Sheri L. Dew, President and CEO of Deseret Book and beloved inspirational speaker, addressed the student body with words of hope and encouragement in her devotional speech titled "You Are a Pivotal Generation"; she began with her expression of great love for the young adults of the Church and of the spirit the youth carried: "I'll tell you though, as I have been thinking this morning, and trying to be very prayerful and careful in my preparations, I have found myself wondering if you are not the most unique group of young adults anywhere in the church. I have seen young adults in probably 60 or 65 countries and I can't think of another gathering like you."
Dew spoke of an interesting experience she had in Europe; after speaking to a group of young adults at an LDS conference, a newspaper reporter interviewed her and asked why she had traveled so far and paid her own fare just to speak to a group of people she had never met. Dew responded with her own set of questions: "Well, tell me--how do you feel about our society today? What do you see in your society here in Austria?" The reporter replied, "Well, I think we have problems. I think [that] actually a lot of our problems come from the younger generation." Dew then asked the reporter why he had come to the conference. He answered, "Well, I heard that these Mormon youth were different. It feels different here. There's something different about this group of young men and young women." Dew felt prompted by the Spirit to answer, "They are different. I'll tell you why I have come to Salzburg. I've come because this is a pivotal generation. And if there's anything I can do as a member of my generation to help them, then I want to do it--even if it means flying across an ocean and spending my own money to do it, and making ... a quick trip to do it."
She then testified that the phrase "pivotal generation" was given to her at that moment by the Holy Ghost. She noted that there were many ways to interpret this phrase and she gave a few examples: She began with pivotal, and stated that pivotal could mean that we are the generation to welcome back Jesus Christ, or we could be raising the generation that will welcome Him. She also reasoned that pivotal could mean that we have reached "that precarious tipping point in our lives" when more of the people in this world choose wickedness rather than righteousness. She expressed that as college students we are at a pivotal point in our lives and that our generation has been prepared for this wickedness. Thereafter, she stated, "The decisions you are making right now and that you will make in the foreseeable months and years will absolutely determine whether you pivot towards the world or towards the Lord. Now, to make things really interesting, the way you pivot will determine the course of your life and it will determine the quality of your eternal life."
Next, Dew, thinking as a CEO of a large and successful company, asked the audience to put on their business hats and pretend to run a company. She introduced the idea of "disruptive business strategies" by describing how many successful businesses have looked at an existing industry and found a way to more efficiently produce an item. Some examples given were iPods and the music industry, e-mail and the US Postal Service, and Amazon.com in relation to book selling. She stated: "Disruptive business practices and strategies and products can sometimes be very, very successful, but they leave a trail of destruction in their wake."
She let the idea linger and then asked, "If it were your assignment to develop a disruptive strategy to disrupt your generation, what would you do? If your assignment were to say 'How would I keep all of you from doing what you came to this earth to do? How will I disrupt the Father’s plan in your mortal lives?'"
Dew shared a statement from Elder Holland in response to her question: "This is not our home. Sometimes we act as though we're going to stay here, when we aren't, we can't, and we won't." She further stated that it is easy to forget that this life is a small portion of our existence because mortality is a small, though pivotal, window of the eternities. She then stated that Satan works to help us forget that we must live our lives to prepare for the life to come. She reiterated: "If we don’t do as well as we know how and we are prepared to do, it'll be largely because we act and make choices as though we're going to stay here, as though this life is all there is, when that is not the case."
She then inverted the "disruptive business strategies" formula, making them three of the most important things that completely determine the outcome of our lives: 1) Knowing you are a son or daughter of God and that you have a mission to fulfill on Earth, 2) Understanding what the Savior did when He atoned for us, and understanding what He will do now to help us, and 3) Learning to receive personal revelation.
She urged students to think about their roles as children of God: "Do you think there's any chance that our Father in Heaven would have taken a chance on the outcome of the last days by sending men and women he couldn't count on? I just don't think that there's any chance that he would have done that." Moving on, she stated that Heavenly Father reserved our generation for these days of wickedness because He knew we could withstand the temptations and trials. She spoke of the significance found in listening to the Spirit--especially in regards to our royal birthright: "What is not significant is for me to tell you who you are, but for the Spirit to tell you who you are, because when you absolutely know who you are, it changes everything about the choices you make and about the way you spend and live your lives."
She tied the choices we have made or are now making to the healing salve found in the atonement of Jesus Christ, stating, "Think of the weakness that you have. Do you know that the ultimate source of solving those weaknesses and of making them strong, and turning them into strengths, is the Savior?" She summed that Satan would come after each one of us, whether through sin or trials and that only the healing power of the atonement could heal us of our imperfections and heartaches.
As her speech wound down, Dew invited every student to pray for help in receiving personal revelation from Heavenly Father, stating that our Father wants to hear from us and provide guidance, but we must be willing and worthy of hearing His counsel. She then counseled the audience to remove anything that could obstruct the Spirit from their lives--music, movies, clothing, etc., noting that in order to receive guidance from our Heavenly Father, we must put forth the effort to receive it.
In closing, Dew bore her testimony of our generation's strength: "God knew that when the world fell apart he would want you and he would choose for you to be here. I know that's true and that you are a pivotal generation."
--Photo by Monique Saenz