The typical Sunday finds us at church with our local "ward" or congregation of about 200. Twice a year, we have what is called "Stake Conference" where 7 or 8 wards in our area all get together for a single 2-hour meeting instead of the regular 3-hour block of meetings. On rare occasions--like this past weekend--the occasion is even larger. Not to be confused with "General Conference," which is broadcast to all the Church's units around the world, we had Regional Conference on Sunday, which involved the Salt Lake North Area, a total of 73 stakes (we're guessing about 250,000 people).
As those 2-hour meetings tend to be a real challenge on the little kids, we agreed to keep Amanda home with the kids and send Justin to the broadcast with pen and paper in hand to take notes... and take notes he did! It was such an awesome meeting, we thought it would be worth sharing some highlights.
First of all, the conference was presided over by the President of the Church, Thomas S. Monson. It is always an amazing experience to hear this inspired man talk and give council. We truly believe he is God's mouthpiece here on the Earth today, and that he indeed receives revelation, not only for the church members, but for the world over!
Elder Richard Hinckley, the son of our previous prophet and President of the Church, Gordon B. Hinckley, was the first speaker. He spoke on gratitude for the love that our Heavenly Father shows for us as his children. "Families are the foundational unit of God's society, both here on Earth and in the eternities," he said. He went on to quote a wonderful verse from the New Testament, Matthew 16:19. "And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." His point was to caution us about the way we live our lives, as we are truly laying out our eternal life now. He spoke a lot about the testimony of Peter and the keys of priesthood and wished he could go on and on about the fascinating role played by each in the gospel. He told us to never take our temple covenants lightly and bore testimony of the power of the sealing ordinances performed in the temple. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sister Cheryl Lant (General Primary President) was the next speaker, and she delivered a great talk about what we must do to keep our families and homes safe in today's world. She quoted a lot of the 38th section of the Doctrine & Covenants, particularly highlighting what it says about an "enemy in secret chambers" and how "if [we] are prepared, [we] shall not fear." Sometimes Satan's influences is obvious, sometimes not, as she put it. A very interesting point she punctuated was that Satan cannot come in [to our homes/lives] unless we invite him in. His tools, of course, are the media, time-wasting activities, selfishness, and so forth. She turned her thoughts to protecting our families and quoted President Spencer W. Kimball - it was such an awesome quote, I searched for the exact words. I'm including more here than Sister Lant quoted, but it's worth the space:We need continually to fortify our homes and families and
defend them against the onslaught of evils such as divorce, broken
families, brutality, and abuse, especially of wives and children.
We need to constantly guard against immorality,
pornography, and sexual permissiveness that would destroy the
purity of the family members, young and old. . . .
. . . We find these evil forces almost everywhere we go.
Exposure is almost constant. We track them into the home from
the school, from the playground, from the theater, the office,
and the marketplace. There are but few places we go in our
everyday world where we can escape them.
What then must be our service? What must we do? We must be
constantly alert to their evil presence in our homes and destroy
them as we would the germs and filth of disease. We must hunt
them from the closets of our minds, freeing ourselves of such
worldliness, quenching the embers of wickedness before they
become destructive flames.
- Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Spencer W. Kimball, p. 208
Sister Lant further encouraged that we allow no excuses nor rationalizations to allow evil to exist in our homes. We need to regularly evaluate the level of such influences in our homes. Our focus should become:
- Secure the basics of faith, repentance, baptism, prayer, service, keeping the Sabbath holy, having Family Home Evening and regular scripture study. These bring the Spirit and strengthen us. She also encouraged obtaining and referencing the new nursery manual: Behold, your little ones. We should not be afraid to use the scriptures to answer children's questions about the gospel. They understand more than we give them credit for.
- Evaluate where we spend our time and energy. Don't let selfish things detract from family time. It is ever important to find balance in our lives.
