Rebooting ‘Your Friends in the Gospel’ podcast
I am so excited to engage the world, teaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I hope that the communities of the Single Adults’ Blogs of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Your Friends in the Gospel, which I established, will join me in sharing their examples and testimonies of Jesus Christ on the Wisdom, an Audio Community app. Find me there at joinwisdom.audio/alexander if you want me to share your Wisdom talk to our community.
I discuss the Book of Moses in the Pearl of Great Price. I invite you read it, if you want to read the true translation of the first eight chapters of Genesis.
Your Friends in the Gospel reboot
Hi I am Alex Hicken. I would like to thank Brock Jon, a Talent Team member of the Wisdom Audio Community, for inviting me to bring the ‘Your Friends in the Gospel’ podcast to the Wisdom Audio Community. As with other hobbies, I actually quit podcasting at the beginning of this year because my life was not balanced. I was running a technology podcast, when I truly wanted to focus on the ‘Your Friends in the Gospel’ podcast. I have been planning to discuss how to establish balance in one’s life as a talk on the Wisdom App for a while now, but I am rebooting the ‘Your Friends in the Gospel’ podcast. The plan for this podcast episode is to discuss the following things: Rebooting the ‘Your Friends in the Gospel’ Podcast, re-engage the community that I have established, and conclude with a spiritual thought about “Come, Follow Me,” a home centered church supported curriculum of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The original purpose of the Your Friends in the Gospel community was to established a platform for Young Single Adults to share their example and testimony of Jesus Christ in a blog or vlog format about eight years ago. It was initially called the Mormon YSA Blog Spot. I was inspired to establish this blog because I listened to a program on the Latter-day Saints Channel, when they interviewed the founder of the Mormon Mommy Bloggers website.
I am no way saying that I have established a thriving community because within the eight years, we have less than 1900 followers, and the Facebook Group called Your Friends in the Gospel has less than 180 members. My networking and recruiting practices did not follow the policies of Facebook, and I was nearly banned; therefore, I shifted my focus from recruiting to sharing content of the Young Single Adults. The community is not thriving mainly because I got married; however, I am re-engaging these communities.
When President Russel M. Nelson, the prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, announced a refocusing of the church’s marketing to being the Church of Jesus Christ rather than Mormon, I renamed the social media pages. It is now called Single Adults’ Blogs of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on Facebook, where the community is largest.
I think that the Wisdom, an Audio Community App, has established itself to be a wonderful platform to re-invigorate the community of “Your Friends in the Gospel” because the app is a safe place to share your thoughts, example, and testimony of Jesus Christ in a public manner without persecution. I am no longer asking the community members to face the daunting task of composing an article. With the Wisdom app people can just ask to join the conversation with one click, and I can allow them to join. I invite you to join this conversation after I share my spiritual thought or start your own Wisdom Talk. You can share with me or the community after. The app is new, and it does not a direct message feature. My Twitter and LinkedIn pages are displayed on my Wisdom account page.
Now to my spiritual thought for the first episode of season two of ‘Your Friends in the Gospel’ podcast comes from the “Come, Follow me” curriculum because we are concluding reading the Book of Moses. The Book of Moses for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is peculiar because it is not the entire Book of Moses. All versions of the Bible have been translated by man, so they are imperfect and incomplete. I mentioned that Russel M. Nelson is the current prophet of the church today. Prophets, Seers, and Revelators from the beginning of time have been given a tool called the Urim and Thummin by God to translate unknown languages or see visions to help them in their purpose to be special witnesses of Jesus Christ. Joseph Smith Junior, the founding prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, translated the lost language of reformed Egyptian and the Book of Mormon by faith in Jesus Christ to reveal to him in English the meaning of the symbols of the language. The Book of Mormon is an abridgment of books of prophets in the ancients Americas by a prophet historian named Mormon.
