Answer: We all are excited for General Conference!!
We hope that each of us can take to heart the invitation given by President Dieter F. Uchtdorf in the September Ensign magazine. He said:
“As you prepare for general conference, I invite you to ponder questions you need to have answered… Answers to your specific prayers may come directly from a particular talk or from a specific phrase. At other times answers may come in a seemingly unrelated word, phrase, or song.”
As some of you know, these past few weeks President Boyd K. Packer’s general conference talk has been criticized by some who feel that he was insensitive to those who struggle with homosexual temptations. While we sympathize with those who struggle with same gender attraction, we also sympathize with those who struggle with opposite gender attraction for intimacy before (or outside of) marriage, and those who struggle with powerful urges to view pornography, and those who can’t seem to control their anger, or those who seem to be prone to laziness, lying, selfishness, self-hurting, and an innumerable number of temptations that can be part of our natural man. If we carefully read President Packer’s talk, we quickly see that he is not just speaking to those struggling with same gender attraction–he is speaking to all of us who struggle with temptations that are not in harmony with the plan of salvation, teaching us that through the atonement we can resist those temptations. He wasn’t speaking to just one group of people–President Packer was speaking to ALL OF US.
We are all HUMAN
Man, isn’t conference weekend sweet? There is almost nothing better than to sit at the feet of the prophets of God and hear them teach for hours and hours…in our pajamas even! How we love general conference! And how we love the prophets of God. It seems that the greatest test of any generation is how they respond to the messages of the living prophets. That is one reason we wrote the chapter “Why Should I Listen to and Follow the Prophet” in the WHY? book and we wrote most of our new HOW? book based on the prophets’ directions telling us HOW to live the gospel.
Multiple times in this general conference reference was made to President Ezra Taft Benson’s classing talk “Fourteen Fundamentals in Following the Prophet.” We thought it would be cool to re-print the entire talk here for those who want to read that entire message. We testify that we truly are led by living prophets today, and that Thomas S. Monson is the Lord’s anointed spokesperson as President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Here are the fourteen fundamentals in following him from President Benson’s talk:
If you are in seminary, you probably just studied Joseph Smith History. We want to emphasize 8 keys from Joseph Smith’s teenager years that will help you be an awesome teenager like he was. We are going to look at what happened to Joseph after the first vision, and what we can learn from him: (more…)
This past week we (John Hilton III and Anthony Sweat) had the rare opportunity to be in the presence of prophets. We were invited to attend a social event where two members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and one member of the First Presidency were present. Because it was a social setting, we were able to personally approach these prophets, shake their hands, look into their eyes, ask questions, converse with them, listen to their responses, and feel of their love and testimony. It was a memorable evening. What was so striking was to see them in a setting where they were just as other men—conversing, laughing, eating, and being entertained. Indeed, prophets are mortal and normal in regard to the same human condition we are all in. However, after being in their presence, and especially after hearing their words, the Spirit of God reaffirmed to our minds and hearts that they are indeed special men because of their prophetic mantle. They are the Lord’s anointed. They are his servants on earth who hold the keys of the kingdom. The book True to the Faith says:
“As members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we are blessed to be led by living prophets—inspired men called to speak for the Lord, just as Moses, Isaiah, Peter, Paul, Nephi, Mormon, and other prophets of the scriptures. We sustain the President of the Church as our prophet, seer, and revelator—the only person on the earth who receives revelation to guide the entire Church. We also sustain the counselors in the First Presidency and the members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles as prophets, seers, and revelators.
