“Well done, thou good and faithful servant.”

Retired federal judge Paul Warner is the “star” of the latest video short from the Interpreter Foundation.  Like the others in this series, “A Dying Declaration” — that’s the title of this one — has been drawn from the Interpreter docudrama Undaunted: Witnesses of the Book of Mormon.  And, as with the rest of the series, we hope that you’ll both enjoy it and share it further.

And, by the way, did you know that the forthcoming Interpreter Foundation film Six Days in August has a Facebook page?  Well, it does, and it’s located here.  We invite you to visit it, to enjoy it, to like its contents, and, yes, once again, to pass it and its posts on to others.  Please help us!

I’m saddened to have heard the news this morning of the passing of my longtime friend and associate George Mitton.  He was an associate editor of the old FARMS Review before it was terminated in a palace coup at the Maxwell Institute and, after that unpleasant episode, was involved with the Interpreter Foundation from its very beginning.  He has been serving on our book review committee, and I received a note from the chairman of that committee in response to the news of his passing:  “Just last week I received an email from him with feedback on a book review. He was contributing to the kingdom right up to the end. What an inspiration!”

My wife and I also had the good fortune to have known George’s remarkable wife, Ewan Harbrecht Mitton, whom some may perhaps recall from her mention in the account, given in the third volume of Saints, of the Tabernacle Choir’s 1955 European tour.  She was the soloist for the Choir during that historic visit, which was undertaken at least in part to celebrate the dedication of the temple in Zollikofen, Switzerland, the long-dreamed-of first Latter-day Saint temple in Europe.

George  was soft-spoken, kind, funny, incisive, hard-working, and deeply loyal to the Kingdom of God.  We’ll sorely miss him, but we’re happy for him at the same time.  As one of the members of our Interpreter board put it, “He will be with Ewan again. He was a great contributor and thinker.”  He is a classic illustration of the principle of “enduring to the end.”

I’m very happy, too, that we got a book of his essays out in time, and that we were able to present it to him at a small celebration in his honor on 10 May 2024.  (The book’s overall theme — “four significant articles that offer much guidance for our preparation to meet the Lord at the veil” — is exceptionally appropriate to his own passing.)  I’m grateful to all who made the book and the event happen.

My wife and I drove up with Kent and Gayle Brown on Saturday evening for a reunion of the January-June 1978 BYU Israel semester-abroad program in which I participated.  It was my first time in the Middle East.  Kent was the faculty director of that program, which occurred when BYU’s eventual Jerusalem Center for Near Eastern Studies was just beginning to be a topic of serious discussion.

Thanks to the efforts, I think, of a pair of sisters who were on the program, they have been doing these reunions pretty regularly for quite a while.  But — owing to periods spent living in California and Egypt and Israel, as well as a hectic summer travel schedule and, of course, my own toxic, unpleasant, and anti-social personality — I think that we’ve only previously managed to attend one of them.  And that was quite a while back.

It was fun to renew acquaintances and to catch up.  Two of that group are, alas, no longer with us, but most of the others came.  I think a lot of such reunions.  I don’t want to overdo it, but they seem to me at least a minor foretaste of the glorious heavenly reunions promised by the Gospel.

Just posted on the never-changing website of the Interpreter Foundation:  “Come, Follow Me — Study and Teaching Helps (2024): Lesson 35, August 26-September 1: Helaman 1-6: “The Rock of Our Redeemer””

Editor’s Note: Four years ago, Jonn Claybaugh began writing the Study and Teaching Helps series of articles for Interpreter. We now have these wonderful and useful posts for all four years of Come, Follow Me lessons. Beginning this year we will be reposting these articles, with dates, lesson numbers, and titles updated for the current year’s lessons. Jonn has graciously agreed to write new study aids for those lessons that do not directly correspond to 2020 lessons.

Also newly posted on the Interpreter website:  The Book of Mormon in Context Lesson 35: “The Rock of Our Redeemer”: Helaman 1-6

During the 4 August 2024 Come, Follow Me segment of the Interpreter Radio Show, Martin Tanner, Hales Swift, and Brent Schmidt discussed Book of Mormon lesson 35, “The Rock of Our Redeemer” covering Helaman 1-6.

Delivered from the bondage of commercial interruptions, their conversation is now available for your delectation.  The other segments of the 4 August 2024 radio show can be accessed at https://interpreterfoundation.org/interpreter-radio-show-august-4-2024.

The weekly Interpreter Radio Show can be heard on Sunday evenings from 7 to 9 PM (MDT), on K-TALK, AM 1640.  As an alternative, you can listen live on the Internet at ktalkmedia.com.  We have not yet enabled individual drone delivery of thumb drives containing the show.

Plainly, this Greg Sheridan fellow seems to have had at least a momentary glance, in connection with his article, into the Christopher Hitchens Memorial “How Religion Poisons Everything” File™.  Thanks to Philip Leaning for calling the article to my notice:  “‘The Australian’ Newspaper Looks into The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: “What it plainly has the power to do is inspire its adherents to decent lives and significant service of others” (Greg Sheridan, ‘The Australian’ Foreign Editor)”