reading the tutorial.

A similar tutorial is found in the Portuguese, Spanish and Italian version of the wiki.

It is easy to create or translate articles, or to add links, but it may be confusing in the beginning. For this reason the tutorials were created.

Our English version of the wiki has now more than 600 articles, thanks to many great volunteers but more needs to be done in English and especially in other languages. We need to improve our Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German, French, and Arabic sections of the wiki and we would like to create other sections in Chinese, Japanese, Russian, and so on.

If someone is interested and can write in another language, he or she can write to us and we will set up a new language in the wiki.

David of MormonConverts.com recently shared with me a good idea: Ward Bloggers.

The Church already allows ward members to share a (private) site with the news and members of their ward. If (public) blogging software were added, each bishop in the Church could call a local person to be responsible for writing about happenings in the ward — upcoming Sunday School topics, with links to the readings for that week, or who spoke in sacrament meeting and what they spoke about.

I’d love to read the ward blogs of areas in my mission — to know that someone I taught had spoken in Church, or that a member I knew had sent a son on a mission. I’d also want to read the blog of my “home ward” to stay connected with the many good people that influenced me as a youth.

Revelation is an important subject in the doctrine of the Mormon Church. In fact, one of the main points of controversy with other Christian churches is that most of those churches teach that revelations are a thing of the past, forever lost after the death of the Apostles who lived on the earth at the time of Jesus.

Nothing could be more far from the truth. According to the Prophet Joseph Smith and his successors in the presidency and apostleship in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints revelation is what Jesus meant when said that on “this rock” He would build His Church. ( Read more )