This has been distressing information, to say the least, all the more so because the mob’s chaotic and violent actions were praised and encouraged by the outgoing president of our country. I believe his behavior and the mob’s behavior should be publicly condemned. I think it is wrong. I will speak no more of this, however.

Because as I sit in the sunlight, I am also basking in peace. I feel God has seen my broken heart and baffled mind, and has reached out to comfort me.

In my scripture reading, as part of my Come, Follow Me study, I read the following words from President Russell M. Nelson:

I am optimistic about the future…. But I am also not naive about the days ahead. We live in a world that is complex and increasingly contentious. The constant availability of social media and a 24-hour news cycle bombard us with relentless messages….

Our Savior and Redeemer, Jesus Christ, will perform some of His mightiest works between now and when He comes again…. But in coming days, it will not be possible to survive spiritually without the guiding, directing, comforting, and constant influence of the Holy Ghost.

I also ended up in Psalms 27 (as part of my better-late-than-never effort in response to our prophet’s invitation to read all the verses listed in the Topical Guide about the Savior).

This Psalm, a prayer of sorts, felt soothing and so relevant. I know I’m not experiencing the mob (“host”?) action first-hand, but the emotional and mental impact on such news is real for me. It’s upsetting, confusing, concerning, unsettling. But I felt God helping me recenter myself on Him.

This is how we can make it through “a time of trouble.”

I hope that perhaps these words might be helpful to others who may be wrestling with today’s headlines (if you live in the US) or other difficult challenges facing you individually, or us collectively. With God’s help, we can find our way.

1 The Lord is my ^alight and my ^bsalvation; whom shall I ^cfear? the Lord is the ^dstrength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?

2 When the wicked, even mine enemies and my foes, came upon me to eat up my flesh, they stumbled and fell.

3 Though an host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear: though war should rise against me, in this will I be confident.

4 One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may ^adwell in the ^bhouse of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the ^cbeauty of the Lord, and to ^dinquire in his temple.

5 For in the time of trouble he shall hide me in his ^apavilion: in the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me; he shall set me up upon a ^brock.

6 And now shall mine head be lifted up above mine enemies round about me: therefore will I offer in his tabernacle sacrifices of joy; I will sing, yea, I will sing praises unto the Lord.

7 Hear, O Lord, when I cry with my voice: have mercy also upon me, and answer me.

8 When thou saidst, ^aSeek ye my ^bface; my heart said unto thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek.

9 Hide not thy face far from me; put not thy servant away in anger: thou hast been my help; leave me not, neither forsake me, O God of my salvation.

10 When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up.

11 ^aTeach me thy way, O Lord, and ^blead me in a plain path, because of mine enemies.

12 Deliver me not over unto the will of mine enemies: for ^afalse witnesses are risen up against me, and such as breathe out ^bcruelty.

13 I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the ^aland of the living.

14 ^aWait on the Lord: be of good ^bcourage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: ^cwait, I say, on the Lord.

The post “[I]n the time of trouble” appeared first on Women in The Church of Jesus Christ.

~by Cara

If I can, I’d like to share a quick overview of some of the pandemic’s affects on our family. Know that there have been other periods of time in our life where we have felt like we were drowning and could barely keep our heads above water. There have been other years where I could not wait for them to end. Plenty of times when we have felt lost and alone. I know this year has felt like that for many, some that I know personally and others that I’ve just heard about their stories, and if this is the case for you and your situation, then my heart goes out to you. In many ways, it’s harder to watch others suffer and we wish we could step in to take away the pain.   

This list doesn’t mean we haven’t had our share of extreme disappointments, bizarre health issues, or great concern over the state of the world. But I can look back over the year 2020 with gratitude and see abundance.   

*During the months of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have felt fortunate that my husband has continued to stay really busy in his employment.

*Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve had the opportunity to put into practice using some of our food storage which is something that I’ve always had a passion for.

*Because of COVID, our oldest daughter felt miserable and lost her sense of taste and smell for two weeks while away from home at college, and even though college life is incredibly different because of COVID, she’s learning to spread her wings and discover that she can do hard things.

