Latter-day Saint leaders recognize young adulthood can be a challenging time filled with uncertainty about one’s life course, faith, beliefs and identity.
They also recognize the world’s chaos and confusion, and each human’s innate longing for connection with the divine and with each other.
That is why, for the fourth year in a row, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is hosting its annual conference for young single adults in Utah — and these young adults are showing up, by the thousands.
The Church of Jesus Christ is continuing to host these conferences “because we love you,” Sister Andrea Muñoz Spannaus of the church’s Young Women General Presidency told the Deseret News following her opening keynote address.
“You are very important, you are the rising generation,” she said. “We want you to have the best experience with God, with the gospel, to be the disciples of him, and to have fun and really find joy in the gospel. We love you.”
Latter-day Saint leaders’ care and aim for young adults can be seen throughout each aspect of this year’s Utah Area YSA Conference, taking place Aug. 14–15 at the Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City.
The Utah conference includes keynote speakers, music and a variety of gospel-centered classes. It also includes a winding trike course and areas for pickleball, mini golf, video games and various yard games — all with the goal of bringing Latter-day Saint young adults closer to Christ and to each other.
Sister Spannaus gave young adults two invitations in her keynote address to help them remain faithful and become instruments in “advancing the work of God.”
The first was for young adults to surround themselves with good friends and people. The second was for them to remember and record their personal spiritual experiences.
Each spiritual experience “molds us, it shapes who we are, it shapes our souls,” Sister Spannaus said in her address. Recognizing and remembering these experiences opens the door for more.
Gayle and Tom Holdman, the closing keynote speakers for the first day of the two-day conference, shared lessons from their life and their work creating stained glass together for more than three decades.
“We are like pieces of glass in the ultimate artist’s hands,” Gayle Holdman said. “We are not completed, we are not perfected, and we do not fulfill the measure of our creation until we allow light to come through us.
“Jesus Christ himself is that light.”
Gayle and Tom Holdman co-own Holdman Studios and lead a team of 130 artists in two international studios. Together, they have been able to work on a wide variety of projects, including more than 150 temples of the Church of Jesus Christ.
“You are more powerful than you know,” Tom Holdman told young adults. Tom has lived with a lifelong speech impediment, but has found he can best express his light and testimony through art.
“You are not alone,” he said. “You are held. (And) you are capable of more than you know.”
Complete summaries of Sister Spannaus’ and the Holdmans’ keynote addresses are available on TheChurchNews.com.
The conference’s first day will end with evening activities, including a concert featuring “American Idol” winner Iam Tongi. The conference will continue through Saturday, Aug. 15.
