Are We Back on Track?

It seems our blogging hit a stumbling block in December for all of us but I think we're back on track now. I really enjoyed reading that little slice of Drew's mission memories. I hope the mysterious smoker survived his unintentional contribution to the missionary effort. I also enjoyed reading about Dave's day in court. Sounds like a very entertaining afternoon.

I have nothing so entertaining to report, but something I feel is of great import. I went to a presentation last night (It was an "empty nester's FHE" group we belong to). The presenter was a man named Jim Englebretson, son-in-law of a member of our group. He lived in Pennsylvania for 22 years and then was mission present in Oklahoma before moving to Provo. He's had alot of experience with missionary work and said he was beginning to see a pattern. His Oklahoma missionaries would have some investigators coming along when suddenly they turned cold and refused any more discussions. In Dallas 15 years ago we knew their ministers had given them "the talk" about the evils of Mormonism and scared them off, but President Englebretson's missionaries were facing a far more pervasive foe---the internet. He discovered there are dozens of internet sites aimed at attracting and deceiving anyone who might be slightly curious about the Church. Their sites have innocent sounding addresses, like: Mormon church.org or Mormon underwear.com, or Mormon temples.whatever.
While our church has stuck pretty much with LDS.org, thinking people interested in knowing more about the church would look there, others with their own purposes in mind have picked up on the term more familiar than LDS---Mormon. The information on these sites are misleading at best, and even slanderous and evil at worst. If any of you heard Elder Ballard's December address to the graduates of BYU-H you'll know he addressed this problem by intreating the members to combat this menu of lies with truthful sites of their own.
Brother Englebretson started an organization called "Moregood" (the translation of "Mormon") and for the past year has been buying out many of those evil sites with big bucks and is also purchasing many more domains (is that the right word?). He is soliciting the members to click onto the good ones and add their testimonies and positive experiences. The more a site is hit, the more it moves up the list to the top. As you know, the first ones you see are the ones you follow up on. If there are several pages of references you never get past the first page.
If you e-mail this organization they will send you a list of the "good" sites (so you can contribute to them) and a list of the "bad" sites (so you won't click on them by mistake and give them a boost up the ladder).
This is an all new battlefront and we've been in the dark about what's been happening. Now we know how to fight this enemy we need to draw our swords. You kids are much better at internet stuff than I am but I'm going to give it a shot. I hope you will, too. Mom

The e-mail address is: moregoodfoundation.org