*Because of COVID, our 15-year old son re-evaluated his priorities and made a really tough decision to turn in his soccer cleats for multiple other activities that he is really enjoying pursuing. 

*Because of COVID, our 13-year old son has taken on new challenges and is teaching himself some new skills.

*Because of COVID, our 8-year old son was able to be baptized outdoors in a cold creek on a perfectly magical fall day that could never be replicated.

*Because of COVID, our family has slowed down, altered some of our perceptions, realigned some of our priorities, spent more time in the scriptures, and created stronger family bonds.

A week ago Friday, in the 11th month of the year, at 11:00 am, the prophet and president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Russell M. Nelson shared an 11-minute message with the world. On the surface, it may not have appeared to be a plea to us in the eleventh hour, which is a phrase we typically state as meaning right before it’s too late. But what if it was a message along those lines? What if his message is one of the most important things we could hear and implement in our lives before our Savior returns to the earth? 

This man, whom Latter-day Saints sustain as our prophet, seer, and revelator, a brilliant man who is a renowned physician offered us healing in a troubled time, said that there is a remedy — “one that may seem surprising — because it flies in the face of our natural intuitions. Nevertheless, its effects have been validated by scientists as well as men and women of faith.  I am referring to the healing power of gratitude.”

He continues,

“Over my nine and a half decades of life, I have concluded that counting our blessings is far better than recounting our problems. No matter our situation, showing gratitude for our privileges is a fast-acting and long-lasting spiritual prescription.”

President Nelson then encouraged us to participate in two activities for at least seven days: He asked us to turn social media into our own personal gratitude journal and to unite in thanking God through daily prayer. 

President Nelson asked us to notice if we felt happier and more at peace at the end of the seven days. I truly felt the flood of gratitude that Pres. Nelson mentioned in his message. I loved getting a better glimpse inside so many people’s lives and enjoyed the creative responses to things to be grateful for that I often take for granted. 

I also loved the honest posts about heartache. 

For example, a family relative that has struggled with infertility for over 14 years shared the following:

I was so happy for the call to use social media as a gratitude journal from our Prophet and loved the positivity that it brought a few days. But then came something I didn’t expect- those negative feelings that can accompany this platform: inadequacy, envy and sadness. Seeing people post their gratitude for things that I didn’t have made for a melancholy scroll. And so I didn’t post, because to think of what I was thankful for was too hard and wouldn’t be good enough anyway.

Then I saw a post highlighted by the church, from a woman who had the same feelings I did. In it she shared the advice her mother gave her when she spoke of the discomfort and disappointment she felt. She said “[my mother] lovingly held my pain and then gently reminded me that the #givethanks challenge was not just for celebrating the perfect things in our lives. It’s about looking for the good in what we have.

This sweet cousin to my husband then posted daily about her gratitude for hope and promises of children of her own either in this life or the next,, and the peace that brings her heart.

In Doctrine and Covenants 59:7 we read, “Thou shalt thank the Lord they God in all things.” A few verses later in the same section it says, “And in nothing doth man offend God, or against none is his wrath kindled, save those who confess not his hand in all things, and obey not his commandments”. 

Things were not going well when the Lord gave this “thanksgiving” commandment to the early Saints. The Kirtland Safety Society had failed; most of the Saints were in extreme poverty. Many key leaders had left the Church and were adding fuel to the fires of persecution. The Kirtland Saints experienced such severe persecution they had to leave comfortable homes and travel to Missouri in miserably cold and difficult conditions–and in Missouri they were anything but welcome. Nothing seemed to be going right for the Saints—yet it was at this time the Lord commanded them to “thank the Lord thy God in all things”.

Similarly, the Book of Mormon people were “suffering all manner of afflictions” when the Lord commanded them to “give thanks in all things” which we read in Mosiah 26:38-39. 

We too are in a time of tribulation. It’s a huge challenge to live this higher law as our adversity continues to escalate. When everything is going well, gratitude is easy, but what about when it seems that all hope is lost?

