This presentation was given at the BYU Women’s Conference on May 5, 2023.

And we begin.

Did you ever have to make up your mind? Pick up one and leave the other behind.

It's not often easy and not often kind.

Did you ever have to make up your mind?

That silly song is part of the soundtrack of my youth.

At the time, and I guess still today, it seemed to express an underlying wisdom that I can't imagine that John Sebastian had in mind when he wrote that whimsical little tune. Did you ever have to finally decide and say yes to one and let the other one ride? There's so many changes and tears you must hide.

Did you ever have to finally decide?

The first conversation of which we are aware that any of us was involved in was about making choices. In the premortal world, Heavenly Father described to us a world apart where we could choose to go to make decisions that would determine our eternal destinies. Mortality would begin with a choice.

Are you in or are you out? “There is a way for you to become like me,” Heavenly Father said. “A way to acquire all of my goodness,

all of my capacities, all of my enjoyments and joy.

But that way requires that you decide to opt in to my great plan of happiness.”

Tellingly, the Great Council of Heaven wasn't an election where the minority went along with the majority.

It required each and every one of us to individually decide for ourselves—

make a choice to come or not.

The Savior responded to that question, essentially saying, “Well, for my part, I choose to follow the Father’s plan. And I will go into the world, but I also choose to redeem mankind while I'm there from the consequences of their poor choices and to right wrongs and to heal

that which would become broken in a fallen world.” And so the stage was set. And now here we are.

We came to design our eternal lives through the choices that we make.

We learn here that some ideas are better than others.

The choices really matter.

This means that one of the most important things that we came to the earth to learn is how to go about making hard decisions, especially when we're conflicted between what seems fun and what is painfully right; what seems socially advantageous but is inconsistent with the sociality of the Saints.

Is it okay sometimes to go along, to get along,

even when it means going off the covenant path?

President Russell M. Nelson spoke to the young adults of the Church about the power of choices just about a week short of a year ago.

He said: “My purpose tonight is to make sure that your eyes are wide open to the truth that this life really is the time when you get to decide what kind of life you want to live forever. …

During this life we get to choose which laws we are willing to obey— those of the celestial kingdom, or the terrestrial, or the celestial—

and, therefore, in which kingdom of glory we will live forever.

Every righteous choice that you make here will pay huge dividends now. But righteous [decisions] in mortality will pay unimaginable dividends [in the eternity].”

So if we can pull up that FSY guide,

each of you should have received one of these.

Credit to Brad Wilcox, who went to great lengths to get these all distributed to you. Thank you for his

students who are out there handing them out. Thank you.

This is not the guide. This is the crib sheet. The pocket version. The nutshell for you law students of the booklet that interestingly,

Elder Uchtdorf carries in his shirt pocket and has for decades and pulls that out when he's meeting with heads of state or dignitaries.

This is his first go-to to explain what the Church is about. Well, let us talk to you about the values that we instill in our youth. So that will be a good asset for all of us.

Choices matter. So the new For the Strength of Youth guide for making choices was designed to help us,

young and old, to make decisions worthy of our true identities as children of God, as members of the Church, children of the covenant, and disciples of Jesus Christ.

This actual guidebook is designed not as a list of correct answers but as a workbook teaching us how to make inspired choices, how to align our decisions now to be consistent with the decisions that we made when we entered mortality. How to make decisions worthy of your station, your mortal mission, and your eternal destiny.

When I arrived as a bewildered law student just down the street here to go to law school, I was told, “Now, don’t expect to learn the law here. That’s not what we do.”

A little bit shocking to me to learn at that point.

“Legal education,” they said, “isn’t about learning the right answers to every question. There are too many questions and the world is too complex, and those questions come different every time they arise.

Legal education is about learning how to look at legal problems,

identify important issues, and find solutions.”

Well, that's sort of the approach of this guidebook. It’s designed to do that too. It’s built around five principles.

Jesus will help you. President Nelson makes a powerful connection between good choices and faith in Jesus Christ.

He said: “Jesus Christ is the only enduring source of hope, peace, and joy for you. Satan can never replicate any of these.

And Satan will never help you.

On the other hand, God’s work and His glory is to bring about the ‘immortality and eternal life of man.’

God will do everything He can, short of violating your agency,

to help you not miss out on the greatest blessings of all eternity.”

So that’s the first principle. There are four more. Let's go ahead and bring those up, please.

