Latest from Saturday’s LDS General Conference: Nelson attends afternoon meeting; newest apostle touts ‘church of joy’

The biggest question looming as The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints entered General Conference weekend was whether its 100-year-old president, Russell M. Nelson, who has been alive for more than half the faith’s history, would be present at the proceedings.

That query was answered soon enough. Saturday’s morning session started with Nelson viewing the meeting from home. Henry B. Eyring, his 91-year-old second counselor in the governing First Presidency, conducted the session while seated in his chair. His first counselor, 92-year-old Dallin H. Oaks, also was in attendance.

Nelson, the oldest-ever Latter-day Saint prophet, did, however, go to the afternoon session, arriving in a wheelchair. Apostle Gerrit W. Gong conducted.

For the evening session, Nelson and apostle Jeffrey R. Holland (both of whom used wheelchairs Saturday) watched the day’s final meeting from home. Apostle Ronald A. Rasband conducted.

In April, Nelson attended two sessions at the Conference Center in downtown Salt Lake City and viewed the remaining three remotely — just like millions of fellow members around the world.

He delivered a recorded address at the two-day gathering’s close, announcing 15 new temples. If the recent conference pattern holds, Nelson will again name new locations for the faith’s most sacred edifices.

The centenarian church leader attended a globally broadcast celebration on his 100th birthday on Sept. 9.

Here are the latest speeches and announcements from Saturday’s three sessions:

Evening session

General authority Kyle S. McKay: Forgiveness and direction

As a young man, Mormonism’s founder and first prophet prayed to God about his sins and about truth. Joseph Smith’s mystical experience became known as the “First Vision,” which helped launch the Utah-based church.

For Joseph, though, “the experience was also personal and preparatory,” said general authority Seventy, Kyle S. McKay, now serving as the church historian and recorder. “All he wanted was forgiveness and direction. The Lord gave him both.”

It gave him “confidence to ask for forgiveness and direction for the rest of his life,” said McKay, who followed emeritus Seventy Steven Snow in the historian position. “His experience has also given me confidence to ask for forgiveness and direction for the rest of my life.”

Smith prayed again and again for divine forgiveness of his sins, and always felt the love of God, the general authority said. “It is neither his mission nor his nature to condemn. He came to save.”

Relief Society leader Kristin M. Yee: The joy of redemption

To illustrate the power of the Savior’s love and atonement to save people from their mistakes, Kristin M. Yee, second counselor over the faith’s worldwide women’s Relief Society, recalled the time she tried to paint a portrait of Jesus.

Alas, she explained, she applied a varnish to protect the painting from dirt and dust, which wiped away part of the picture and threatened to ruin it altogether. Yee said she felt she had destroyed what God had helped her create, causing her to feel sick inside. She wept.

In desperation, she turned to prayer, pleaded for help and painted through the night to repair the work. To her delight, she related, the redone painting looked better the next morning than it did before.

“What I thought was a mistake without mend,” Yee said, “was an opportunity for his merciful hand to be manifest
— he was not done with the painting, and he was not done with me.

“What joy and relief filled my heart,” she added. “I praised the Lord for his mercy, for this miracle that not only saved the painting, but taught me more about his love and power to save each of us from our mistakes, weaknesses, and sins, and to help us become something more.”

Through sincere repentance, Yee said, people can be forgiven of their sins. “Repenting allows us to feel God’s love, and to know and love him in ways we would never otherwise know.”

“You may feel at times that it’s not possible to be redeemed, that perhaps you are an exception to God’s love and the Savior’s atoning power because of what you are struggling with or because of what you’ve done,” she said. “But I testify that you are not beneath the master’s reach. The Savior ‘descended below all things’ and is in a divine position to lift you and claim you from the darkest abyss and bring you into ‘his marvelous light.’ Through his sufferings, he has made a way for each of us to overcome our personal weaknesses and sins.”

Apostle Gerrit W. Gong: Holiness in everyday life

Holiness presents life with a sacred purpose, said apostle Gerrit W. Gong. “But holiness also invites us to infuse daily living with the sacred — to rejoice in daily bread, manna as it were, amidst this world’s thistles and thorns.”

