You know how sometimes when someone is giving a talk, they start with the chatty small talk, or a joke, or an explanation of when or how they were asked to speak – and then, before you know it, they are ten minutes into their talk before they have actually started saying anything? That is what will be hapening for the first few paragraphs. If you want to skip down to find some “meat” feel free, scroll down to “Enough housekeeping”.
I awoke to this email:
No pressure, but I think you owe it to your readers to have something posted very soon about conference. I know you have to strike a balance on time and you don’t want to just churn out nonsense… Yes, I’m standing here with my arms folded across my chest, tapping my toe and scowling. 🙂
Hmmm. Apparently the white shirt pictures aren’t going to buy me more time. Why the delay? As you know, I am not very opinionated, nor do I have much to say. Oh wait. That’s our dog. I have plenty to say, but I feel a bit trepidatious expressing my thoughts about Conference – in much the same way I feel as when the Spirit is coaxing me to stand up and bear my testimony. I’ll get there – sometimes it takes a while.
Also: If you are looking for a post to tie Conference to the “4th Quarter Comeback“, this is not that post. It will be tomorrow. Promise. (Or Thursday…)
Enough housekeeping…
Over the weekend, my EC and 4/5 FOMLs were able to attend the Saturday sessions of Conference at the Conference Center. Sunday, we hunkered down and watched on TV. Both were great in their own way. Between sessions on Sunday, we took a drive up Guardsman Pass – a road in the mountains behind SLC. It is autumn foliage time, and it was beautiful. As we looked out across the beautiful display of nature at its finest, I thought to myself “Reason #496 that I know that God loves me”. (Reason #497, BYU-USU game)
I feel my Savior’s love, in everything around me…
And that is how I came away from this weekend: Secure in my ever-greater understanding that God loves me. As I reflect black on what I saw, heard, and felt, my eyes well up and I have to stop typing. I don’t even think I noticed at the time, as I was busy listening and taking excellent notes.
And that is how I came away from this weekend: Secure in my ever-greater understanding that God loves me. As I reflect black on what I saw, heard, and felt, my eyes well up and I have to stop typing. I don’t even think I noticed at the time, as I was busy listening and taking excellent notes.
I feel loved.
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President Boyd K. Packer? If Samuel the Lamanite were alive today, he would want to be like President Packer. For 50 years he has told the world, and the saints, what we needed to hear – come what may. The devil surely hates this man, and that hatred is reflected in society. Knowing this causes my heart to be filled with love for this aging servant of the Lord, who chose to give my children a precious gift of truth: That they are being raised in enemy territory, yet the Holy Ghost will protect them. Most of us were surprised to hear him tell the youth that the end is not soon in coming – that there will be time for marriage, kids and grandchildren. The headline writers across the globe took note as well.
That was Sunday morning. What followed were many wonderful talks about what to do with that remaining time.
Read the scriptures. Particular emphasis on the Book of Mormon. (Scott, Eyring, Callister, Bennett +)
Endure to the end. (Eyring, Hales) Is this a bigger problem than I was aware of? Perhaps those teachings, along with President Packer’s remarks tell us not to hunker down and try to “ride it out” until the 2nd Coming. Baby Boomers – are you listening? The Lord needs more senior missionaries. (Holland)
Learn the Doctrine. (Scott, Curtis, Callister, Hales, Eyring, Nelson, Oaks)
Share the Gospel. (Yamashito, Ballard, Waddell, Perry)
Get busy serving. We don’t have to wait for the Church to tell us what to do. (McMullin, Alonso, Uchtdorf, Eyring, Bednar)
Teach with the Spirit. (Richardson) Where did Matthew Richardson come from. What an excellent talk!
Manage our precious time wisely. (Ardern) Yep. This is the one that was given just for me. I am so glad Elder Ardern didn’t call me out by name – it would have been embarrassing.
Use the internet as a force for good. (Perry, Bednar) You know what this means? It means I keep blogging. Woo-hoo!
Realize that we are at war, and the Adversary is real. (Holland, Packer) Yeah, I flinched a second since I wrote this post a couple weeks back. “We Are at War“.
Finally, I want you to know how much I enjoyed President Monson. He is getting along in years, and arrived a bit late to the first session on Saturday. So, when he stood up at he close of the Priesthood Session with 30 minutes left, I thought to myself – looks like we’re getting out early. – like the Relief Society sisters do.
We didn’t leave early. Instead, President Monson gave a MASTERFUL talk about courageously following the Savior. If you haven’t watched it, please do. He then followed up with an equally wonderful talk on Sunday morning. My love and appreciation for him grew this weekend.
