On Monday last week I hit the gym for a while after work, watched the introduction of the Professor Moriarty program. I need to get better at getting in and out of the gym fast, there was like an hour of overhead just wandering around work, chillaxing until I was in the mood to get in there. Takes way too much time as-is.

On Tuesday an old math professor of mine was visiting. I only found out because a friend of mine, a fellow member in the singles ward, was a math major and is heavily involved in recruitment efforts, so she knew he was coming up and arranged a lunch, inviting me along. He didn’t recognize me, but he was the professor that taught the last math class I ever took at BYU. During lunch I sat next to a couple of admins from the Math department, along for the trip. I made the mortifying mistake, though flattering I’m sure, of asking if one of them was a student. I didn’t realize just how off I was until she started talking about her own son who was in the middle of his mission.

That evening at Institute we turned out to have quite a few matching outfits.

On Wednesday I had an appointment to see the investigator I’d mentioned last time, with the missionaries. Unfortunately he dropped the elders, saying he just wasn’t interested in what we had to offer at the time. Shame, he seemed so interested when we were there in the lesson.

That evening I was playing some Zelda and it was raining in the game at the same time as it was raining outside. Made me wonder, if the game could geo-locate itself based on the system’s IP address and correlate that with some weather service, it should be able to make the in-game weather match whatever’s happening outside. That’d be fun.

On Thursday I had a shocking realization that I’d completely spaced on a service event the previous Saturday. Oh dear. I IM’d the one who coordinated the thing, apologizing profusely (even threw up a quick-n-dirty apology e-card on my website). Turned out they had sufficient numbers. Still, it was basically Flubber-level forgetfulness.

Friday was a friend’s birthday party. Saturday evening I went out with a couple friends to see Gifted. What an amazing movie, I highly recommend it.

I stayed up that night veeery late to put the finishing touches on a talk for Easter Sunday. It’s pasted in below in its entirety.

That evening we had an Orphan Easter potluck dinner. Good stuff. Played Resistance afterwards for the first time in a while. Went from there to another friend’s house for Settlers of Catan. Hadn’t played that game since I was in California in 2013.

I have a big assignment I need to complete for a job, but I’m continually finding new ways to distract myself. Netflix recently came out with a new original show, Iron Fist (the first three episodes have been real fun). Also, StarCraft [Brood War] is now free for PC & Mac. Ahh, childhood.

Right, so, here’s the talk. Some paragraphs are things I wrote but decided not to say, I’ve struck them out to indicate as such.

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Thanks very much for that hymn, my soul needed some stilling. Whenever I get a chance to speak publicly my body’s just, “here’s all the adrenaline you could ever ask for!”

Now I hadn’t actually realized how awesome General Conference can be to a bishopric setting topics for Sacrament Meeting, it’s like a little vacation from having to come up with anything. Easier for the leadership, easier on the speakers, just pick whatever you want, it’s great.

Also I completely forgot to have my talk have anything to do with Easter, totally slipped my mind until we sang that opening hymn. So I hope the Spirit gives you all some Easterly vibes while I talk about something completely different.

The last time I prepared a talk it was before I’d graduated, and I had a paper whose deadline was 11pm on Saturday night. So I stayed up till four preparing that talk. And, it turned out alright. So, I figured, let’s do that again, see how it goes. It’s kind of like Calvin and Hobbes says, why do teachers bother giving us all this time to do the homework when they know we’re all gonna do it the night before.

Although I must say, whenever you go to bed and you hear birds chirping outside, you know you’ve made a horrible error. I just wanna yell at those birds, like, “Don’t you know I’m trying to pretend this is a reasonable hour to go to bed?!”

So I guess it’s a tradition in these talks to talk a bit about myself first. I grew up in Alpine Utah, the quintessential Mormon experience, full on bubble. You’ve got Utah, which is weird on its own, then there’s Utah County which is its own flavor of weird, from Provo up to Lehi. I’ve heard Alpine called “the ‘Utah County’ of Utah County”, and it doesn’t seem far off. I mean you’re driving down I-15, our one lone freeway, and you see billboards for law firms that read, “Because your home teacher doesn’t practice law.”

