General Conference October 2026

I have experienced something like this exponential growth. It was a time of spiritual extremity for me, a period of extreme temptation and struggle. Not amazing resistance to temptation. I was a single dad and nothing was working out for me. Certainly didn’t know where my future was going, in spite of my graduate STEM degree.

I remember deciding, to sacrifice all my sins on the altar, and no matter how many times my sacrifice fell off the altar (regressed, failed to live up to my covenants fully), that I would repent, put my sacrifice back on the altar. This felt like I was dying, but I decided what I chose to do regardless of that. I don’t mean physical death. I mean I felt worn down, lonely (so lonely, can’t even express it), torn apart and giving up everything that felt meaningful.

So I decided I hadn’t been given permission to stop repent, I dug my heels in and swore I would continue struggling if it was the last thing I did.

I will just say, this led to powerful spiritual experiences. Afterwards, it felt like a ‘level up’ in video game. Like the moment in a story where the hero receives the magic sword or armor. It was an experience with literal hell… And literal heaven and… extremely sacred experiences.

Some of my conference thoughts, aphorisms, stories, etc

Themes:
Enduring trials with faith
Tithing
Ministering
Scripture study
Consecration

I loved the story of President Oaks ministering in the temple locker room – ‘it’s just what we do, isn’t it?’

My husband and I were getting really nervous with President Christofferson’s introduction to his talk — we were very relieved when he mentioned the actual topic haha. As BYU folks though we are aware that this was a real problem for a lot of Provo Bros

Renlund – Focus on the miracles, not the cold oatmeal
Giuffra – (talking about tithing blessings) ‘through faith and diligent work’
Hutchufale- I think he alluded to a virtue and vice pair (belief in unconditional love -> God will save us in our sins) which I guess was also addressed by Alma
Hutchufale – ‘quick to repent, slow to judge, ever hopeful that the best is yet to come’
Matthew Eyring – be /grateful/ for opportunities to mourn with those that mourn
Chipotle- learn people’s names (kinda a call to repentance for me)
Anderson – be ok without stimulus, God speaks in stillness (also the theme of a recent devo by Kearon)
Dube- do not let guilt keep you from coming to Christ
Oaks – build! faith!
Uchtdorf – exponential spiritual growth (like for G, this was a striking thought for the group I watched with)
Spannaus – loved this whole talk. I want to do all of her 7 challenges
Gilbert – loved his whole talk. At the end he said some listening would need more conviction and some more charity – i think i need both

My intimidating thought on hearing Uchtdorf’s exponential spriritual growth: A defining characteristic of an exponential function is that its first derivative is exponential. All of its derivatives are exponential. We always scale a graph of such a function so that its slope is on the order of one where we’re looking, but that’s a choice to keep things comprehensible. Exponential growth not normalized to fit on the page actually surpasses any bound we try to frame around it.