We can go on and bring them all up. Thanks.

They include loving God, love your neighbor, walk in God’s light,

your body is sacred, and the truth will make you free.

Elder Neal A. Maxwell once commented on something like today’s theme.

You might remember he said that in his early Primary days,

“we sang ‘“Give,” Said the Little Stream’—certainly a sweet and motivating but not exactly theologically drenched [song].

Today’s children, as you know, sing the more spiritually focused ‘I’m trying to be like Jesus.’”

Well, that was more than a one-off, singular observation. It describes a gospel pattern that is part of the continuing Restoration. As we approach the Savior's return and the social fog of confusion that will precede it,

the Church will become more and more focused on things that will bring our youth closer to Christ sooner in their lives.

The new For the Strength of Youth guide for making choices is an example of this. But the Children and Youth program is loaded with ways that we ask youth to turn to the Savior as they go about their decision making and their leadership and their scholarship. We ask them to lead their quorums in classes knowing that when they begin praying about each other,

they bond a relationship with Heavenly Father that will remain.

The FSY guide has been rewritten every 10 or 15 years since the 1960s,

addressing the changing issues of the day. This version is different. It's no longer a list of things to avoid,

like has been prominent in past books. It's a guide instead for learning to determine what the Lord would have us to do.

It's a way of thinking about daily decisions in the context of our eternal purposes.

It urges youth not to look for permission to do something in a booklet but rather in their patriarchal blessings and in the words of the prophets and in the counsel of parents and leaders.

The background against which we should make decisions is not a list of “Thou shalt nots” but instead thinking about how that decision helps or hinders our eternal destiny. The format of the booklet. If we can go to the guide format—

the next page, thank you—is to address issues by providing eternal gospel

truths that pertain to those issues. Invitations to walk the covenant path and promise blessings that come from following true principles.

When a young person follows these protocols, they learn to go to God with their questions of how they will

or should live their lives. As they get early into the habit of bringing Heavenly Father into these decisions,

it will help them to forge lives of peace within the covenant.

So now let me invite Brother Wilcox to come and address some of these specifics.

Sisters. It's such a joy to be with you.

We feel very lucky to be some of the few men

on campus this conference. And we feel very blessed to be able to be with you. As President Lund said, the revision of the guide started with vaping.

The guide that we had previously didn’t say anything about vaping, and so everybody was all panicked and we kept getting letters saying we need to review the guide and we need to put “Don’t vape” in there. And so we went running to the Brethren and said we need to add vaping to the For the Strength of Youth booklet. And it was President Uchtdorf—

It was Elder Uchtdorf who wisely reminded us of Mosiah 4:29–30. The ways to sin are numberless.

So we put vaping in today.

What are we going to need to add tomorrow? And what are we going to need to add the next day? Because people will just keep inventing ways to sin. And he told us and wisely counseled the Young Women Presidency and the Young Men Presidency that we needed to start focusing more on principles and not just on the lists of do's and don'ts. So you know that you grew up in a world where we were told not to watch R-rated movies. The problem: the international rating system is very different from the rating system we have here in the United States.

Another problem: the standards keep shifting. What used to be a PG movie is now a G movie, and what used to be an R movie is now a PG movie. So what is the solution?

Principles. Teaching principles. Listen to what it says in For the Strength of Youth.

It says, “As you make choices about what to watch, read, listen to, or participate in, think about how it makes you feel.

Does it invite good thoughts?

Stay away from anything that mocks sacred things or that is immoral. … Have the courage to turn off a video or game, walk out of a movie or a dance, change your music, or turn away from anything that is not consistent with the Spirit.”

Now, that's a principle that is very different from what we've heard in the past about not watching R-rated movies.

And so we learn to work through principles.

Another rule that you grew up with and that I grew up with was that we don't date until you're 16.

The problem: we now have four stakes in India where young people and their parents don't even think about dating until their 20s.

We also have strong members of the Church throughout Europe where now the word “dating” is synonymous with sleeping together.

So the rule says you don’t sleep with somebody until you’re 16?

Like, that’s what we want to communicate?

Again, what's the solution? Principles.

Listen to what we read in the For the Strength of Youth guide in which we don’t even see the word “dating” except in the index.

