Specific Conference

I like to call General Conference “specific conference” because I feel like it is always so specific to me. There inevitably are words that pierce my soul and make me feel like God is speaking directly to me. It happened again this weekend. But before I get into that let me share about the week leading up to general conference because I feel like I prepared a little differently than usual and that lead me to having a more specific than general experience.

After Spring 2021 conference my mom bought me a collection of the talks that included places to take notes and journal in the margins of all of the talks from the Saturday, Sunday and priesthood sessions of that conference. Having this journal encouraged me to read and reread conference talks during the six month span in between conferences. I felt like I was more prepared for lessons at church because talks were fresh on my mind and I was more likely to turn on a conference talk and listen as I drove, did dishes or worked. Among the talks that became my favorite during that time were “Infuriating Unkindness” by Dale G. Renlund, “What We Are Learning and Will Never Forget” by President Russell M. Nelson, “The Personal Journey of a Child of God” by Neil L. Andersen and “Light Cleaveth Unto Light” by Timothy J. Dyches. Reading and studying the most recent conference talks helped bring me peace, perspective and prepared me to receive more words of encouragement and repentance as this conference rolled around.

A few weeks ago my mom sent me a new journal in the mail (she takes good care of me and continues to help me learn and live the gospel), a conference notebook from LDS Living. It had sections to take notes during the different sessions of conference but it also had daily prompts leading up to conference weekend. Things like making goals, preparing a list of questions, cleaning up your home, scheduling in conference and inviting others to watch were some of the daily prompts. This helped conference be at the forefront of my mind throughout the week and made me so excited to hear the words of our living prophets and apostles.

And of course our trip up to New York the previous weekend where we got to walk through the same land that early church leaders walked and sit in the calm and peaceful forest where a young Joseph Smith saw God the Father and Jesus Christ who spoke to him, called him to do a great work and answered his questions and yearnings of his heart. Experiencing those sites prepared me to have similar experiences during conference weekend. Though I may not have seen God the Father and Jesus Christ like Joseph did I definitely felt them through the words of their living prophets and apostles. I too received a witness that I have a great work to do on this earth and had several of my own questions answered and yearnings of my heart made known to me. I know God knows us and is eager to assist us and let us know that He is near, if only we look and listen and seek Him out.

Which brings me to Saturday… throughout my study, prayer and experiences I thought I was pretty well set and excited for conference. I was not however anticipating that I would enter the first session of conference with a truly broken heart and contrite spirit. On our way back from New York last Sunday I received a text from the Relief Society president notifying me of my ministering partner and assignment. I did not know who either woman was but was asked if I could help provide a ride to the woman I am assigned to minister to the following Saturday. I responded that I would be happy to and plans were made for me to pick her up that next Saturday morning. When 8:30 rolled around I got ready and headed over to the woman’s apartment ready to take her to her needed destination. I was unprepared for everything that happened after that. Suffice it to say that I was humbled to the dust as I approached circumstances far from anything I’ve ever had to live in. I was humbled as this woman told me of her upbringing in a permanent RV campsite, humbled as she told me about the lack of friends she had in school and overall lack of opportunity in life. I was humbled as I sat there thinking: “how am I, 23 year old me, supposed to minister to someone with such a different life experience?” And I was heartbroken over her situation. Then I sat down and listened to conference. Compassion was the word that reoccured over and over again and struck me each time. The most poignant talk was by Elder Ulisses Soares. The whole talk felt to me like Heavenly Father was wrapping me in a hug and telling me that He was grateful for my compassion for this woman. Elder Soares’ words also prompted me to look at the beams in my eye before Jaden’s motes. I felt compelled to kneel before my maker and plead for mercy. I renewed my commitment to work on not judging by outward appearance. This specific conference not only answered my questions and spoke peace to my soul, but it also showed me areas to improve and lessons that still need to be learned.

And I want to share a little bit more about what I have learned about compassion since conference… and it’s not always talked about: boundaries. As I drove home from my ministering experience that Saturday morning among the grief I felt toward the situation I also knew there were going to need to be some boundaries set in the way I am going to minister and be available to help this woman in her situation. I know that the point of this life is to help each other back home but I also know the way the gospel is designed and the church is set up is to help individuals become self-reliant: physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. There is a difference between being compassionate and being taken advantage of and I am learning the difference of those two. There’s no more perfect example of this than the Savior. When I was on my mission I distinctly remember sitting in a meeting at church where the woman giving the opening thought shared a message about boundaries. I will never forget the principle she shared. She talked about Jesus feeding the five thousand and the compassion he had on the multitude and the miracle that took place, he literally fed thousands and thousands of people with five loaves and two fishes. Then she said that the next day the multitude came back and instead of Christ feeding them again he got into a boat and cast it a ways off creating a boundary and preaching from there effectively saying that He was not going to just feed them every day… He was there to not only provide physical aide but spiritual. He was there to help them help themselves. Now let me stop right there and say that I have since fact checked this story and the timing is off. The gospels differ in the details they give of the events in Christ’s life but both Matthew Mark and Luke actually give the account of Christ preaching from the boat BEFORE he feeds the five thousand. HOWEVER the principle is not lost because there is still a beautiful lesson in the events of the day preaching from the boat. In Luke’s account in Chapter 5 we read:

1 And it came to pass, that, as the people pressed upon him to hear the word of God, he stood by the lake of Gennesaret,
2 And saw two ships standing by the lake: but the fishermen were gone out of them, and were washing their nets.
3 And he entered into one of the ships, which was Simon’s, and prayed him that he would thrust out a little from the land. And he sat down, and taught the people out of the ship.
4 Now when he had left speaking, he said unto Simon, Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a draught.
5 And Simon answering said unto him, Master, we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing: nevertheless at thy word I will let down the net.
6 And when they had this done, they inclosed a great multitude of fishes: and their net brake.
7 And they beckoned unto their partners, which were in the other ship, that they should come and help them. And they came, and filled both the ships, so that they began to sink.

