Technology spreads the word

Being the geek that I am, I'm always thinking in terms of technology and how that impacts current events. On Sunday night right after President Hinckley, word spread very quickly around the world. Most people in Utah knew within a hour of him passing away and the story was on national new sites within 2 hours. I have heard from many people that Wikipedia was updated before most people knew. All the traffic to the KSL website (the local NBC station owned by the Church) actually caused major delays, and most of my friends said that they had problems getting to the site. Before I knew, he had passed away, I was trying to access some websites at BYU and had noticed that it was much slower than it is normally on Sunday nights. My wife, said that she had trouble placing phone calls on her cell phone as she tried to call family and friends living outside Utah. The Internet was a buzz with the word. The following quote is from lds.org

The passing of President Hinckley was discussed extensively on the “blogosphere.” The day following his death, a new blog post was published about him every couple of minutes. According to Blogpulse, a service that tracks trends in blogs, President Gordon B. Hinckley was the third most mentioned person in the blogosphere on Monday, 28 January.

Now, that is a real testament of how technology can be used to spread the word. The amazing thing is that all this technology we use today did not exist or was not in wide spread use when President Hinckley was called as Prophet. Without this technology, the Church would not be able to spread the gospel to the whole world as effectively as we can today. I firmly believe that the Lord has blessed us with much of this technology, for his divine designs and he is kind enough to let us play with it for other things. If you take a look at the Church's increase use of technology during President Hinckley's lifetime, some amazing things have been developed and used take the gospel to the world.

Although I haven't done the research, I willing to bet that President Hinckley's funeral, will be watched by more people around the world than any other person's funeral. It is going to be broadcast via the Church's satellite system, and over the Internet in over 50 different languages. I'm sure that the audience will be measured in millions.

A Prophet Remembered

I will always remember President Gordon B. Hinckley and the spirit that I felt when in his presence or while listening to his voice.

Since I have been attending BYU, I have been blessed with 3 opportunities to see President Hinckley speak at BYU devotionals. The last one was last September. The first time will always be the most memorable. The devotionals are held in the Marriott Center, which is a basketball arena that seats about 15,000. I will never forget when President Hinckley walked in. Without a word of announcement, all 15,000 of us silently stood in honor as he took his seat on the stand. At the same time, the Spirit filled the room testifying that despite his small and humble stature, he was in fact the living Prophet of God and the witness of our Savior he bore was true. Although I did not doubt that he was the Prophet before, the witness I received that day is something that I can not deny.

I'm also grateful for the remarkable and wonderful building that was built on the BYU campus in honor of Gordon B. Hinckley. It is right next to the buildings where most of my class are held. The morning after his passing, I went out of my way to walk by his building, so I could be reminded of the legacy of hard work he has left with BYU and its alumni. The school has put together a few videos that highlight the impact he has had on BYU:

Tribute to Pres. Hinckley
Our Journey Together