Stake Conference

I love our stake presidency.  President Scoggin, Bates, and Christensen are impressive.  Of course stake conference was good and the satellite feed to the church where we attended worked perfectly.  (That has not been our usual experience.)  

There were a lot of good speakers, but my favorite thoughts came from an older man, Brother Orrin (I think).  Here's a few that I wrote down:

• On forgiveness - Our preoccupation with hurt or wrong doing gives us selective memory.  It takes neither strength or intelligence to brood in anger or hang onto a grudge.
• On trials - Things happen in our lives despite our wanting to do what is right.  We think that following commandments will always bring happiness, but that is not the promise. We've been promised opposition in all things.
• Indian's given names - We give ourselves names like "Man Who Fails".  Our Heavenly Father has given us other names like "Child" or "Daughter".
• He told of a young child that had been awakened by a nightmare and came to his parent's room for comfort.  The parent told the child to pray.  Heavenly Father would protect him and the Holy Ghost would comfort him.  The child replied that what he needed was someone with skin on.  Sometimes we need to be the person with skin on.

Brother Eric Nielson spoke on Home and Visiting Teaching.  He said that your family comes first, then HT/VT, then your other callings.  His key point was getting to know your families. It takes time, but that's when HT/VT gets to be fun and the duty part evaporates. That's what I need to work on.

It was a beautiful day, and the blossoming trees along Lake Forest were spectacular even though it had rained hard the night before.