I hope everyone enjoyed General Conference last month.  I absolutely love General Conference.  I do things a little bit differently in my personal study with Conference.  I love to combine all the talks into one document and then run a program to find the word frequency of every word said in those talks.  There is also an app called “Wordcruncher” that I love to use. It allows you to search a session of Conference or the Standard Works to see how often a certain word is said. 

Here are a few interesting observations from the last Conference.  Including the priesthood session, there were 31 talks given.  “Jesus” and/or “Christ” were said a total of 370 separate times! This comes to about 12 times per talk! And this doesn’t even include other names that we use for Him such as Savior or Redeemer!  

“Minister” or “ministering” was mentioned 46 times. “Come Follow Me” was said 8 times. “Covenant path” had 18 mentions. “Home-centered” was said 21 times.  “Family history” had 12 mentions.  “Temple” had 145 mentions.  “Repent” in its various forms had 93.  “Atonement” was said 45 times.  “Family” had 155 mentions.  And “prophet” was said 66 times.

What may be surprising to some people is that the word “heart” was said 99 times!  Elder Kim B. Clark shared some incredible thoughts on the heart during his talk, “Look unto Jesus Christ.”  He taught us that Jesus gave His heart to His Father.  The Savior showed this in every thought, word, and action while on Earth. He submitted to His Father’s will. He did only those things that pleased His Father.  He loved His Father.

Elder Clark connected our hearts to covenant keeping when he said, “Our covenants come alive in our hearts.”  This was one of my favorite quotes from Conference.  Have our covenants been written upon our hearts? Have the promises we’ve made to Heavenly Father “become rock-solid commitments, our deepest desires?”  

I don’t think we can overemphasize the fact that Heavenly Father is much more concerned with our hearts and our desires than just merely with our actions.  He wants us to do the right things for the right reasons.  As we try to do so, the Holy Ghost will sanctify us and help our covenants come alive in our hearts during this pursuit!