Sorta-liveblogging general conference: Sunday afternoon session

Sunday afternoon, the chance for everyone to relax, ’cause we can tell the end is coming soon.

So: Since this may be the first in this string of general conference posts you see, a full explanation of the way they’re structured: Since blogs have the bizarre feature of requiring one to read bottom-up in order to get a chronological picture of everything from post to post, that means that below this post is the previous session, and below that one is the one before that, and so on. To better match this, the first speaker in this session is at the bottom of this post, the next speaker is above that one, and so on. This makes for a strange ordering, but the positive of it is that it means you can scroll down to the bottom of the Saturday morning session post and read bottom-up from there through the entire conference, and get everything in chronological order.

The complication: Under each speaker my comments are ordered top-down. This adds a potential bit of confusion, but it’s the only way i could get it to work conceptually for me. Anyway—now you can scroll to the bottom, or you can just read like a normal person would read a normal text and get the conference backwards. Either way’s fine with me, really.

Closing thoughts

• Favorite address of the entire conference: Russell M. Nelson’s, coming in a a dark-horse candidate and passing up the expected winners, Dieter F. Uchtdorf and Jeffrey R. Holland.
• A couple of notable mentions: D. Todd Christofferson’s address wasn’t what i’d call particularly stirring or such, but a solid set of needed reminders, and may actually be the one i end up thinking about most. Dallin H. Oaks’s will merit a close reading, as well—there was a lot going on in it, and i’m quite aware that i didn’t nearly catch all of it on a first listen.
• What was up with every. single. congregational. hymn. being preceded by an announcement that everyone was to begin singing “on a signal from the conductor”? I mean, were people ever even confused about that before?
• I asked earlier why none of the non-native English speakers gave addresses in their native languages—it turns out, per a news release i got pointed to online, that they’re not doing that this conference. No explanation why as far as i can tell, but i’ll say that i hope it’s just because of glitches that they’re ironing out and that the option will be back in the future.

David A. Bednar (of the quorum of apostles)

• The leadership of the church has a great deal of collective experience that we can learn much from.
• When you can no longer do everything you’ve always done, you focus on what matters most.
• The leaders of the church are not spared from affliction, but rather are blessed with strength to continue to press forward despite affliction.
• He’s seen six of his fellows in the quorum of apostles die—and there’s both sadness and joy in the separation from their friendship for a time, and the recognition that they have gone to an eternal glory even while leaving us with wisdom to learn from.
• [I like the recognition that age can be a positive thing. I’ve long liked hanging around old people, both for the depth of experience and the frequently age-associated lack of filtering. Yes, there are things that youth has going for it—a willingness to try new things, often an intense desire for change—but rather than fetishizing youth, in my opinion we need both youth and age. (And besides, now that i’m rapidly approaching oldness myself, i get to feel like i’m not a hypocrite for hoping that i’ll still have reason for being around.)]

Koichi Aoyagi (recently released from the quorums of seventy)

• Our purpose for being on this earth includes experiencing trials.
• However, our purpose is not merely to endure our trials, but to overcome them through the atonement of Jesus Christ.

Kim B. Clark (of the quorums of seventy)

• A discussion of the saints of Jesus’s time and immediately after, and what we have in common with them.
• Whatever our level of faith, it isn’t enough for the work ahead—and so we need eyes to see more clearly, and ears to hear more completely.
• To do this we do not need to be perfect, but we need to be good and getting better.
• If we devote ourselves to the work, we will have what Paul called “the mind of Christ”.

Allen D. Haynie (of the quorums of seventy)

• From my oldest: “I’m always impressed by the ability of every general authority to turn anything into an analogy.”
• God the Father knew we would sin, and so set up a plan whereby we could become clean.
• Avoidance of sin is the preferred path, but as far as the atonement of Jesus Christ is concerned, it doesn’t matter how deeply we have sunk into sin.
• The Savior will never turn away from us when we turn to repentance.
• “Repentance is not easy—things of eternal significance rarely are.” [Is that correct? Quite possibly. I’ma have to ponder on that one a bit.]
• Repentance leaves us perfectly clean, and ready to receive all that God has to give us.

Carole M. Stephens (of the relief society presidency)

• We can choose to see commandments as limitations that take our agency and limit our growth, but as we let Heavenly Father teach us, we will see them as what they are—an expression of love.
• Trust God, and God’s plan for you.
• Jesus promised that the Comforter would “abide with [us] forever”, and this right is available to every worthy confirmed member of the church.
• As we trust God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, and the counsel of the prophets, we will find joy in our mortal journey.

Von G. Keetch (of the quorums of seventy)

• The commandments God has given us are to help us avoid danger.
• We show our faith in God every day by keeping the commandments, particularly in those situations where we don’t particularly understand the reasons for them.
• “God wants us to have joy, He wants us to have peace. He wants us to succeed.”

Devin G. Durrant (of the Sunday school general presidency)

• Advice: Save money each week.
• More important advice: “Ponderize” (coined word!) one verse of scripture each week.
• [I like that he’s pointing out that you can get the meaning of a scripture passage without particularly memorizing it. I honestly get tired of some people saying in church classes that we need to memorize verses from the scriptures, when what we really need to do is incorporate them into our lives whether we memorize them or not, as he’s pointing out.]
• Don’t hesitate to invite people from other faiths into your study of the scriptures.

D. Todd Christofferson (of the quorum of apostles)

• How does the Lord’s church accomplish the Lord’s purposes?
• Moving from grace to grace requires more than just being nice or feeling spiritual—it requires ordinances and enduring.
• Doing all that cannot be done in isolation, and so the Lord has given us a church.
• In the body of Christ we have to go beyond simple ideals and concepts, and work with each other as a whole.
• “Repentance is individual, but fellowship along that long, painful path is in the church.” [Got a couple words wrong, i think, but that was the content.]
• The support of the church isn’t just spiritual, but also temporal.
• A belief that all roads lead to salvation leads to no need to spread the word of the gospel—but we believe that a church and its ordinances are necessary, and so we need to preach to the world.

Opening choral stuff

• The choir’s rendition of “Praise the Lord with Heart and Voice” was really, really amazingly well done—and i say that as someone who’s generally not a fan of MoTab, and who doesn’t normally like that song.
• One of the early songs—the one right after the opening prayer—the choir not just stood in unison, the angle of the camera let you see that they opened their music in union! That’s a little bit of crazy, right there.