Joseph was directed by God to re-translate the Bible, and he found that the first eight chapters of Genesis was composed much differently than what is found now; therefore, it was written and published separately in a book called the Pearl of Great Price. We do not have a official Joseph Smith Translation version of the Bible, but there are footnotes of the King James Version of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ publication of the Bible that reveal the true translation. I was discouraged from reading the some chapters of Genesis because it did not represent the writings of Moses how he intended it to be understood. Moses is a great writer.
I want to express my gratitude for Heavenly Father for calling prophets again on Earth and revealing the truth of his word again. It is not only that we are learning the truth of word of God, but we are learning the true nature of God through his word because these ancient prophets truly communed with God. I intended to share some excerpts comparing the differences, and I could not find a good one, but I will share this verse of from the Book of Moses. It is the sixth verse of chapter one. It is a segment of Heavenly Father’s word to Moses in a vision. Heavenly Father said the following:
“And I have a work for thee, Moses, my son; and thou art in the asimilitude of mine bOnly cBegotten; and mine Only Begotten is and shall be the dSavior, for he is full of egrace and ftruth; but there is gno God beside me, and all things are present with me, for I hknow them all.”
In this verse Heavenly Father reveals his relationship to man as all mankind are his children. He also testifies that Jesus Christ is and shall be the Savior, who is full of grace and truth.
The most used verse of the Book of Moses is the thirty-ninth verse of chapter one: “For behold, this is my work and my glory – to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.” Jesus Christ has overcome death, and every human will be resurrected and immortal. Eternal life is Heavenly Father’s true goal of humanity. It is not a given, where everyone will be resurrected. The literature of Pearl of Great Price reveals that our first estate of immortality is granted because we chose to follow the plan of salvation when we lived with God as spirits. Our second estate is eternal life, and we are still working today to prove our choice in mortality. Eternal life is life with Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ in their Kingdom of Glory. They want to share their kingdom and glory with us because they love us and want us to enjoy their fulness of joy and happiness. Our purpose on earth is to prepare to meet God. The Gospel is Jesus Christ is the way to return to live with our Heavenly Father. This is what we will be discussing on the ‘Your Friends in the Gospel’ podcast.
The Most Significant Events of 2021
We discuss the year of 2021 after a quick topic about Amazon’s Alexa, telling a girl to electrocute herself.
Alex’s most significant events are the launch of Polkadot and EIP 1559. Trevor’s are the Pokemon Diamond and Pearl remake, the announcement of Pokemon Legends: Arceus, the release of the OLED Switch, the launch of the James Webb Telescope, and the Chip Shortage. Nick’s are mainstreaming of cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens; and the release of Fuji’s GFX 100S, Nikon Z9, Canon R3, raising the standard of professional photography.
Nick Chao shares Western film inspired melodic sketches.
Merry Christmas. This whole month Nick Chao has been sharing music, and the last two songs feel like Christmas. We discuss the following topics: Truly implements Wisdom: the audio community app’s vision better, Final Fantasy XIV is not admitting new subscribers temporary, Should Pokemon make an adult themed game?, My first impressions of the Whoop 4.0 strap, OnlyFans Ghostwriting, and Orchestral Sketches.
Nick Chao explores music genres in his new song “Winter Field,” a cinematic Christmas theme.
Nick share new songs two weeks in a row! We discuss the following topics: Nintendo OLED Switch Review, Whoop Strap 4.0 delivery delays, new Google and Apple COVID-19 policies, Nodle Cash and Clover Finance Polkadot Crowdloan, Observing Cosmic Creation, and Nick’s new song Winter Field.
Nick Chao shares a new song, “Rough Seas.”
The regular crew attends this episode, discussing the following topics: RoomieOfficial is active again back to his more regular schedule, Penguins enjoy a solar eclipse on Antartica, I host a Jag Industrials’ SenseCap Helium equipment, Iron Maiden tours with Within Temptation, The annual 5% average staking rewards of Cardano is not enough for me, Instagram is going back to Chronological order, Trevor reviews Pixel leaks, and I interview Nick on his new song that he titles “Rough Sea.” Trevor also discusses one of the first studies planned once the James Webb Telescope is running and the recent Pixel Buds feature drop.
