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I will not be adding notes live this time, but everyone else is free to add your comments and impressions. I will add mine later. Although a bit dry, Elder Packer’s talk about the Savior is good basic stuff. I really enjoyed Elder Packer’s talk, we need more talks about the basic atonement. I felt bad for him though because he was obviously struggling. I didn’t appreciate the one after that, the seventy I don’t know the name. Seemed to be a retrenching of ideas sigh. The sisters talk was awesome though. First non-English talk coming up. Unfortunately it’s about the rescue. I don’t like the reference to the one assigned to be rescued compared to a palsy. Present favorites – Elder Packer (I didn’t expect to have that) and the Sister E. – the one on the sacrament. Not loving Elder Christopherson’s talk – I find the young adult references unfortuntate. I did enjoy Pres. Monson. He is like a super grandpa to me. I think according to Christofferson’s talk we should fight against correlation. It makes me lean on a program. His wrap up wasn’t bad. I give it a 6 out of 10.
I love Henry Eyring’s voice. Yes. The Silver Fox is coming to the podium. Will he speak German?
D’oh. I just looked at the clock. I missed most of this session. Looks like I’ll be reading this session. So I was only able to catch the last talk. I’m a bit torn on it. The part about going back to the past and having to explain to someone about modern technology and being disbelieved or even persecuted by people that are in a place where they are incapable of understanding (very loose paraphrasing).
I got the sense that this was aimed at the disbeliever, that they may currently be in a place where they can’t understand but if they hang around for a while it will become clear. The problem is that I flipped it on it’s head. That the info in the essays is in the church’s future and members today will disbelieve and persecute the people that try to explain these things to them.
I was put off by a large section of his talk but I noticed that he was very careful to say the spirit would bear witness of spiritual truths, not that the spirit would bear witness of the truthfulness of the church. I’ll have to eventually go back and rewatch the talk with that in mind because I wasn’t enjoying the talk until I noticed that. Up until that point the talk had a “if you don’t believe, stick around, you’ll eventually see how we’re right” vibe, which is the same old message that I’ve found off-putting in the past.
President Monson mentioned twice that we will be learning from the men AND women who speak. I appreciated that simple wording. I really love it when President Packer focuses on Christ (really, on anything except sexuality in some way). This was a very good talk. About the atonement applying to the pain of the innocents: “Someone must pay for what was done to me. Someone already has paid.” Also, “Gospel success will be measured by spiritual strength in ways that cannot be counted.”
Elder Robbins: I don’t like the unspoken connotations I am positive he had in mind, but I appreciated that he left them unspoken and dealt only with principles. Without the connotations, it actually was an excellent talk. Unfortunately, it’s almost impossible to remove the connotations. I also liked that he used Joseph smith as an example of screwing up.
Sister Esplin: Excellent talk about the sacrament. I LOVED the focus on “enabling power” and remembering blessings during the sacrament, not just on remembering sins and repenting of them.
Elder Wong: CANTONESE!!! Gave me chills, I have to admit. I love the change. The talk was about “The Rescue”, but it was an wonderful way to frame and discuss it. I really liked the analogy of the man with a palsy being taken to Jesus to be healed.
Elder Christofferson’s talk was another one that will be interpreted in multiple ways, since he focused on principles. Personally, I loved the focus on personal agency and the (overlooked, perhaps) implications that we are doing God’s work here by encouraging people to find their own faith and act according to the dictated of their consciences while staying LDS. My favorite statement was near the end, when he said that we don’t need to meet some minimum standard before receiving God’s help.
Pres. Uchtdorf was President Uchtdorf. Seriously, another home run. What hit me hard this time is that he is BALANCED, and it shows in his talks. I really love the fact that he is, in some ways, the voice of the Church right now – since President Monson is not as vigorous as he used to be – and that he is the theological voice of the Church, since President Monson speaks almost always about service and love (and I love them both for that).
If I were to rank them in order of “please listen” to “give it a miss,” I’d go with Packer first (really excellent, focus on Jesus Christ like a special witness ought to); Esplin (good explanation of the sacrament with some focus on Christ, although I would have liked it better had she relied more on her own thoughts as opposed to quoting other GAs); Uchtdorf (particularly toward the end and talking about how the church is a place for everyone and that he spoke about spiritual truths, not necessarily “gospel truth”); Christofferson (like Ray pointed out I did like the idea that we don’t have to meet some level of obedience in order to get God’s help); Robbins (mundane, actually almost dozed off); Wong (I did like the Cantonese but I didn’t like the voice over and would rather have had subtitles, and while I see Ray’s point about the analogy he was making with members helping Christ to heal, I did not like the implication that those who are to be rescued are somehow palsied, paralyzed, or broken – but maybe that’s just me being overly sensitive). I don’t list Monson because he really didn’t say anything, it was the customary welcome speech and no new temples is not really a surprise. All that said, a year ago I probably would have left the room after Wong got going and would have likely missed Christofferson (which wouldn’t have been all that big a deal, actually) and perhaps most of Uchtdorf. I’ve listened to conference in my second language for many years now. Overdub is the method they’ve always used. I guess this is the first time English speakers have been exposed to it. It reallystarts getting distracting when you know both languages. They don’t do subtitles because currently conference only has one feed that goes out to video, radio, and audio only streams. They’re probably also factoring for the people that are not strong readers. I suppose in the future they could separate the feeds out; multiple subtitles and multiple language tracks?
Another note on overdubbing. Quite often in the past if a person speaks more than one language they will pre-record their talk in the other language (non-English in the past). When it’s their turn to talk they overdub the audio with the pre-recorded version on that specific language channel so people get to hear the talk in the speaker’s real voice, not the voice of the translator. Perhaps they could have done that in this case. If comfortable enough with English maybe they could have set it up such that Chi Hong Wong’s overdub was in his own voice.
The people it really matters to aren’t you and I so much, but the people that, for the first time ever, are getting to hear talks in conference in their native languages without being subject to the overdub. Now you can see what they’ve been dealing with for years.
Really only caught Uchtdorf’s talk. I really liked it, he seems to be aware and thinking about those of us who struggle in their faith. I liked the analogy for absolute truth, but I wish all of us Latter-day Saints could accept we don’t have all the right tools to know absolute truth. We can choose to believe what we believe, and spiritual experiences can even bear witness to those beliefs, but just because we have those experiences doesn’t mean that is the standard by which all are to be judged. We may someday learn that belief in Christ and belief in Hinduism are not mutually exclusive, but they were both important parts to God’s truth. Elder Oaks’ talk started out with a direct statement against gay marriage, but he then added things that I absolutely love, including: 1) If things become law that we don’t support, we need to accept it.
2) We should not support discrimination based on sexual orientation.
3) We should not keep our kids from playing with non-member children, referencing it happening in Utah.
It’s not going to be one of my favorites, but it’s a LOT better than I thought it would be at first – and the second half was excellent.
DFU previously described the women’s meeting as the first session of GC, but he introduced the Saturday afternoon session as the second. Which one doesn’t count – last week or this morning? I just got up and walked out. This talk about Joseph Smith is making me want to throw things. “The internet doesn’t have a truth filter” so instead trust in the sanitized, correlated version of church history.
DH is mad at me for walking away, but I just can’t get behind this one. How many wives did JS have, actually?
Elder Anderson’s talk was a very traditional view of Joseph. That says it all.
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