- Make and keep covenants with the Lord. Our lives should be defined by these covenants. She quoted Jacob 3:2 from the Book of Mormon - "O all ye that are pure in heart, lift up your heads and receive the pleasing word of God, and feast upon his love; for ye may, if your minds are firm, forever."
- It is important to fulfill our roles within the home, namely of Father and Mother working together. She admonished children to receive parents' teachings with an open heart. She commented on the example of the faithful Lamanites in 3 Nephi 6:14, who "were firm, and steadfast, and immovable, willing with all diligence to keep the commandments of the Lord."
She closed by repeating the counsel that we should take comfort and hope in our Temple Covenants.
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Elder M. Russell Ballard, Quorum of the Twelve Apostles: Elder Ballard was the next speaker, and he opened by quoting President Monson's words from the Priesthood Leadership Meeting from Saturday, it was a beautiful quote and something along the lines of always acting when you have a prompting from the Spirit. His message repeated a few things. First, the Holy Ghost remains our companion only as we live righteously; we need to truly "receive" the Holy Ghost, as we are instructed after baptism. His mission is to teach and testify of truth! No man receives such a witness of spiritual things except by the Holy Ghost, and it is He who helps any man or woman to gain a testimony of Christ and the gospel. Again, He will be our companion only as we anchor ourselves to the light of the gospel and to Jesus Christ. We are entitled to his presence but only if we are living worthy of it. He used that platform to advise us to absolutely shun the evils that are constantly surrounding us. He proclaimed that each of us will experience our share of failures in life, but that our successes "will certailny outweigh" our occasional failures if we seek Holy Ghost. Elder Ballard shared a touching personal story of missing opportunity to heed a spiritual prompting and learning a painful lesson from it as a young bishop. To recap the story, he was leaving the church late one night around 10 pm when he had a prompting to stop by the home of an elderly sister in the ward. He dismissed it due to the lateness of the hour, figuring it would be improper to stop by so late. He promised himself he would stop by early the next morning before heading to work. When he arrived, the lady's daughter came to the door and received him with tears in her eyes, saying: "Thank you, bishop, for coming so soon. Mother passed away just 2 hours ago." He stifled the reluctant emotion in his voice as he spoke of the lesson learned, that we should never ignore a prompting of the Spirit. In this case, he lost the opportunity to bless a sister who was at the end of her mortal life preparing to cross over the veil into the spirit world.
He concluded with a few words about repentence and becoming like our Savior one step at a time. He quoted 3 Ne 27:19-20: "19) And no unclean thing can enter into his kingdom; therefore nothing entereth into his rest save it be those who have washed their garments in my blood, because of their faith, and the repentance of all their sins, and their faithfulness unto the end. 20) Now this is the commandment: Repent, all ye ends of the earth, and come unto me and be baptized in my name, that ye may be sanctified by the reception of the Holy Ghost, that ye may stand spotless before me at the last day." He specifically highlighted that Jesus grew from "grace to grace" until finally He becoming like our Heavenly Father. He set the example for us, and we should proceed one step at a time.
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President Thomas S. Monson took the podium after the midway rest hymn and as the final speaker. Personally, I was thinking whoa... he's got a lot of time to talk; I wonder what's on the agenda? Well, in true President Monson fashion, he had a simple and direct agenda. He spoke of the importance of "lov[ing] thy neighbor as thyself," declaring that it is our responsibility to follow the Savior's example. He quoted a verse from 4th Nephi 1:15 about how love is designed to take the place of contention in the hearts of man. The remainder of his talk was based around the passage in The Doctrine and Covenants 88:119, which reads: "Organize yourselves; prepare every needful thing; and establish a house, even a house of prayer, a house of fasting, a house of faith, a house of learning, a house of glory, a house of order, a house of God;" The context of the verse came from a revelation through Joseph Smith at the end of the year 1832 to the saints that they should build a temple in Kirtland, Ohio. He put a twist on it and said "there is no better theme to consider as we build ourselves, our own personal temples." President Monson went through each aspect of the verse, and shared a unique story from his life experience about each one. A few of them I remember and will share specifics:
- A house of prayer. He encouraged us to "pray always," both in private and as a family, and especially with our children.
