Today I was able to speak in church. The topic I was assigned was my favorite General Conference talk. This is more or less what I said:
I grew up watching General Conference on TV. We looked forward, every six months to having church in our pajamas. My mom would make a coffee cake, which, as children would have disturbed us immensely, but since we had only ever heard it called conference cake it was OK. And we would all settle in for the two hour show on Sunday morning – with food to keep us quiet.
As I grew older, I would sometimes tune in for the afternoon session – or at least I became aware that there was an afternoon session while my parents watched it. And once seminary started, I began getting challenges from my teachers to watch all four sessions – or at least to try to tune in for the fifteen “main talks” by the twelve apostles and first presidency. Even still, I don’t think I really ever sat down and watched all eight hours of conference until I was a missionary.
I went into the MTC in the final days of July, which means I spent most of August in the MTC and flew in to Texas five weeks before the October conference. For the first time in my life, conference weekend required me to get up, change out of my pajamas and go to church. I am pretty sure I grumbled about it a bit to my companion, but I was completely astonished to find that General Conference at church was wonderful! I LOVED it! I am the oldest of six kids, so it was the first time I ever experienced general conference free and clear of distractions. It was the first time in my life when I listened and heard all four session of general conference. I had never before realized how much of what was said were quotes straight out of the scriptures. I had never known that you pretty much cannot go a conference weekend without hearing every basic principle a missionary teaches. I had never known that general conference could be so powerful.
I remember going out between sessions and telling people about the things we were learning and hearing in conference. And that very first Saturday morning session I heard Elder Anderson (who was then a member of the 70, but is now one of our twelve apostles) give a talk called Prophets and Spiritual Mole Crickets.
He began his talk by quoting a scripture spoken by the Old Testament prophet Joshua. I was familiar with the verse – I had grown up knowing it to be a favorite of my dad’s. “Choose ye this day, whom ye will serve, but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”
He reminded us of Joshua’s experience saying, “We can almost hear the whining of the skeptics as Joshua announced his battle plans for taking the city of Jericho.”
But, as the people followed the Lord’s prophet in perfect obedience, their objective was accomplished.
Elder Anderson said:
In our world today, one thing has not changed since Joshua spoke: Those who choose to serve the Lord will always listen attentively and specifically to the Prophet. In modern Israel, serving the Lord means carefully following the Prophets.
Elder Anderson then told a story from a time when he and his family lived in Florida. He described the grass they had there, and explained that there was a small, brown insect, called a mole cricket, which could destroy a yard.
One evening he and his friend were out on the front steps. The friend noticed the mole cricket and, pointing it out to Elder Anderson he warned, “You’d better spray your lawn.” Recalling that he had recently sprayed the lawn with insecticide he decided it wasn’t worth the time or money to do it again so soon. He ignored the warning.
He remembers checking his lawn the next day and it looked beautiful and green. He said to himself, "Well, maybe that little mole cricket was just passing through my yard on the way to my neighbor's yard."
For more than a week he kept an eye on his yard and said he even congratulated himself for not overreacting to the friends warning. Sadly, about ten days after the conversation took place, he learned of his mistake.
He says: Shockingly, as if it had happened overnight, brown spots covered my lawn. I ran to the garden store, bought the insecticide, and sprayed immediately, but it was too late. The lawn was ruined, and to return it to its former state required a new crop of sod, long hours of work, and large expense.
My neighbor's warning was central to my lawn's welfare. He saw things I could not see. He knew something I did not know. He knew that mole crickets live underground and are active only at night, making my daytime examinations ineffective. He knew that mole crickets did not eat the leaves of the grass but rather found nourishment in the roots. He knew that these little inch-long creatures could eat a lot of roots before I would ever see the effect above the ground. I paid a dear price for my smug independence.
Elder Anderson followed his story up by saying:
We live in a wonderful day. The blessings of our generation are lush and beautifully green. With faith in the Savior and obedience to the commandments, our lives can be full of satisfaction and joy.