So growing up there, I really loved my parents. My mom was great, she’s the kind where, like I’ll be in fourth grade and she’ll be tucking me in asking about my next day in school and I’ll go, “Oh yeah, they want us to dress up as a historical figure in class tomorrow.” And she’s, “Mmm, what?” “Mhm! G’night!” And then I wake up and she’s putting the finishing touches on a cardboard-and-aluminum Roman soldier getup. Man, moms are just the best.

And then my dad was basically my genetic donor, I’m like a clone of him. He went to BYU and is a software engineer. He actually met my mom there, as one does. Which put some pressure on me. My parents met there, my grandparents met there.. Senior year comes and goes and I still hadn’t put a ring on anyone’s finger, so I’m like, “Guess I’ll stick around and do a Masters!” Y’know, job’s not done yet.

So I’m the oldest of four, the first one to really shove off from Utah. We all got along most of the time. My younger brother, who incidentally beat me and was the first of us to get hitched, when we were growing up whenever he’d annoy me I’d sneak into his room and steal all his movie posters and hide them in the house somewhere, really ticked him off. Now I’m older and wiser of course.

And while I never really collected posters, I love desk toys. I’ve got a couple of Taser rounds I nicked from the gun range at the local police department, I’ve got this tube of gallium, this metal that liquifies at body temperature, and there’s this 3d-printed model of my brain from an MRI scan. So any time someone from work asks, “Jeff, why are you so weird?” I can just point there. Y’know, in case show-and-tell ever makes a comeback, I wanna be prepared.

Speaking of my brain, I want to apologize to you collectively, as one of the things I’m really really bad at is remembering names and putting them to faces. I wanna make an analogy that describes this – there’s this thing called the Von Neumann model which basically describes every modern computer ever built, where you’ve got a central processing unit, some attached storage, and then just inputs and outputs. These days we’ve got really fast-but-expensive memory called RAM, and then slow-but-cheap memory called hard drives. You ever notice how when you open a program that you haven’t used in a while it takes a while? But then you use it again and it comes right up. That’s because it took a while fetching all that code and assets from the hard drive, and now it’s in RAM and ready to go.

It takes like a thousand times longer to get something from the hard drive as it does from RAM. You ever want to breathe new life into an old computer, just put more RAM in it.

But anyways, so when I see someone and they say hi, the place where I store names-and-faces is like my hard drive, and it always takes a while to fetch the right name, and by the time that happens it’s too late and I just end up saying ‘hey, buckaroo’. So I’m working on that.

But in general I just like to keep things simple. There are complicated things that I love, like it’s my jam, but it’s all stuff that’s enabling. Like, diagnosing a misbehaving router. Y’know, cause Internet-access is a basic human resource now – gotta have it. Or making a web page. Cause you never know when you need to throw together a last-minute apology e-card when you forget to show up to a service event.

But budgeting, taxes? Ew, no thank you, m-mmm. It’s like Jango Fett said in Attack of the Clones: “I’m just a simple man, trying to make my way in the universe.”

But in general I just like to keep things simple. Don’t like complications. It’s like Jango Fett said in Attack of the Clones: “I’m just a simple man, trying to make my way in the universe.”

And with that wonderful segue, I’m gonna talk about making your way in the universe through service, which is the topic of President Uchtdorf’s message from priesthood session.

In his talk he mentions the Sons of Thunder, James and John. Two lead disciples. As they’re walking along with Jesus towards Jerusalem they stop and ask Him, “Grant unto us that we may sit, one on thy right hand, and the other on thy left hand, in thy glory.”

And I’ll bet the other disciples were thinking, “Oooh dear, they didn’t check themselves, now they’ve gone and wrecked themselves.”