President Nelson said in his message: “Does gratitude spare us from sorrow, sadness, grief and pain? No, but it does soothe our feelings. It provides us with a greater perspective on the very purpose and joy of life.”

Russell M. Nelson is an incredible man of faith, as well as a man of science. His prescription for us to turn our hearts to gratitude is backed by many research studies. I am fascinated by our brains and their capacities and loved learning a little about the psychological effects behind the principle of gratitude. Let me share some things that you might already know or might enjoy learning:

Research is overwhelming that gratitude makes people happier. Some people are more thankful than others, whether by nature or habit, and research has shown that those people in general are happier, more hopeful, and less materialistic than their peers who are less grateful.

But gratitude is also something you can learn. In one study on the subject of gratitude, subjects were randomly divided into two groups. One group would keep a journal every day describing three problems they had faced that day, and the other would describe three things they were grateful for. At the end of two weeks the gratitude group was significantly happier than the problems group. 

Another study had people write a specific, heartfelt letter of gratitude to someone who had helped them. People who wrote these letters were happier, a week later, than a group that had written about their deepest feelings. More important, the gratitude writers were still happier three months later, and by a larger margin. 

It seems to be that when we focus on what we are thankful for, we not only feel better in the moment but also train our brains to notice more things to be thankful for.

Gratitude has overwhelmingly been shown to improve people’s relationships. Researchers have found that feeling and/or expressing gratitude helps keep relationship bonds strong in romantic and marriage relationships. This is true even when the marriage faces severe stressors.

It provides a safe foundation to a friendship. 

Feeling gratitude makes us feel more like doing things to help others. Researchers call this “prosocial” behavior and it covers everything from doing favors to offering praise and appreciation, to cooperating on tasks at work.

Thankfulness is contagious; we often respond with prosocial actions just from seeing someone else feel gratitude. 

Gratitude can also protect us from the consequences of trials and traumatic experiences. Adolescents who are more grateful are also significantly less likely to ideate about suicide, even when they experience bullying. And research has repeatedly shown that feeling gratitude, protects people from developing depression even when they are chronically ill. 

Feelings of thankfulness also protect against PTSD and other trauma symptoms for war veterans and victims of school shootings, terrorism, and natural disasters. And in areas where people are prone to physical and emotional stress, feelings of thankfulness help protect against burnout. This is especially important in health care professions, where burnout is high but need is great; a little bit of gratitude goes a long way toward keeping health care providers happy and engaged.

The thing about agency is, we don’t have to be grateful for anything. We can always tell ourselves that whatever kindness was done was owed to us; that whatever good things we enjoy, we deserve more of them; that whatever we may have gained from our struggles wasn’t worth it. We can always turn our focus away from what we do have toward the fact that others have more of it. We can choose ingratitude.

But, anyone can choose gratitude over entitlement.

If we decide to choose gratitude, in obedience to the commandments of God, we will immediately—and increasingly—feel the benefits in our lives.  Just like all the commandments of God, thankfulness provides more to us than to its recipient.

The holiday season is ending, but I am committed to make gratitude a bigger part of my daily life. 

The post Because of COVID: One woman’s reflection on COVID-19 and 2020 + her thoughts on the #GiveThanks challenge appeared first on Women in The Church of Jesus Christ.

There was a time — quite a long stretch of time, actually — when I would hear people say, “Practice gratitude” and I would shrivel up a little inside. Things were bone-deep hard in my life, and gratitude definitely felt more like a platitude. When people shared (felt like threw) that idea over the pulpit or the social media fence, it often felt somehow like a dismissal of the pain that was already mostly invisible to others. It left me feeling even more invisible.

It’s not that I hadn’t tried being grateful, it just didn’t quite…work?…for some reason.

So this weekend when I heard ripples about how some people are responding to President Nelson’s #GiveThanks invitation with not-such-positive feelings, I could empathize, at least a little.

Of course, I don’t know what the specific bristle is about for different individuals, but I’ve heard from some that it can be hard to see people such a flurry of posts about the things that for many represent “sorrow that the eye can’t see” in their lives. For example, posts about health or health-dependent activities and opportunities can hurt when you are sick; posts about children can trigger the ache when you are childless or mourning a loss of a child; posts about happy marriages can sting when you are single or struggling with marriage issues. And the list can go on.