Yet in these days of much beauty, our challenges in choosing to serve the Lord are more subtle than those of former days, but without question they are as spiritually pervasive. There are spiritual mole crickets that burrow under our protective walls and invade our delicate roots. Many of these insects of wickedness appear small, at times almost invisible. Yet if we do not combat them, they will do damage and attempt to destroy that which is most precious to us.
His talk continued as he expounded on the importance of making family prayer, scripture study and family home evening a priority despite scheduling challenges. Towards the close of his talk, he opened it up to a plea that we listen attentively to the conference talks that would be spoken for the remainder of the weekend.
I don’t even remember when I bought them, but somehow, I ended up owning the cassette tapes of this particular general conference. If I remember the schedule right, every morning as a missionary we had half an hour of personal study, half an hour of companion study, half an hour for breakfast and half an hour to shower and dress. I would listen to these tapes during breakfast and getting ready for the day portion of my morning. And I came to love the words that I had practically memorized.
Elder Eyring spoke in the Saturday afternoon session that conference on the topic of repentance. His talk was titled Do Not Delay. He said:
One of the questions we must ask of our Heavenly Father in private prayer is this: "What have I done today, or not done, which displeases Thee? If I can only know, I will repent with all my heart without delay." That humble prayer will be answered. I know, because it was for me this very day. (This statement is not in the text of his talk - you have to listen to the talk being spoken to hear it.) And the answers will surely include the assurance that asking today was better than waiting to ask tomorrow.
I remember thinking, “whoa!”, if someone like Elder Eyring is getting answers to his prayer about what he needs to do to repent and improve himself, then there must be plenty that I need to do to change!
And I forever see him standing in the darkness after a missionary discussion, as he describes in this talk, being taught by his 70 year old district companion that even though the cleansing power of the atonement is infinite, that it is important to repent as soon as possible because certain blessings of joy and happiness can be lost forever when we live in our sins.
Elder Holland’s talk, that October, was titled An High Priest of Good Things to Come and he promised, “Some blessings come soon, some come late, and some don't come until heaven; but for those who embrace the gospel of Jesus Christ, they come.
About a month ago there was actually a mormon video on YouTube that acted out the story he told in that talk. He was having car problems as he and his young family set out on a cross country trip to move for graduate school. He told of having his car break down in the exact same place two times in a row. The man who helped him asked, “How far have you come?" and here is Elder Holland speaking, "Thirty-four miles," I answered. "How much farther do you have to go?" "Twenty-six hundred miles," I said. "Well, you might make that trip, and your wife and those two little kiddies might make that trip, but none of you are going to make it in that car." He proved to be prophetic on all counts.
Just weeks before giving this talk, Elder Holland said that he had driven that same stretch of road. He talked of how things have changed since that experience – his children now raised and with families of their own and driving a car with no problems. He said that nothing about the current trip was at all similar to the trip so many years before. “In fact,” he said “except for me and my lovely Pat situated so peacefully at my side, nothing of that moment two weeks ago was even remotely like the distressing circumstances of three decades earlier.
Yet in my mind's eye, for just an instant, I thought perhaps I saw on that side road an old car with a devoted young wife and two little children making the best of a bad situation there. Just ahead of them I imagined that I saw a young fellow walking toward Kanarraville, with plenty of distance still ahead of him. His shoulders seemed to be slumping a little, the weight of a young father's fear evident in his pace. In the scriptural phrase his hands did seem to "hang down." In that imaginary instant, I couldn't help calling out to him: "Don't give up, boy. Don't you quit. You keep walking. You keep trying. There is help and happiness ahead--a lot of it--30 years of it now, and still counting. You keep your chin up. It will be all right in the end. Trust God and believe in good things to come."
And you know, I can’t drive that stretch of road, or see the sign to Kanarraville down in southern Utah, without being inspired by Elder Holland.