Best of November 2021, including Nick Chao’s song Roses & Lead Paint
This is the first official monthly highlights episode of the Very Hicken Bros podcast; therefore, the edited episode jumps around within the month of November 2021. I put in many topics in the episode from the Talk to You Later livestream, which we had audio recordings of; such as the following: Trevor raves about Taco Bell’s Grill Cheese Burrito. I share my NoName Nerd Minimeal NFT, which includes the crash of my computer; then, I take that moment to discuss my affiliation with NoName Nerd. Since the next subject is time sensitive I made sure to say the date that we published the next segment, which was dedicated to Kyung-bo Kim also known as the Overwatch League eSport’s athlete “Alarm,” which was recorded/shared on November 10th, 2021. Trevor and Nick discuss the Blizzard’s Earnings call and the delay of Overwatch 2. Nick discusses Nikon and Cannon, catching up with Sony mirrorless cameras. I discuss Acala’s successful crowdloan, and Nodle’s crowdloan announcement. Trevor then shares his review of the Pixel 6 Pro. We conclude with my interview with Nick Chao on his rough sketch song called Roses and Lead Paint.
Oura Ring 3 Review
This episode was a little wild. Trevor had a bunch of topics. News was a little weak for me. I finished my arch of Acala news last week, and all I had was my Oura Ring experience to share.
The following are the topics that Trevor had: GTA Trilogy Definitive Edition’s latest patch fixes 117 bugs and ‘adds cloud cover’ | VGC, Linux Mint 20.3 Arriving Soon with a Surprise New App, Rare Candy is Bitcoin’s newest NFT platform, and CERN collider detects neutrino for the first time. I recall that Trevor’s topics were hidden until the last minute, so I was unable to craft the conversation better. We discussed the delay of the James Webb Space Telescope. NASA delays launch of new James Webb Space Telescope after ‘incident’.
Kyler and Nick made same music. Nick has a possible five new song, pending. He is considering publishing them as a collection on a platform. Kyler explained his Twitter post about recreating the first part of ‘Ric Flair Drip’ in FL Studio BY EAR.
I was putting together the highlights episode for November and the Very Hicken Bros podcast, but I have a lot more to do to complete it.
I am making this video unlisted because people want me to make chapters, and I don’t have time to do that. I will make it public, when I do make the chapters.
DigiDenizen NFT
Yesterday NoName Nerd offered a Black Friday ten dollars off promo code. I used it to purchase a five dollar DigiDenizen NFT, and I purchased two custom NFTs of the two thumbnails. One person actually hearted the current thumbnail on OpenSea.
The DigiDenizen NFT is fun because it is going to have a reveal event at New Year’s Day. The theme is a role-playing game. I have played a Final Fantasy game on my old Gameboy, and the graphics is like that game but colored. I can reveal it before New Year’s Day, but I hope that I get a more rare and valuable one if I wait.
2021.11.28 A Suspenseful Exciting Story
2021.11.25
Today is Thanksgiving, and we are flying to Oklahoma currently to see John Ledesma; however, we did have a Thanksgiving meal already. Trevor came over with bread, eggs, drinks, chips, and hummus. He got off work last night at 8:30 post meridiem, calling to ask about recording a podcast. He also asked about what we are doing this morning. Jessica did previously think of having a Thanksgiving breakfast with him. We decided some food, and I concluded my preparation for the podcast.
My default breakfast request is French Toast. I am a minimalist, so my personal recipe is to soak the bread in egg, and cook it; no milk, sugar, or cinnamon. When Trevor asked what I want to put on it; for example syrup or honey, I said that I would like yogurt. The meal was pleasant.
After we began playing the Pokemon Diamond and Pearl remakes. The first thing that the game has us do is download an update, so we opened a box of Yu-Gi-Oh cards. I am not very Yu-Gi-Oh literate, so I mainly looked at the pictures. One booster pack had a very valuable card. It was Evil Twins something like that, being worth three-hundred dollars. Trevor wants to make decks out of the booster packs that we opened and play the game. Yu-Gi-Oh is very complicated, so every turn would probably take me ten minutes to complete.