And we all know that social media is well-known for being a potential vehicle for feeding that sort of “pouring lemon juice on the wound” kind of feeling when someone is already hurting. (Sometimes it can even create pain when we didn’t feel it before. Social media is a topic for another day, though….)

I don’t know how that stinging feeling might be transformed for you if you are hurting, but I can share that God did bring friends and resources and language and mentors who helped the idea of gratitude slowly start to crack through the protective shell I was living behind. Through them, God helped the idea go from a sour platitude to something more like the oil the Good Samaritan poured into the wounds of his should-have-been enemy. The oil of joy, even.

Gratitude is still something I’m practicing, but I’m understanding more why sages from all traditions through millennia have encouraged it, and why those in the modern-day medical and mental health professions also encourage practicing gratitude. I can taste that it has the potential to be life-changing and life-giving.

One of my friends who is further along the gratitude practice path, who has helped me feel and understand more of its power, gave me permission to share the following.

As a little bit of background: Alicia is two years out from a devastating cancer diagnosis (stage 4 metastatic breast cancer). Her treatments thrust her still-young-body into way-too-early menopause, mocking her desire for more children. She will have to be on treatments for the rest of her life, which life she realizes may be shorter than she had planned or hoped for. (And this is only the stuff she has felt to write about publicly. We all have sorrows that are not visible to others.)

In short, she knows something of what it is like to grieve, to lose, to yearn. She knows the longing for something once experienced in the past (like health, flexibility, fertility) or the pain taking a future dream and packing it away for this life.

This is what she wrote a couple of days ago.

Through hard chemo, I kept a gratitude journal.

One day, I was only well enough to scrawl, “I’m grateful for puzzles.” The writing is wobbly, and I treasure it.

I learned a lot about the power of gratitude with that daily practice. I learned when we pay attention, really pay attention to our lives and every blessing worth expressing gratitude, healing pours through the crevices of our souls.

Gratitude mends individuals, relationships, communities, nations! I spent my life [before cancer] unaware of the power gratitude held.

One evening after a treatment, our family went out to eat. My head was wrapped in my favorite white scarf. My family all wore telling pink bracelets. Our server paid for our meal but I found it still came with a price: he’d lost his wife to breast cancer, and he laid his grief at our feet, going into great detail about the process.

It sparked an anxiety attack.

I went back to our hotel room and while everyone else slept, I forced myself to write two full pages of things I was grateful for. Through writing, my heart slowed down, my breathing returned to normal. I was finally able to fall asleep.

So I find: When I can’t find my footing to walk by faith, I walk by gratitude.

Are you breathing? Is your heart keeping time within your cozy core? Breath and blood are miracles. Commonplace, but no less miraculous.

I’m grateful for breath.

For blood.

My blood and Christ’s.

I’ve heard some criticism over public gratitude practices…and I disagree. Full stop. Gratitude is a healer. Not THE Healer, but it is a powerful, underestimated and often untapped force for healing.

There are times when others post about what they are grateful for and it hurts. It hurts like when someone my age goes jogging by my house or announces a pregnancy, but under no circumstances do I want anyone to try to manage my pain for me. Don’t you dare NOT share your pregnancy announcement. I want a chance to practice celebrating with you AND feeling what that pain/grief has to teach me. I want to go to God with it, lean in and learn. Also keep running by my house. It’s good for both of us. Your physical practice of running is making you stronger and my mental practice of accepting my new limitations is making me stronger.

If someone else’s public gratitude practice hurts, lean into your own practice ten fold.

Write two pages when you can’t breathe.

Write one line when you don’t have strength.

But do it. Do it, and see if your life isn’t revolutionized. Miracles have a funny way of flourishing when they’re paid attention to.

Kind of like people.

The post When it is hard to #GiveThanks (or to hear others express it) appeared first on Women in The Church of Jesus Christ.

