Time for Mormon conference

SALT LAKE CITY — The spring flowers in and around Temple Square are trying to survive the midweek snows, downtown Salt Lake City seems to be bustling with an obvious influx of visitors and much of the local advertising has taken a marked turn toward a Mormon market.

Welcome to another conference weekend — more specifically, the 180th Annual General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

From this morning to Sunday afternoon, the church will conduct five two-hour sessions at the 21,000-seat LDS Conference Center, with proceedings to be broadcast via television, radio, satellite and the Internet.

President Thomas S. Monson, now in his third year leading the church of more than 13 million members, will preside at the sessions.

The church's purpose of conferences can be found in one of its volumes of scripture, the Doctrine and Covenants.

"And now, behold, I give unto you a commandment, that when ye are assembled together ye shall instruct and edify each other, that ye may know how to act and direct my church, how to act upon the points of my law and commandments, which I have given." (D&C 43:8)

The first-ever such gathering came two months after the April 6, 1830, organization of the LDS Church, which conducts two general conferences a year — the annual conferences in April and the semiannual ones in October.

This April, the conference weekend coincides with Easter, with a number of the messages to be given by the church's general authorities likely to focus directly on the mission and ministry of Jesus Christ.

In addition to the general authorities teaching doctrine and providing instruction to the lay leaders and members, conference is a time of accounting, announcement and change.

The sustaining of church officers is conducted each conference, usually in the Saturday afternoon session. However, in recent years, the sustaining has been done in morning sessions when it includes individuals receiving new calls to the church's two highest governing bodies, the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve.

No vacancies exist in those two groups, where members serve in lifetime callings. So any priesthood leadership changes to take place this weekend will likely be among the quorums of the Seventy — both the general authorities in the First and Second quorums and the area authorities in the other quorums.

In recent conferences, most Seventy callings have been sustained in April with releases announced in October.