"Of Things That Matter Most"

Many of you know that every 6 months the LDS church comes together for a worldwide two day conference. During this conference we are instructed by our beloved prophet and leaders. With the ending of each conference comes renewed strength, resolve, hope and faith to be better. As with most conference weekends, my family comes to Utah to visit and attend at least one session at the Conference Center in Salt Lake. Now that there are three of us Hogge kids living in Utah (Joey and Spencer at BYU) the family visits as often as possible... and I LOVE it! Dad got tickets for us girls to attend the Saturady morning session together. That session was my absolute favorite of all conference sessions.

My beautiful Mom and Grandma.
I can only hope that I will age as well as they have ;)

Twins! Last time Hilly visited she came to church with me and the bishopric on the stand thought I had brought my twin with me, haha.

All the ladies. We missed Sarah and her girls!

Sweet Elder Holland spoke of his gratitude for our faith. What a humbling talk! I felt so loved by him and felt that my own faith could be stronger. We are so blessed to have good men as our leaders. Elder Christofferson's remarks motivated me to live a more consecrated life through purity, work, respect for my physical body, service and integrity. My favorite talk of all of conference was Elder Uchtdorf's "Of Things That Matter Most". Wow... talk about inspired! His talk answered ALL of my general conference questions. My mom kept saying, "They need this talk to be a fifth Sunday lesson!"

Elder Uchtdorf began by suggesting, "it is good advice to slow down a little, steady the course, and focus on the essentials when experiencing adverse conditions... When stress levels rise, when distress appears, when tragedy strikes, too often we attempt to keep up the same frantic pace or even accelerate, thinking somehow that the more rushed our pace, the better off we will be. Let's be honest; it's rather easy to be busy. We all can think up a list of tasks that will overwhelm our schedules. Some might even think that their self-worth depends on the length of their to-do list... Because they unnecessarily complicate their lives, they often feel increased frustration, diminshed joy, and too little sense of meaning in their lives."

So, what is the solution? We must choose to slow down and decide what is good, better, and best. We must focus on the basics. What are the basics? The basics are our relationships with our God, with our families, with our fellowman, and with ourselves. It's simple really, just focus on these four key relationships.

I feel relieved and excited to slow down and to focus on my relationships.

We celebrated Spencer's 18th birthday with the family in town.

Givin' some brotherly love to Hilly. How cute ;)

Jon decided to wear his traditional Tongan clothing for conference....
mmm I love my Togan!
We hope everyone is enjoying the beautiful Fall season! Yay!