Select Talks for Elders - Need to be Updated (Outdated)

[pyz01]

Hello -- I am the Elders Quorum President and I wanted to add the lessons for the next 6 months in the mobile app. The link to "Select Talks for Elders Quorum Lessons" works great -- but when I went to add the lessons for the next 6 months - last year's dates appear and this is no way to add for the next 6 months. Anyone else experiencing this? If so, is there a way for this to be fixed? Thanks to all.

[lajackson]

-- but when I went to add the lessons for the next 6 months - last year's dates appear

Well, the conference talks only appeared in Gospel Library a day or two ago. I expect it will not be long until you will be able to select talks from the October general conference.

I would point out that when the study of general conference talks became a part of the curriculum, the world was not quite as connected as it is today. So the talks from the October conference this past weekend would have been scheduled for discussion during the months of November through April, and the April conference talks would be studied from May through October. This allowed for the Liahona (formerly the Ensign) to arrive in time for the first discussion each six months.

I do not recall that those instructions have ever changed, although I am aware that leaders all over the world are trying to pick a conference talk from less than a week ago to discuss this coming Sunday, a week later.

There might possibly be one more talk from April conference that would be worth discussing this week. Or the programmers might get the updates completed by the end of the week, now that the most recent talks are available electronically.

A more interesting question for me would be if you select a talk from April and the app gets updated to present talks from October, will the April selection stick?

[davesudweeks]

I was Elders Quorum (EQ) President before the option to schedule the talks was in Gospel Library, but we purposely overlapped about a month (October conference talks would be used November through April, April conference would be used May through October, etc.). The main reason was we were asked by our stake president to coordinate lessons with the Relief Society (RS) so we would study the same lesson each time (and married couples could study during the week together (because both had the same lesson). This built in several weeks for the EQ Presidency and RS Presidency to coordinate on the planned lessons for the next 6 months.

Unless something has changed, the church does not prescribe the start date of when you begin studying the lessons from the "most recent general conference" and this gives a little cushion for everything to catch up. You don't have to do this, but it does give you some breathing room...

[jdlessley]

We were able today to select an October 2023 conference talk. Getting all the things ready for this Sunday this early after General Conference is the fastest I have seen.

[sbradshaw]

There was a bug in Android Gospel Library this week that prevented choosing talks for the right dates. This is now fixed in Android Gospel Library 6.6.2!

A more interesting question for me would be if you select a talk from April and the app gets updated to present talks from October, will the April selection stick?

Yes, if you enter talks into Gospel Library in advance – i.e. fill in October's lessons with April talks before the changeover – those April talks will be available on the relevant weeks in October for members of your class or quorum. The changeover only affects the process of adding talks – it doesn't remove talks that were already added.

Unless something has changed, the church does not prescribe the start date of when you begin studying the lessons from the "most recent general conference" and this gives a little cushion for everything to catch up.

I think there's room for flexibility for practical reasons – i.e. if talks aren't published yet in your language, or if it's difficult to coordinate planning in a short time. But the term "most recent general conference" (General Handbook 8.2.1.2 and 9.2.1.2) implies that the start date is the date of the conference, so I would disagree that the start date isn't prescribed.

[pyz01]

SBradsahw is correct. Updated the library app to 6.6.2 today and was able to load the talks.

As an aside, all information on this thread has been good. Yes, when loading the talks, they allowed me to go four weeks (2 sessions) beyond the next conference date so to allow for overlap. But, as shown today, I can also select talks from the most recent GC (i.e., last week's conference) for this Sunday. So, you have the flexibility to go either way. I like to get the talks from the most recent conference, so I selected a talk from the recent GC. Thanks to all who reported or had a hand in correcting the issue.

[davidhaws]

I want to add a talk from a prior general conference that is not from the current period period. Can I do that?

[jdlessley]

I want to add a talk from a prior general conference that is not from the current period period. Can I do that?

That capability is not currently available in the Gospel Library mobile app.