Athletes from around the globe are getting ready to compete in the dream of a lifetime in Tokyo over the coming weeks, and among them are a handful of Latter-day Saints.

The active ingredient, Cognivia, in the memory and healthy aging supplement MemNivia, licensed to the Orem, Utah company, DeVore Nutritionals, was recently selected by Nutra Ingredients as one of the top healthy aging products of 2020 – tops in the USA, Europe and Asia. Nutra Ingredients is an international supplement trade organization that monitors the efficacy and claims of thousands of products coming out of the supplement industry and awards only the best of the best.

In a talk given in the May 1999 general conference, President Dallin H. Oaks said of the Three Witnesses to the Book of Mormon:

When the clock struck midnight on New Year’s Eve this past year, my family celebrated in typical fashion with Chinese food, watching the ball drop in Times Square on television, and tromping around in the snow while banging pots and pans outside, despite the frigid temperature. The year 2020 promised to be a good one. Not only was it a nice, even number, but it brought in a new decade, and new hope in addition to a new year.

“The more I followed this feeling to pursue something bigger, I felt this closeness to my Heavenly Father that I hadn’t before.”

Here are just a few of the things I enjoyed as a child more than riding the bus.

If you expect your patriarchal blessing to make wild or unusual promises and predictions, you may be misunderstanding what a patriarchal blessing is. Your patriarchal blessing isn’t a fortune cookie, and the patriarch isn’t a fortuneteller.[1] The patriarch is a prophet, called to convey God’s words and will to you. He is only authorized to pronounce the promises he is prompted by the Holy Ghost to give. Patriarchs are counseled by their leaders to avoid making sensational or extravagant promises in the blessings they pronounce, even if the Spirit shows them rather remarkable things about the blessing’s recipient. President Joseph Fielding Smith (1876–1972), tenth President of the Church, explained, “I know of one or two cases … where a brother has been blessed by the patriarch and told that he would become a member of the Council of the Twelve [Apostles]. Usually [the patriarchs] don’t say that … even if the patriarch felt that the chances are [very good] that a man will be called to the leading councils of the Church.” President Smith added, “Patriarchs should be very careful in giving their blessings not to make extravagant expressions and to be conservative in what they say.”[2] Thus, you should not expect extravagant things to be mentioned in your blessing. Patriarchs generally avoid, for example, talking about things like the timing of the Second Coming when they give a blessing. While the young man or young woman being blessed may live to see the second coming of Christ, most patriarchs simply wouldn’t mention that in the blessing. President Smith further explained:

Compared with a once-soulful experience of prayer and scripture study, many of us know what it’s like to find spiritual practices becoming impoverished, superficial, and thin. Although it’s easy to conclude that prayer or scriptures themselves are somehow limited, it would be shortsighted not to also consider ways in which larger tendencies toward distractedness, stressful busyness, and an accelerating pace of life might be playing a role.

This story originally ran on LDS Living in December 2017.

Rena Elmer is no stranger to trials—those of the painful, gut-wrenching variety and also those of Olympic size.