Elder Ballard spoke to us first and gave an amazing unscripted talk. He had one written, but decided not to use it and just went by the spirit instead.
Brother Neeleman went next and spoke about the internet as a tool for helping others find the gospel. Websites are much easier for most people to use until they are ready to get baptized because they can remain anonymous if they don't want people to know they are investigating and they are able to work at their own pace. Unfortunately, until recently Google searching "Mormon" yielded almost entirely anti-mormon websites. One day, Bro. Neeleman was searching and found FairLDS.org and decided to send a donation ($1,000- "a small donation") and was shocked to receive a letter from the lady who runs it explaining that she has MS and was struggling to keep the website running until his check came. After that, Bro. Neeleman decided to start helping the church change the image it had on the internet and started the More Good Foundation (Mormon means More Good) which is aimed at ensuring that each anti website or comment online is countered by 10 pro-Mormon sites/comments. They achieve this goal through websites such as LDS.net(where everyone should get an account) and MormonWiki. I wish I had the statistics on how big of a difference they have made, but I don't. What I can share is some good youtube channels:
http://www.youtube.com/user/mormonmessages?blend=3&ob=4
http://www.youtube.com/user/MormonNewEraMessages
http://www.youtube.com/user/mormonanswerman
http://www.youtube.com/user/mormons101
Or a Much Larger List, though this still will not show everything.
Elder Christensen spoke on member missionary work and dispelled many of the common misconceptions on how to go about the work. He placed a lot of emphasis on being genuine with people, never building up your relationship prior to inviting them to learn about the gospel, never judging whether a person would or would not accept the gospel until AFTER you have tried and inviting those who have sufficient for their own needs to share in our opportunities to serve others.
After Elder Christensen's talk we broke up into 60 different groups, ate lunch and developed plans for new ways to share the gospel and improve people's knowledge of what we believe. Ideas ranged from using twitter to redoing the old pass-along cards. We all voted on our favorites and the top ten got to present their ideas to Elder Ballard in front of the entire conference and he then spoke to us again and is taking the ideas to the brotheren to decide on implementation. My personal favorite was virtual temple tours- when there is a temple open house somewhere in the world a 3-D virtual tour would be put online to help dispel myths about the temple.
After the conference we had a few hours to wander the city/eat dinner. A dance started at 8-ish but was pretty lame (masquerade balls aren't a very good place to meet people, neither are dance floors too small to see anyone through the crowd) so I spent probably more time wandering the streets than at the dance.
The next day was stake conference where we got to hear from Elder Ballard again and met him briefly afterword.
It was a fun weekend, but now the week is in full swing and life has resumed its normal function. On to life's next adventure!
One more thing. For those who are interested, the talks are supposedly going to be posted on ldseducationconference.org sometime soon. They really were amazing and if you are interested in this stuff you should check it out!
Awwww, look at poor Elder Ballard sandwiched between those goofy looking cadets!
ReplyDeleteJust kidding. Glad you had that opportunity. Seriously, your life is full of opps that most of us will never see.