Thoughts...

I just keep thinking about how I need to post about conference. Since having kids, I haven't been able to sit and focus on conference as much as before. I always try and we record it on the DVR so that we can go back and watch, but it's just different.
This year, however, my kids were really good. They played in the basement while I plopped myself down on the couch to watch conference. I really, really enjoyed it. It felt like so many of the talks were just what I needed. Since I gave a talk just the last week in March, I had been doing a lot of studying, reading and praying. Many of the thoughts and impressions that came to me during my preparation were reinforced during conference; all the more making the messages feel personal.
The talk that I keep thinking about was President Monson's talk at the end of the Sunday morning session. He told a story of a woman who was leaving East Prussia for Germany after the war. She had lost her husband to the war and now had lost her home. She packed what she could into a small wagon and left, on foot, with her children. It was many miles to travel in the cold and snow, but she was determined to press forward.
As they moved forward they ran out of food, clothing and shoes. Watching her children begin to starve, she could do nothing but press forward. One by one she buried her children in the frozen ground with nothing more than a teaspoon to dig their graves. Just before the end of her journey, she had to dig a grave with her bare hands to bury her baby.
She had lost everything, her home, her belongings and worse her husband and then her four children. She wanted nothing more than to die. She contemplated suicide when the impression came to get on her knees.
President Monson encouraged each of us to follow her example, to get on our knees to seek for divine supplication in the trials we have been called to bear. This woman went on to live a happy life, knowing that because of the gospel of Jesus Christ she would see her family again one day. President Monson reminded us of the scripture that , "men are that they might have joy, " and encouraged us to "be of good cheer."
Considering all that is going on around us in the world today, and given our own individual challenges of parenting, finances, marriage, testimony (whatever they may be), we can press forward accepting the challenges as they come, recieving the strength to endure and overcome from the atonement of Christ.