Welcome to Inklings. I am Emily Bell Freeman and I'm so excited to welcome you to a space where you and I get to experience a hint of something more together. This is a community where we lean into discussions that will help us obtain a bedrock understanding of the doctrines of Christ. Not overnight, but every day better. Strength gathered over time. There is a place for you here. Looking forward to spending the semester with you as we embark on a journey focused on becoming His. Greetings everyone. Happy Thursday. Welcome to Inklings. This is one of my favorite Inklings because it is the one where we go through and talk about the whole entire semester. Everything that we have studied and learned and how we've grown and how we're different now than we were six months ago before we started this. And I always spend the day before and last night and this morning just thinking over every conversation that we've had and all of the things that we've learned together. So this is always our short one. We just do a little recap of the whole last six months and then Rio makes us a little sprinkling paper that you can put in the back of your binder and save it just as your memory of what have we loved, what have we loved, and what have we learned and what have we done. And so I just I want to think about where we are. Let me just show you because this is so cute everyone. Here's what Rio made for us. I'm going to read it to you in a minute. But there is something for me as we gear up for this next conference ahead. There is something that I love about just taking a minute to think about okay where have we come from? What have we learned? What have the last six months taught us and and how are we different now and better now that we've been living just a little bit better every single week and so then every single day as we've been part of growing together. So I don't know what your notes and your conference binder and all of that looks like but by the time we get to this point in the study, my conference binder is so worn and it is so full and it has notes all over everywhere and not cute. No one wants to have mine but I love when you look at just all of the notes and everything that's happening. Hopefully you can see some of that. It's just this document has become so well used and loved and notes are in there and growth is in there and I love that we have that opportunity to be thinking about what are we learning and doing. I know all of a sudden everything just went black and white around me. We don't know why and that's so funny you guys. Look what I'm looking like right now. I don't know how that happened and let's see if we can solve that. That is way better. So anyways what I wanted to start off first of all and talk about is we began with a talk from President Oakes and President Oakes was talking to us about family and what family, the importance of family in not just God's plan but in a life and as we go through and think about that we started out doing families, embrace doctrine, families ask for heavenly assistance, families watch for the love of Heavenly Father, families find strength in affliction, families teach the purpose of life, families teach kindness, families teach forgiveness, families teach self-control, families teach the value of education, families practice love and patience, families follow Christ together, families serve one another, families discover knowledge, families do meaningful things together, families prepare for missionary service, families learn as a group, families counsel together on concerns, families pray together, families worship together, families share sacred experiences and I love this thought of as you take a general conference and as you think about each of the talks individually how they're strengthening us and our families and homes and then our church communities and you just feel that it reminds me of that scripture from Isaiah where it talks about strengthening your stakes and lengthening your cords and preparing for all of what is about to come and I love that we did that this semester. I also love what that one sentence that we based our whole entire study on which is this is real, let us be a part of it and I don't know why and I don't know if this has been true for all of you but as we've gone through the last six months you've seen AI ramping up, you've seen a lot of things happening in the world and sometimes you wake up every morning or you go to bed at night and you might look at the news and I think we have had this funny six months where it's really common to say this out loud, wait is this real, is this for real, what's happening right now and I love that our prophet just called out what is real, what we can count on, what is true of our time and our day and it's these words that come from a pulpit that come from prophets, seers and revelators that come from apostles that we are learning and growing because of what they're teaching us and that if we may have questioned all around us what is real but there are things in our binders that we don't have to question, that we don't have to wonder about, that this is real and this is something that we can count on and that we can rely on and I love that that's what we've been doing this whole semester so always what I do at the end is just go through and as we're having our conversations every single Thursday morning I will write down in the margins of my wide margin conference talks these are some of the standouts, these are the one-liners, these are the one part of the lesson that I was like oh this is exactly what I needed this week I don't know if you do that same thing where you just you have that one thing that you're like oh where was that one lesson and it is the line that is the part that you just want to hold on to and remember and catch and so I went through from my notes last night and I just wrote down what were the one lines from each lesson that felt the most relevant to me from this study and we do this every time if you're new here at the end of inklings at the end of a semester we'll go through and I just love to gather the the sprinkles or the sprinklings and that may not make sense if you're not new here and when the slide goes up for this today's lesson it will have cupcakes on it because one of the things that we do believe that are important here at inklings is you may not make it to every lesson and you may not make it all the way through an entire class but just like a cupcake has that frosting and the sprinkles on the top if you just take a lick off the top of a cupcake you still get to experience the sweetness of the whole cupcake and that's how we feel about inklings even if you don't get the whole entire thing if you even just got a small bit then there was still goodness there there was sweetness there there was something fulfilling about coming even just for the small parts that is one of my favorite things about this community so i'm going to read you my sprinklings and see if it brings back memories for you if it brings back some of these great discussions and conversations that we've had here are some of the things that i wrote down that i thought i just don't want to remember i don't want to forget from the last six months what if he was your son however much you've prayed pray more remember the timbral moments put on your white gloves and call out the band the readiness is all no one sits alone is not a nice thought it's a great work what if the proving is simply just to prove he is there growth happens gradually large ship small helm only believe weaving temperance lift up your banner be the soul that keeps on trying remember the degree of difficulty