BYU Women's Conference 2010

I was able to go to most of BYU Women's conference this year and I wanted to record and share some of the things I learned.

From Sister Julie Beck:

~ Taking care of our posterity takes precedence over all things. (In a freudian slip, I wrote in my notes "prosperity" instead of "posterity":)
~The most important skill we can learn, the ultimate education is the power to know and do God's will.
~ When our priorities are out of order we lose power. We need to use the following categories for prioritizing keeping in mind that the most important thing is salvation in God's kingdom:

1. ESSENTIAL: scriptures, personal prayer, (take a paper and pencil to prayer and ask: who do I need to help?) pondering, keeping covenants, being worthy and ready to receive revelation.
2. NECESSARY: taking care of home and family, creating a climate for the Spirit in our home. The temple is our model, we need to do the mundane tasks to keep a house of order. We need to cook meals - a place to teach and gather. We need to SMILE, teach our children, support our husband.
3. NICE TO DO: crafts, lunch with friends, reading. These add variety and make life fun, but they won't SAVE us.

She talked about how her father-in-law worked shift work and she felt as a mother she was working all the shifts. We need to save our energy, when we are at the top of our game, for the most important shift of our particular stage. For mothers of teenagers it will probably be the "swing shift" 4 pm - midnight. For young mothers it may be the day shift. For mothers of newborns it's definitely the graveyard shift!

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Lisa Valentine Clark (whose blog I follow) talked about technology. She said that we need to be DELIBERATE about the way we use technology to make our lives less complicated, not more complicated.

As a side note: In our stake conference Saturday meeting our stake president suggested that we need to know how to use the internet, texting, social networking, etc. because it is how people communicate now, but use it appropriately with rules. Rules such as: know where your children have a presence online; if you wouldn't say it in person, don't type it; respect appropriate boundaries between youth and adults; don't embarrass your spouse; and remember: there is no app for parenting!

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From Elder Oaks:
~ Service in the family requires sacrifice, we must learn to balance personal needs with the needs of family members.
~Family success if based on righteous self-denial. We must dedicate our efforts to rearing the next generation.