Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints gather together twice a year for a Church-wide conference to hear from Church leaders. Over the last decade there have been a few changes made to the General Conference experience.
Mission age change
The Saturday morning session of the October 2012 General Conference is a conference that will long be remembered by today’s youth of the Church. The change in missionary age impacted tens of thousands of LDS youth.
During the session, President Thomas S. Monson made the announcement that all worthy and able young men may serve a mission at age 18 instead of age 19 and that worthy young women could serve at age 19 instead of age 21. This announcement caused the missionary force of the Church to expand from 58,500 in October 2012 to 88,000 by October 2014.