COVID - 19 General Conference

This is now the 4th Sunday of social distancing. This was also General Conference Sunday. More on that later. Here are the current Arizona statistics for the virus spread.

Here are the US statistics for confirmed cases (again, many more cases were too mild to test and don't show up in these statistics.

So COVID-19 case numbers have definitely increased...more than doubled in one week.

Back to conference. This was a historic conference for the church. We celebrated the 200th anniversary of the First Vision of Joseph Smith and it was the first General Conference ever held without a live audience present. The virus pandemic had everyone social distancing.

Choir numbers were all prerecorded. The last choir number was 'We Thank Thee, O God, for a Prophet' sung by multiple choirs around the world. It was well done an inspirational.

President Nelson introduced a new proclamation on the "THE RESTORATION OF THE FULNESSOF THE GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST" that he read from the sacred grove. He also introduced a new symbol...

New Church Symbol

...and 8 new temples:

• Bahía Blanca, Argentina

• Tallahassee, Florida

• Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of the Congo

• Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

• Benin City, Nigeria

• Syracuse, Utah

• Dubai, United Arab Emirates

• Shanghai, People’s Republic of China

I was impressed by the descriptions of the Kirtland Endowment and how vital it was to the mission of the church in this dispensation and the work of gathering Israel.

The Kirtland Temple played a brief but important role in the restoration. This was an inspirational conference. Pres Nelson asked the whole church to fast on Good Friday (April 10, 2020 which happens to be Eric's birthday) for relief from the effects of the current pandemic. Seldom has the whole world been affected in such a way.

We look forward to doing our part.