So what I learn from these verses is that in one instance Christ was on land performing miracles and literally feeding people fish. But in another instance He was in a boat teaching people to fish and performing miracles so they could feed themselves. It’s like the old adage goes: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”

Sometimes when we minister we are supposed to be giving fish, but other times we are to help teach people how to fish.

I’m learning that Christlike compassion isn’t always just doing things for people, sometimes it is fostering in them an ability to do things for themselves.

And sometimes that is hard… It reminds me of when I was working as a CNA in high school one of the things we talked a lot during our training was that we were supposed to help our residents maintain their dignity and foster independence as much as possible. So for example sometimes the easiest thing would have been to just hurry and help a 90 year old button up his shirt and do it yourself because you could do it in 1/4 of the time… but allowing him to maintain his dignity and foster independence meant patiently waiting for him to do it himself. I imagine this is going to be a good lesson to keep in mind when I have kids. I hope I can have the compassion to help them when needed but also teach them and let them act on their own and help them help themselves. I hope I can apply this in my ministering assignments and relationships as I set compassionate boundaries and do the hard thing whether it is saying no at times or allowing others make their own choices and learn to fish. And I hope I recognize in my own life that sometimes Christ gives me fishes immediately and other times He is helping foster in me an ability to get the fish on my own.

So that is how specific conference was for me. It was raw it was real and I can’t wait to continue to listen and reread the talks and continually learn from the words of prophets both modern and ancient.

Peaches:

• Pulling out our fall decorations and lighting a pumpkin scented candle
• Found Halloween costumes for our upcoming couples Halloween party
• Seeing pictures of mom’s cute Halloween decor. I know a lot of people despise Halloween but I always grew up loving it, my mom always made October so fun since her birthday is in October. I always tell people we like Halloween that is orange, black, purple and green and cutesy not gory and scary
• Made chicken noodle soup. Soup season is back!!!!
• Started a better routine of going to bed earlier and waking up earlier and working out in the mornings
• Keile’s brother is a jeweler and she taught us a wedding ring cleaning hack that is seriously no joke and works with gemstones other than diamonds like my Morganite ring: fill a cup with enough Windex to cover your ring. MICROWAVE the Windex for 30 seconds (this part is key for some reason) put your ring in the warmed windex and wait one minute. Then remove and brush with a soft bristle toothbrush for 1-2 minutes and rinse and blow dry on cold. *Always brush and rinse over something that can catch a stone if it comes loose.* My ring has seriously never sparkled this much since I got it!
• Went to a Blue October concert with the Huntzinger family (Amanda’s parents) and Tanner & Amanda
• Sending a birthday party invite to my mom since she’ll be here for her birthday
• Seeing pics of the beautiful changing leaves back home in UT and watching ours gradually turn out here
• Bought a new glove that is basically a silicone scrubber you wear on your hand that is awesome for washing dishes, wish I had it at our last apartment when we didn’t have a dish washer
• Went to a market in downtown Squirrel Hill with my friend from church
• Saw a booth at the market that reminded me of Bridger and his woodworking projects and the table he made 
  
• FaceTiming mom and seeing grandparents
• Sam & Kennedy had their baby
• Hearing that our nieces and nephews got their pictures I colored for them, I love my pen pals
• Our conference tradition of sausage egg casserole and orange rolls turned out great despite us not having an accurate temperature read on our oven (it literally is a dial and we don’t know when it is preheated so we give it a turn, wait 20-30 minutes and hope for the best. I really need to buy an oven thermometer)
• Proving to Jaden my cutting board collection is useful because they can be used as serving trays and pan trivets
• Building a “second couch” out of our air mattress and pillows to watch conference with friends
• Specific Conference
• Getting the cutest pic of our baby niece and nephew watching conference. Wesley is a protector of Hayes for sure, so so sweet!
• Finally learned how to use our shower -which sounds so dumb-but it is so difficult to get to the right temperature I seriously feel like you spend half your time showering trying to figure out the temperature of the water. But I learned you have to start by warming it up with hot water only and then slowly and I mean SLOWLY introduce cold until you achieve the optimum temperature

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pits:

• Seeing that Bill Nye was coming to speak at Pitt next spring but also seeing that you have to buy season tickets that are $345 minimum price, no thanks!
• Hearing Sam & Ken's baby Macky was in the NICU (he’s out now and home doing well)
• Unexpected turn of events at Blue October Concert... there weren’t a lot of crowd members at the concert so they ended up “dumbing” down their show and just did acoustic versions of everything which was fine because I didn’t really know a lot of their music anyway but also kind of a bummer because they are a hard rock band and I was looking forward to experiencing a concert like that. I can honestly say I’ve never been in an outdoor concert venue before where you had to be quiet and whisper because there were times it was so quiet you could hear a pin drop
• Getting upset and irritated over things that really don’t matter
• Our oven is so old
  
• Feeling heartbroken and insufficient after my ministering experience

Lessons Learned:

• Look at the motes in my eye before Jaden’s beams
• Don’t judge by outward appearance
• Christlike compassion isn’t always just doing things for people, sometimes it is fostering in them an ability to do things for themselves
• How to clean my wedding ring so it looks sparkly new again
• How to get our shower to the right temperature