October 9, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Yesterday a friend told me that he found something interesting about me at this website:
newyorktimesbestsellerlist.org
If we scroll down we can find one very nice video about the conversion story of brother Ott Dameron (my good neighbor)
and my own conversion story. The funny thing for my friend was that they titled my video by saying
Watch The founder of More Good Foundation, from Italy:
I have been working for the More Good Foundation from the beginning, and I am still doing it, but the real founder is David Neeleman, the famous Mormon, the same person who founded JetBlue and now Azul, in Brazil.
In any case, the website also call the Prophet, president Gordon B. Hinckley,
Revered President Hinckley…
We do not call “reverend” our prophets, but what is important is that they provided a great link to a very good video, where President Hinckley shares his testimony
October 6, 2008 | Leave a Comment
I have written before about my conversion story and how I became a member of the Mormon Church.
This is a very interesting picture of the day of my baptism.. I was skinnier and younger, obviously
Elder Forbes, Giuseppe Martinengo, Elder Stout
Now Luca, my son, is in the mission field, looking for people like me, ready to accept the Gospel and the Church. My son had an exchange of emails with one of the two missionaries who taught me the gospel first, and the one who confirmed me a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
This is an excerpt from the email that was written by Lynn Forbes (Elder Forbes) about how he remembers those times:
I would be happy to share my recollection of how I met your dad…. It was sometime in December of 1984. I had only been in Italy a little over two months, so was still in the process of really learning Italian. Me and my senior companion (Elder Burton) were doing street contacting in Asti, where we would go to the busy streets and try to talk to people about the gospel, and arrange to visit them in their homes if they would let us. I actually think I remember some of our conversation with your dad on the street that morning. We would typically look for men who would be in the age range where they might be married, so your dad was younger than we might usually stop. I really believe that Heavenly Father knew your dad was ready for the gospel - so, we ended up stopping him anyway. I think I totally messed up what I wanted to say, but, somehow your dad invited us to come to his house with our message. It wasn’t until January that we ended up getting to talk to him. By that time, Elder Stout (I think you’ve met him) was my senior companion. I do remember the day that we finally spoke with your dad, because I wrote about it in my journal. That afternoon, we had been tracting (knocking doors) without much success. At one apartment building, we actually had a couple of interesting things happen to us - first, on one floor, after we knocked and told the person inside who we were, we heard a dog barking as someone who was angry was unlocking the door - we decided to leave that floor and go to another floor. On that floor, a lady got really angry with us and told us we better get out of the building or else. So, we left the building. As we left, that lady dumped a bucket of cleaning water on us from above. We talked about what we should do - and decided we would try to pass by some of our street contacting names. Your dad was the one we decided to see (he was only a name on a sheet of paper, at that time). Anyway, we went by his place (his mother’s home), and he let us in, and we taught him the first discussion. We asked him to read from 3 Nephi (Christ’s visit) and we made an appointment to return in a couple of days. When we came back, he had read all of 3 Nephi, and had started at the first of the Book of Mormon. He said he knew it was true and that he wanted to be baptized. It seems like we returned every day, or every other day for a week or so. He finished the BofM soon. The only problem we ran into was his mom. Because of her, we put off his baptism until February - she was still very angry - you probably know that part of the story from your dad. But, he ended up being baptized. Elder Stout baptized him and I confirmed him. His confirmation is still one of the times of my life that I felt the Spirit the strongest. I don’t think that Elder Stout and I were “special” missionaries. We were just out, doing our best, and Heavenly Father did the rest. That is the key to missionary work, I think - to be out “opening your mouth” and doing your best - it sounds like you’ve learned that. I’m glad you are having a great mission - seeing the gospel change people’s lives - it really is a beautiful thing. You will look back on your mission as a great time in your life - when you had the privilege of devoting all your time to the Lord. There will be times in the future when you will miss that.
August 28, 2008 | Leave a Comment
According to LDSMediaTalk,
Crowdsourcing is an innovative business trend that takes collaborative work to a whole new level. Around the world, individuals are using online communities to identify people with similar experiences or interests who can share ideas, offer their expertise, and collectively accomplish work.