When I was a missionary back in the 1990s, about halfway through my mission, we had a change in leadership. The “area president” (overseeing and training leaders in multiple missions) came and spoke to our mission and told us that we were not teaching correctly. He essentially said, “You spend all of your time trying to make appointments with people rather than teaching them.”

He was right.

He challenged us to use every contact opportunity to teach who we are and what we believe. We went from teaching about four times a week to teaching 20, 30, and even 40 times a week…because we would share truth in each contact rather than waiting for formal appointments to teach.

Even if that counsel and that charge had not made any difference to what happened in the mission (although it did!), the invitation to action changed me, my mission and my life. From that time forward as a missionary, I was committed in a new way to sharing the core of my faith with others, and letting them have the opportunity to learn more about what the Restored Church of Jesus Christ is all about. And because truth was on my mind and on my lips more frequently, it entered into my heart with more force and power. The more I spoke truth to others, the more God spoke truth to me.

I feel a similar kind of energy and excitement about President Russell M. Nelson’s recent call to action around how we talk about ourselves and the name of our church — The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As he explained, this isn’t just some marketing ploy, and it doesn’t seem to me to be something only for the media or for the Church’s public affairs department. It feels to me like an invitation to all members of the Church.. a call to action… an opportunity to share more about what the Church really is. As President Nelson talks about it, it feels to me to be a chance to join in an effort to be responsive to the Lord Himself. Note President Nelson’s use of the word we.

The Lord has impressed upon my mind the importance of the name He has revealed for His Church, even The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We have work before us to bring ourselves in harmony with His will.

In a devotional in Montréal, Canada this week, President Nelson shared a few more thoughts about the call to action.

“We know that it’s going to be a challenge to undo tradition of more than 100 years. And we don’t have all the answers. All we know is the Lord has said, ‘Thus shall my church be called …. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,’ ” he said, repeating Doctrine and Covenants 115:4. “That’s enough for me.”

Those of us who have been in the world of online social media sharing about the Church of Jesus Christ have seen efforts over the years to both acknowledge the full name of the Church and to recognize that many outside of our faith tend toward using the label of “Mormon Church” and “Mormons” to describe us. Thus, many devoted people (like those at the More Good Foundation, who sponsor this site) have created social media spaces to be able to have an opportunity in search engines to match the chatter and to share more with others about who we are, what we believe, and how we live as Latter-day Saints. So it can leave a lot of questions and can feel like a big change to go from the pithy nickname and shortened ways to refer to our faith (“Mormon Church” or “LDS Church”) to using longer names and labels as requested in the updated style guide.

But I’m excited for the challenge and opportunity to respond to President Nelson’s invitation. I have a feeling at least for me it’s going to invite more of that change inside of me that I felt as a missionary.

We as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints may not be able to change how others may call us, but I do feel like the prophet is calling us to call the Church by the name that the Savior Himself gave it. There is recognition that this won’t be easy. In fact, President Nelson acknowledged that some in the media simply say it

“‘can’t be done.’ President Nelson repeated the difficulty with a clarification: “I know it can’t — but it’s going to be, because the Lord wants it that way.” (See “‘We’re correcting a name,’ President Russell M. Nelson tells Latter-day Saints in Canada.” Deseret News, August 18, 2018.)

As noted in the statement above, already, “various Church leaders and departments” have started to make changes. Elder Neil L. Andersen noted (as quoted in the Deseret News article referenced above) that such changes will entail “an extended, multi-year effort — but this will not be something that will be attempted and then pulled back from.”

As I was pondering the invitation this week, I happened to open up to Bishop Gérald Caussé’s talk from the April 2018 General Conference. I was struck by this simple paragraph that seems to sum up the heart of what President Nelson is inviting us to see.