It says: “When and how should I get to know members of the opposite sex? The best way to get to know others is through genuine friendship. While you are young, build good friendships with many people. In some cultures, youth get to know members of the opposite sex through wholesome group activities. For your emotional and spiritual development and safety,

one-on-one activities should be postponed until you are mature—

age 16 is a good guideline.

Counsel with your parents and leaders. Save exclusive relationships for when you are older. Spend time with those who help you keep your commitments to Jesus Christ.”

It may have been shorter to teach a rule,

but now we need to teach principles that include the reasons for the rules. Now in the January 23— I’m sorry, in the June 23 FSY magazine— and sisters, we are very familiar with the fact that youth don't consume information through magazines like we used to. The information that they get has to be bite-sized. It has to be said in two or three sentences. But we still appreciate you for having copies of the FSY magazine

on your toilet lid. Maybe in that moment,

the youth will actually pick it up, and they will see the treasures that are there. In the June FSY magazine— so it just barely came out—comes a question from a young person: “If the For the Strength of Youth guide doesn’t say not to do something, does that mean it’s okay?”

Well, the editors answered with a quote from

Elder Uchtdorf’s talk when he introduced the guide. It’s short. It’s consumable. Here it is: “The Lord is not saying, ‘Do whatever you want.’”

Words from an Apostle

right there. And they go on to quote the FSY guide, which more young people have read about on social media than have read.

Let's listen to what it says in the guide.

It says, “The purpose of For the Strength of Youth is not to give you a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ about every possible choice you might face.”

It's what President Lund was talking about. “Instead, the Lord is inviting you to live in a higher and holier way— [in] His way.” This guide is not the first time that we have been invited to live in a higher and holier way. In the Sermon on the Mount in the Old World and at the sermon on the temple in the New World, Jesus said he has come not to destroy the law

but to fulfill the law. What does that mean? Think of it this way:

“I am not come to destroy the law, the preparatory law,

but to bring a fullness of the law after the preparatory law.”

So He said in the past it said, “Thou shalt not kill.”

“But I say unto you, whosoever is angry with his brother is wrong.”

Oh, well, I'm sure glad now I can kill my brother.

As long as I'm not angry with him.

Jesus said, “Thou shalt not commit adultery. That was the old law. But I say, don’t even lust. Don’t let lust enter your heart.” Well, I'm sure glad I can commit adultery now.

I just don't have to have lust in my heart. But I can commit adultery because it doesn't say I shouldn't.

We've got to teach our young people, just as Jesus has taught His disciples anciently and in our day,

to step up to a higher law. In the past, the law was an eye, for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

If somebody harms you, get back justly.

But Jesus said, “Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek,

turn to him the other also.

In the past, you learned that you should love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy. But behold, I say unto you,” says Jesus, “Love your enemies, bless them, that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them who despitefully use you, and persecute you.”

This Christianity stuff is not easy.

And as young people are making the easy choice,

they have to understand that they’re not making the Christian choice,

because the choice to follow prophets and to follow Christ is always a choice to walk uphill.

Many people say, “Oh, you Latter- day Saints, you’re blind, mindless sheep following your prophet shepherds.”

Since when do mindless sheep go uphill?

Mindless sheep go downhill after every fad and every fashion and after every influence of the world.

Those who go uphill are the ones who are faithfully and consciously, intentionally making a choice. To lift themselves and to live a higher law.

It's always worth making that choice because as we choose to live like Christ,

Christ Himself is willing to give us the grace, the enabling power,

the divine assistance, the endowment of strength

so that we can learn to live like Him.

You heard Elder Uchtdorf introduce this guide in general conference.

We were blessed enough to be in some of the leadership meetings

just prior to that conference, where

Elder Uchtdorf said this, and it touched my heart deeply.

He said: “Our youth have been known for too long by what they can’t do.”

Now, if you're thinking of young people in any high school in this country or internationally, you know exactly what I mean.

Oh, he’s a member of that church. He can’t smoke. He can’t do drugs. He can't party. He can't have sex outside of marriage. He can't. He can't. He can't.

Elder Uchtdorf said, “I long for the day when our youth will be known for their love of Jesus Christ and for their willingness to live like Him.”

I testify that as our youth step up to higher laws,

they can stop looking for reasons and excuses to follow lower laws.

Instead, they can look for the strength that Christ alone,

because of His Atonement, can give them and can give all of us.

And I say that in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Okay. Imagine that you

are in the same meeting where President London and Brother Wilcox are speaking.