Examples of crowdsourcing are provided by people editing a Wikipedia article, or uploading a video to YouTube, and so on.
Crowdsourcing is the act of taking a job traditionally performed by an employee or a third-party provider and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call. Using the technique, an organization can tap into the collective intelligence and expertise of the public at large to complete the task. Crowdsourcing can include anything from gathering feedback on a new idea, asking for help to solve a problem, or actually accomplishing the task at hand.
It is important to realize that crowdsourcing is not a magic tool for solving all problems, but it can be used to speed up many processes and test new ideas or attract volunteers to participate in projects that would require an amount of resources unavailable to an organization.
However, there are also criticisms of this idea. According to Wikipedia
Some reports have focused on the negative effects of crowdsourcing on business owners, particularly in regard to how a crowdsourced project can sometimes end up costing a business more than a traditionally outsourced project.
Some of the pitfalls of crowdsourcing include:
- Added costs to bring a project to an acceptable conclusion.
- Increased likelihood that a crowdsourced project will fail due to lack of monetary motivation, too few participants, lower quality of work, lack of personal interest in the project, global language barriers, or difficulty managing a large-scale, crowdsourced project.
- Below-market wages, or no wages at all.
- Difficulties maintaining a working relationship with crowdsourced workers throughout the duration of a project.
In my experience I have noticed that some of these criticism are true. For example, to overstress the use of volunteers in an organization to save money may be a mistake since volunteers are not really free. They need to be trained and organized, and most of the time they are looking for something in return. Therefore, unless the organization is able to find alternative forms of “compensation” for volunteers, the turnover may become extremely expensive. In short, lack of monetary motivation, too few participants, lower quality of work, lack of personal interest in the projects may end up costing the organization more than simply paying people to do it.
Thinking about the use of crowdsourcing in the Mormon Church I cannot avoid thinking that it has been used many times very well (see the recent example of the Family History Record Extraction program).
However, in some cases I believe that the most important result and benefit is not that of saving money to the organization, but that of allowing members to learn and to participate more fully in fostering the mission of the Church. This added benefit alone may be enough to promote more “crowdsourcing programs” in the Church.
August 14, 2008 | Leave a Comment
It is sad to notice that in many homes (even Mormon homes) parents are not monitoring their TV and Internet appropriately. Some people simply do not monitor their children, others even provide their children with a negative example of parents who spend most of their free time in front of the TV, watching almost verything that is presented. How can they teach their children? Their actions speak louder.
According to LDSMediaTalk
pornography on the Internet is a blight…I believe, however, that in many homes the Internet isn’t the worst portal for inappropriate content. For some, the TV is even worse–and many don’t know it.
Movie channels like HBO have content you’d be horrified to see your kids watching. Nudity, inappropriate language, violence. It’s all there in abundance. Even stations that come with the basic packages (like MTV) have content I’m not comfortable with my kids watching. Pay-per-view channels are awful. If you’re not careful, your kids can order movies which not only ring up your monthly bill but, much worse, bring content into your home that you don’t want there. Commercials can be the worst. I’m embarrassed at some of the commercials I see in prime time.
What can we do?
One solution, perhaps too radical for some, but probably the best solution, is to throw away our television and use our time at home interacting in more positive ways.
If this is too much, and it may not be enough since your children may be watching TV at someone else’s home, here there are a few other suggestions,
Be careful ordering movie channels like HBO and Showtime. We don’t order them at all. Second, block channels you don’t want the kids to see. You can use the parental controls on most cable and satellite services to completely remove certain channels from the list of channels that your family can even see in the channel guide. We do this with MTV and others which have content that we don’t like and we also do it with the channels that allow pay-per-view movies. If you want to allow pay-per-view movies then make sure they’re password-protected. Most importantly, P-A-Y A-T-T-E-N-T-I-O-N. My kids have friends whose parents don’t have any idea when the kids watch TV. I don’t allow my kids to go their houses. And we always try to pay attention when the kids are watching TV. It may sound severe, but if the kids (even the teenagers) want to watch TV, they have to ask permission first. And if they don’t, they lose TV priveleges. This helps us gauge how much TV they’re watching.
