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Best hymn: “Oh, What Songs of the Heart,” Saturday evening. It gets bonus points for mention of Heavenly Parents, but I really liked it musically too.
Worst hymn:  “Lord, I Would Follow Thee,” Sunday morning. This was just very bland.
Fastest hymn: “The Lord Is My Light,” Saturday evening.
Slowest hymn: “Did You Think to Pray?” Saturday morning.
Best and worst choir: I really liked the Utah Valley Institute choir that sang Saturday evening. I was much less a fan of the BYU-I choir that sang Saturday afternoon. It wasn’t a knock on their singing; I just felt like the arrangements they sang had weird pacing changes. (Sorry, as a music noob, I can’t explain it any better.)

Longest prayer: 167 seconds, S. Gifford Nielsen, Saturday morning invocation.
Shortest prayer: 51 seconds, Emily Belle Freeman, Saturday afternoon benediction. I appreciated that she didn’t force herself to use proper prayer pronouns.
Unsurprising prayer difference: Men gave eight prayers, with the shortest being 93 seconds (average of 114 seconds). Women gave two prayers, with the longer being 68 seconds.

Best slip of the tongue: While conducting the Sunday afternoon session, Quentin L. Cook welcomed us to the 109th annual General Conference. (It was actually the 194th.)

Best title: Patrick Kearon, “God’s Intent Is to Bring You Home”
Overdone title: Dale G. Renlund, “The Powerful, Virtuous Cycle of the Doctrine of Christ” I didn’t realize until I read the talk that he was quoting Russell M. Nelson, who has a love of hyperbole.

Longest talk: D. Todd Christofferson, 1961 words. (He also gave the longest talk among Q15 members last conference.)
Shortest talk: Susan H. Porter, 1252 words.

Best laugh:

• Dale G. Renlund showed with his hands the sizes of the tiny waves that knocked him off his kayak.
• Massimo De Feo told how his wife told him the reason he didn’t remember them having any major problems was that he had a short memory.

Strangest joke: Jeffrey R. Holland, who hadn’t given a talk in a couple of conferences because of health issues, joked that it was because he gave a bad talk last time. He said that he was at risk of being banned again, “positioned on a trapdoor with a very delicate latch.” While I appreciate his willingness to laugh at himself, I found this an odd choice of jokes precisely because we have seen that speakers don’t get removed from the rotation if they do bad things. You can try to stealth canonize your favorite proclamation and still come back. You can openly set up a money-making scheme and still come back. It seems like a weird thing to call attention to.

Bad pattern: There was wall-to-wall discussion of temples and covenants. Two speakers—J. Anette Dennis and Dallin H. Oaks—brought up temple garments, which I feel like are mentioned in conference rarely if ever. (Gerrit W. Gong even exhorted members to buy our own temple clothes.) I have to wonder if President Nelson has noticed that maybe all the new temples he’s announcing aren’t drawing as much new patronage as he had hoped, so now he’s trying to drum up some more traffic to make them look more successful. This discussion showed up in some strange lines:

• Jack N. Gerard said that in performing the atonement, Jesus “fulfilled the covenant He had made with His Father.” I feel like I’ve never heard this called a covenant before. Is this new doctrine?
• Andrea Muñoz Spannaus said that “obeying our covenants” is one key to drawing on the power of Christ. Obeying? I’ve heard keeping, but a covenant isn’t a commandment or a rule.
• Ulisses Soares assured us that “having the spirit of the Lord’s house in us changes us, completely.” Wait, so the temple has its own spirit now? Is the Holy Ghost at risk of being displaced?

Beloved buzzwords:

• Russell M. Nelson’s “think celestial” line from last conference was picked up and repeated by a number of speakers, sometimes in strange ways. For example, Neil L. Andersen, with a reference to D&C 87, said that “[The Lord] spoke of a righteous people resisting the deceptions of the adversary, disciplining their faith, thinking celestial, . . .” Really? He spoke of that?
• There’s clearly been a push to call temples “houses of the Lord.” This often sounds clumsy. For example, here’s the opening to David A. Bednar’s talk: “During a recent open house and media day for a new house of the Lord, . . .” Of course, President Nelson has also pushed to use the full name of the Church, regardless of how or where it doesn’t fit, so he’s clearly not one to be deterred by verbal clumsiness.
• Ronald A. Rasband appears to not be able to give a talk without saying “by divine design.”

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If we’re between Palm Sunday and Easter, that must mean it’s Holy Week. But more importantly for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, after Easter comes General Conference! I have some guesses about things we will and won’t hear about.

