Stokes said she can't personally count the people "who have blessed my life. I've been absorbed into precious families," with invitations to temple marriages, baby blessings, funerals, family events and everyday meals from her LDS friends. "We've shared joys and sorrows. I came into the church based on its teachings and the degree of correlation with those teaching and actions of most members." She said she's been "blessed to observe righteous priesthood holders ... the persuasion, long-suffering, gentleness, meekness and love unfeigned," spoken of in LDS scripture.

"As I observe what the church does ... I know I am in the right place. Indeed, this is the place."

Even so, she said, there are those who still reject the revelation allowing priesthood for all worthy males. For those "who prefer to hold on to the teachings of the past," she quoted Elder Bruce R. McConkie, who told students at BYU following the 1978 announcement, "it's time for disbelieving people to get in line and believe in a living prophet."

She urged all of those assembled to "reach out to those with a lack of understanding about this matter ... that we might help them come unto Christ and by so doing, help ourselves to come unto Christ. Since our coming to this land in chains, I believe it was the blessing of forgiving that enabled us to survive. Today we're capable of even more — of loving those who do not love us." "Do we have a ways to go? Yes — a very long way to go. But we're raising a generation so much less color-conscious than the last one. ... I have great hope for the future."

Ahmad Corbitt, president of the New Jersey Cherry Hill Stake, said he admires "the stalwart black pioneers who valiantly bore testimony of the Savior and his gospel without benefit of priesthood" before the announcement that then-church President Spencer W. Kimball had received a revelation lifting the ban.

"We as Latter-day Saints who are black must assure our primary focus is on the saving doctrines and practices of the gospel, especially the Atonement." He urged those in the audience to "increase the teaching of children that they are literal spirit sons and daughters of a kind Father in Heaven who loves them beyond our ability to express."

He asked them to teach all young people to "come to Christ faithfully and apply the atonement diligently" as the foundation of "what will most help them. We must increase our own focus on these things, embracing weightier matters of the gospel."