A new search site aims to rival Google, it is called Cuil.com. This new search engine has been launched by former workers at the web giant Google.
It is called Cuil, from the Gaelic for knowledge and hazel, its founders claim it does a better and more comprehensive job of indexing information online. According to the founders, the technology used by Cuil.com can understand the context surrounding each page and the concepts driving search requests.
However, many analysts believe the new search engine will have a hard time to defeat Google. The creators claim that Cuil uses more than 120 billion webpages to build up its index of the information it finds on the web.
Cuil website also claims that
Rather than rely on superficial popularity metrics, Cuil searches for and ranks pages based on their content and relevance. When we find a page with your keywords, we stay on that page and analyze the rest of its content, its concepts, their inter-relationships and the page’s coherency.
I am really curious to see if their search engine will prove to be better than Google’s, but even if successful, it will take time to replace, if ever, Google.
July 19, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Several months ago I created my first video with the story of when I met the Mormon missionaries and joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Many people have watched it and I have received some good feedback. I wish my English was better, but I know that my accent did not prevent good people from appreciating it (or detractor from criticizing it anyway…).
Last week I decided to record a similar video that contains the story of a few experiences I had before meeting the Mormon missionaries. Those experiences prepared me over the years to understand and accept the message of the Restoration.
At this point I can’t avoid making fun of myself and comparing it to Star Wars movies. The second trilogy tells the story of what happened before the first trilogy….
Similarly this second video tells what happened before the first video. But I am not Darth Vater…
I have the impression that in this second video my English is better, but natives will better judge if this is true.
Giuseppe Martinengo: before becoming a Mormon
July 18, 2008 | Leave a Comment
When I was a very young kid TV programs were already stealing a lot of people’s time. However, at that time, in Italy at least, we only had a few channels to choose from and not all of them were really interesting.
By the time I was a teenager, however, multiple channels started to appear and TV “consumption” started growing a lot among people. I was blessed by a mother who taught me how to avoid wasting time with TV. Because of that, I had time to read and think (yes, think, something that is hard to do when we watch stupid TV programs where in the background there are people laughing to make sure you think it is a actually funny).
I think that I became a member of the LDS or Mormon Church because I was not watching TV, but I was reading a lot and thinking, and experimenting. Because of that I was not so influenced by the common culture and fads, and I grew up with a freer spirit.
I always tell my children to avoid wasting their time with TV or video games or useless videos on youtube.
However, the Internet can be used positively, and differently from the TV, can allow participation and sharing, and not only passive “absorption” or “consumption”.
This is the point made by a recent blog on LDS Media Talk. They ask: do we have time to blog (and share our beliefs online)? Yes we have.
The proof? Here you go (quoting from LDS Media Talk):
Clay Shirky estimates that 100 million hours have collectively gone into Wikipedia. He compares that to 200 billion hours of watching TV each year in the U.S. alone–the equivalent of 2,000 Wikipedia projects a year. We spend 100 million hours in the USA every weekend watching just the advertisements–that would permit the creation of an entire Wikipedia in just one weekend if we just skipped the ads!
His point is that people have the time, but they waste it watching TV. How you use your time is a choice: good, better, or best.
So, we have the time, but we, member of the Church, waste a lot of time in passive entertainment or watching the wrong kind of things on the Internet.
So, since you feel attracted by the Internet, why you do not use it for a good purpose? I have a personal opinion that since it is almost impossible in our modern society to avoid using the Internet, if we use it for a good cause we can not only do good, but also better protect us from the temptation of using it for the wrong purpose.
In any case, these are the videos from Clay Shirky. I know that it is a little passive to watch them, but it is for a good cause….
July 11, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Elder Ballard suggested that members of the Church of Jesus Christ (Mormon Church) should write a blog and express their feelings about being a member of the Church to invite others to share of the blessing of the Gospel.
But what is a Blog?
