Patriarchal Blessings and The Gospel Library App

I love that I can now view my patriarchal blessing directly from the site. I looooove that!

I just have one small suggestion that I have been doing for years at home and in my own scriptures that has really changed the gospel for me.

I use my Patriarchal Blessing as my own Liahona. The way I do that is I reference everything that stands out to me back to my Patriarchal Blessing (PB). So I will link scriptures back to important parts of my blessing either that have to do with blessings, cautions, or admonitions in my PB.

Is there a way that you could allow my PB to be footnote-able? I would love to highlight specific scriptures on how to have more faith to my PB that tells me to "always strengthen your faith." Does that make sense?

I haven't found any way to do it through the Gospel Library app.

It could be as simple of a fix as allowing "notes" or "notebooks" or "journal entries" to become a usable document, or to almost make it a "pdf" that is a static document that I can highlight and link just like the scriptures and talks right now.

So right now, my work around is that I have typed out my PB and placed it into a notebook of mine in the GL app. And when I think a scripture or a thought applies to my PB I will make a note at the scripture level that it refers back to my PB. But I would love if I could link Mosiah 15 : 23 for instance directly, in the GL app, to Paragraph 7 Sentence 2 in my PB.

Does that make sense? Is that possible?

I am also looking for this feature in the gospel library app as it would be very helpful to fully utilize my blessing and save all my notes in a central area. I would love a place specifically for the pb that automatically uploads but as said in the last comment editable notes would also work.
Thank you

President Monson has taught us: “Your patriarchal blessing is not to be folded neatly and tucked away. It is not to be framed or published. Rather, it is to be read, pondered, internalized. It is to be loved. It is to be followed. Your patriarchal blessing is, to you, a personal Liahona to chart your course and guide your way.”
It is difficult to follow this prophetic instruction when we cannot read and study our patriarchal blessings in conjunction with our scriptures. I want to underline and highlight significant passages in my blessing. I want to cross reference passages from my blessing with appropriate scriptures, the words of latter-day prophets, and with insight gained through personal study and prayer. I want to gain a better understanding of its meaning and the actions I need to take to live worthy of my promised blessings. I want to be reminded of passages in my blessings as I read corresponding passages in the scriptures. Can you please make the necessary changes on LDS.org so that we can use the Notes and Journal tools you have already put in place to help us correlate our study of our patriarchal blessings with the scriptures? I know this request would benefit millions of members of the church and would seem to be in complete agreement with the emphasis to appropriately use electronic devices given during our last general conferences by church leaders. As a patriarch, I see tremendous opportunities for growth as members around the world have the opportunity to spend more time pondering the counsel and promises given in their personal blessings. Please let me know if this can be pursued.

dewittal wrote:Please let me know if this can be pursued.

That's up to the Priesthood Department to set that priority with the developers. There is a small group of developers. They work as directed from above on the org chart.

Please note that I think your request is a good one and would be a nice feature. My comments below are not meant to say otherwise, only to expand our view of what's already possible.

dewittal wrote:President Monson has taught us: “Your patriarchal blessing is not to be folded neatly and tucked away. It is not to be framed or published. Rather, it is to be read, pondered, internalized. It is to be loved. It is to be followed. Your patriarchal blessing is, to you, a personal Liahona to chart your course and guide your way.”
It is difficult to follow this prophetic instruction when we cannot read and study our patriarchal blessings in conjunction with our scriptures. I want to underline and highlight significant passages in my blessing. I want to cross reference passages from my blessing with appropriate scriptures, the words of latter-day prophets, and with insight gained through personal study and prayer. .... I want to be reminded of passages in my blessings as I read corresponding passages in the scriptures.

"Cannot" is a powerful word. You can do the things you describe, just not in the way you want. Your Patriarchal Blessing (PB) can be typed into a word processing document and printed to PDF. PDFs (even with just the reader, and there are readers for devices as well as computers) allow highlighting, comments, and comments can include hyperlinks (e.g. to the URL of an online scripture) as well as a reference or even the text of the scripture in question. Text from your PB can be copied and pasted into a note which is attached to a scripture in Gospel Library or the online scriptures. Your entire PB can also be pasted into a journal entry so that it's in the GL app and online Notes tool. On Apple devices, you can put links from the PDF into the Gospel Library app (right to a specific scripture).

While this is not ideal, it can be done, and someone who really wants to study in this manner can - and can gain much of the benefit you desire, just at a slightly higher effort.

dewittal wrote:Can you please make the necessary changes on LDS.org so that we can use the Notes and Journal tools you have already put in place to help us correlate our study of our patriarchal blessings with the scriptures? I know this request would benefit millions of members of the church and would seem to be in complete agreement with the emphasis to appropriately use electronic devices given during our last general conferences by church leaders. As a patriarch, I see tremendous opportunities for growth as members around the world have the opportunity to spend more time pondering the counsel and promises given in their personal blessings. Please let me know if this can be pursued.

If you have not already done so, please use a feedback link on LDS.org to send this feedback to the developers. This is a user-to-user forum (I'm just a fellow user), and there's no guarantee suggestions here will make it to where they're needed to be considered for implementation. If you submit the suggestion via the feedback tool, it will get there. If enough people do it*, it may influence the priority for adding this feature.

*I also strongly recommend prayer - for the feature, for the developers (who are no doubt overloaded, but filled with desire to do more), for the decision-makers, for those who desire to use technology to be guided in finding ways to make the most of what they have, and for the Lord's will to be done in this manner.

Liz

I recently received a church survey about the Gospel Library. Too bad I hadn't seen this post before then, as it would have been great to include as a suggestion. At least from receiving a survey I know the church is looking at and pondering the whole setup; I hope they get some useful and helpful feedback that will help guide their decisions. As lmcguire pointed out, use the Feedback link. It's a time when they're thinking about things, so such feedback may be timely and get to decision makers as they contemplate the future.

I have mine typed into a Note/Journal - It works perfectly for me.

Well except the complete lack of usefullness of text editing in that solution - as long as you don't require paragraphs, underlining, bold, center, etc...

johnshaw wrote:I have mine typed into a Note/Journal - It works perfectly for me.

Well except the complete lack of usefullness of text editing in that solution - as long as you don't require paragraphs, underlining, bold, center, etc...

Paragraphs work just fine in journal entries - I have numerous with paragraphs (sorry, but I believe even our complaints should be accurate).

You can get "sections" by using titles (which are bolded) and separate entries and then putting the relevant journal entries into a notebook - where they can also be sorted. The rest (text formatting) is indeed lacking.

Again, it's not ideal, but it's better than nothing while we pray and wait for new features.

Liz

Liz, I love the pray and wait aspect of the gospel, it works with so many things

johnshaw wrote:Liz, I love the pray and wait aspect of the gospel, it works with so many things

I wish we had "like" buttons for posts on the forums. I would "like" your post. When you wait on the Lord, you usually get better than expected (even when you don't know it).

I am convinced that the Lord knows full well how many of us use and love these tools, and the features we want for righteous purposes. And I'm convinced that prayer works for software as well as for people, and that in this case, praying for the people involved (strangers though they may be), and the people who could be involved, but aren't yet, will yield blessings for all of us.

In the meantime, let's show the Lord we're sincere, by gratefully doing the best we can with what we've got.