Two of my heroes. And here we are. But glad to be here. If I can just give a little inside

perspective, it has been so amazing to watch President Lund and President Cordon working together and bringing their presidencies together. If that could be modeled— what they have done in every stake and in every ward—

it would go home and would change families forever. And it is true that

Brother Wilcox will tell you that he loves you. And he actually does.

He has a heart that is about that big.

And so—just a little insight that may get me in trouble.

But here we are. Three weeks ago, following a fireside with the youth,

a 17-year-old young woman met me and, holding her For the Strength of Youth guide for making choices,

said that she had studied it from cover to cover and was so grateful for the trust that she felt. That she had gone through the booklet twice, and the third time she was partway through and was commenting about things that were said in the fireside.

Standing next to her was a a younger young woman. They didn't know each other.

She handed me a note that she had pinned during the fireside and asked if I would get that to President Nelson. In the same manner, she expressed in that open note

her gratitude and appreciation to the leadership of the Church, to the prophet, for the trust that she felt.

Well, we go around and we ask different youth how they are interpreting

For the Strength of Youth.

In his talk last October, where

Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf introduced the For the Strength of Youth booklet,

he said the following: “Is it wrong to have rules? Of course not.

We all need them every day.

But it is wrong to focus only on rules instead of focusing on the Savior.

You need to know the whys and the hows

and then consider the consequences of your choices.”

Last Sunday, while meeting a 14-year-old young man by the name of Mitchell,

I asked how he was interpreting For the Strength of Youth.

He hadn’t read it. He hadn’t opened it. He came from a fairly normal quorum and ward. I started to ask him a question:

“So, Mitchell, what will you do when this opportunity comes?”

And as Brother Wilcox quoted, they are numerous in their options. This wasn't a terribly

vile infraction, but it was definitely in the previous guidelines and rules that we’d looked at. He said, “Well, I haven’t looked at the book.”

I said, “Well, how will you respond when this becomes a choice?”

He thought for a few minutes and then said, “I don’t know; probably however I feel about it.” He was serious.

He had not contemplated at 14 when the opportunity comes to make a choice that he would have a choice.

It would simply be if he was having a good day or if he was having a bad day, one influenced by friends or one that he would hold to truths that he understood.

In his same talk, Elder Uchtdorf said last October:

“At the heart of God’s plan for your happiness is your power to choose. …

So he allows you to choose. … It sounds like an easy choice. …

The problem is that we don't always see things as clearly as we would like to.”

In a talk given in this building 23 years ago, President Henry B. Eyring

said the following. His talk is entitled “A Life Founded in Light and Truth.” It was given in the August 2000 devotional during Education Week.

“We can help by seeing clearly the opportunity.

The teenager who begins to say, ’It’s my life to live,

my choices to make,’ is speaking the truth, a wonderful truth.”

And then President Eyring goes on to talk about what’s going on in the heart and mind of that young person.

President Eyring then says: “Agency … is so priceless a gift from our Heavenly Father that the War in Heaven was fought to defend it. …

The teenager you love may well have been one of the valiant warriors

on the side of agency.”

I'd like to tell you about an experience.

I won't give names or enough information because he'd be very identifiable by the other missionaries that served along his side and in the same mission he did. About the same time period that President Eyring was giving the talk here in the Marriott Center, this

21-year-old and his younger sister were both baptized into the Church.

They were living in a large city in Canada.

A year later, he found himself serving in a mission in Southern California.

Barbara and I met this missionary for the first time when he had been serving for at least 12 months.

It was only about two weeks after the first transfer that we received a phone call that he and his companion were about ready to kill each other. This elder was much bigger than the other one.

The other, his companion, is now serving as a military officer in Korea for our country. So you could see that the conflict wouldn't be ended quickly.

I asked them if we could meet over at the meetinghouse closest to them.

It was on a Saturday afternoon. So I drove over to the meetinghouse.

One door was unlocked. I walked into the building and could hear some beautiful music being played on the piano.

It was absolutely gorgeous.

I knew that was the missionary companion who was known to be

so obedient and paid such close attention to the rules of the mission.

When I walked in, that elder was seated on the back row with his scriptures open. They were actually right-side up. And there he was studying. And at the piano,

dressed far from missionary attire on a Saturday afternoon, was this other elder from Canada. Big kid.

About 22 years of age at this time. 23 years of age.

I asked if I could meet with them individually.

