Did this General Authority lie in his Conference talk?

[Notatbm]

40 minutes ago, bluebell said:

They’ve had a form of FSY for decades. At least since the 80s I think. But it was called EFY and you had to travel to BYU (or maybe a couple other locations around the US, I’m not sure) to attend. Worship band type music has been a staple of those events for just as long. You could even by the tape or CD at Deseret Book each year. 

Yea my pops was the stake pres in the 80s. Never heard of trips to byzoo. Must not have been a thing here and this is mesa az area

[Calm]

2 hours ago, bluebell said:

They’ve had a form of FSY for decades. At least since the 80s I think. But it was called EFY and you had to travel to BYU (or maybe a couple other locations around the US, I’m not sure) to attend. Worship band type music has been a staple of those events for just as long. You could even by the tape or CD at Deseret Book each year. 

We had youth conferences when I was a kid (70s, Northern California). Had different classes with popular speakers to attend.  Went to some resort in the mountains in California.  Church rented a bus to get there iirc, but maybe we carpooled.   Took a couple of hours.  It was three or four days.  Lived in dorms.  There was a dance.  Only speaker I remember was Keith Merrill, film guy.  Had just won an Academy Award.

Edited 5 hours ago by Calm

[Rain]

1 hour ago, Notatbm said:

Yea my pops was the stake pres in the 80s. Never heard of trips to byzoo. Must not have been a thing here and this is mesa az area

I'm in Mesa as well.  It was definitely a thing for people to go to EFY at BYU and later in Tempe and Flagstaff and maybe other places. I'm trying to remember if my daughter went to one of the local ones, that came later, here or if it was in Salt Lake. 

I really didn't hear about it at church till the church changed from it being a special, separate thing to an everyone does it. I don't know if that is still going or not as it has been years since my kids were that age. I heard about it more from friends, talk CDs for teens and Education Week so I could see why you might not heard about it much.

 

Edited 5 hours ago by Rain

[Calm]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Especially_for_Youth
 

Quote

Especially For Youth (often abbreviated as EFY) is a week-long youth-oriented seminar focused on fellowship and teaching the principles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). It is run by Brigham Young University's (BYU) Division of Continuing Education (CE) and is the largest church-oriented summer camp, attracting over 50,000 attendees every year at locations around the world.[1][2]

Quote

EFY was created by Ronald C. Hills in 1976 when 172 youth and 15 counselors met for the first session of the summer program. Then-Commissioner of Church Education Jeffrey R. Holland, now of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, was one of the banquet speakers at the founding session. The next year, attendance rose to 863 youth. As of 2005, the total number of participants who had attended EFY over the years was 409,484.^[3] John Bytheway wrote his master's thesis at BYU on the early years of EFY.^[4]

I was pretty sure it was going on at BYU when I first attended, which was the summer of 76.  I was annoyed by the non students wandering around campus.

https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/4577/

John Bytheway’s master’s thesis on EFY.  Has lists of teachers, classes, activities, etc.

Edited 4 hours ago by Calm

[Notatbm]

53 minutes ago, Rain said:

I'm in Mesa as well.  It was definitely a thing for people to go to EFY at BYU and later in Tempe and Flagstaff and maybe other places. I'm trying to remember if my daughter went to one of the local ones, that came later, here or if it was in Salt Lake. 

I really didn't hear about it at church till the church changed from it being a special, separate thing to an everyone does it. I don't know if that is still going or not as it has been years since my kids were that age. I heard about it more from friends, talk CDs for teens and Education Week so I could see why you might not heard about it much.

 

Yea my time I could have gone I suppose was before CDs existed… 

[Notatbm]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

We had youth conferences when I was a kid (70s, Northern California). Had different classes with popular speakers to attend.  Went to some resort in the mountains in California.  Church rented a bus to get there iirc, but maybe we carpooled.   Took a couple of hours.  It was three or four days.  Lived in dorms.  There was a dance.  Only speaker I remember was Keith Merrill, film guy.  Had just won an Academy Award.

We had a youth conference here. It was a regional thing and one day long with a dance at the end. I dont remember anything about it except we had a really cool speaker. Vietnam vet. All kinds of inspiring war stories even better than Paul Dunn ( lol). Whole uniform except Garments got burned off in a bomb attack, using a vial of consecrated oil to lube  weapons during an all night battle on a fire base somewhere in nam..the event was a success I suppose. No worship bands or live music.

Several years later he ran for president. Learned he wasn’t even Mormon till 1984.

boy what a let down it was to learn it was all lies. Can’t believe Salt lake sent us this dude. Interestingly it was 85/86 within a year give or take of the salamander letter bombings. Turns out none of our leaders had their discernment meters turned on back then.

speakers name was Bo Gritz…

Edited 4 hours ago by Notatbm

[webbles]

1 hour ago, Rain said:

I'm in Mesa as well.  It was definitely a thing for people to go to EFY at BYU and later in Tempe and Flagstaff and maybe other places. I'm trying to remember if my daughter went to one of the local ones, that came later, here or if it was in Salt Lake. 