Such ordinary holiness to the Lord rejects the profane, snarky cleverness at others’ expense, and “algorithms that monetize anger and polarization,” Gong said. But it says “’yes’ to the “sacred and reverent, ‘yes’ to our becoming our freest, happiest, most authentic best selves as we follow him in faith.”

Such a sense of the sacred “draws us closer and happier to the Lord and each other,” the faith’s first Asian American apostle said. “Holiness to the Lord in the House of the Lord prepares us to live with God our Father, a man of holiness, Jesus Christ, and our loved ones.”

In holiness, Latter-day Saints can feel God’s love as they center their daily lives in Jesus and “covenant belonging,” Gong said, “communion with God; connection and commitment with family; compassion and community with all around us.”

Afternoon session

Apostle Ulisses Soares: Submit heart and soul to God

Brazilian apostle Ulisses Soares warned listeners against “people becoming consumed with themselves” and pursuing “self-centered” lifestyles that “don’t match God’s loving plan.”

Such thinking, “often justified as being ‘authentic,’” he continued, can create “significant stumbling blocks.”

He drew contrasts with this mindset to the examples of a young man who, despite his fears, decided to serve a church mission, as well as a young woman who refused to conform to work dress standards she deemed immodest.

He acknowledged that an array of factors — from genetics and geography to mental and physical challenges — “influence our journey.”

However, he was emphatic: “In things that truly matter, there is an inner space where we are free to choose whether or not we will decide to follow” God’s plan.

“The ultimate test of our discipleship is found in our willingness to give up and lose our old self,” he explained, “and submit our heart and our whole soul to God so that his will becomes ours.”

General authority Aroldo B. Cavalcante: No one is ever forgotten

There are many ways to serve in the church. Whether helping nursing home residents, proselytizing as a missionary, or just reaching out to fellow members, said general authority Seventy Aroldo B. Cavalcante, Latter-day Saints can bring hope and guide others to the covenant path.

“Though you wear a nametag, sometimes you may feel unrecognized or forgotten,” said the Brazilian church leader. “However, you must know that you have a perfect Heavenly Father who knows you personally and a Savior who loves you.”

General authority D. Martin Goury: Be thou clean

“Through the Savior’s redemptive sacrifice, each of us can repent and seek forgiveness and become clean,” general authority Seventy D. Martin Goury said. “Repentance, a foundational principle of the gospel, is essential for our spiritual development and resilience as we navigate life’s challenges.”

Goury, an Ivory Coast native, said repentance is essential if we are to become clean and be ready for the Savior’s arrival when he comes again. He noted that his wife wears hearing aids that she must clean regularly if the device is to work properly throughout the day.

“When she overlooks this daily ritual,” the leader said, “her ability to hear suffers throughout the day, spoken words gradually fade and eventually become inaudible. Just like her daily hearing aid cleaning allows her to hear clearly, daily repentance allows us to discern the guidance of the Lord through the Holy Ghost.”

By repenting and becoming clean before the Lord, Goury continued, members can have the Holy Ghost to serve as a spiritual connection with their Heavenly Father.

“In coming days, it will not be possible to survive spiritually without the guiding, directing, comforting, and constant influence of the Holy Ghost,” Goury said, quoting church President Russell M. Nelson. As members “consciously choose to follow the guidance of prophets and apostles,” their capacity to have the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost grows and they are better able to understand the spiritual promptings they receive.

General authority David L. Buckner: The holy calling of friendship

Growing up, general authority Seventy David L. Buckner said his father would often remind him that “simply sitting in a pew on Sunday doesn’t make you a good Christian any more than sleeping in a garage makes you a car.”

Jesus, Buckner noted, repeatedly refers to his followers as his friends. Extending this same hand of friendship to others is one way disciples can, he said, truly be like him.

“I see the Savior’s declaration ‘ye are my friends’ as a clarion call to build higher and holier relationships among all of God’s children ‘that we may be one,’” he said. “We do this as we come together seeking both opportunities to unite and a sense of belonging for all.”