What came into my heart for the one that was known to focus on the rules intently was to simply be patient.

That he had earned the money during his youth.

And here he was spending his mission, literally babysitting an elder who had been known to struggle with every single rule imaginable in the mission.

We talked for a few minutes, and then I met with the elder from Canada.

A whole different message came,

and that was to talk to him about the gospel that he had embraced.

He wasn't raised in the gospel.

He had lived a life without a lot of regimentation or rule orientation.

Big, loving kind of guy. Wasn’t defiant in his rule breaking. He

just crashed against every single type of rule. In President Eyring’s talk,

he talks about what’s going on

in the minds of these youth

and how they are being pulled by this vigilant defense of agency.

And what's being imposed upon them.

So this elder and I talked for a few minutes.

He had not studied the gospel much.

The suggested study pattern in the mission was not followed by him.

He was doing all kinds of other things.

I asked him if he would commit to engage into going through

the white handbook in simply asking the question regarding those rules and suggestions and guidelines to find why. Not to know more about it.

His companion was doing that.

It was to understand more of the foundation as to why those rules, suggestions, and guidelines were in place.

Well, he served for about eight months, still weaving in between rules.

He had tightened him up somewhat.

It was interesting to watch as he would study the gospel

how the truths started to come out into his mind,

literally being led by the Spirit to the reason for the rules in the handbook.

Well, we would meet monthly and get a little update.

He didn't look like he did at the piano on that Saturday afternoon,

but he at least had a white shirt and a tie on, and we would talk a little more. With four months left in his mission,

I walked into a Relief Society room to meet with him for that monthly time together, and the chair that he was sitting in with armrests was literally bouncing

back and forth. I admit I was more nervous than I had been in the previous eight months with him.

He looked at me and said, “President, I have waited to talk to you.

I have learned that God gets His power through obedience to eternal law.”

I looked at him and said, “Elder, you’re finished. Mission accomplished.

Now just spend the next four months working on applying

the rules that are supported by that doctrine.

And you’ll understand even better why they are in place.”

In his talk last October, again, Elder Uchtdorf said:

“But when you earnestly seek the truth— eternal, unchanging truth—

your choices become much clearer. … So where do you find truth?

It is contained in the gospel of Jesus Christ. And the fullness of that gospel is taught in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”

Sisters and mothers, leaders, and all adults, We are truly the pioneers

That must help bring these youth across the plains from a focus on the rules to a focus on the foundational doctrine that supports those rules. As President Nelson reminded us when he was focusing us on obeying the Sabbath day, he made a list of rules.

And as he understood the true purpose of the Sabbath,

the rules faded in importance.

Not that they wouldn't be recognized or obeyed, but that they would not be what governed his heart and his decisions on the Sabbath day.

In his talk, again of August 2000, President Eyring said:

“Our opportunity lies in their seeing a simple truth. and their seeing this is their opportunity, too. It is their life to live, and yet they live it with two powerful opposing forces pulling on them in different ways.”

I suspect that as we work with the youth— our children and those that we work with in our callings or as neighbors and friends—that as we take them from a focus on

rules to a focus on doctrine,

literally sitting down in family councils or in class and quorum councils and understanding

beyond the rule and what supports that rule,

that they may just lead us into an understanding of doctrine that we haven't even understood as we’ve studied and lived the gospel.

It will become our blessing as we cross those plains with them.

In his talk of last October, Elder Uchtdorf said:

“So the purpose of For the Strength of Youth is to point you to Him.

It teaches you eternal truths of His restored gospel—truths about who you are, who He is, and what you can accomplish with His strength.

It teaches you how to make righteous choices based on those eternal truths.”

I bear witness that in the hearts of every missionary and every child and us is the truth that was taught by our parents before this life

and that it is the Holy Ghost that will bring those things to our remembrance.

They will sound familiar. They will come to us easily.

It is much more complicated to learn

a set of rules than it is to have doctrines reminded and brought forth into our minds. That I testify in the name of Jesus Christ,

amen.

Thank you, Mike and Brad. Now, we're all friends here.

Could we just have a little focus group?

It’s okay to say “toilet top” in elders quorum. Is it okay in Women’s Conference to say “toilet top”?

I’m not getting a clear signal there, so I’m going to go slow in using that

in the future. So how are we doing?