• Church purchase of Kirtland Temple: 70%
• Church top purchaser of land in Nebraska: << 1%
• Church purchase of Pacific Gateway Industrial development in 2022: << 1%
• Kirtland Temple, the first temple of the Restoration: 90%
• Kirtland Safety Society, the first financial institution of the Restoration: < 1%

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Best hymn: “Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing,” Saturday afternoon.
Worst hymn: “We Listen to a Prophet’s Voice,” Saturday morning. We can’t seriously claim to believe in fallible prophets while we sing this hymn.
Fastest hymn: “Arise, O God, and Shine,” Saturday evening.
Slowest hymn: “I’m Trying to Be Like Jesus,” Sunday morning.
Best tacit admission that the hymn is too long: The YA choir singing “I Believe in Christ” Saturday evening just skipped verse 2.

Longest prayer: 164 seconds, Michael T. Nelson, Saturday morning benediction
Shortest prayer: 49 seconds, Clark G. Gilbert, Saturday evening invocation

Best title: Robert M. Daines, “Sir, We Would Like to See Jesus”.
Worst title: M. Russell Ballard, “Praise to the Man”. Can we please just not with the prophet worship?
Title that sounds like a threat: Yoon Hwan Choi, “Do You Want to Be Happy?”. Well, do ya, punk?

Good patterns:

• Multiple speakers emphasized the importance of relationships and not the gospel as a list of requirements (Amy A. Wright, Robert M. Daines, Dallin H. Oaks, and especially Emily Belle Freeman).
• Multiple speakers pointed out how Jesus reached out to people at the margins (Robert M. Daines, Ulisses Soares, and Christophe G. Giraud-Carrier).
• Ulisses Soares, and Christophe G. Giraud-Carrier talked about how we’re all equal before God, and there’s no place in the Church for racism or other prejudice.

Bad patterns:

• Multiple speakers used threats to get their points across. Dallin H. Oaks and Russell M. Nelson threatened people with lesser kingdoms in the next life if we don’t shape up. Carlos A. Godoy and Valeri V. Cordón warned parents that we’ll lose our children if we’re not devoted enough.
• Joni L. Koch and Adilson de Paula Parrella felt like they still needed to make a big deal about the correct name of the Church. For Elder Kock, it felt particularly out of the blue, as he was talking about humility, and then brought the topic up as part of a “pop quiz” on humility. What?
• It’s not good news when multiple speakers (D. Todd Christofferson and Russell M. Nelson) are quoting from D&C 132. Even if they’re not talking directly about polygamy and women as interchangeable objects, you can bet they’re talking about adjacent topics.
• Two speakers (Yoon Hwan Choi and Gerrit W. Gong) talked about how Church members shouldn’t turn down callings.

Random interesting bits:

• I appreciated that when he wanted a sports example, Gary E. Stevenson not only went for a sport not popular in the US (soccer), but he talked about women’s soccer.
• Ulisses Soares compared the many groups of humanity to the Iguaçú Falls in Brazil that come from the Iguaçú River. This makes the second Conference in a row with a Brazilian river analogy, as in April, Dale G. Renlund talked about the pororoca in the Amazon, where the water flows backward under some conditions. I look forward to seeing which speaker will take up the baton and keep this topic going next April!
• In talking about the afterlife, Dallin H. Oaks gender-neutralized the description of people in the celestial kingdom, quoting D&C 76:58 with daughters added: “they are gods, even the sons [and daughters] of God,” but a few paragraphs later, he didn’t gender-neutralize people in the terrestrial (“honorable men of the earth”) or telestial kingdoms (“he who cannot abide . . . a terrestrial glory” [ellipsis in original]). Honestly, I appreciate that he tried, as it’s often not obvious when scripture writers meant men as people and when they meant it as just men. But I also think this highlights the concern so many women have that they’re really not that important in LDS thought, except as tickets.

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Fastest hymn: “I Believe in Christ,” Sunday morning.
Slowest hymn: “I Stand All Amazed,” Sunday afternoon.
Best hymn: “High on the Mountain Top,” Saturday morning. This is frequently sung as a congregational hymn, which means a vanilla arrangement, so it was fun to hear a different version with stuff like organ interludes.
Worst hymn: “Keep the Commandments,” Saturday morning. This is a dull hymn to begin with, and the bland arrangement didn’t improve it.