Apostle Patrick Kearon: Jesus Christ is joy

As Latter-day Saints, apostle Patrick Kearon said, “we are members of the church of joy. And nowhere should our joy as a people be more apparent than when we gather together each Sabbath.”

Weekly sacrament meetings offer those who assemble with their ward and branch families, he said, “to celebrate the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, our deliverance from sin and death, and the Savior’s powerful grace. Here we come to experience the joy, refuge, forgiveness, thanksgiving and belonging found through Jesus Christ.”

Everyone who comes together can “contribute, no matter our age or our calling, to making our sacrament meetings,” Kearon said, “the joy-filled, Christ-focused, welcoming hour they can be, alive with a spirit of joyful reverence.”

And reverence is not merely “folding our arms tightly around our chests, bowing our heads, closing our eyes, and holding still — indefinitely,” said Kearon, demonstrating that pose. “This might be a helpful way to teach energetic young children, but as we grow and learn, let us see that reverence is so much more than this.”

Worshipping is so much more than simply attending, the British apostle added. “There is a significant difference between the two. To attend means to be present at. But to worship is to intentionally praise and adore our God in a way that transforms us.”

True worship shows in facial expressions, in singing and in welcoming all to this “sacred time for spiritual renewal.”

And taking the emblems of the sacrament is more than “thinking only about all the ways we messed up during the week before,” Kearon said, but also to “ponder the many ways we have seen the Lord relentlessly pursue us with his wonderful love that week.”

In those moments, the faith’s newest apostle said, Latter-day Saints “can reflect on what it means to discover” the joy of daily repentance.”

He invited his listeners “to discover this joy, embark on its quest…to receive the Savior’s gift of peace, light and joy — to revel in it, to wonder at it, and to rejoice in it, every Sabbath.”

General authority Juan Pablo Villar: Giving us a helping hand

Juan Pablo Villar, a general authority Seventy from Chile, recalled playing in the ocean off the coast of his South American homeland and being rescued by his older brother, Claudio, twice from powerful waves that dragged him under the water.

Just as he was rescued by his brother who extended his hand and pulled him out of the water, Villar said, so our elder brother, Jesus Christ, always stands ready to help. “During our mortal time,” the leader said, ”we are subject to the attacks of the adversary, like the waves that had power over me that summer day, we can feel powerless and want to give in to a stronger fate.

“Those malicious waves,” he added, “could jostle us from side to side. But do not forget who has power over those waves and, in fact, over all things. That is our Savior, Jesus Christ. He has the power to help us out of every miserable condition or adverse situation.”

As members think celestially, the Lord will always “be there, and in his time, he will be ready and willing to grasp our hands and pull us up to a safe place.” Having an eternal perspective, Villar said, can also help members receive revelation to help others who need help or rescue.

Seventy José A. Teixeira: On becoming the ‘salt of the earth’

Portugal’s José A. Teixeira of the Presidency of the Seventy invoked the New Testament instruction to become “the salt of the earth,” equating the commandment with “[being] the change the world needs today.”

To accomplish this great task, Teixeira called on this listeners to:

1. Make the temple “the center of our devotion.”

2. Strengthen others by living the gospel together.

3. Serve in a church calling.

4. Use “digital communications tools with purpose.”

“Striving to be the salt of the earth,” he said, “includes so much more than an endless scrolling of reels on a 6-inch screen.”

Apostle D. Todd Christofferson: Insidious ‘weapons of rebellion’

There are many acts of “willful rebellion” against God, said apostle D. Todd Christofferson, but possibly more “insidious” is “passive” resistance, like “ignoring his will.”

“Many who would never consider active rebellion may still oppose the will and word of God,” Christofferson said, “by pursuing their own path without regard to divine direction.”

And some aspects “that may be neutral or even inherently good,” he said, “but that [are] used in the wrong way become ‘weapons of rebellion.’”

Speech, for example, “can edify or demean,” the apostle said. “There is much in public and personal discourse today that is malicious and mean–spirited…much in conversation that is vulgar and profane, even among youth. This sort of speech is a ‘weapon of rebellion’ against God,‘ full of deadly poison.’”