I believe that I am playing the Brilliant Diamond version. The beginning was much more simple than Sword and Shield. I never played this version of Pokemon. I think that the chibby digital art fits the previous version. There is just much more pixels.
Since the transition fees for Cardano are reasonable, I have collected about sixty ADA tokens. I’m preparing to stake my ADA tokens. There was a one-hundred dollar cryptocurrency investment as a prize for a contest at work, and the host of the contests felt a little disappointed because a coworker told him that his crypto winnings will pay for the next contest fantasy football entry fee. He wanted every participant to pay their entry fee. I thought that the crypto was unclaimed, so I was hoping to ask for it for my birthday. When I received the news of the fantasy football entry fee, not being paid, I thought that I was resolving his disappointment. When I saw that a prize for a higher rank in fantasy football is crypto, I thought that a similar situation may arise. I did not completely resolve the crypto situation, but I resolved it temporarily.
I seem to be writing in reverse chronological order. I will start from the beginning of the week. On Monday, I had to convince Jessica to go to ballet in the evening because the class is more advanced than she would like. I told her that her beginner class is only once a week; would you go to CrossFit once a week? What results would you see if you went to CrossFit once a week? She understood that she would not make any progress, going to CrossFit once a week, and she related that ballet.
At ballet I composed my journal entry for the week. I also posted another article about my art project making the thumbnail for the Very Hicken Bros podcast. I did not want the previous image of my progress be lost. Today is now Saturday, and yesterday NoName Nerd offered a Black Friday ten dollars off promo code. I used it to purchase a five dollar DigiDenizen NFT, and I purchased two custom NFTs of the two thumbnails. One person actually hearted the current thumbnail on OpenSea.
The DigiDenizen NFT is fun because it is going to have a reveal event at New Year’s Day. The theme is a role-playing game. I have played a Final Fantasy game on my old Gameboy, and the graphics is like that game but colored. I can reveal it before New Year’s Day, but I hope that I get a more rare and valuable one if I wait.
On Tuesday we visited Hayley and Austin Lopez for the first birthday of their daughter named Chloe. It was fun to catch up with them. Austin posted on Facebook about requesting crypto tips, and we talked about that. He is mainly into Bitcoin, but he also has Cardano, Eth, and Shiba coins. I told him that I like investing in projects in Polkadot like I have mentioned.
On Wednesday I finished packing before recording a podcast, I am a part of the Unstoppable Domains Twitter family, and a bounty was to encourage Beeple to purchase the Beeple.nft domain. Beeple is definitely the foremost NFT artist currently. I just told him how I use my Unstoppable Domain, saying pictures can be attached to them, making them a traditional NFT. I feel up to selling my thumbnail NFTs new that they are minted. I can be a NFT artist too.
I did not prepare as much as usual for my podcast. I wanted to publish an episode concluding my Acala crowdloan experience, since they won the first Polkadot slot auction and my audio was messed up during our last recording session. Nodle also announced a crowd-loan, so I mentioned that. I laughed a little because Nick was on his phone and Trevor was dousing off during my segment.
We are on the 8:45 anti meridiem flight from Oklahoma to Salt Lake City, so we had an early morning. Thanksgiving was great. Heather made us a taco buffet, so we didn’t have a Thanksgiving dinner on Thanksgiving; however, we did have a Thanksgiving meal at Aaron and Geogina Ledesma’s house. It was fun because I helped bake corn bread, and Jessica made mash potatoes. I played a lot with Benjamin. He hugged my legs, and he would crawl up to be with me. He also crawled on my back, and we danced to music.
It was the first time that Jessica met her cousin in Oklahoma. Aaron Ledesma is her uncle. Jessica finally met all her cousins at twenty-seven years old. I didn’t talk too much with them, but I met Jaron, Lara, and Tawnie.
Jaron is preparing for his mission, and they asked Lucas and I for tips. I didn’t say anything except agreeing with Lucas that MTC training is much different than the field. I would say to love the people that you serve, but that is common knowledge. It really does make the difference in a mission to love everyone in the area that you serve. Jaron is leaving for his mission on Tuesday.