Longest prayer: 270 seconds, Adeyinka A. Ojediran, Sunday afternoon benediction. This was the second-longest Conference prayer I’ve ever seen, being beaten out only by D. Rex Gerratt’s 274-second prayer in 2007. (My data does only go back to 1996, and is spotty prior to 2005.)
Longest prayer, honorable mention: 186 seconds, Thierry K. Mutombo, Sunday morning benediction. At the time he gave it, this was the longest prayer since 2010, but then he was upstaged by Elder Ojediran the very next session.
Shortest prayer: 45 seconds, Mark L. Pace, Saturday morning benediction.

Best title: Vern P. Stanfill, “The Imperfect Harvest”
Phoning it in title: Gerrit W. Gong, “Ministering”
Most overwrought title: Ahmad S. Corbitt, “Do You Know Why I as a Christian Believe in Christ?”

Good patterns:

• With Russell M. Nelson, Dallin H. Oaks, and Neil L. Andersen focusing on different issues, and Jeffrey R. Holland and his musket sidelined with COVID, there was no mention of LGBTQ issues, which is so often an area where speakers say cruel things.
• Some men in the Logan Institute choir (Saturday evening) and the BYU choir (Saturday afternoon) actually had facial hair! And hair touching or over the collar! (Yes, even the BYU choir. Don’t tell the Honor Code Office!)

Good/bad pattern: Russell M. Nelson gave only one full talk and the usual half-talk at the end to announce new temples, and the other First Presidency members gave only one talk each (like last Conference) leaving more opportunity for different people (especially women) to speak. Unfortunately, rather than getting more women added to the lineup, we just got an abbreviated Saturday evening session.
Bad pattern: Speakers capitalize even random titles for prophets (“Father Lehi,” “Prophet Joseph”), but of course still refuse to capitalize—or even mention—Heavenly Mother.

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General Conference is less than a month away. What topics do you think we’ll hear about? What topics

will speakers carefully avoid? Here’s a list of some of my guesses of topics and phrases and possible policy changes, along with the likelihood that they’ll come up in Conference talks.

Words and phrases

• “Youth battalion” — 90%
• “Middle-aged battalion” — < 1%
• “Senior citizen battalion” — << 1%
• “Youth corps” — < 1%
• “Let God prevail” — > 99%
• “Covenant path” — 99%
• “Plan of happiness” — 60%
• “Plan of salvation” — 10%
• “Divine design” — 20%
• “Hinge point” — 10%
• “Under the banner of heaven” — << 1%
• “Big 12” — 1%
• “SEC [Southeastern Conference]” — < 1%
• “SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission]” — << 1%
• “We consider this matter closed.” — << 1%
• “In all material respects, contributions received, expenditures made, and assets of the Church have been recorded and administered in accordance with approved Church budgets, policies, and accounting practices.” — 99%

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This weekend, the Church will hold its first general conference to welcome a large live audience since before the COVID pandemic began. Even with the return of an audience, though, Church spokesman Heber Gordon Alonzo Pratt explains that several adaptations made during the previous four conferences will be retained going forward.

First, during the sustaining votes, which are held each conference to allow members to express their support for the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve and all other general-level governing bodies of the Church (as presently constituted), audience members will no longer be asked to raise their hands in support. Rather, as during the pandemic, all audience members, whether viewing online or in person, and

in real time or later using recordings, will be presumed to have expressed support unless they explicitly express otherwise by contacting their stake president and surrendering their temple recommend (if applicable). Making this change permanent has a number of benefits, Pratt explained. First, it does not privilege the voices of in-person attendees over those of members who are far from Salt Lake. Second, it eases the minds of General Authorities who may become unsettled by the possibility of a dissenting vote occurring right before their very eyes. Third, it relieves attendees, who do not know ahead of time which session the sustainings will occur in, of the burden of having to raise their hands upwards of five times. “Essentially, we’re streamlining the sustaining process by making it opt out rather than opt in,” Pratt summarized.

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With the Church’s announcement that this April’s Conference will feature a women’s session, many members have been left puzzling at the General Authorities’ rationale for handling of the Saturday night session. Last year, they first announced that the session would be discontinued, but then later brought it back as a fifth general session. All this came after the Saturday night session was for many years always a priesthood session, but was then switched in 2018 to an alternating priesthood and women’s session.

Here at ZD, we are pleased to share that we have learned the explanation for these seemingly random changes. Below is a photo leaked to us from a source deep in Church administration that appears to show President Nelson drumming up excitement before he spins the Saturday Night Selector wheel to decide what the Church will do for the upcoming Conference.