But the Savior just said, you don’t really know what you’re asking for. “Can ye drink of the cup that I drink of?” Can you go through what I will go through? To get to where I’m going?

And they just said yeah, “We can”, and to me, that shows that they really didn’t know what they were asking for. But the Savior said ‘fine’, “But to sit on my right hand and on my left is not mine to give; but it shall be given to them for whom it is prepared.”

And He went on to elaborate that if you want to be great in the kingdom, you’ve gotta minister, you’ve gotta serve. You wanna be chief? Be a servant to all.

And this attitude is reflected in our modern church organization, where the vast majority of leadership roles are completely non-compensated. It’s one of the things we try and highlight as missionaries, “Hey, we’ve got a lay clergy, check this out.” Kind of like those commercials for Shane Co., where they say that their diamond sellers don’t work on commission. The ones that are like “Now you have a friend in the diamond business!”. Phew, never getting that out of my head.

Now I’m not gonna make a joke about diamonds to this crowd. I’ll just joke about not making a joke, and leave it at that. [before it gets any more recursive]

So yeah, I think our lay clergy is something that really contributes to the stability of the Church. There’s a quote from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, that goes,

“One of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”

And really, these leadership positions, like bishop, or stake president, are really hard. President Uchtdorf, in his talk, talks about a stake president who’s super busy prepping for a big pioneer celebration parade. He goes to all this work, goes to all these meetings with General Authorities, gets everything in place, and then just before the event his stake gets reorganized and he’s released.

Then he goes and volunteers for this event, because he still wants to be involved, and he’s asked to bring his truck and a shovel, to help clean up after the horses. Now President Uchtdorf uses this moment to show how well this stake president understood the doctrine of chiefs and servants. And I’m sure he does. But to me it also seems kind of straight forward. Like if I were running the show and a few days beforehand given the option to put it all in someone else’s hands and just shovel manure and make that my contribution to the event? Man, sign me up!

It’s something that’s repeatedly drilled into us by Church leaders, that no one calling is better than another, or more important. Some leadership roles may have more influence, but that is of no consequence when Heavenly Father is determining how much love He has for you, or how to bless your life.

In my job, whatever role you’re in, there’s only so far you can go before you stop being promoted, because levels are based on impact, and you reach a point where no matter how good you are at your job, you can’t make more of an impact.

Thankfully, callings don’t work like that; the rewards are not capped. The worth of every soul is great in the eyes of God. So no matter how many lives we touch, even if it’s just our own, we’ll receive blessings for our service.

No matter what calling we have, it is always important to make sure the Spirit has room to guide us. I want to briefly paraphrase a quote from Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon:

“Good process serves you so you can serve customers.” Or, “Good callings serve you so you can serve Church members. But if you’re not watchful, the calling can become the thing. This can happen very easily in large organizations. The calling becomes the proxy for the results you want. You stop looking at outcomes and just make sure you’re doing the calling right.”

Now I think it’s somewhat more difficult at this level of Church involvement to lose sight of the end goal of our callings, to build the kingdom and help others come unto Christ, but it is worth keeping in mind.

Something else to keep in mind, especially those entrusted with leadership positions, is the risk of addiction to approbation. The honor and love we show to our leaders is something to be grateful for; but, like when the BlendTec guy learns that yes, an iPhone 7 does blend, “don’t breathe this.” In other words, as President J. Reuben Clark advised, “don’t take yourself too darn seriously.”

And by the way, that word, “approbation”, President Uchtdorf uses it at the end of his talk as well, and it called to mind the words from the hymn “O My Father”. I want to quote a bit of it – because it is somewhat relevant, but also because I just love the lyrics.

“When I leave this frail existence, When I lay this mortal by,
Father, Mother, may I meet you In your royal courts on high?
Then, at length, when I’ve completed All you sent me forth to do,
With your mutual approbation Let me come and dwell with you.”