- A house of fasting. Shared some verses from Alma 17 - namely, verses 1 through 3. In those verses, Alma meets up with the sons of Mosiah as he was traveling from Gideon to Zarahemla. Not only was it a joyful meeting just to run into them, but he was delighted that they were still faithful, and they attributed that to, among other things, much fasting.
- A house of faith. He shared a cool story. While he was presiding as an Apostle at a stake conference in Ohio, the stake president asked him if he'd be willing to meet with the mother and father of a young missionary who had recently decided that he was going to come home early from his mission. He agreed, and right off the bat, the father exclaimed, "Elder Monson, I just don't understand. We have been living our lives as faithfully as we possibly can, and we have felt the Lord's blessings, yet our son is making this decision. We fear the Lord is not hearing our prayers."
President Monson's simply reply was a question, "Where is he serving?"
The parents responded, "Dusseldorf, Germany."
President Monson described how he just smiled and said, "Good brother and sister, the Lord has heard your prayers and He does care about this situation. It just so happens that I will be travelling to your sons mission in 2 weeks to address the missionaries!" Long story short, President Monson took time to meet with this young elder, he remained on his mission, and had a great and successful experience. - A house of learning. President Monson's words were simply, that "there is safety in the scriptures" and we should not postpone reading them. He reiterated Sister Lant's comment that children are more able to understand than we realize. He encouraged personal and family scripture study and that we always seek out the very best books.
- A house of glory. I didn't get any specific notes. I believe he addressed "glory" and "order" together.
- A house of order. He quoted the great musical verses from Ecclesiastes that "to everything there is a season." I recall him talking about how we should keep that in mind with each phase of life we go through, that while each phase may have some common threads, there are new things to learn all along the way. God has a plan for each of us.
- A house of God. President Monson spoke of the importance to have clean hearts and willing hands so that we can do the work of God.
He closed with a really cool story that rather encompasses all of these bullet points. While serving as a mission president in Toronto, Canada, President Monson had a young missionary who got really sick quite suddenly. He had shared a 6-bed room with 5 other gentlemen. The morning that he was wheeled away for surgery, the nurse came in with 5 breakfast trays each with a delicious breakfast. As she went to deliver the first tray, the patient said, "No thank you, I won't be having breakfast this morning." She was a little surprised but went on to the next patient. He said the same thing. As she went down the line, the remaining men all refused the delicious-smelling breakfast.
A little miffed, she stopped at the doorway, put her hands on her hips, and said, "Now you all usually eat us out of house and home! What's going on here?"
The patient in bed number 3 spoke up and explained to the nurse. "Our young friend has been wheeled away this morning for his surgery. He is a good young man, a missionary for his church. Now, none of us belong to his church, but in the time we have shared this room, he has taught us a lot about his beliefs, about prayer, and fasting, and faith. We are fasting for him this morning."
The story gets even better. The surgery, which was expected to be very risky, went perfectly. When the doctor came out, President Monson greeted him. As was the practice, he came prepared to pay the doctor for his services, but the doctor refused payment. He said something to the effect of, "I cannot accept pay for something I feel I didn't do on my own accord; my hands were as if they were not my own. They moved in a way that was foreign to me! And I cannot take credit for the success of this procedure, therefore I cannot accept your money!" The doctor gave full credit to a Higher Power. It was such a cool story.
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In all, the conference was quite impressive and very inspiring. It makes us all the more excited for General Conference coming up next month! We share the same gratitude as a couple for the gospel of Jesus Christ in our lives and the unique perspective it gives us on life. In a world so fraught with disappointment and discouragement, the gospel brings a special light and reason to rejoice, knowing that no matter how grim the trials may be that come before us, this life is simply a test, and it is open-book, and with sincere effort, we can get through anything!
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