Studying the General Conference Ensign

 I love, love, love General Conference!  While watching the sessions on Saturday and Sunday I take lots of notes about the topics and feelings I have about what is being said.  Then the following month when I get my General Conference edition I love to read the talks and see the things I wrote in my notes.  I am sometimes surprised that what really touched me and what I heard as the main message of a speaker is just a small part of their talk.  I hear what I need to hear.  Then I learn even more by reading the messages.  In this post I am going to show you a way of studying that is helpful to me.  I realize this may not work for everyone.  My hope is to inspire you to study, whatever way works best for you!  I am a very visual learner.  I am also able to see through written "layers".  I define the layers as being colors, shapes, drawings and sticky notes.  I am able to focus on each "layer" individually as well as together.  I'll explain with a visual for each one.

This is a legend for my markings.  I taped it on the Table of Contents page. It's a litte hard to read in the picture, but each one is explained with a picture below so just keep scrolling!.

 The first thing I did with each talk was to take a red pen and put a bubble cloud around all of the sentences or phrases that were in my notes.  These are the things that I wrote while watching conference.  I love to look through the talks and see these red outlines!  It reminds me of the feelings I had and how the Holy Ghost touched me at that time to inspire me to take that note.

 Next, with a blue pen I put a box around each of the scriptures referenced in the talk.  At the end of each talk is a footnote resource list.  This tells me where each scripture is located so I can write it down in the margins next to the blue box.  Some of the talks actually have the scripture references written after each quote.  I did the same blue boxes for those talks, I just didn't write the reference again in the margin.  This helps me to study the scriptures more in connection with the talk's message.  It was fascinating for me to see in Elder Bednar's talk that 75% of his talk was scripture!


 

 After marking the scripture locations, I use a yellow highlighter and as I read and re-read the talk I highlight the parts that really stand out to me.  When I am finished, if you were to go back and read just the highlighted parts, you would have a good idea what the talk was about.  A lot of these highlighted paragraphs are things I want to study more in depth or are things I really want to remember.

  This page has one of my awkward sketches. (I am no artist, lol!) The story in this part of the talk reminded me of a Relief Society lesson that I taught.  I drew a small version of the picture that I had in my R.S. manual and it's reference on the last page of the talk next to the picture of the young boy to remind me where the full lesson was located.  I thought it would be a good FHE lesson, especailly for my daughters.  We are going to base our next 6 months of FHE around these conference talks so this one is already coming together!

I use the sticky notes towrite my feelings or thoughts to add to the talk pages.  This is a part of the visual layering I mentioned.  If I write too much on the pages in the margins, it overwhelms my eyes and gets lost.  By having things written on these notes, I am able see them when I choose to, but not be distracted by them when I am studying.  I also like to use different colors and papers for different parts.  More layering.  Am I making any sense?

  For small notes or specific references, I did occasionally mark them in the margins instead of on a sticky note.  I used a black pen to differentiate the note from the blue scriptural references.

 Here I went onto Pinterest and found several pins from several people of conference "memes".  (I'm sorry I didn't keep a list of who and where I found them!)  I printed some of the fun ones postage stamp sized and stapled them onto the pages where the quotes are found to create these fun little colorful tabs.  I did this purely for esthetics.  They add no real study value, except visually, to me!

 Choose a talk to study.  Mark it up as an example.  Add a few pens and sticky notes for additional talks and this is a great visiting teaching gift!   I hope something in this inspires you to study the General Conference Ensign.  The messages are powerful and full of gospel truths we desparately need in our lives and are for us today!  Remember:  Today's prophet's words = today's scripture!