Two and a Half Days, or One Tap
From “Prophets, Seers, and Revelators,” by Elder Vaiangina Sikahema · Saturday morning session, October 2026 General Conference
The big idea
Having living prophets and apostles is a rare gift, and the fact that we can hear them so easily is no reason to treat what they say lightly.
Objective
Youth will be able to explain why living prophets are a gift worth sacrifice and will plan one specific way to take a prophet’s words seriously this week.
Before you teach
- Read Elder Sikahema’s talk. Practice retelling his grandparents’ voyage in about three minutes.
- Ask the youth ahead of time to bring phones or scriptures. Have a timer ready.
- Bring paper and markers for three teams.
- Write on the board, covered or turned away until needed: 16 hours. Two and a half days.
Lesson plan
Thirty minutes in 6 parts. Times are a guide; let the Spirit and the learners set the pace.
The race
- Start right after the prayer. Say: phones or scriptures out. On go, find any talk from this general conference by a member of the First Presidency or the Twelve and hold it up. Go.
- Time the first person and the last person. Write both times on the board in seconds.
- Uncover the other numbers on the board. Explain that in 1947 a young couple in Tonga expected a 16-hour voyage toward an Apostle and it became two and a half days in a storm. Today’s lesson is about the gap between those numbers and yours.
The voyage
- Tell the story, keeping to Elder Sikahema’s details: his grandparents, Sione and Salote Wolfgramm, were 28 and 25, poor farmers with no formal education, serving a mission on the isolated island of Niuatoputapu with three children aged 4, 3 and 9 months. Elder Matthew Cowley, an Apostle, was coming to Tonga. Only two Apostles had ever visited before.
- Tell the hard part honestly and gently: the storm left their baby son severely dehydrated, there was no medicine, and he died. They buried him within two days and continued their voyage.
- Have a youth read the key quote that calls an Apostle’s visit the chance of a lifetime. Then have another read the paragraph of the talk that begins: They were sailing toward an Apostle.
- Ask the questions below. Let them answer each other, not just you.
- Be honest: what is your first reaction to their choice to keep going?
- What did they believe an Apostle had that they could not get anywhere else?
Headline challenge
- Make three teams. Team 1 reads Amos 8:11–12. Team 2 reads Amos 3:7. Team 3 reads Joseph Smith—History 1:17.
- Each team has three minutes to write a headline of eight words or fewer that captures its passage, in big letters on paper.
- Teams hold up and explain their headlines in the order 1, 2, 3. The class votes for the best one that is not their own.
- Connect the three: a long famine of hearing the Lord’s word; the Lord’s pattern of revealing through prophets; and the day the heavens opened to a teenager. Read the key quote about a then-teenage boy.
- Read President Holland’s words quoted in the talk (see aligned quotes).
- The Father and the Son began the Restoration through someone about your age. What does that say about how the Lord sees young people?
A light thing?
- Read Doctrine and Covenants 90:5 aloud. Explain simply that the Lord is warning us not to treat lightly what He reveals through His servants.
- Have a youth read the key quote about cell phones. Hold up your own phone as you ask the first question.
- Movement: name one wall Agree and the opposite wall Disagree. Read each statement below and have the youth move, then ask one person from each side why. Statements: The easier something is to get, the less I value it. I remember more from a talk when I write something down. It is harder to listen to a prophet when I already think I know what he will say.
- Have everyone sit. Read the speaker’s invitation word for word (see invitations).
- Why do we take for granted the things that are easiest to reach?
- How can a person your age know for themselves that prophets speak for the Lord? What has helped you?
Make it weigh something
- In pairs, give two minutes to design a one-week plan that would make a prophet’s words heavy instead of light for a teenager. It must be specific and realistic: which talk, when, where, and what you will do with it.
- Hear plans quickly. Let the group choose one to do together, or let each youth choose their own.
- Have each youth write their plan in their phone notes or on paper and show it to their partner. This is your check that everyone has one.
- Read Doctrine and Covenants 1:38 and point out the Lord’s assurance, which the speaker quoted, that His word will all be fulfilled whether by His own voice or the voice of His servants.
Witness and follow-up
- Read the key quote that begins: What a blessing it is. Bear brief testimony of Jesus Christ and of His living prophets.
- Tell the youth you will open next week by asking what they did and what they noticed. During the week, send one short reminder to the class or to their parents.
Key passages from the talk
“For Saints scattered across the Pacific, having an Apostle of the Lord among them was the chance of a lifetime.”
“I suspect the Lord knew that even when we would have these devices (cell phones) to easily see and hear His anointed servants, many of us would still take them for granted.”
“With that clear, simple, and understated introduction, the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, would begin the work of restoring the Savior’s ancient Church through a then-teenage boy in upstate New York.”
“What a blessing it is to live in a time when apostles and prophets are on the earth.”
The speaker’s direct invitation
“let us not be guilty of holding ‘the oracles of God … as a light thing’”
Scriptures
- Amos 8:11–12 Team 1 reads it and writes a headline of eight words or fewer about a world hungry for the Lord’s word.
- Amos 3:7 Team 2 reads it and writes a headline about how the Lord reveals His will.
- Joseph Smith—History 1:17 Team 3 reads it and writes a headline about the day the heavens opened to a teenager.
- D&C 90:5 Read aloud before the Agree and Disagree activity; ask what treating revelation as a light thing looks like at their age.
Other voices that agree
“Are the heavens open? Does God reveal His will to prophets and apostles as in days of old? That they are and that He does is the unflinching declaration of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to all the world.”
“Apostles bear a unique, authoritative, divinely empowered witness of the living Christ”
Three things to remember
- For centuries people longed for prophets and could not find them; we have them.
- Easy to reach does not mean small.
- The Lord began the Restoration through a teenager, and He speaks to me through His prophets today.
Ways to act this week
- Pick one talk from this conference by a prophet, seer, and revelator. Listen to it this week with nothing else on your screen, and write down one sentence to act on.
- Put that one sentence where you will see it every day, such as your lock screen or mirror, and do what it says.
- Tell one friend or family member what you chose and why.
- Thank Heavenly Father in prayer for living prophets, and ask Him to help you know their words are true.
Suggestions written for this lesson, not the speaker’s words.
Music
- We Thank Thee, O God, for a Prophet
Adapting the lesson
- At home or with two or three youth: skip the teams; read each of the three passages together and write one headline for each as a family.
- Large class: make six teams, two for each passage, and let the pairs of teams compete for the better headline.
- Only 15 minutes: do the race, the voyage, Doctrine and Covenants 90:5 with the phone quote, and the one-week plan.
This lesson is an independent study aid written for this site. It is not an official lesson of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Quotations are word for word from the official talk; paragraph numbers count the paragraphs of the talk as published at churchofjesuschrist.org, not counting headings or picture captions. The activities, questions and ideas for acting are suggestions; follow the Spirit and adapt them to those you teach.