Penrose Stairs

The particular optical illusion featured in today's gag is called the "Penrose stairs" named after its creator Lionel Stairs. The Penrose stairs were later made famous by the graphic artist M. C. Escher (whose art style I have attempted to ape in today's comic).

Having knocked on hundreds, if not thousands, of doors as a missionary, I'm pretty sure I tracted a couple of these as a missionary.

Big Dog

This is a very large dog.

For the Strength of Youth Exercise Routine

I'm going to start referring to scripture study as reps to my teenagers.

Your October 2022 General Conference Activity Packet

I served my mission in the future basketball hotbed of Slovenia. There were signs even then that this tiny, little country might someday produce one of the world's best basketball players. Losing to chain-smoking Slovenes in pickup basketball games was not an uncommon experience.

General Conference is just around the corner. It's time to start thinking about how you are going to entertain your easily distracted. Might I suggest the Ward Cartoonist General Conference Activity Packet? This year the packet is available in English, Portuguese (thanks to the translation work of Dani Queiroz de Souza), and Spanish (thanks to the translation work of Gabi Herrera).

And while we're at it, check out the other resources available on this website.

The Ward Cartoonist Activity Page Newsletter is sent to inboxes every Friday morning. It includes a fun, new activity page every week for you to print off and share with your little ones. The newsletter is ideal for parents, grandparents, or primary teachers. Sign up for the free newsletter here.

I've got a number of books in print full of pages and pages of activities to entertain the young and young at heart for hours. You'll definitely want to check out the Old Testament Come, Follow Me Activity Book--with an activity page or two for each Come, Follow Me lesson covered in 2022. Also consider the Super Sunday Activity Book, the Scripture Power Activity Book, Now That I am Baptized: A Puzzle Book for LDS Kids, and the Puzzle Book for LDS Kids. If you'd rather laugh than solve puzzles, check out my compilation of missionary comic strips in Mission Daze.

If you've got an Apple device, check out LDS Scripture Heroes and the Book of Mormon Adventure apps.

Dangerous Mission

This is obviously not true. An 18-year-old Elder would look excited not scared when commenting on those facts.

Starving Missionaries

Yeah, this was definitely an issue in my mission, but only because we had so few members. The few we had would have gone broke if they'd try to feed us all we'd need.

Go Deep

Football season is upon us. Today's gag demonstrates why football coaches discourage their team's receivers from taking philosophy classes. (It also provides a ready excuse should your team fail to win a game.)

The Next Door

Can I make a confession? I totally made up the 1,200 door thing. But it totally sounds like something someone in the MTC would make up too.

Discarding the Ring

I am pretty excited for Amazon Prime's new Lord of the Rings television show. (It comes out tonight.) So far the reviews have been overall positive. The show's effects and visuals are supposed to be incredible (somehow the series' budget is purported to be upwards of $1 billion!*) and outside of knowing Sauron, Galadriel, and Elrond survive throughout the series, I have no idea what's going to happen. Sign me up!

*Based on the number of purchases my household has made on Amazon, we've invested a sizable portion into the budget.