Isn’t it wonderful that the name given by revelation to the restored Church binds together the two most important elements in each gospel covenant? First is the name Jesus Christ. This Church belongs to Him, and His sanctifying Atonement and covenants are the only pathway to salvation and exaltation. The second name refers to us: the Saints, or in other words, His witnesses and His disciples. [We are Latter-day

As I pondered more, I thought about how in some religious traditions, a saint is someone who has received extra-human status, perhaps even someone who is worshipped. In the Restored (latter-day) Church of Jesus Christ, Saints are messy mortals, all in need of Christ’s saving grace, trying to follow Him the best we can, and committing ourselves to Him through ordinances and covenants of baptism, confirmation, and so on. So to me, even calling ourselves Latter-day Saints can testify of our focus on Christ!

To me, this invitation from President Nelson is beyond just how we reference the Church, although clearly that is important — something he feels needs to be changed so we can be more in line with God’s will. I see it as part of President Nelson’s overall vision of the role and responsibility of the Church to help prepare the earth for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Perhaps the world needs to hear more of His name, more about the reality of a restoration, more about the power of covenant-making and covenant-keeping. Perhaps we who are members of the Church can embrace more gratefully what it is that we really believe and belong to. The term “Mormon” may inform some people about the Book of Mormon, but even that is designed to be Another Testament of Jesus Christ! But how many people really know that the Savior is the focus of our faith?

Of course, there are a lot of practical things to be figured out. And of course, there are lots of questions about what that will mean. Still, I’m excited to jump on board the best way I know how, and I’ll be watching with great curiosity and anticipation to see what kinds of changes will ripple out from this charge. Seeing what President Nelson has done over such a short amount of time, I think we are in for a wonderful ride. “Keep your arms and legs inside the car at all times! Hold on tight and have fun!”

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I stumbled on a website that invites people to read President Nelson’s talks since his calling as an apostle. (I found this website before hearing of Sister Andersen’s effort to read all of President Nelson’s talks, but was even more energized about engaging in this effort after hearing Elder Andersen’s talk.)

The owner of the site has curated a list of all of those talks, and I thought I’d give reading the talks a try. (I love watching for patterns that happen between different leaders of a current time, across different leaders over decades/centuries of time and within the lifetime of any given individual leader.)

I was excited and humbled at what I found in only the first two talks! President Nelson has been pondering truths (that we saw him address again this weekend) for a long time. This could come as no surprise, but what surprises me is how easy it is to miss the patterns.

Here is a link to his first talk ever given as an apostle. It appears he may have been called from the audience, without prior foreknowledge of his calling. But without hesitation, he said,

“I have implicit faith in the Lord and in His prophets. I have learned not to put question marks but to use exclamation points when calls are issued through inspired channels of priesthood government….Feelings of commitment well up from the depths of my soul. My sweetheart, Dantzel, and I first made those covenants in the temple of the Lord over thirty-eight years ago, to consecrate our lives to the service of the Lord. Today, I reaffirm that promise, to give all I have to the building of the kingdom of God on the earth. In accepting this call, knowing that challenges, charges, and keys will be conferred and that buffetings will likewise come, I commit my effort, my energy, and my all.”

“Now, I understand fully that the call to the Holy Apostleship is one of witness to the world of the divinity of the Lord Jesus the Christ. I know that salvation is centered in Him! … His message is the restored gospel of Jesus Christ; and it is administered by the Church that bears His name. He directs the affairs of His church by the power of the priesthood and by revelation through prophets who proclaim His doctrine to all people of the world.

“The testimony that I bear is but an echo of the resounding testimonies of the eighty-four who previously have received this call to the Twelve since the spring of 1820.”

I’ve started to notice a pattern in the last couple of years that President Nelson talks about the responsibility the Church has to help prepare the world for the Second Coming. Guess what he mentioned in that first talk he ever gave as an apostle?

“[W]e are of the house of Israel…charged with the irrevocable responsibility to prepare the world for the second coming of the Savior.”

The second Conference talk President Nelson ever gave also carries threads that were covered in last weekend’s conference addresses. President Nelson talked to us about the critical nature of prayer, for example. In 1984, he was teaching similar things. On one hand, it should come as no surprise, but on the other hand, to me it’s a reminder to listen carefully to our prophets and apostles.

