General Conference!

Hi friends!
I hope y'all had a fantastic evening last night and loved the General Women's Meeting as much as I did! Even though I couldn't watch it last night, I did today, and it was fantastic. I love the simplicity of the Gospel. I loved the strength of the Spirit I felt. And then there's General Conference this weekend! :D The goodness just doesn't stop. I am so grateful for the Gospel!

All right, all right, here are the announcements and lesson recap:
1. Tomorrow night from 5-11pm is the Ward Closing Social at Spring Haven Lodge in Springville. Carpools will be leaving from Fleur-de-Lis at 5, 6, and 7pm. You don't have to come back with the people you went up with.
2. Institute is on Wednesday at 7pm in B092 JFSB.
3. Quick Connect is Thursday at 7pm.
4. General Conference is Saturday at 10am and 2pm, and Sunday at 10am and 2pm!
--Side note with that, please support the brethren in our ward and encourage them to attend/listen to the Priesthood session at 6pm on Saturday.

Today Relief Society was combined with Brother & Sister Porter teaching us from Elder D. Todd Christofferson's October General Conference talk, “The Moral Force of Women.”
https://www.lds.org/general-conference/2013/10/the-moral-force-of-women?lang=eng

Bro. Porter: What did Elder Bowen do to his wife the other weeK? He called his wife “The Gospel of Jesus Christ.”
What I got out of it was not that Sis. Bowen is perfect, but that she represents the women of the church. The RS always shows men up in how they can be better. It’s really about what women bring to the gospel. I think that’s what Elder Christofferson is getting at here too.
I can tell you that it’s because of Sis. Porter that our family is still strong in the gospel and we’ve been able to move forward.
He says that women are the moral force of society. Is that true? Are your mothers the moral force of society?
Adrienne: You hope they’re the moral force. Because that’s who are teaching children while they’re at home. That they’re correcting anything that could otherwise be influencing them.
Bro. Porter: You’re right on. Women outside the church are struggling with it. They don’t have the same moral compass to help them along.
Sis. Porter: We’ll talk more about that because as the talk goes on, he says that society is taking that away from women. They’re being told to be stronger and more equal to men in everything we do.
Bro. Porter: Having talked to you a little bit by what Elder Bowen said and did, I don’t want you to feel overwhelmed.

Women bring with them into the world a certain virtue, a divine gift that makes them adept at instilling such qualities as faith, courage, empathy, and refinement in relationships and in cultures. When praising the “unfeigned faith” he found in Timothy, Paul noted that this faith “dwelt first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice.”

Paul mentions that in the New Testament. That’s a great credit to Timothy’s mother and grandmother.
Elder Christofferson talks about the women he met in Mexico. He mentions one example of a young mother who had moral authority. With her husband she sacrificed a number of pleasures and seemed almost superhuman.

The demands on her were many and her tasks often repetitive and mundane, yet underneath it all was a beautiful serenity, a sense of being about God’s work. As with the Savior, she was ennobled by blessing others through service and sacrifice. She was love personified.

I want you to envision, “what is my life going to be like?”
Perhaps that involves a career, getting married, I imagine it involves having children.
Sis. Porter and I are here to testify that there is no greater joy than to have children in your home, to have a family. There’s also no greater way to learn patience. In the gospel we understand the family is important there is no greater role than to lead a family.

I have been remarkably blessed by the moral influence of women, in particular my mother and my wife. Among other women that I look to in gratitude is Anna Daines. Anna and her husband, Henry, and their four children were among the pioneers of the Church in New Jersey, in the United States. Beginning in the 1930s, when Henry was a doctoral student at Rutgers University, he and Anna worked tirelessly with school and civic organizations in Metuchen, where they lived, to overcome deeply rooted prejudice against Mormons and to make the community a better place for all parents to raise their children.
Anna, for example, volunteered at the Metuchen YMCA and made herself indispensable. Within a year she was appointed president of the Mothers’ Auxiliary and then “was asked to run for one of the three women’s positions on the YMCA board of directors. She won without opposition, and so joined the very council that only a few years before had refused to let the Saints meet in their building!”
My family moved into the New Brunswick Ward when I was a teenager. Sister Daines took notice of me and often expressed her confidence in my abilities and potential, which inspired me to reach high—higher than I would have without her encouragement. Once, because of a thoughtful and timely warning from her, I avoided a situation that would surely have led to regret. Although she is no longer here, Anna Daines’s influence continues to be felt and reflected in the lives of her descendants and countless others, myself included.