I really didn't hear about it at church till the church changed from it being a special, separate thing to an everyone does it. I don't know if that is still going or not as it has been years since my kids were that age. I heard about it more from friends, talk CDs for teens and Education Week so I could see why you might not heard about it much.

 

I'm from a small town in Arizona (Mohave County) and I always wanted to go to EFY growing up and that is the 80s/90s.  I did get to attend the younger "World of Adventure" which was only for pre-teen boys.  There was also a "World of Adventure" for pre-teen girls.  Similar to EFY/FSY but for younger ages.  I think they merged those in with EFY in 1999 - https://universe.byu.edu/1999/04/12/lds-church-educational-system-makes-changes-to-youth-program

[Rain]

14 minutes ago, Notatbm said:

We had a youth conference here. It was a regional thing and one day long with a dance at the end. I dont remember anything about it except we had a really cool speaker. Vietnam vet. All kinds of inspiring war stories even better than Paul Dunn ( lol). Whole uniform except Garments got burned off in a bomb attack, using a vial of consecrated oil to lube  weapons during an all night battle on a fire base somewhere in nam..the event was a success I suppose. No worship bands or live music.

Several years later he ran for president. Learned he wasn’t even Mormon till 1984.

boy what a let down it was to learn it was all lies. Can’t believe Salt lake sent us this dude. Interestingly it was 85/86 within a year give or take of the salamander letter bombings. Turns out none of our leaders had their discernment meters turned on back then.

speakers name was Bo Gritz…

The CD I am talking about didn't come out till after I could have gone as well.  They were ones I had for my kids. John Bytheway, Hank Smith. Those kind of CDs.

Your speaker likely didn't come from Salt Lake. The speakers for my kid's activities and the RS activities I went to were always found by our stake leaders. But yes, Bo Gritz is a interesting choice for a youth conference.

[Rain]

12 minutes ago, webbles said:

I'm from a small town in Arizona (Mohave County) and I always wanted to go to EFY growing up and that is the 80s/90s.  I did get to attend the younger "World of Adventure" which was only for pre-teen boys.  There was also a "World of Adventure" for pre-teen girls.  Similar to EFY/FSY but for younger ages.  I think they merged those in with EFY in 1999 - https://universe.byu.edu/1999/04/12/lds-church-educational-system-makes-changes-to-youth-program

Interesting. I hadn't heard of the adventure ones, but that sounds like it was inbetween the time I would have gone and when my kids would have. 

[Notatbm]

46 minutes ago, Rain said:

The CD I am talking about didn't come out till after I could have gone as well.  They were ones I had for my kids. John Bytheway, Hank Smith. Those kind of CDs.

Your speaker likely didn't come from Salt Lake. The speakers for my kid's activities and the RS activities I went to were always found by our stake leaders. But yes, Bo Gritz is an interesting choice for a youth conference. 

Hmm yea I have no idea where he was dug up at. Looks like he lived in Nevada at the time. I wonder how someone crossed paths with him? I know my dad had no idea who he was until just a week or two before the conference and he was the one who organized the conference. He told me because he thought I’d be excited to hear him speak which I was. I was and still am a military aficionado. 

Had to be someone in Utah though. My dad and bk packer knew each other pretty well and he stopped by the house from time to time when in the valley. Probably someone packer recommended. 

Edited 3 hours ago by Notatbm

[Calm]

3 hours ago, Notatbm said:

Yea my time I could have gone I suppose was before CDs existed… 

I had a cassette tape for one.

[Calm]

2 hours ago, Notatbm said:

Had to be someone in Utah though.

Why?

[BlipBlap]

On 8/18/2026 at 1:42 PM, Notatbm said:

Agreed- they just need to be careful when they say "WE" have no paid clergy when clearly "WE" do have some paid clergy especially when the person who is actually saying it gets a paycheck from the church every two weeks.

This is similar to a commander I worked for in Iraq who never once stepped outside the wire and went on a combat mission. In fact, to my knowledge he had never personally engaged in combat in his entire career. He would routinely brag about how "WE" were kicking AQI butt on a daily basis despite taking hundreds of casualties in the process. He wasn't wrong about "WE" meaning "US" because "WE" were kicking butt. He wasn't involved in it so it would have been much more accurate to say "you guys" or some such thing. 

 

No, we do not need to be careful at all when we say that we have no paid clergy.  "Paid clergy" is a direct reference to someone doing this as a profession.  They are receiving payment in return for services rendered.  Trying to act as if this is equivalent is incredibly poor faith and this is essentially another "leak" about something that was never a secret.

[BlipBlap]

On 8/18/2026 at 11:50 AM, Rain said:

Technically, seminary teachers do, or at least did, get paid. This was quite a few years ago, so things may have changed, but my mom was called in to the bishop, similar to a calling, and asked to apply for the position.  She got paid a very small amount, so small it was probably called something else rather than pay. Expense reimbursement was separate from that.

If I remember right, they were also formal employees of the Church Educational System.