Welcome to the New Address

Welcome to the new Rise Up! O Men of God. I've updated the image of the Salt Lake temple and changed the address. This new image is a lot crisper and I'm a lot happier with it. Nobody complained about the old image, but it was pretty blurry and it bothered me a lot. I've looked for a new image almost since I uploaded the first one. With some fancy editing I can probably make the text in the image look better. If someone has advice for how to do that it would be a great help.

When I started this blog during the October 2011 General Conference weekend I tried to think up some awesome web site names and addresses that would convey uplifting messages. I thought that "shake off the chains" (2 Ne 1:23) was really cool as well as "Rise Up! O Men of God" (LDS Hymn 324). Both are inspiring messages so I used the first for my address and the second as the title.

After further reflection I have decided that it would be better in the long run if the address is the same as the title. I made sure this address was available on blogspot and then read how to make the move. Angie told me I could export my posts and import them here so that saved a lot of time! I thought I'd have to manually recreate each one and I didn't want to do that for a large number of posts.

The visits that got tracked on shake-off-the-chains.blogspot.com aren't going to get converted here so the counter has started over at zero. I was really, really happy with the success and the positive comments I got from family and friends in the first three months of blogging! I'd say there were several times as many hits per post as I imagined there would be. Probably close to ten times as many. Really, thank you all for visiting and leaving comments. Some of you have emailed me personally and I appreciate that too.

I have some goals to increase the number of posts I write and hope to attract a lot more attention in the coming months. With your help Sharing, Liking and commenting, these messages can reach more and more people. If you like a conference talk that I write about or a personal story that I share, feel free to pass it along to others. In this information age, the gospel of Jesus Christ can truly reach the four corners of the earth.