you are doing so good there will be no dnf's remember that means did not finish i loved that lesson this is a great work do not be drawn off contend therefore morning by morning and day after day good news knocking fully known and truly loved sand dollar prayers how did he get the marks and it fell on a day amazing grace you guys didn't we get so smart over the past little bit like i every one of those i read and i was like oh i am so much better for this and i love i love what we've learned i love what we've done together and i love who we have become and as we think about each of these things and and maybe you want to hang this somewhere just as you prepare for saturday morning to start um this this is who we are now as we prepare to go into this next six months and imagine what we're going to be um next after um we see what comes so as you think about these sprinkles as you take time to just reflect over what have you learned and who have you become and how are you different now and you may go through your own notes and and pull out your own one liners the one thing that i thought to myself is i looked at mine is it has been a hard six months it it has been a little bit of a wrestle and there's so many of these were just like stay stay in it and um keep going and know that he's with you and we're doing an important work i was so interested in how many of these talks pointed us to um kind of that courage and on on to the victory that call to just rise up and keep going was so good and it makes me think what's ahead um for us this weekend now there's going to be a lot of really awesome things that are going to happen in the next several days and i'm so excited as we just think about what this is going to look like this weekend for all of us and a couple things we talked about this before but just to keep in mind saturday morning there is going to be a really sweet opportunity for all of us to sustain a profit and as you gather with your family or your friends or whoever you watch conference with i think it would be really interesting to think about that word sustain and what does it actually mean and what does it require from us when we raise our hand what are we saying um what are we promising what's the expectation for us because i think we often think about what's the expectation for the person who is called but also the fact that we actually raise our hand what is the expectation of us and when you do a solemn assembly to sustain a profit it's different it's unique it this is not a temple solemn assembly we're not dedicating a temple we're sustaining a profit and and it will be an experience that is memorable and it will be really memorable for your children and your grandchildren i don't know how your house is when we do the sustenance at conference but lots of time at our house um people are putting their lunch together they're getting chips they're getting their play everybody's getting ready to go sit down for conference you're kind of listening but you know the sustenance are going on and so you're not like you don't have your notes out you don't have your pen out you're just doing those things i'm going to invite you to be your whole family gathered together by the opening song of saturday morning and sitting together and waiting for what is about to take place and if you've had a chance to to talk to them about what it means to sustain someone it will be an even more powerful experience so be thinking about that as you're preparing for general conference and whoever you're watching it with because that's going to be a sweet and a really important part of what happens is this sustaining that takes place um we're going to be doing what we always do around here which is my favorite thing um where we'll be running posts and you can put your favorite part of conference in the posts as you're listening and because i'm a little bit busy rio does that for us so that will be happening over on good news brand and it will just happen at every single conference you'll be able to get on and watch people uh be commenting and it it's fun to see the comments showing up and um and just what felt important to everyone what was the standout for our community and the important phrases and um and the lessons that are being learned in conference and so um if you're if you're watching that might be something that you want to engage in as we go along and then you know that rio and i cannot wait for after the last session of conference on sunday i get so excited about this um to announce what will we be studying for this next six months so by sunday night um we will have something up there rio loves to make it so cute everyone so um we'll we'll have our theme and you just keep checking back but by sunday night we'll know what we're doing and then we have cute meg who's getting together a whole bunch of stuff for us on um uh small groups so be you can take this whole weekend to be putting your inklings groups together and then there's going to be a monthly small inkling group letter um that will come out that's just meant to inspire you and help you with your um groups so be be getting those already get those all prepared and then um sunday night we will have our um that our announcement and we will be off and running for the next semester um then this right now is in the stories so if you want to print this out and put it in um it up where you can be looking at it as you prepare for conference rio has that all ready for us so you can um print that out right now and then hopefully you've got yourself a journal and treats some good treats and uh that you're spending today and tomorrow thinking of your most important questions and preparing your heart and your home and everything for conference and easter it's going to be such a good weekend so oh update on greg um greg is finished all his radiation we're so happy about that and then um there is uh let's see finished radiation two weeks of a lot of side effects those are just finishing up right now we slept terrible for two weeks um but now starting to feel better we wait one month and then we do all those scans again so we're going to be so nervous in one month from now but we'll do all the scans and then we'll tell you what's happening and then someone's asking if there is a solemn assembly yes it is called a solemn assembly so there are different kinds of solemn assemblies one we're we're more used to it's the one with the white handkerchief and we do the hosanna shout and that is a temple dedication um the solemn assembly for when a prophet is sustained is a little bit different that's what we're going to experience on saturday morning so um both are called solemn assemblies this is right and important and um but it will feel a little bit different so um we we will have that fun experience i'm going to update you on greg as soon as there is an update right now we're just praying um and hoping for a miracle because remember we expect miracles that is what we do so that is what we're hoping for and then um we will go through conference and meet back here next thursday and that's so fun and um we'll have so many good things to talk about so love to all of you have a good conference weekend and then next thursday we will have all the instructions for what are we doing next have a happy easter and a happy conference thanks for joining me this podcast is taken from our thursday inklings discussions which happened live on instagram at inklings.institute if you loved being here i'd love to invite you to go even deeper with me get reminders and enjoy first access to all our events and gatherings by going to emilybellfreeman.com backslash inklings