Sis. Porter: Bro Porter and I lived in a lot of places. Our first job out of BYU was in Michigan. I’m from California, and the East Coast is very different. From there we went back to CA, then to AZ, then here to UT. I like to be involved in my kids schools and the political activity in our area. I connected to this story because as a woman sometimes you wonder how to make a difference. I’m here to tell you that there’s small things you can do to let your light shine.
Carla: That reminds me of my mom. Everyone knew my mom. She’s always worked full time, but you always knew she’d be home to make dinner. Your kids need to know that you’re always there for them. She’s still the woman about town, but she’s always available to talk to me.
Sis. Porter: Just like this woman she helped this town change their view about Mormons. There’s so many small ways that just by being you and letting your light shine, you can open doors and help others.
My grandmother Adena Warnick Swenson taught me to be conscientious in priesthood service. She encouraged me to memorize the sacramental blessings on the bread and water, explaining that in this way I could express them with greater understanding and feeling. Observing how she sustained my grandfather, a stake patriarch, engendered in me a reverence for sacred things. Grandma Swenson never learned how to drive a car, but she knew how to help boys become priesthood men.
Sis: I really liked that because how many of you had a grandmother that could look into your soul and help you be a better person.
Bro. Porter: What Elder Christofferson says right after that I think is very powerful.

A woman’s moral influence is nowhere more powerfully felt or more beneficially employed than in the home. There is no better setting for rearing the rising generation than the traditional family, where a father and a mother work in harmony to provide for, teach, and nurture their children. Where this ideal does not exist, people strive to duplicate its benefits as best they can in their particular circumstances.

I think that’s critical. The world has lost sight of that. We need the foundation of the family. There’s no more better or powerful place you could be than in the home.
Ashley: I had a discussion with someone just the other day about sex education in Utah. I think it’s silly that schools can form students morals. We both kind of agreed that those are the things you learn in the home. Our friends have huge influences, but so much of what your parents expect from you and the examples they give, shape that part of you very early on.
Bro. Porter: What Sis. Porter and I decided before we had children, was that we would be completely open with our children. They could ask us any question they wanted and we would discuss it with them. What we also found over the years was that, you think you have to go into detail with kids, but you don’t. I agree that you said parents should be the ones teaching those values in the home.
Carla: My mom told me that her mom didn’t tell her anything, so she went out and did it all. When I was growing up, my parents were very open and taught us everything.
Brittany: There are good principles that can be taken from this. If we as parents aren’t strong and helping our children learn, there are other people who will. Even if they’re friends aren’t open, your kid will be ignorant. They’ll know things, but not from a really great source. I was at a family history center the other week and saw a video where the daughter asked her mom to go out and roller skate with her. The mother was really busy and the daughter said that the relationship building was very important now so that they could have a strong relationship now.
Olivia: A parent needs to have those conversations with their kids so they can learn it the way they need, and the information the parents want them to have.
Visitor: Attachment starts very early in life. If you don’t have that secure attachment with your caregiver, then you start to grow up super anxious or avoidant. It shows that people who have both parents actively involved in their lives, it makes a huge difference. I work with at risk kids, and it’s so sad to see that these kids don’t have that. I want so much to tell them that those who are checking up on them outside of the home are trying to help them and I wish they could have that in their home. It’s so important to have that love at home.
Sis. Badger: I just need to put this in perspective a little. 42 years ago when I was in high school, they showed us how to prevent pregnancy. We sort of live in a bubble in Utah.
Krystal: I had to take some of my education classes online. I actually had to take that particular class in an online setting. I feel there was a marked difference. Though you can’t regulate morals, you can keep immoral things from being taught in schools.
Bro. Porter: There’s 3 things that Elder Christofferson wanted to bring out that are some concerns he has.