A career may seem good but “could be turned against divine directives,” Christofferson said. “Still, it is possible that devotion to career can become the paramount focus of one’s life. Then all else becomes secondary, including any claim the Savior may make on one’s time and talent.”

Focusing on career might cause some to forgo legitimate opportunities for marriage, neglect a spouse or children. “Even intentionally avoiding the blessing and responsibility of child rearing solely for the sake of career advancement,” he warned, “can convert laudable achievement into a form of rebellion.”

While taking care of one’s body can be good, Christofferson said, “it would be a mark of rebellion to deface or defile one’s body, or abuse it, or fail to do what one can to pursue a healthy lifestyle.”

At the same time, “vanity and becoming consumed with one’s physique, appearance or dress can be a form of rebellion at the other extreme,” he said, “leading one to worship God’s gift instead of God.”

Burying weapons of rebellion against God, Christofferson said, “means yielding to the enticing of the Holy Spirit, putting off the natural man and becoming a saint ‘through the atonement of Christ the Lord.’”

Morning session

President Dallin H. Oaks: Peacemaking in a time of division

Speaking on the eve of a tense and tight U.S. presidential election, apostle Dallin H. Oaks, first counselor in the First Presidency and next in line to lead the global church, lamented the state of public discourse, stating “this is a time of many harsh and hurtful words in public communications and sometimes even in our families.”

These “sharp differences on issues of public policy” have serious and harmful consequences, he warned (without overtly mentioning the election), including “actions of hostility — even hatred” between people both privately and publicly. Other times, it “paralyzes” lawmaking on urgent matters.

“We need to love and do good to all. We need to avoid contention and be peacemakers in all our communications,” he advised. “This does not mean to compromise our principles and priorities but to cease harshly attacking others for theirs.”

This commandment, he said, is a “permanent commandment,” and one that, like tithing, fully embracing “The Family: A Proclamation to the World” and using the “revealed” name of the church, Latter-day Saints have been perhaps a little slow to fully realize.

Such commandments stand in contrast to “temporary commandments,” such as the one early Latter-day Saint pioneers followed when they abandoned the United States for the frontier.

“As we pursue our preferred policies in public actions, let us qualify for his blessings by using the language and methods of peacemakers,” he urged. “In our families and other personal relationships, let us avoid what is harsh and hateful.”

General authority Gregorio E. Casillas: Making a positive difference in the world

Latter-day Saints should avoid “comparing ourselves to one another,” said Gregorio E. Casillas, a general authority Seventy from Mexico. “Your spiritual abilities are unique, personal, and innate, and your Heavenly Father wants to help you develop them. There will always be someone you can help feel the love of your Heavenly Father. Your potential is divine.”

As members help others, God will bless their lives, Casillas said. “He will bless your current or future family; and he will bless the lives of his children that you encounter. We live in a time of great opportunity. Although we face many difficulties, I know they are there in part to allow us to help others feel the love of our Heavenly Father.”

It is a “privilege to watch over people who need a helping hand, an embrace, a feeling of comfort, or simply for us to be with them in silence,” the leader said. “If we can help lighten their burdens, even if only for a moment, then we will be able to see the great manifestations of the Savior’s power in their lives.”

As disciples of Jesus Christ, Latter-day Saints can make “a positive difference in the world,” he said. “We can provide a sense of joy that is reflected in our countenance; a joy that we share with words of love and acts of kindness. Let us be good neighbors, good employers and good workers. Let us strive to be good Christians at all times.”

General authority David P. Homer: Truth is absolute

Contrary to what some might say, God’s “boundaries between right and wrong are not for us to define,” general authority Seventy David P. Homer told listeners.

“God has established these boundaries himself,” he said, “based on eternal truths for our benefit and blessing.”

Submitting to these boundaries does not limit but expands one’s potential, he argued, stating: “The choice to submit our will to God’s is an act of faith that lies at the heart of our discipleship. In making that choice, we discover that our agency is not diminished; rather, it is magnified and rewarded by the presence of the Holy Ghost, who brings purpose, joy, peace, and hope we can find nowhere else.”