Blog is short for “web log.†A blog is a Web site, maintained by an individual or organization, with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other media such as graphics and video. You can start a blog about anything that interests you. For example, blog.giuseppemartinengo.com is my blog in English, and giuseppemartinengo.org is my blog in Italian, while giuseppemartinengo.net is my blog in Portuguese.
There are many other great blogs on the internet about the Mormon Church (or LDS Church), such as LDSblogs.com, mormanity.org, blog.moregoodfoundation.org and so on. You can create a blog that is open to anyone to read, or you can restrict who can read your blog.
Why should you start a blog?
You should start a blog to share your ideas, beliefs, and insights. You don’t have to be an expert on a topic to blog. Blogging is also a great way to share your own personal testimony and to teach people about the Church by telling them what it’s like on the inside. It’s also a lot of fun. When speaking to students at BYU-Hawaii, Elder Ballard said, “Most of you already know that if you have access to the Internet you can start a blog in minutes and begin sharing what you know to be true.â€
Is blogging difficult?
It can be as easy or hard as you want to make it. Setting up a blog is very easy. Writing regular blog posts is the tough part. It you really want a high-quality blog, you need to be committed to post often to keep people reading. If you decide to begin a blog about the gospel, schedule regular times each week.
Where do I begin?
You can sign up for a free blog at LDS.net or on blogging sites like WordPress.com and Blogger.com. If you’re interested in starting a blog using your own domain name (your own Web address), you can get one at those sites, or contact the More Good Foundation for help.
Below is a short video in plain English about blogs. I really like this simple video and I used it for the first time last January when I was teaching a marriage preparation class at BYU, a few weeks after Elder Ballard gave his now “famous” talk at BYU-Hawaii.
July 1, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Tonight I found a very interesting page on the Internet. In fact, it was a page about me and this blog that was created by someone who is of Italian descent.
It is titled “Testimony of an Italian Mormon Convert”
He made this comment:
I really enjoy these immigrant stories where someone comes from somewhere else and makes something of himself/herself and what they will pass on to their offspring and the magic of the whole process. Reminds of my great-grandparents who left Italy with their kids on a ship and started a new life in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. I am grateful for them because had they not done what they did, well, I simply wouldn’t be here or possibly even exist. The implication of that for me and my family would be astronomical.
I hope my kids realize it. In fact, this is a good opportunity to share a few pictures of my first son, Luca, who is serving a Mormon Mission in the Boston Massachusetts Mission. He has been in the Mission field for a little more than 6 months and from his letters we realize how much he has already improved his life.
We can feel from his letters that he is happy as never before. Since he went to the Missionary Training Center we noticed a change for better.
To join the Mormon Church in Italy, many years ago, was an important step not only in my life, but in the lives of my future kids (not yet born at that time). For this reason I always told my sons that it is their responsibility to go and find many other people like me, and baptize them, so that they will someway repay for the blessings they received in their lives, thanks to what two missionaries did many years ago in Italy.
This is him, when he received the mission call…
He is discovering where he will go…
Opening the booklet…
The Mission call….
The Mission call was saying that he would leave on February 6… but this is not what happened… infact, he left before that? Why, it is all his daddy’s fault!
June 23, 2008 | Leave a Comment
I have found some interesting statistics about what nonmembers of the Mormon Church think of the Church at LDS Media Talk:
According to a recent Pew study of 1,461 American nonmembers of the Mormon Church:
I am sure that these statistics are a lot worse in most of the other countries around the world.
Someone commented to that blog post by saying,
it seems to me that we may never change some people’s minds, because frankly, they don’t like us, and will believe any negative ideas they hear.
It is a good point, many people will never change their minds. But is this what we are really trying to do?
I really think that the Internet will be key in letting millions of people know about the LDS or Mormon Church. Missionaries waste too much time trying to find people. However, we are not trying to change some people’s minds, we are trying to find those who will listen to the voice of the Lord, those who
are only kept from the truth because they know not where to find it (D&C 123:12). They will change their own minds.
When I met the missionaries (see my conversion story) they did not have to change my mind. I changed it. I only needed to know that there was the true Church of Jesus Christ on the earth. A willing heart and the Spirit did the rest.
keep looking »