A pernicious philosophy that undermines women’s moral influence is the devaluation of marriage and of motherhood and homemaking as a career. Some view homemaking with outright contempt, arguing it demeans women and that the relentless demands of raising children are a form of exploitation.8 They ridicule what they call “the mommy track” as a career. This is not fair or right. We do not diminish the value of what women or men achieve in any worthy endeavor or career—we all benefit from those achievements—but we still recognize there is not a higher good than motherhood and fatherhood in marriage. There is no superior career, and no amount of money, authority, or public acclaim can exceed the ultimate rewards of family. Whatever else a woman may accomplish, her moral influence is no more optimally employed than here.

The “mommy track” is being degraded by the world. It is a great influence in our world and society.
We already talked about the second.

Attitudes toward human sexuality threaten the moral authority of women on several fronts. Abortion for personal or social convenience strikes at the heart of a woman’s most sacred powers and destroys her moral authority. The same is true of sexual immorality and of revealing dress that not only debases women but reinforces the lie that a woman’s sexuality is what defines her worth.
A third area of concern comes from those who, in the name of equality, want to erase all differences between the masculine and the feminine. Often this takes the form of pushing women to adopt more masculine traits—be more aggressive, tough, and confrontational. It is now common in movies and video games to see women in terribly violent roles, leaving dead bodies and mayhem in their wake. It is soul-numbing to see men in such roles and certainly no less so when women are the ones perpetrating and suffering the violence.
Former Young Women general president Margaret D. Nadauld taught: “The world has enough women who are tough; we need women who are tender. There are enough women who are coarse; we need women who are kind. There are enough women who are rude; we need women who are refined. We have enough women of fame and fortune; we need more women of faith. We have enough greed; we need more goodness. We have enough vanity; we need more virtue. We have enough popularity; we need more purity.”10 In blurring feminine and masculine differences, we lose the distinct, complementary gifts of women and men that together produce a greater whole.

We would reference everyone also to The Family: A Proclamation to the world. Men and women have unique responsibilities, but both are necessary.
https://www.lds.org/topics/family-proclamation
Carla: I want to know if you have to choose one. I don’t think you have to go all the way one way, but in my sense, I want to be a mother and an attorney. I just want to say you can do both.
Ginger: I want to reference the Women’s Conference. Sister Burton said there are spiritual help wanted signs we can fill. We need to have good influence on others, because they need our help.
Bro: When Sis. Porter and I were engaged I told her I wanted to have 12 sons. She said she didn’t want to have kids at the start of our marriage. One night we were doing homework and she had a change of heart, where she told me our family wasn’t complete.
If you take it as a prayerful endeavor, the Lord has distinctly given us those roles.

My plea to women and girls today is to protect and cultivate the moral force that is within you. Preserve that innate virtue and the unique gifts you bring with you into the world. Your intuition is to do good and to be good, and as you follow the Holy Spirit, your moral authority and influence will grow. To the young women I say, don’t lose that moral force even before you have it in full measure. Take particular care that your language is clean, not coarse; that your dress reflects modesty, not vanity; and that your conduct manifests purity, not promiscuity. You cannot lift others to virtue on the one hand if you are entertaining vice on the other.

Bro. Porter: All I have to say is that I’m a better man because of my wife and her moral character. Each of you has that moral power that you can raise your society by holding true to what you know and what you know to be right. I testify that your HEavenly Father loves you and knows each of you.
Kelsey H: I want to add my testimony to that that I know we can add our moral force to society. As disciples of Christ we’re going to emanate that goodness.