Stokes Sounds Off: Miscellaneous Church News

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Sunday, January 21, 2018

Miscellaneous Church News

Hello again, everyone! In the last little while, the Church News website has published a few new articles which I wanted to pass along. First of all, even though they had published a new General Authorities chart following last October's general conference, with the deaths of Elder Hales and President Monson and the subsequent reorganization of the First Presidency, it makes sense that the Church News has published an updated version of that chart, including empty spaces for the existing vacancies. You can find a PDF version of that chart here.

The Church News also ran a couple of articles focusing on addresses given at the Church's annual seminar for MTC presidents and visitor's center directors. This one summarized an address from Elder Gregory A. Schwitzer, who is one of a few Assistant Executive Directors of the Church's Missionary Department, and also the chair of the Missionary Medical Health Services Division. Additionally, the Church News published this article of the remarks then-Elder now-President Oaks gave during that same seminar, which was done just a few days before he was called to the First Presidency.

Additionally, aside from addresses in that seminar, the Church News ran  article about the return of missionaries to Madagascar, where a plague outbreak in that nation led to those missionaries being evacuated and temporarily reassigned in October last year.  It was great to hear about that.

It is awesome to see how the Church is progressing in small and simple ways that, when seen in retrospect, are more significant than we realized at the time. It has always interested me to see the work of the Lord unfold, and I am grateful these things mean so much to so many of you as well.

That does it for this post. Any and all comments are, as always, welcome and appreciated. Thank you for the privilege of your time. Until my next post, I wish each one of you all the best and pray that the Lord will bless you all in everything you do.

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