Geogina teaches ballet, so Jessica and her was able to talk about that.
Heather’s parents were at the Thanksgiving, and it was nice to meet them. There were way too many people in attendance for the table, so Jessica and I ate on the couch. After eating I found that there were bar stools at the Kitchen island and the dining table was not even full of people. There seemed to be plenty of seating.
The conclusion of our experience at Aaron’s house is watching the first two episodes of the Mandolorian. The story seems simple. We watched it because Jessica and I never have. Aaron was wearing his dadalorian shirt. Oh yeah! I forgot to say that Unstoppable Domains is sending me a t-shirt for being part of their Twitter family.
In the evenings, we would watch Lord of the Rings at John’s house. I would not watch them mainly because I sit too much.
John lead a “Come, Follow Me” lessons. We listened to the Elder Holland talk “Safety for the Soul” in commemoration of Hyrum and Joseph’s martyrdom. I may have appeared distracted during the viewing, but I was following along with the text and the audio. I liked how he capped his talk with they who treasure the word of God will not be deceived.
Work is good. I finished a project on Wednesday. I have a new Daybreak project to quantify, so I have work to start of next week. I am not overwhelmingly busy, which is nice. I will probably be looking for work by the end of the week.
I seem to be running out of things to written. I think that when I start writing about things that I have written about is a sign that I should finish writing. I posted a playlist of the podcast episodes that I have interviewed Nick Chao about his music. He has posted nine compositions with the Very Hicken Bros podcast. He was working on a remix of an older song that I recognized last week, which was fun. He is changing it from a pop song to a symphonic metal song.
2021.11.28
When we got home from the flight yesterday, I looked into Cake DeFi’s Black Friday promotion because if I deposited more than twenty-five dollars of cryptocurrency, they would match it up to thirty dollars; furthermore, they would give me a five percent bonus for freezing my staked tokens for six months. I already got a one-hundred-five percent return on my DeFi tokens! This is my first staking experience. Cake DeFi enables me to stake without having the minimum requirements, hardware, and software that staking individually requires. It is like delegating my tokens, which are options on Polkadot and Cardano. It is sad high fees are on Ethereum. I went with DeFiChain because I didn’t want to deal with Ethereum’s inefficiencies.
I am still learning about Cardano’s staking data to determine who to delegate my ADA tokens to. It gives the ROA percentage, which I still have no idea is, and the cost is a percentage plus three-hundred forty. The percentage is the amount of the returns that the node operator decided to keep for himself, and three-hundred-forty is the minimum standard cost to operate and maintain the nods set by Cardano. The rest of the return is distributed to the delegators.
Jessica and I tried to prepare our primary lesson, but we were so exhausted that we couldn’t focus well, deciding to take a nap. After the nap and grocery shopping, we found that it was late, and it would be suspicious to go to work to print the primary activity. Looking online, I found a false hope that FedEx is open twenty-four seven. There were no retail opportunities to print the activity, but I was at a Whole Foods; therefore, I tried my luck with the store. They had to have a printer handy. After the discovery of the false information on Yelp about FedEx, I got up walking around the store without telling Jessica what I was doing. (This is a suspenseful exciting story about printing out a sheet of a primary worksheet.) Walking past the cashiers, I saw a printer in the customer service kiosk. I stood there patiently as a sign said that the kiosk is closed. A sister came to see how she can help me. I asked if she could print something for me. It is for a church primary class. She said “How? You can’t use the printer.” I said that I could email it to you or I can print directly, if it can print with WiFi. She gave me her email address. I emailed her the print out, and the situation of no commercial or retail opportunity to print the primary activity was resolved.
The primary class went well. A student was proud to show what she colored to her parents. We were pushing their attention span of coloring the accomplishments of Joseph Smith until another student remember that we made paper temples previously. Temples was the last topic, so we let the children make paper temples. It is hard to know if the children are learning, but at this age one must trust the power of the word of God and the learning process of the human soul. It is line upon line precept upon precept.