“All you sent me forth to do”, that’s a heavy thing. We have some resources to help guide us. Patriarchal blessings. Personal revelation. In the absence of specific direction though, I think it’s usually safe to simply see where you are, and lift where you stand.

That seminal phrase was introduced in another of President Uchtdorf’s talks.

I want to read from another of President Uchtdorf’s talks, the one where he introduces the seminal phrase “lift where you stand.” In it he talks about John Moyle, a stonecutter who lived in Alpine during the construction of the Salt Lake temple. During this time he would wake up at 2am every Monday morning so he could be in Salt Lake bright and early at 8am. And then on Friday he’d start back at 5pm and arrive home around midnight. Year after year after year.

Until one day a cow kicked him and gave his leg a compound fracture. Like in Star Trek whenever Dr. Mccoy would be faced with 20th century medicine and just cringe at how backwards it all was, John Moyle had to get his leg amputated.

Now I think he’d deserved a pass at that point, but no. I guess his stonecutting skills transferred to wood carving and he made himself a prosthesis, with an ingenious ankle joint. And used that prosthesis to get himself back on the road to Salt Lake, so he could help finish the temple. If you ever visit and you see the words “Holiness to the Lord”, those were carved by him.

And if you ever visit Alpine you can go check out Moyle Park, a really picturesque historical site.

Later on his grandson became an apostle, and commented that although his own service may be more visible, his grandfather’s was no less pleasing to the Lord.

This man really was a fighter, he didn’t lie down even when he had every excuse in the world to do so. I just want to take a minute to remark on something I’ve come to see over the last few months here, which is that from where I’m sitting, each of you is a fighter. We’re all fighting for something in our lives, whether it’s better housing, jobs, relationships, spiritual growth. And I don’t think anyone could come here and meet you all and fail to see that these folks are just solid, are engaged in the work.

And nope, not gonna make jokes about being engaged either, not me, m-mmm.

But yeah, I always thought, Ok, I just gotta land that internship, just gotta graduate, just gotta finish my masters, just gotta find a job, and I’ll be home free. I’m finding out that the work never really stops, at least, not until my grandchildren are all married off. Then I can sit back and enjoy retirement.

But in the mean time, while we’re going through life, doing what we’re doing, it’s so easy to dehumanize other people. And I don’t mean that in a cruel or vindictive way. Maybe that wasn’t the best word choice to begin with. But what I mean is, it is very rare, I think, outside of a spousal relationship spanning decades, for two people to really know one another. We build up these mental models of each other based on what we know of them and how we see them act, and use that model to infer things, like whether we think that person is worth being friends with, or worth extending forgiveness to. I’m not saying this is wrong, I think this is the best we can do without some form of telepathy. [And some science-fiction writers would claim that that wouldn’t help one bit anyways.]

But as long as we’re judging each other based on proxies we’ve built up in our heads, it usually doesn’t hurt to be a little more liberal in our assumptions of good intentions. “Why’d that person cut me off this morning?” Well, maybe he’s a doofus, or maybe likes to kick puppies for fun. Or, maybe his wife was sick that morning and he had to help get the kids ready for school before darting off and making sure he wasn’t late to work or else he’d be let go and have to come home without dinner that evening. You never know. And since we don’t know one way or the other, it wouldn’t hurt to assume the latter, or something like it. As Captain Hammer said in Dr. Horrible’s Sing-along Blog, “Everyone’s a hero in their own way. You and you and mostly me and you.” Just kidding, just kidding. That was part of the song, not my testimony.

Speaking of everyone being the hero of their own story, I just want mention journals. Big fan, I think everyone should keep one. And not just for the big stuff. You never know what your future self or descendants will cherish. And you never know if you’ll end up famous one day. Biographers, when they’re looking through old writings, trying to really get to know someone through the written record, they often get stuck with whatever was written about that person only after they became notable. The real interesting stuff is in the formative material. ‘How did they get to become that person?’