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There will be plenty of time to dig in deeper, and I will, but please know that I feel very loved by my Heavenly Father. This Conference reaffirmed in my heart that the Savior is in charge. He is running this Church, and He wants us to be successful in this life. He provides us with profound and timely teachings to help us succeed.
He employs wonderful men and women to carry that message to us – if we will listen.
He sends His Spirit to confirm their teachings – if we will listen.
He loves us – whether we listen or not.
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Please share your thoughts with me. Also, thanks to all those who gave feedback regarding how note-taking has impacted your Conference experience. It makes me feel all warm inside.
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I’m going to respectfully disagree with the disagreement over my feelings about laughter during President Monson’s Sunday morning address.
I get that the purpose of life is joy…after all, the Atonement is the foundation for the Plan of Happiness . I appreciate that, I love that. I joined the Church because of the truths it teaches: mankind’s eternal destiny is one of joy. I appreciate that President Monson, and all who associate with him who speak at General Conference, do so in an uplifting way.
My critique is not with them….it is with us (or, at least, those of us who take things a little too lightly sometimes).
President Monson, at times in this particular address (and the print versions aren’t posted yet for me to quote directly from) is talking about some pretty dire, pretty serious stuff. The Lord’s standards are being mocked and derided, both in and out of the Church, on every hand. We live in a culture that is destined to spiritual and literal failure — and when that is pointed out, the crowd laughs.
I was watching, not listening, and I didn’t see anything particularly worthy of a guffaw at that particular moment in his voice or manner. I saw a look that could probably be described as exasperation on his face, but is the appropriate response to that laughter?
I admit, President Monson looks like he’s hamming it up sometimes, and in those instances laughter is probably appropriate and welcome. My point is that in this particular case, I didn’t see any play for laughter…I saw seriousness and soberness.
I think there are two possibilities here, and I tend to think that the underlying cause of what I see as a truly inappropriate reaction to a prophetic warning is the more benign of the two; that is, people were condescendingly laughing when they saw a wonderful, grandfatherly, righteous, virtuous man talk about wickedness…much the same way some may laugh off grandpa’s warning that “the Holy Ghost goes to bed at midnight”, or something like that. I don’t think the crowd was mocking the Prophet great-and-spacious-building-style (those outside the Conference Center, and in certain corners of the so-called Bloggernacle, most certainly were).
I just think that there is a level of spiritual immaturity out there, even among faithful and worthy members of the Church, that is going to have to change if we are to successfully build Zion and prepare for things to come.
So we all get to keep blogging! Yay!
Sandy
Ah, yes, the conference laughter curse. Drives. Me. Nuts.
If that’s what you consider “skimming the surface” we’re in for a real treat once you start digging deeper. Thank you so much for sharing your insights with the world! I, too, am glad you can keep blogging 🙂
President Monson is really good at making clever comments. I laughed when he said, “because you’re worth it.” Obviously referring the the famous make-up slogan. Yes it is very serious stuff but that doesn’t mean life should be heavy all the time. Adam fell that men might be, and men are, that they might have joy. I personally though Monson was making jokes. Not to take away from the seriousness of what we face but to help lighten our hearts. That’s what I love about a good majority of conference talks. They are there to build us up, give us hope. Not rain down hell fire and brimstone into our souls.
I guess a few other jokes were snuck in, too, but they didn’t equal the same caliber as the Prophet’s. Maybe it was the teddy bear look.
I love President Monson’s facial expressions! As I was watching Sunday morning, I kept having to look up from my stitching to see what people were giggling about. (Yes, stitching. If my hands aren’t busy, my body goes into idleness spasms.) I noticed that his were the only jokes/faces laughed at, which reminded me of Pres. Hinckley and the enormous fits of giggles he induced. Both of these men have managed to teach us incredible gospel principles while we are SMILING! I am pretty sure there is something to this! Or maybe its just the regular to HDTV thing…
I agree with Steph. It seems as he has gotten older, the facial expressions have become more exaggerated. Maybe it’s from living a life in public that went from radio to TV to HDTV. When one is speaking to 20K people in a giant room, you tend to forget that people are also looking at your face on 72″ plasma screens in HD.
My son bemoans the curse of Conference laughter. He is bothered that things that are not even remotely funny in normal life become suddenly hilarious if said in Conference. The bar for humor is pretty low – but that isn’t why we are there.
