Getting back to that first batch of names submitted for ordinances... the way to submit at the time was to pick up family group sheets from the church library, fill them out, and mail them to Salt Lake City. There were two different addresses, depending on whether your names were from before or after 1500. After a few weeks they would send a report of which ones had been approved, and cards for those people had been sent to the temple you designated. You had to request a name at the desk before you went in for your session.
When I was submitting names from The Harris Wheel, you took a diskette to the family history library and the were matched against a database on CDs. You took a separate diskette to the temple, and they printed the file there. The internet was not widely used at the time, but I could see that was the direction things were going. I am still not sure that I saw how much easier it would become.
When I think about the changes I have seen during my lifetime, you would think I was 100 (I am only 50).
My earliest church memory is being in nursery on a Tuesday morning, while my mother was in Relief Society. I remember going to Primary after school on Wednesdays. Then all of that changed. All of those meetings were changed to a three hour block. There are children here who will only remember two hour meetings.
We went from one quorum of the 70 to twelve. Budget contributions ended and they changed it so that all missionaries paid the same amount monthly, regardless of where they served. Minimum ages for missionaries have changed, and the number of missionary training centers increased, along with a recent addition of home learning.
When I was born there were 13 temples in operation. Today there are 168 operating, 46 under construction or renovation, and 68 announced.
Many of those changes are a response to the growth that we have seen, but they also sometimes come as a preparation for more growth, before it happens.
That is where we get to the crux of the talk that my talk was based on: Elder M. Russell Ballard's "The Trek Continues!" from the October 2017 General Conference.
He makes the point that even 170 years since Brigham Young declared "This is the right place," we were still not able to rest on our laurels; there was still more work to be done.
As it is, my strongest conference memory of Elder Ballard comes from October 1993 and April 1994, both of which occurred while I was in the mission field.
I remember that April feeling like the speakers were repeating their subjects, so the subtext was that six months ago, we were not listening. That was my feeling, but Brother Ballad removed all doubt when he mentioned going to leadership trainings since speaking on ward councils and the importance of getting input from everyone. When he would look for demonstrations of that, he found many bishops had taken this to mean distributing assignments among more council members, but they were not really taking feedback.
Without exception, the bishop took charge of the situation immediately and said, “Here’s the problem, and here’s what I think we should do to solve it.” Then he made assignments to the various ward council members. This was a good exercise in delegation, I suppose, but it did not even begin to use the experience and wisdom of council members to address the problem.
Eventually I asked the bishop to try again, only this time to solicit ideas and recommendations from his council members before making any assignments. I especially encouraged him to ask the sisters for their ideas. When the bishop opened the meeting to council members and invited them to counsel together, the effect was like opening the floodgates of heaven.
We really have too much to do; it could never be appropriate to expect one person in the ward to have all of the insight. Even breaking it down to a presidency or committee level, there are counselors and other members because we need other perspectives and relationships and guidance and care.
It is clear that our work is not done, so what is most important for us as we attempt to finish our journey? And what did Elder Ballard say about that?
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