Last week, I wrote a bit of a pre-General Conference post. I talked about some of the reasons that I looked forward to General Conference. Now I’d like to focus on what I learned from the most recent sessions as well as how my excitement matched up with each thing that I was excited about.
Temples
President Russell M. Nelson announced 20 new temples during the final talk of the final session. This is apparently tied for the most temples announced at one time. During his time as the president of the church, President Nelson has announced enough temples to almost double the number of temples worldwide. That actually blows my mind a bit considering I remember President Gordon B. Hinckley being really focused on temples.
Of the 20 temples, three are in Asia, seven are in North America, five are in South America, four are in Africa, and one is in Oceania. To me, that demonstrates just how much the church is growing throughout the world.
It might sound odd, but the one that stood out the most to me was the temple being built in Fairbanks, Alaska. Have I ever been to Fairbanks? No, I’ve never even been to Alaska. As a bit of a temple nerd, though, I know that the other temple in Alaska, the Anchorage Alaska Temple, is over 1,000 miles from the closest temple. It’s also the northernmost temple in the world. The temple in Fairbanks will change both statistics.
Small, Significant Churchwide Changes
I must admit that I do look forward to those small, significant worldwide changes that we’ve come to almost expect over the last few years. Was I disappointed that the only real changes announced were the new temples? No. I think that learned enough from the talks that other changes weren’t necessary. Besides, I think I still need to learn from previous changes.
General Conference Revelation for Me
As has been the case for the last few years, I went into General Conference with four questions. I will admit that I didn’t come up with them as early as I’d like. I do feel like I should do that at least a week in advance. It was more like three days.
I won’t go into my questions. They were pretty personal. I will say, though, that this is the first time where I felt like every talk pertained to at least one of my questions. Some of them, it was most of the talk. Others, it was one sentence or even one phrase that I felt like applied to one of my questions. Honestly, I’m not sure that it was so much that more talks applied to my life as I went in with the attitude that I wanted to know what I needed to get out of each talk.
That’s not to say that all four questions were answered to my satisfaction. In some ways, I will admit that I’m a bit disappointed. While I felt like I got a lot of answers or at least direction on how to better get answers concerning two of my questions, the other two had a lot of “be patient, “read the scriptures for answers,” or “pray to know” sort of answers. Unfortunately, these two questions were the ones that I really wanted answered. I’ve definitely learned that patience is something I need to develop a lot more.
General Conference Theme/s
I’m definitely interested in learning the themes that others got out of General Conference. For me, two things stood out: covenants and turning to Christ. I would also add that there was a theme of accepting and loving others within the church who are different from us. I guess that’s technically three themes.
Worldwide Nature of the Church
In the previous post, I talked about how I enjoy hearing the names of new general authorities or new people put into general auxiliaries. We didn’t get a lot of that this time. What we did get were speakers from other countries than just the United States. Hearing their accents was a wonderful reminder of the worldwide nature of the church.
Sustaining General Authorities
I’m not sure why, but I completely skipped over this in my pre-General Conference post. To me, though, one of the best parts of General Conference is sustaining the general authorities. That’s why the Saturday afternoon session is generally my favorite session. Saying that I support the prophet and other leaders is a really meaningful experience.
How about you? What are some things that you learned from the most recent General Conference? What did you feel like were the themes?
1 comment
Comments are closed.