Obviously I didn’t attend the priesthood session of General Conference, but in my studies, I came to love the talk Elder Wirthlin gave called Growing Into the Priesthood. He told a story about getting a pair of skates, and then later a football jersey, both of which were too big for him. When he exclaimed that he wouldn’t be able to use them, his mother replied, “Be grateful for what you have, Joseph. You’ll grow into them.
He said, “I think back on those days with some tenderness. Curiously enough, I also look back with tenderness to my dear mother's encouraging words, "Don't worry, Joseph; you'll grow into them."
In a similar way, we all need to learn how to "grow into" our responsibilities as priesthood bearers.
That story has become a life mantra for me, especially as I strive to “grow into” my roles as a mother, as a daughter of God, as a wife, and as a person who is trying to simultaneously fill all of those roles as well as the others I feel directed to fill.
All of these talks, which have each provided what I have felt to be life-changing understandings for me, were taught in a single conference weekend. I remember, a few years later as conferences came and went without me gaining the same passion and appreciation for the newer talks, wondering how it was that every most amazing talk was given that same weekend. Why weren’t there more talks like that? And I realized that these talks aren’t any more significant or outstanding than others which were subsequently given.
In fact, in the process of preparing for this talk, I threw out the question to my friends on facebook, “what is YOUR favorite talk”. The answers I got were from years past and things that I vaguely if at all remembered. So why were these select talks so meaningful to me and completely different talks stood out more significantly to my friends?
Only that these were the talks that I spent the time learning, that I invited the spirit by way of study and devoted time which allowed these talks to really burn a place into my heart and impact my life.
Since that question arose in my mind, I began to pay better attention - not only when the talks were given in general conference, but also by going back to study and review the words of God as given through his servants the prophets. I think Elder Bednar changed our vocabulary when he gave his talk about tender mercies. A few years ago President Uchtdorf created in me a whole new love for and understanding of the principle of hope. Once, while I was in the midst of a psychology class, Elder Wirthlin gave a talk that singlehandedly expressed every principle of the class I was currently learning and reminded me that all the answers to life’s challenges really can be found in the revealed word of God. And Elder Holland has given some amazing talks both about the atonement and about the Book of Mormon in recent years.
General conference is full of buried treasures and we need to take the time to discover those treasures for ourselves. Sometimes it’s hard. I find myself in a month like July and think, well I don’t really know the talks from this last conference as well as I should, but I’ve already wasted half of my time and the next conference is only three months away. Maybe I’ll just wait until then and really study hard and learn those talks.
I’m really glad for the opportunity I’ve had to speak on this topic, to help remind me to change today. Really, isn’t that what Elder Eyring taught me a decade ago when he said Do Not delay. I think to myself that there is so much going on with finishing semesters, and taking care of kids and moving and getting settled in that I just don’t have the ability to add studying the general conference talks on top of it all. But didn’t Elder Wirthlin tell me that I could grow into it if I just tried? Sometimes life gets a bit rocky – things are hard. But I am so grateful for Elder Holland who taught me to face life with optimism and hope and a knowledge that regardless of the exact timeline, things can and in fact will get better.
I actually had the opportunity to meet Elder Anderson at the Houston Temple just a few months after he gave his talk on spiritual mole crickets. I think it surprised him that I knew who he was and thanked him for his talk, but as you can see, it has been meaningful to me. I’ll close with the same words he used to wind down his talk. He said “Let us not follow the pattern I showed in dealing with my Florida mole crickets. Let us never ignore the warnings. Let us never be smug in our independence. Let us always be listening and learning in humility and faith, anxious to repent should it be necessary.”
I have a testimony of the Book of Mormon. I know that Joseph Smith restored the gospel of Jesus Christ. I know that this church is led by our Savior as He reveals His will to our prophets and apostles. I know that they are men of God – truly our watchmen on the tower. I am so grateful for our Savior, and for his infinite and atoning sacrifice that can heal all wounds and bring us each the peace that we seek.
In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
