New module causes white screen
Jamroom Developers
Is 'elapsed_time' a smarty function within your module? If not, then that could be the issue.
If its just a regular function that returns a value, call it like this - {$x = elapsed_time(Sitem['_created'])} then you can use $x in your template - {$x}
Note that 'elapsed_time' on its own as a module function name is not a good idea. It ought to be xxMyModule_elapsed_time so as to make it unique. If there are two elapsed_time functions you'll get a white screen, so maybe that is the issue?