One might wonder. Brad kind of alluded to this fact—

we talk about this a lot—

a lot of the members of the Church when they catch us in a hallway, say, “Man, we’re losing a lot of people, aren’t we?” And I just love to tell you that we sit in meetings virtually every week where we see statistics and we see how this is going and how that's going.

And, you know, with the pandemic,

we've had some folks that got used to not coming to church that haven't quite made their way back yet. And so, you know, there's some numbers that are up and down.

We do lose kids, you know, between high school and missions. We always have. Losing one is a tragedy of immeasurable proportions.

We're never going to be happy with that. But I’ll tell you that the numbers aren't all that different than they've been.

The one bellwether that we might look at to see how are we doing with this rising generation is what’s happening in the FSY world—the For the Strength of Youth conference world? Maybe we could show that slide.

These statistics are a little bit hard to see, but you can see that in 2022 we had 122,000 kids attend FSY on 60 different college campuses around the United States. This year already as of three days ago,

I guess, we went over 115,000 of registered this year.

We think that number will continue to swell as we go. So the demand for FSY seats is so profound that we’ve had to add 38 new sessions between last year and this year—

38 week-long sessions, I’m talking about, of hundreds of thousands of kids in order to accommodate those other folks. Internationally, it’s sort of exciting to see that last year we had just short of 100,000 kids that participated outside of the United States and Canada, which is a lot. This year, already there are 110,000 registrants there, and that number is continuing to grow as we haven't even entered the season yet. And so these numbers are going to get better and better and bigger and bigger and more and more lives will be impacted and that that matters to us because of of what we see. I hope you've experienced what we've experienced.

When these kids go off to FSC kicking and screaming and threatening.

And tearing hair out yours in theirs. And then. And then. Then.

And then they come back—for a minute, just a lot changed, don’t they? They come home with— And I know it doesn’t always stick, you know, from month to month—

but they come home having had a vision of Zion that we believe will propel them through these years in healthier ways than we've seen in the past. And so that is an exciting thing. This summer, for the first time, we’ll be holding an FSY session in Islamabad, Pakistan

where the Area Presidency expects between 200 and 500— 200 kids have signed up so far— they think they could see 500 young people show up at FSY

in that emerging corner of Zion. So it’s an exciting time to be alive.

As Brad was suggesting, there are those who think that the new FSY guide represents a lowering of standards, lowering of the bar because that new booklet doesn't contain all of the lines in the sand that we used to point to to try to keep them in line a little bit: “You’re not 16.” “No, you can’t …”

But President Nelson preempted that thought as the new guide was being written.

Do you remember his seminal talk of 2018, where his first major address to the Church was to the youth of the Church, where he invited them into the Lord’s battalions? Remember that great talk? Do you know how he ended that talk? He said—

here’s a quote—“I plead with you to study this booklet”

this is the older booklet,

but the new one was already in process— “I plead with you to study this booklet again. Prayerfully read it like you’ve never read it before. Mark it up.

Talk about it. Discuss the standards with your friends. Decide how you can live these standards, your standards, with even more exactness.”

Does that sound like the prophet has it in his mind that we need to lower the bar?

That doesn't sound that way, does it? You have a copy of your own, so get another one.

Get a new copy to a friend who may not know your standards

or who may not live them.

That is the attitude of President Nelson about the For the Strength of Youth guide.

And that's the attitude that we're trying to teach among our youth. And it’s getting catchy.

They are not asking the same questions of us that we were hearing

a few months ago.

President Nelson and Elder Uchtdorf speak powerfully about the aid that we receive when we involve the Savior in our choice making,

when we really do have to make up our mind.

President Nelson told the single adults in his address to them a year ago: “Jesus Christ is the only enduring source of hope, peace and joy for you.”

“Jesus Christ is the only enduring source of hope, peace and joy for you.

Satan can never replicate any of these. And Satan will never help you.”

Elder Uchtdorf introduced the newly printed guide in general gonference with these words, if we can bring those up.

“Jesus Christ is the strength of families. Jesus Christ

is the strength of youth. Jesus Christ is the strength of parents.”

That is our testimony, that by having our young people engage the Savior in their decision making early in their lives,

a pattern will be formed that will help them to get through the fog of modern life, where so much of gospel culture is being diminished.

It's our prayer that each of us will follow him with more exactness and with more joy in our hearts.

We leave this with you in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

This presentation was given at the BYU Women’s Conference on May 5, 2023.