sunday school.

i am lucky to be in the ward with one of the best sunday school teachers i have ever had. perhaps i hold this opinion of him because although he is much more intelligent than i am, we are good friends.  but the reasons that we get along are based mainly on the fact that we process thoughts the same way. when he is not kicking my butt at mario kart or talking my ear off about hockey, we always have very stimulating conversation.
our first real spark of friendship happened 2 years ago.  i was speaking in the ward for the first time and afterwards he stopped me and said,
" judaic numerology?  i had no idea that you were the type to study that just for fun. and you quoted two of my favorite church scholars. well done."
so i had met a fellow nerd that enjoyed dabbling in a little pythagorean numerology and we also both love elder talmage. friendship was just meant to be. mike shared this with our class today:

When he was a student, Elder Talmage was once approached by a man offering to sell him an excellent oil lamp. Elder Talmage already had a lamp he felt was satisfactory, but he allowed the lamp seller to come up to his room to demonstrate.

“We entered my room, and I put a match to my well-trimmed lamp. My visitor was high in his praise. It was the best lamp of its kind, he said, and he had never seen a lamp in better trim. He turned the wick up and down, and pronounced the judgment perfect.

“‘Now,’ he said, ‘with your permission I’ll light my lamp,’ taking it from his satchel. … Its light made bright the remotest corner of my room. Its brilliant blaze made the flame in my lamp weak and pale. Until that moment of convincing demonstration I had never known the dim obscurity in which I had lived and labored, studied and struggled.”

Elder Talmage bought the new lamp, and he later suggested what we can learn from the lamp seller as we teach the gospel: “The man who would sell a lamp did not disparage mine. He placed his greater light alongside my feebler flame, and I hasted to obtain it.

“The missionary servants of the Church of Jesus Christ today are sent forth, not to assail nor ridicule the beliefs of men, but to set before the world a superior light, by which the smoky dimness of the flickering flames of man-made creeds shall be apparent. The work of the Church is constructive, not destructive”.

need i say more?
oh yeah. and i am a mormon.