General Conference Weekend

Wow, what a weekend!  All I can say is thank goodness for DVR.  Conference is a different experience with toddlers.  It took my wife and I about four hours per session, but we enjoyed the many wonderful talks that were given.

First of all, congratulations to the saints in Cedar City and Rio de Janeiro, and surrounding areas.  This sneaky Facebook video that is going viral shows how those in Rio feel about it.  This will mark the 17th temple in Utah with 3 under construction (Payson, Provo City Center, and now Cedar City), and the eighth temple in Brazil.

I always try to look for themes in conference. But the great thing about conference is depending on your station in life you’re going to pull out different themes.   With that said, here are    some patterns I noticed from my limited perspective.

1.        – Big emphasis on family.  This is a normal topic, but the big push this time seemed to be on family prayer and family scripture study.  It was mentioned at least 4 times according to my conference Bingo.
2.        – Woman Power! First women praying in conference ever, starting with Sister Jean Stevens of the Primary General Presidency.  This came after the announcement Friday that sister missionaries will be able to fill leadership roles in the mission field.  Recently, I attended a stake conference where Elder Perry spoke, and he said the Elders are going to have to stay sharp to keep up with the flood of fantastic, service oriented, 4.0 sister missionaries that are on their way.  Not to mention that the talk by Sister Wixom about unplugging  from devices and plugging into our children’s lives was the most meaningful talk to me from this conference.
3.        -Peace, faith, and hope: Elder Cook, Elder Holland, President Packer, and President Uchtdorf’s messages resonated hope, faith, and peace. Sometimes we probably leave conference feeling a bit guilty, but it was good to hear reassurance that Heavenly Father wants us to feel happy, enabled, and strong with his help.

We’ll get back to some Ringmasters specific news next week, but I thought it’d be nice to take some time to reflect on what we experienced this weekend.  What did you think? Feel free to comment below!