What to know before General Conference

In-person attendance at the 192nd Annual General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will be permitted with limited capacity for the first time in two years as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The conference will feature five sessions from April 2-3, including a return to a special Saturday evening session for women 12 and older.

More than 21,000 people can be seated in the conference center. However, only 10,000 will be allowed per session this weekend due to “parking and accessibility issues,” the church newsroom reported earlier this month.

Temple Square has been under construction since the Salt Lake City Temple closed for renovations in December 2019. Large portions of Temple Square’s main plaza will be closed on April 11 for landscaping and other reconstruction work. The square is expected to reopen in the fall of 2023.

Church leaders encouraged April conference attendees to use public transportation to help with limited parking availability. The FrontRunner will operate on Sundays this weekend, unlike its usual Sunday closing schedule.

A conference session ticket can also be used as a ticket to board any UTA transit during the conference weekend.

Masks will be optional in the conference center in accordance with updates to the Church’s COVID-19 policy.

General conference will be broadcast and live streamed in approximately 70 languages ​​and then translated into over 100 languages. The event is available live on the Church’s website, the Church’s YouTube channel, BYUtv, and other radio and television stations.

Church announcements

Forty-five new Area Seventies from 23 countries were announced and sustained in a general conference leadership session on Thursday. Two leaders were supported from Russia: Alexey V. Samaykin, responsible for social assistance and self-reliance for the Eastern Europe zone and Nikolai Ustyuzhaninov, president of the Russia Rostov-na-Donu mission.

An April 2022 global report was also released on Wednesday. The report called the JustServe program a “hub for miracles.”

A recent donation highlighted was the $4 million donated by the Church to aid humanitarian and refugee efforts in Europe related to the Russian-Ukrainian war.

Other relief efforts included donating goats and bees to support self-reliance in Jordan, the Church’s self-reliance program translated into 15 languages, and reconstruction efforts following a volcanic eruption in Tonga.

The full 44-minute report is available here.