And it doesn’t have to be a book you write in and keep in your drawer. When I moved out my family started up a weekly email chain so we could all keep in touch and know what was happening in each other’s lives. It’s much easier to be motivated to put details in there, where the time horizon on when it’ll be read is measured in hours instead of decades.

So I’ll put random stuff in, pictures of a woodpecker I spotted outside the chapel, or, y’know, 35 paragraphs of a gripping tale involving my latest Zelda adventure. Y’never know. Gotta mess with those historians any way you can.

I want to hop from that tangent to another one, but this one will tie back to the Conference talk, I promise. There was a sermon given by a history professor at BYU, that highlights the difference between two types of Mormons. And this isn’t, like, active and inactive Mormons, or “good Mormons” and “Jack Mormons”. Two kinds of dedicated, active, believing members of the Church. He gives each of these groups a symbol from the Book of Mormon: the Iron Rod, and the Liahona.

The Iron Rod was the Word of God. Hold fast to it, move forward one step at a time, and you’re sure to make it to the end. The Liahona was a compass. It’ll point you in the general direction, but it won’t give you precise instructions.

The differences between the Iron Rod Saint and the Liahona Saint can be summed up in how each group believes that revelation operates. Does revelation “give us a handrail to the Kingdom, or only a compass?”

To be more specific, the Iron Rod Saint is confident that he or she can find, in the Gospel, the answer to every important question, be it through scripture, prophetic authority, or personal revelation through the Spirit.

The Liahona Saint, on the other hand, is not so confident. They all believe in the same core truths: that God lives and loves us and speaks to us; but Liahonas further believe that “no human instrument, even a prophet, is capable of transmitting the word of God so clearly and comprehensively that it can be universally understood and easily appropriated by man.”

The Liahona Saint has more questions than answers, and isn’t confident that they can get those answers easily from the Gospel. But, they find “enough answers to important questions that they can function purposefully without the rest.”

Now, tying this back to the Conference talk. President Uchtdorf gave a story from his time as an Area President, when he was not invited to the temple dedication in Spain. After some angst followed by prayerful consideration, he states:

“Had I been invited to attend, I would have done so gladly. But if I were not invited, my joy would not be any less profound. Harriet and I would rejoice with our friends, our beloved brothers and sisters, from afar. We would praise God for this wonderful blessing just as enthusiastically from our home in Frankfurt as we would from Madrid.”

Now when I read this, I couldn’t help but notice that it lends itself very nicely to being adapted as a quote from a Liahona Saint:

“Had I had a more sure testimony, I would have bore it gladly. But if I were not as confident, by joy would not be any less profound. I would rejoice with my friends, my beloved brothers and sisters. I would praise God for my testimony just as enthusiastically from a place of uncertainty as I would with a more perfect understanding.”

At times it can be difficult for Iron Rodders and Liahonans to understand each other. “How can you doubt this plain and simple truth?” vs “How can you possibly be so certain?”

But, variety is the spice of life, and each ‘flavor’ of Mormon has their own strengths and challenges. And no matter the kind of testimony, it’s critical that we each obtain one of our own. I want to quote from my favorite author, Orson Scott Card, from an address he gave in my freshman year.

“It’s easy to think you have an answer, because everyone around you agrees with you. But you don’t actually have an answer, until you have asked the question. And if you have not asked the question, you don’t have any answers yet, and…you’re…an echo, and I believe that Mormonism is effective as a religion precisely to the degree that it consists of people who are not echoes…. We’re responsible for asking the questions. It’s not a bad thing for a Mormon to question anything. My belief is that you should question everything. I just tell you after a life of living that way and questioning everything, here I am, a believing Latter-day Saint.

Because I have found no philosophy that explains human life better, and that does a better job of teaching people to live well, to live good lives.”

I bear my testimony that God does speak to us, and He directs the work in this ward through His servants in the bishopric, and as we fulfill and magnify the callings we’ve been given, we’ll help each other walk back to the presence of God, and be made more perfect along the way. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.