Nauvoo Neighbor

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This is the 460th week, and we’re covering the General Relief Society session of the October 2006 General Conference.

Whelp, this is definitely a session with a very, very clear theme.

Eternally Encircled in His Love by Sister Bonnie D. Parkin

• When I received this call, I pleaded with Heavenly Father to help me know what the sisters in the Church needed. I received a strong witness that we, His daughters, need to know that He loves us. We need to know that He sees the good in us. Feeling His love encourages us to press forward, reassures us that we are His, and confirms to us that He cherishes us even when we stumble and experience temporary setbacks.
• Our Heavenly Father loved us before we came to this earth. I know that He loves us, sisters, as does His Son, Jesus Christ. That love will never change—it is constant. You can rely on it. We can trust it.
• Do we think we have to be perfect in order to deserve His love? When we allow ourselves to feel “encircled about eternally in the arms of his love,” we feel safe, and we realize that we don’t need to be immediately perfect. We must acknowledge that perfection is a process. This is a gospel of eternal progress, and we must remember to appreciate the journey.
• The love of Christ will never fail us.

Remembering the Lord’s Love by Kathleen H. Hughes

• the Lord is everywhere when we open our eyes and hearts to His love.
• Peace. Strength. It is what we long for and what is possible. We only need to turn toward His reaching arms. In

And then in comes Sister Anne C. Pingree with a little bit of tough love to go with it:

That very will to go forward toward our Savior sometimes requires on-the-spot repentance… We draw closer to the Savior as we encircle others in loving arms. Or we don’t. We balm emotional or physical wounds. Or we don’t. We look at each other with a loving rather than a critical eye. Or we don’t. We ask forgiveness for harm we have caused, even if it was unintended. Or we don’t. We do the hard spiritual work of forgiving those who have given us offense. Or we don’t. We quickly correct our errors or oversights in personal relationships when we become aware of them. Or we don’t.

The love of Christ will indeed never fail us, if only we remember to rely on it.

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This is the 459th week, and we’re covering the Sunday afternoon session of the October 2006 General Conference.

The talk that stood out the most to me this session was Receiving By the Spirit by Elder A. Roger Merrill. His main point? “Remember, receive is a verb. It is a principle of action. It is a fundamental expression of faith.”

Continue reading “Receiving is a Principle of Action”

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This is the 458th week, and we’re covering the Sunday morning session of the October 2006 General Conference.

This was a strong session with good talks from a number of speakers, but the one that easily stood out to me was “The Great and Wonderful Love” by Elder Anthony D. Perkins. 

In this talk, Elder Perkins addresses “three examples of how Lucifer” spreads lies that “plant doubts about the nature of the Godhead and our relationship with Them.” They are (these are direct quotes):

Continue reading “God’s Love is the Antidote to Scrupulosity”

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This is the 457th week, and we’re covering the Priesthood session of the October 2006 General Conference.

The title of this post comes from mashing together the titles of Elder Christofferson’s talk, Let Us Be Men, with President Hinckley’s, Rise Up, Men of God. We’re going through a crisis of masculinity these days. Richard V. Reeves’s book, “Of Boys and Men” covers this, and a review by David Brooks in the New York Times captures some of the most arresting statistics:

• By high school, two-thirds of the students in the top 10 percent of the class, ranked by G.P.A., are girls, while roughly two-thirds of the students at the lowest decile are boys.
• One in three American men with only a high school diploma — 10 million men — is now out of the labor force. 
• Men account for close to three out of every four “deaths of despair” — suicide and drug overdoses.

As men struggle, some–especially young men–turn to role-models like Andrew Tate. Tate has nearly 10 million followers on X (Twitter) and is the third-most Google person. Tate is a self-described misogynist who is being investigated on suspicion of rape and human trafficking in two different countries (the UK and Romania). Among his other ventures, he  ran Hustler’s University, where 100,000 subscribed to learn Tate’s version of what it means to be a man. 

In the face of the real struggles men, especially young man, the world’s role models only serve to mislead and exacerbate the underlying problems.

Contrast that with the vision of masculinity taught by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Many–especially those who are critical–point out that the Church is highly patriarchal and superficially they are absolutely right. But what kind of patriarchy? What does it mean to be a man, in the eyes of the General Authorities of the Church?

Continue reading “Let Us Be Men of God”

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This is the 456th week, and we’re covering the Saturday afternoon session of the October 2006 General Conference.

Elder Wirthlin started his talk, Sunday Will Come, with he and his future wife’s real life meet cute:

I remember the first time I met her. As a favor to a friend, I had gone to her home to pick up her sister, Frances. Elisa opened the door, and at least for me, it was love at first sight.

I think she must have felt something too, for the first words I ever remember her saying were, “I knew who you was.”

Elisa was an English major.

To this day I still cherish those five words as some of the most beautiful in human language.

He then shared what President Hinckley said at Elisa’s funeral: “it is a devastating, consuming thing to lose someone you love. It gnaws at your soul.” Elder Wirthlin added simply: “He was right. As Elisa was my greatest joy, now her passing is my greatest sorrow.”

Continue reading “The Gentle Light of an Easter Dawn”

This post is part of the General Conference Odyssey. This is the 455th week, and we’re covering the Saturday morning session of the October 2006 General Conference.

When I read Elder David S. Baxter’s talk, Faith, Service, Constancy, I thought I had found the one talk that I would write about from this session. In fact, I was even tempted to skip reading the last three talks of this session (there were eight!) because of how busy I always am. But so far I’ve never done that, and I didn’t want to start now. I’m very glad I didn’t, because Elder M. Russell Ballard’s talk O Be Wise ended up being one of my all-time favorites from the entire General Conference Odyssey so far. 

Continue reading “Life is Hard; Use Common Sense”