Final Project - Digital Latter-day Saints

Have you ever googled yourself? If someone were to google your name and they had to base a judgment of who you are based only on what they find, would it be accurate? If you would have googled Rhett Ferrin two years ago, you would have seen a news paper article that mentioned me for wrestling in high school and a facebook profile. If you google me today, you will find a LinkedIn account with my previous work history and interests.


You will find I was involved with the BYU Leadership Organization, which develops leaders from all disciplines on campus. If you keep looking you will find, my wife Anna and I registered at Macy's, I have this blog, a twitter account, and pictures from my mission on picassa.

One thing that might be hard to find, is what my religious beliefs are. Some people are quite private about their religion. Others think it is a topic that is 'off limits' and very rude or at least inappropriate to talk about.

I on the other hand have no problems discussing my religion openly. For the most part I find people in general fascinating and religion is just another aspect of what makes people unique.

For our final project, Andrew, Kurt, James and I are going to host a fireside about missionary work on the internet. There is a lot of bad press about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the world, especially on the internet. We hope to help our friends and fellow members of the church let people know that they are Latter-day Saints (LDS).

I was surprised to learn in class recently that there is a Referral Center Mission in Provo, Utah. Missionaries are called to answer people's questions and teach about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Two examples are Elder Seth Spencer and Elder Blair Ahlstrom.

For our fireside, we are planning to meet skype with Elder Spencer and Elder Ahlstrom. We want the two elders to share some of their experiences teaching people over the internet and show some of the teaching tools they use.

In addition we want to help the members of the church be more aware of the new websites the church is sponsoring, new.lds.org, mormon.org, new.familysearch.org etc. We are planning for the 21st or 28th of this month so stay tuned.