Apostle Dale G. Renlund: The church is ‘ordinary…disciples of Jesus Christ’

The “Lord’s church” is not “a location or a building,” said apostle Dale G. Renlund. It is “simply ordinary people, disciples of Jesus Christ, gathered and organized into a divinely appointed structure that helps the Lord accomplish his purposes…the instrument through which we learn the central role of Jesus Christ in Heavenly Father’s plan.”

The church “offers the authoritative way for individuals to participate in ordinances and make lasting covenants with God,” Renlund said. “Keeping those covenants draws us closer to God, gives us access to his power, and transforms us into who he intends us to become.”

Just as dynamite without nitroglycerin is unremarkable, “the Savior’s church is special only if it is built on his gospel,” the apostle said. “Without the Savior’s gospel and the authority to administer the ordinances thereof, the church isn’t exceptional.”

Without this church, Renlund said, “there is no authority, no preaching of revealed truths in his name, no ordinances or covenants, no manifestation of the power of godliness, no transformation into who God wants us to become, and God’s plan for his children is set at naught.”

He invited listeners to commit fully to the church and Christ’s gospel.

“This power is far greater than dynamite,” he concluded. “It’ll shatter the rocks in your way.”

General authority Karl D. Hirst: God’s love is there, even when one might not feel it

General authority Seventy Karl D. Hirst spoke emphatically of God’s love for all his children, regardless of whether a person may feel worthy of such love.

“However misshapen we might feel we are, his arms are not shortened,” the British church leader said. “No. They are always long enough to ‘reach our reaching’ and embrace each one of us.”

Still, he acknowledged there are times when individuals may not feel that love.

Why that might be, he acknowledged, “I don’t know.” Nevertheless, he reassured listeners that even when this happens, that love “hasn’t gone away.”

He then offered suggestions for how individuals might put themselves in place to increase their sensitivity to God’s love for them. These included time in nature, service and the temple.

Hirst closed: “We have every good reason to ‘rejoice and be filled with love towards God and all men.’ Let’s get full.”

Young Women leader Emily Belle Freeman: Covenants ‘unlock’ divine power, not who officiates

It is not only the men who officiate in religious rituals that matters, said Young Women General President Emily Belle Freeman, “what the ordinance and our covenant promise unlocks also deserves the focus of our attention.”

God ordained men to stand in his place through ordinances, Freeman said, but women can experience “inward sanctification and covenant connection.”

She cited the example of church founder Joseph Smith’s wife, Emma, who learned through “divine revelation” that “ordinances combined with the keeping of her covenant promises would increase her companionship with the Spirit and with angels, empowering her to navigate her life with divine guidance.”

Emma knew, Freeman said, that “through his divine power, God would heal her heart, enlarge her capacity, and transform her into the version of herself he knew she could become.”

The sacrament of bread and water, or Communion, is “a weekly reminder of his power working in you to help you overcome,” she said. “Wearing the garment of the holy priesthood is a daily reminder of the gift of his power working in you to help you become. We all have access to the gift of God’s power. Every time we partake of the sacrament. Every time we cross the threshold of a temple.”

Apostle Neil Andersen: The power of hope to sustain the faithful amid life’s greatest trials

Apostle Neil L. Andersen opened the Saturday session with a message of hope.

In contrast to the casual, everyday use of the word hope to express a wish, Andersen explained, “our sacred and eternal hopes centered in Jesus Christ and the restored gospel” have the power to bring reassurance even in one’s darkest hour.

He contrasted the example of two families — one faithful and one that “found pleasure in their intellect and the rejection of their faith.” When tragedy struck each in the form of a death in the family, the faithful family members found peace amid their heartache while the other were overcome with “despair and confusion.”

Temples, a defining feature of the Nelson’s presidency, represent the ultimate symbol of hope, the apostle continued.

“There is no pain, no sickness, no injustice, no suffering, nothing that can darken our hope as we believe and hold tightly to our covenants with God in the House of the Lord,” he told listeners. “It is a house of light, a house of hope.”