Thursday, September 3, 2015

329: BUILDING "ZION" ONE HIGH RISE and ONE METROPOLIS AT A TIME.

 Over a year ago I posted that the Church was expanding their multi billion dollar City
Creek project in downtown Salt Lake. Along with the shopping mall (City Creek Center) and upscale apartments (The Regent), the high rise office building called 111 Main will be one of the tallest buildings in Salt Lake. Here is live camera feed in case you want to track the progress of the construction: http://www.111mainslc.com/progress/

Here is the latest rendition of what this office tower will look like . In my opinion, Downtown Salt Lake is looking more and more like Las Vegas.






In addition to all of the building projects in Salt Lake City, the Church has announced their plans to  build a metropolis city with a population of 500,000. I know this is old news for some, but here is the link in case you haven't seen it:
http://www.sltrib.com/news/2709720-155/paul-rolly-mormon-church-moves-to

That is like building a city the size of Denver Colorado with their population of 557,917
 

OR building four of the largest cities in Utah into one jumbo metropolis. Here are the highest population numbers of Utah's cities:

Salt Lake City population: 186,440
West Valley City population: 129,480
Provo population: 112,488
West Jordan population: 103,712
 
One might not bat an eye if this huge building development project was in Jackson County.. but no.. it is in Florida near Disneyworld. Go figure.

You know, I think the Lord would be just as happy if we used our Church income to feed the poor and clothe the naked instead of skyscrapers and sprawling metropolis that mostly would not welcome the homeless and hungry.
 
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Sidenote:

This past weekend we had a General Authority come to our Stake Conference. By profession this Seventy is a lawyer and lives in Utah County. He asked for questions and  answered them in the Saturday Afternoon Leadership meeting.  One of the questions was about the Church's decision to remain in the Boy Scouts. Here is a transcript of how he answered the question:

"The bigger issue came last summer when the decision was made by the Boy Scouts to admit open and avowed, meaning practicing and "in the open about it" gay leaders to scouting. Now within Scout troops, within our troops, if that were to happen, I think everyone would agree that would decimate our young men’s program in what we are trying to teach our young men and the doctrine found in the Proclamation that we have, about when sex should occur and between who sex should occur.

So when the Scout did what they did, the first thing the Church did was it issued a statement from the senior leaders saying, “We are deeply troubled, we need to take a look at this”.

They have taken a look at this and you saw the announcement that came out this past week. The announcement said three things, and I am paraphrasing. If you haven’t read it, read it, don’t let the press read it for you, don’t let the blogs read it for you. Get on and read it for yourself. It says three things. It says scouting has a great history and has produced great young men and the ideals of scouting are very much to be held up as great goals. 

It says second, and I am quoting here three words exactly, at this time, the Church will remain with scouting so long as it can choose it’s own leaders within its own troops, and those leaders reflect the values the Church has. 

And three, the Church will continue to consider how to deal with its youth programs that are now international. The Church is now in over a hundred countries, and Boy Scouts program are for two of them, the US and Canada, and the Church will continue to evaluate how the Church can best serve them. That is the statement. No one goes beyond that statement. 

That is the statement of the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve. No Seventy has any authority to go beyond that statement and that would be a very foolish thing to do. 

So I will just say this, if you think why we have prophets, seers and revelators.. why the Lord gave them to us...the reason is they get to see whats behind the corners from time to time.. where the rest of us can’t see. By definition the word 'seer' is to peer into the future and see what is going to happen. In our Church we have always had great reliance and testimony of their ability to do that. You all have and I don’t know why you would stop now. Prophets, seers and revelators have carefully looked into this issue and they have determined that at this time, we will remain in scouting so long as we can choose our leaders while we evaluate our options or other alternatives. 

I don’t know why anyone would want to question that as a good member of the Church other than to say I am so grateful that we have Prophets, Seers, and Revelators and I hope they keep being Prophets, Seers and Revelators."