My summary and reaction to the Priesthood Session of General Conference:<\/p>\n
A very nice complement to President Monson’s remarks of the morning session. Elder Nelson focused on missionaries and missionary work, reviewing why we have missionaries and what members should do to forward missionary efforts.<\/p>\n
Told story about growing up on the Arabian peninsula and once failing to follow parents instruction to wear shoes. While wearing flip-flops instead, he was stung by a scorpion. The wound was very painful, and the drive to the hospital took two hours, but fortunately the type of scorpion that stung him was only leathal to infants and the aged. He compared this experience to our spiritual actions, when we disregard what we know is right because of laziness or rebellion, and suffer as a result.<\/p>\n
(More about Elder Uceda here<\/a>). Told a story of family relationships, about a daughter who didn’t want to participate in family scripture study and a father who over-reacted to the daughter. In the end both realize their errors and apologize to restore harmony. Elder Uceda uses this story to teach the importance of being submissive to the Lord.<\/p>\n In the best discourse I’ve heard so far this conference, Elder Uchtdorf remembered President Benson’s 1989 talk “Beware of Pride<\/a>” and presented another witness to the destructive nature of this sin. While acknowledging that there is a difference between being proud and being prideful, he suggested that pride is a universal sin, “no one can avoid it, few can overcome it.” This talk was full of insightful comments and observations, and clearly struck at problems in today’s culture, such as Elder Uchtdorf’s comments on pride in sports, politics and religion.<\/p>\n Elder Eyring:<\/p>\n Discussed the need to qualify for the spirit in order to make our service as God would have it be. Told how the priesthood had influenced the lives of two of his ancestors, who each recognized the spirit in the missionaries they met. Stories like his are repeated around the world, with the common theme of the power of the priesthood made manifest. His point: “Let us do whatever is required to qualify for the Holy Ghost as our companion and then let us go forward fearlessly <\/span><\/span><\/span>that we will be given the powers to do whatever the Lord calls us to do.” Told two additional stories. One about a deacon assigned to visit an inactive fellow deacon and invite him to come back to Church. 20 years later, though still inactive, the young man invited to return still remembered the visit (and his grandfather asked Elder Eyring to find the deacon who did the inviting to thank him for his influence). The last story was about a visit that President Kimball made to Elder Eyring’s father, who was in the hospital and seemed to be dying. Elder Eyring, thinking to learn what it meant to comfort the ill from this visit, was disappointed when President Kimball said and did little during the visit. When his father later said the visit was the most comforting he recieved, Elder Eyring realized that it was the power of the priesthood that President Kimball brought that made the difference.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Gives what he calls the 3 R’s of Choice: The right of choice, the responsibility of choice and the results of choice. Covers some of the same ground that Elder Hales covered in his discourse in the Saturday Afternoon session, but in President Monson’s inimitable style. After covering each of these three areas, he told the story of Elder Clayton Christensen’s choice to go to church instead of playing in a championship basketball game for Oxford in the U.K.’s equivalent of the final of the NCAA championship.<\/p>\n On the whole a very enjoyable session. Especially, dare I say it again, Elder Uchtdorf’s talk.<\/p>\n I look forward to tomorrow’s sessions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My summary and reaction to the Priesthood Session of General Conference: Elder Nelson: A very nice complement to President Monson’s remarks of the morning session. Elder Nelson focused on missionaries and missionary work, reviewing why we have missionaries and what members should do to forward missionary efforts. He said that the Church has more than 52,000 missionaries serving in 300+ missions. FWIW, the number of missionaries has fallen for most of the past decade (probably due to the decline in the birthrate among members in the U.S.), and the Church has even had to reduce the number of missions as a result. Elder Nelson also said that among his descendants and their spouses (children, grandchildren, etc.) 49 have served missions. Personally, I have only one so far, so I’ve got a way to go on this metric. I found his promotion of the new mormon.org as a missionary tool very interesting. Elder Kearon: Told story about growing up on the Arabian peninsula and once failing to follow parents instruction to wear shoes. While wearing flip-flops instead, he was stung by a scorpion. The wound was very painful, and the drive to the hospital took two hours, but fortunately the type […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":111,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1284],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-conference-features"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13543"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13548,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13543\/revisions\/13548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Elder Uchtdorf:<\/h4>\n
\n
\n
President Monson:<\/h4>\n
\n