Hooray! It's here!

Each April and October our church holds a semi-annual General Conference. The leaders of our church, through satellite broadcast throughout the world, speak to the members about subjects that they feel are important to our happiness and spiritual well-being. In May and November, these addresses are published in the church magazine, the Ensign. We have a subscription to the magazine and I LOVE getting these two special issues, so I can read the words that I heard again and try to apply them in my life. And our November issue just arrived. Yea!

They also make the addresses available online both in written and video/audio format at www.lds.org. I haven't had a chance to read many of the addresses yet, but one that I liked especially can be read here. It is titled "The Love of God," and it talks about the love that God has for us, and how we can become better disciples of Christ by increasing our love for Him. A quick quote: "We increase our love for our Heavenly Father and demonstrate that love by aligning our thoughts and actions with God’s word. His pure love directs and encourages us to become more pure and holy. It inspires us to walk in righteousness—not out of fear or obligation but out of an earnest desire to become even more like Him because we love Him."

Thinking about a way to explain General Conference to my family members who are not LDS, I decided on this analogy: It would be like, if you're Catholic, the Pope and the Cardinals and the Archbishops (you can correct me if I'm not getting the hierarchy correct--I don't know a lot about the Catholic leadership), all getting together, choosing a number of them to address the church, and then speaking to a body of the members about matters they see members struggling with. These addresses would be recorded, and then made available so that they could be shown instead of regular church services at any Catholic church in the world.

You can imagine how great it would be to be able to hear the leaders of your church directly every six months. And that's why I was excited to get the Conference issue of the Ensign. If you're interested, I hope you check it out.