To light their way

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This week we are covering the General Conference that just took place last weekend, the October 2023 conference. Back to 2002 next week!

I was so afraid President Nelson wouldn't end up speaking! And I was so glad when I saw he'd recorded his talk! The rest of the conference was great too. Unfortunately, I feel like I fell asleep even more often than usual. Usually the last session lulls me right off, but this time I was fighting it in the other sessions too! So I'm extra anxious to re-read all the many talks I missed parts of. Maybe it's time for me to take up crocheting during conference again…

Anyway, here are a few fleeting impressions:

• I didn't pick on any real themes this time. Sometimes in the past they've jumped right out at me. This time maybe I'll notice something later?

• On Monday I was talking to Abe on the phone and heard his companion saying "Think Celestial!" to someone in the background. So I asked Malachi if he thought people were going to pick up on that phrase a lot and and he said "I've already heard it three times today and if I hear it again I'm going to hit someone!" How's that for celestial thinking?

• My favorite thing from President Nelson's "Think Celestial" talk was not that phrase but another idea: "The very things that will make eternal life best will make mortal life best as well." Yes! That is true! I love the efficiency of it.

• Fell asleep mid-Elder Eyring, but I have a feeling I will like his talk—I loved where he was going with the Holy Ghost guiding people by "a series of experiences" or "minute by minute." I like anything that can help me learn more about how the spirit works! 

• Elder Bednar's talk was very tender. I kept getting teary during it as he mentioned sacrifices I have either made, or want to make, in the service of God. It was so comforting to think about the blessings reserved for all the unknown and ordinary people in God's kingdom! As I learn to trust God more fully, His promises become more sure. I suppose that's "think celestial" in a way too!

• Elder Cook said a couple different times that we should praise the Lord with music specifically. I just thought that was an interesting emphasis.

• Sam and I each take one of the kids out to lunch between Saturday Conference sessions, and I took Goldie this year. She and I talked about gifts and talents. She told me, among other things, how she "wasn't very good at drawing" and I was telling her that a gift doesn't mean "you were born being able to do this thing perfectly and with no mistakes!" Being "gifted" means that you're a person who wants to keep trying and is willing to keep trying at that thing until you improve. And Goldie definitely has that gift for art! She works and works to get her drawings to look just right, where some of her siblings will just toss off stick figures with no desire to do anything more.

Anyway, after we had that talk it was interesting that Elder Stevenson developed the same theme! I love how he said spiritual gifts require spiritual work if we want to receive them—"some assembly required."

• I really liked Elder Gong's "Love is Spoken Here" talk. I'm not sure what I liked about it, really, but I thought it was a cool idea to think about the ways (besides words!) that our Heavenly Parents speak to us, and the way we can learn to transmit these languages of love to our children as well. I could definitely work on expressing even ordinary conversations with warmth and love.

• Sister Amy Wright was one of my favorite speakers, mostly for this one line which struck me so strongly: "We can't share the oil in our lamps but we can share His light!" I have never considered that aspect of the parable. I've been so focused on the fact that the oil can't be shared! But of course! Yes, yes, we can't give anyone a testimony, but we can use our lamps to light their way, hopefully to get their own oil, in due time! I thought that was such a beautiful image of what we're trying to do for our children. Send them to buy their own oil…but not alone. And not in the dark.

• Sister Tamera Runia (not sure I got that name right?) was another favorite speaker. I missed quite a bit of the end of her talk due to…ahem…some less-than-reverent behavior from the children. But I felt immediately that it was going to be an important and meaningful talk to me. I'm excited to study it further. I loved the theme of feeling hope now, of choosing now to let God's promises be real in our lives. And I loved the idea that our hope in someone can change the way that person sees himself!

• Elder Robert Daynes (?) had me so intrigued about "face-blindness." I want to learn more about it! I loved the metaphor as he used it to describe our relationship with Heavenly Father, but where I thought he was going to go with it was that so many of us never truly learn to see and know other people like we should. We don't see their "true faces" and so we remain blind to who they really are—people like us, children of God. Anyway, the example applies both ways, I think. When we come to truly "see the face of God" it will be because we know Him—and that will be because we've learned to be like Him—loving everyone around us. 

I also loved his phrase "To serve is to stand in the river of God's love to His children." Another cool image.

• I liked Joni L. Koch's talk on humility. I like how he tied humility to following the prophets willingly. "Let strong opinions be swallowed by a stronger conviction that God speaks through his chosen leaders."

All right, I'm sure there is more, but now I'm falling asleep even writing about Conference! Anyway, it was great. I'm so sad it's over! Why is it always over so quickly? (Even when you aren't asleep…)

• Oh, and I have some contributions to the Puffer Fish hall of fame: