Pres. Monson presides
Pres. Uchtdorf conducts

BYU Choir sings: “For the Strength of the Hills.”

Invocation: David L. Beck of the YM

Choir sings: “On This Day of Joy and Gladness.”

Elder Ballard

We need the greatest generation of missionaries in the history of the Church. World is more challenging. Young people have many more distractions. Technology has expanded and almost everyone has access to handheld devices for good and ill.

I speak to missionaries now serving, future missionaries, returned missionaries and all single adults.

Interviewed by bishops and stake presidents. You may not be interviewed by a GA. But a member of the Quorum of the 12 assigns every missionary to a specific mission. Your photograph comes up on a computer screen together with specific information. We review your answers to the missionary recommendation questions. For that moment, it seems like you are responding to us. Then we assign you. It is not the same as a face to face interview, but it is close.

We also do videoconferencing.

We need your whole heart and soul. We need young adults who are willing to listen to the Spirit. It is time to raise the bar for your entire generation.

Answer these questions:

–Do you read the scriptures?
–Do you kneel in prayer?
–Do you fast and donate a fast offering each month?
–Do you think deeply about the Savior during the Sacrament?
–Do you try to keep the Sabbath day holy?
–Are you honest at home, church and work?
–Do you avoid looking at pornography and photos that might embarrass you?
–Are you careful with your time? (Avoid Tinder and Snapchat).
–Is there anything in your life you need to change and fix beginning tonight?

Please courageously repent if you are lacking anything in these areas.

Additional counsel: RM does not mean retired Mormon. Do things of your own free will. Visit people who are lonely, sick and discouraged. Continue to learn and grow and receive inspiration.

Four new courses in Institute. Young Single Adults need to date and marry. Don’t text, use your own voice to introduce yourself. To actually hear a voice may shock her, perhaps into saying yes.
Continue reading →

President Obama made his first trip ever as president to Utah on Thursday. He met with Church leaders and local politicians, but not with President Monson, who is preserving his strength for General Conference

From the Deseret News:

Traffic was cleared before Obama’s motorcade made its way from Hill onto I-15, diverting onto Legacy Parkway and winding back to downtown Salt Lake City just before 9:15 p.m.

Obama met with LDS Church leaders at the hotel, including President Henry B. Eyring and President Dieter F. Uchtdorf of First Presidency, and Elder L. Tom Perry and Elder D. Todd Christofferson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.

Deputy White House press secretary Eric Schultz said they were expected to talk about the church’s long record of service, including its work on disaster relief and other humanitarian issues, and the need to fix the nation’s broken immigration system.

The leaders were also to discuss the need to forge more common ground across differences and to promote service to neighbors, both in the United States and around the world.

LDS Church President Thomas S. Monson did not attend the meeting.

“Because of the need to preserve his strength for this weekend’s general conference, it was felt that the logistics of meeting away from church offices, with the walking and the waiting periods associated with a presidential visit, would regrettably not be conducive to President Monson’s participation,” said church spokesman Eric Hawkins.

Hawkins said President Monson remembers fondly his visit to the White House to present Obama with his personal family history in 2009.

President Obama has visited many “red states” in the last few months, and this was his first time in Utah as president.

To see the history of presidential visits to Utah, see this.

I wish this were an April Fool’s joke, but it is not.

Harry Reid, a Latter-day Saint, has no regrets about lying about Mitt Romney not paying taxes because his fellow Democrat won the presidency in 2012.

Here is what Harry Reid said:

CNN’s Dana Bash asked the then-Senate majority leader about his 2012 remark that Romney hadn’t paid his taxes in 12 years.

“So no regrets about Mitt Romney, about the Koch brothers, because people have even called it McCarthyite,” Bash asked.

“Well, they can call it whatever they want,” Reid said. “Romney didn’t win, did he?”

So, according to Harry Reid’s moral compass, you can lie about anything, including who should be the president of the United States, as long as you win.

How can LDS parents possibly point to this sad, pathetic man as an example for anything positive when he justifies lying as long as you get what you want?

The embarrassment that is Harry Reid just became a shameful example of all that is wrong with America today. When Mormons look back on Harry Reid’s tenure, they will see a man who refused to repent about bearing false witness, a man who reveled in his dishonesty because he achieved worldly gains.

As Megyn Kelly said last night, it is just disgusting.

I post this to spark some discussion on a Monday. If you’re going to comment, keep it civil and keep on-topic.

Many of the world’s trends are worrisome. But Church leaders are continually upbeat, so it probably is a good idea to try to emulate them. Elder Holland gave a great talk Feb. 6 to CES educators.

Here are some highlights:

We know for certain that if and when everything else in the latter days is down or dying; if governments, economies, industries, and institutions crumble; if societies and cultures become a quagmire of chaos and insecurity, nevertheless, through it all the gospel of Jesus Christ and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that bears that gospel to the world will stand triumphant. It will stand undefiled in God’s hand until the very Son of God Himself comes to rule and reign as Lord of lords and King of kings. Nothing is more certain in this world. Nothing is more sure. Nothing could be more of an antidote to anxiety. As the Prophet Joseph declared, and as a generation of missionaries quote with fervor: The truth of God will sweep every country and sound in every ear. No unhallowed hand can stop it from progressing. Still true.

Elder Holland said one of his primary concerns is that members are delaying getting married and having children because they are so worried about the world.

Let me list some specific things that I think you should teach your students to be glad about and over which they should cease being fearful. I note, for example, getting married, having families, and welcoming children into the world. We in the presiding councils of the Church hear far too often—and perhaps you do as well—that many of our youth and young adults are terrified to get married. In extreme cases they are fearful that the world is about to end in blood and disaster—something they don’t want to take a spouse or child into. In less severe, more common cases, they are fearful that the world will just get more difficult, that jobs will be too hard to find, and that one should be out of school, out of debt, have a career, and own a home before considering marriage.

Good grief! On that formula Sister Holland and I still wouldn’t be married! Seriously, when we got married we were both still undergraduates at BYU, with neither set of parents able to help us at all financially, no way to imagine all the graduate education we had yet ahead of us, and this with $300 dollars between us on our wedding day! Now that may not be the ideal way to start a marriage, but what a marriage it has been and what we would have missed if we had waited even one day longer than we did once we knew that that marriage was right. Sure, there was sacrifice; certainly there were restless days and weeks and months; certainly there was some burning of the midnight oil. But I tremble to think what we would have lost if we had taken “counsel from our fears,” 15 as President James E. Faust would later tell me over and over and over that I and no one else should ever do. What if we had delayed inordinately? What would we have missed?

Continue reading →