Conference in General-2 of 4

So, what is it about sitting around all day that makes me tired?? I listened and took notes, but it gets increasingly more difficult to pay close attention and ignore the urge to lay down and fall asleep.

The church audit report was impressive... more than 13 million members worldwide... more than 279 thousand of those were convert baptisms this past year... and 124 operating temples worldwide!

Aaron and I got a big kick out of the beginning of Dallin H. Oaks' talk about testimonies... he said a testimony is not a travel log or professing how much we love our families, and it ends when we start preaching... that took us back to our Young Single Adult Branch days of testimony meetings: Our YSA testimony meetings almost always went over by 30 minutes or more and were very spiritual and I enjoyed them... however, not everyone understands the reason behind a testimony meeting and it often became story time. Aaron and I would sit in the back with our program flipped to the blank side and we'd make a tally of the "gratefulmonies", the "travel logs", the "confessions", etc. (you get the idea). It was sad because the category with the fewest tally marks was "Jesus Christ", which meant that most everyone just told their stories and failed to testify of Christ or the Restored Gospel. I know that sounds so self-righteous... not like we've never said what we're grateful for or added a story to illustrate a point when up on the stand... but, it was a reminder to be sure to bare testimony of what I really believe to be true and not just indulge in telling everyone about my daily journal or find some twisted way of sharing a bit of gossip or bad dating experience while disguising it as a testimony (believe me, there were people in the YSA Branch who did this). Anyway, we got a laugh out of hearing an apostle use similar verbiage as we did in those YSA days.


Later, Elder Oaks went on to explain how knowledge encourages obedience and in turn obedience enhances knowledge. I really liked that. I know in my early conversion days, I was ridiculed as blindly following these "so called prophets". It was so difficult to explain to people how I felt these men were inspired of God and that even though I didn't understand all things, I knew it was the right thing to do to obey their teachings because they taught the way of Christ. Well, 14 years later, here I am living a very fulfilling lifestyle, sharing my life with my wonderful husband and two beautiful daughters. Sometimes I obeyed out of faith and trust in who was teaching me, lacking a full knowledge of the doctrine, but obeying anyway. Eventually that obedience led to knowledge. That knowledge, or testimony, which grew as I obeyed the teachings of Christ, made me want to work harder to obey because I understood better why Christ would have us follow certain commandments. It truly is a never-ending circle of blessings.

More tomorrow...