In response to Thomas, the laughter was simply a response to President Monson’s facial expressions. He was rolling his eyes and shaking his head, and was frankly being a little snarky about how ridiculous some of the world’s views are. Maybe you listened rather than watched, but President Monson was being a little bit of an entertainer during that segment, and the congregation was duly amused.
I was more than a little dismayed at the Conference Center congregation’s laughter during President Monson’s Sunday Morning address when he was talking about the moral failings which are becoming a much more “normal” feature of our surroundings. I thought the remarks were serious and sobering, not funny.
What to make of this? Were some people simply amused at the Prophet talking about these subjects, or was this some kind of nervous laughter prompted by introspection? Or was this a case of some people thinking “here is our cute grandfatherly prophet talking about naughty things..ha ha”?
I don’t know what to make of it, but I found it to be a wholly inappropriate response to a serious warning and call for repentance.
Soo many things stood out to me that I will definitely have to blog about it (aka, use the internet as a missionary tool)…one of my favorite talks was about how a memorized scripture can be a power and even a friend to us…LOVED that one! Made me want to work harder on my goal of memorizing ‘The Living Christ’. I had done ‘The Family Proclamation’ years ago and now I will buckle down in this 4th quarter and finish this one! Thanks!
@Twinmomww, this is our first year on the east coast, and you’re right. We only changed times one hour, but I felt like I was slogging through the stickiest mudfest ever with sleepy (read: grumpy) kids in the early afternoon and hungry (read: grumpy) kids in the late afternoon.
Still, it was a fantabulous conference (I only say this because my husband did most of the cat-herding).
@MMM, I, too, stole some of your note-taking ideas, and look forward to lots of x’s and o’s in my journal. Thanks for the tips. I also had new multi-colored felt-tip pens to play with (when they weren’t abducted by the hooligans), and was able to highlight where my specific answers to prayers came in. Heavenly Father is so good.
I came away with a bunch of “themes,” but the one I noticed most was: Pray with Heavenly Father; He wants to help; He loves YOU. Pretty awesome.
Well, I feel so very sad that I missed most of the talks due to shushing/disciplining children and making lunch and dinner. The sessions fall at such inconvenient times of the day here on the east coast. I did get to hear Pres.Packer and Pres. Monson a couple of times. I guess I will have to make up with next month’s Ensign.
This was my favorite conference in years. I felt more spiritually prepared which allowed me to feel love instead of despair. Chastisement, yes, but not despair….
President Monson was just delightful. I love him more with every conference. And, well, Elder Anderson’s talk pierced me to the soul. I loved it.
Matthew Richardson is a great Ed Week speaker and has been in the SS General Presidency for several years. He also teaches a Doctrine and Covenants class at BYU. He is fabulous.
The talk that most spoke to me was Pres. Eyring’s talk in Priesthood. Yes, I am a sister, but I feel that the PH session was just for me. Wow.
I too loved conference, and the note taking tips helped immensely.
After conference we get together with my husband’s family for dinner. His sweet father asked us all to pick one thing to improve for the next 6 months.
I’m sharing this idea because I suffer from the “newest shiny object” syndrome where I can’t keep my eye on the ball, or the objective, for a long period of time – especially if I have more than about 3 goals at a time. Only working on one thing at a time makes this easier for me.
Mindy:: Thanks! After you are about halfway done checking them off, it will look like a bunch of hugs and kisses.
Yes! I feel loved too. I also noticed lots of talk about where our “desires” are… if we want x, first we have to desire it. Maybe it was my own personal message, but I felt like it was all over the place.
Great summary… and I kind of used your note taking system this time around. I’ve got a lot of circles to x out…
Yeah, I had just posted on Facebook (inappropriate post, too) just before Ardern spoke. Needless to say, I was shamed.
I loved Sis. Dalton’s talk for obvious reasons, loved President Eyring’s and anytime our prophet spoke!
I also remember when 20 or so years ago when Elder Packer said those very words to my generation. Did I just say 20 years ago???
Jennie: Funny how we pay better attention if the speaker has an accent. While I didn’t find Elder Ardern as yummy as you apparently did, I enjoyed his talk immensely.
Not only did Ardern give a talk that made me feel ridiculous for posting to Twitter as conference was going on (but it was a tweet *about conference*), but I just wanted to eat him up with that adorable Kiwi accent. It’s like I was watching conference plus Flight of the Conchords at the same time. (Well, not exactly.)
Thank you. I enjoy reading your posts. I don’t get to all of them, but I love how you put things. I am older than you, (my spirit my not be) I can tell because of the way you speak of your children. However, I learn much from those younger from me. You are full of wisdom. Thank you for sharing.