“It is possible to disregard or even misuse spiritual power. Some have misused the power of prayer by making that sacred communication trivial….But the Lord places the initiative upon us. He expects us to reach for his power, just as we must insert the plug in the outlet for electricity. He said, “If thou shalt ask, thou shalt receive revelation upon revelation, knowledge upon knowledge, that thou mayest know the mysteries and peaceable things—that which bringeth joy, that which bringeth life eternal.” (D&C 42:61; italics added.)

And then consider the focus of all the changes that took place, and how they centered on ministering rather than just going through the motions. Here’s what he said in 1984.

“Some well-meaning Saints even do the right things for the wrong reasons, if they narrowly center on the percentages they report rather than on the precious people they serve.”

My husband noted that in his priesthood session talk on Saturday, President Nelson urged priesthood holders to harness the blessings and power of the priesthood more fully — and then he used his own priesthood authority by virtue of his role as our prophet to bless us as he concluded the conference!

“Rewards result from the righteous use of the spiritual power belonging to the priesthood! And they are so great that they are almost beyond human comprehension.”

(I loved his insights around how ultimate promises of the priesthood are inextricably connected to committed partnership between men and women…something that has been talked about by various leaders in recent years … but it clearly was not new to President Nelson.)

And, given some of what was happening in the news along the Wasatch Front and on the internet prior to conference, I wanted to add these words from then-Elder Nelson. He’s long cared about how wrong abuse is.

Like cutting the cord with clippers, it is possible to use spiritual power so carelessly as to destroy one’s very connection to that power. I know a husband who dominates his wife as though she were his possession. He seems to regard her about as he does his automobile or his suitcase, which he uses for his own purposes. And I know a wife who dominates her husband to the point that he has lost all feelings of worth.

Remember, “The rights of the priesthood are inseparably connected with the powers of heaven, and … the powers of heaven cannot be controlled nor handled only upon the principles of righteousness.” (D&C 121:36; italics added.)

I look forward to reading and re-reading what we were taught in General Conference. I also plan to continue to read past talks from President Nelson to understand more of how the Lord has prepared his mind, heart, spirit, and body to receive this mantle of being our prophet in these hastening days of the history of the Church and the world. Echoing again the words of Elder Holland: “What a prophet!”

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“To paraphrase Ralph Waldo Emerson, the most memorable moments in life are those in which we feel the rush of revelation.”

– Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, April 1, 2018

What an amazing “rush of revelation” members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints experienced this weekend! As I listened to Elder Holland also say, “What a prophet!” my heart felt like it would burst.

After the conference sessions were over, my husband said something like, “We’re going to need to work to keep up with President Nelson!”

(For those not of our faith, he’s 93, but you would never know. Not only is he physically strong (one of the leaders quipped that they are just trying to keep President Nelson off the ski slopes); he also is already proving to be a visionary, action-oriented leader.)

But my husband’s thoughts went deeper than that. I felt like his words were inspired, and so I can’t paraphrase them well, but the idea was that President Nelson is ready to help lead us through more of the hastening work — but our willingness to respond to his inspired leadership is what will allow him to keep receiving the inspiration necessary to press this work forward.

I was reminded of what was mentioned again in this conference — that when President Monson urged us last year to read the Book of Mormon, President Nelson was immediately and specifically responsive. He modeled what he now needs us to do as prophet. It’s up to us to help hasten the work.

We’ve been called to minister like never before, with a unity like never before — between men and women, between adults and youth, between leaders and members, between heaven and earth.

In this conference, we were also reminded, yet again, that the tumultuous times of the last days will require our own spiritual centeredness like never before. There is and will continue to be a lot of opposition in our individual and our collective lives. We will need the anchor of a personal connection with God and deeply-rooted personal experience communicating with Him and leaning on Him.

There are amazing things happening. It was a gift to participate in General Conference this weekend. What a blessing to participate in the solemn assembly, to sustain two new apostles and other leaders, to hear of the changes that came to priesthood quorums and home and visiting teaching (read the FAQ here) to hear the announcement of seven more temples. 

And there are amazing things ahead. President Nelson and others reminded us that we are preparing for the Savior’s Second Coming! We are engaged in a work that is wonderful, powerful, and eternal.

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