This weekend, Aug. 29-30, at the 2025 Utah Area Young Single Adult Conference, the breakout rooms offered seven different topics.
A noticeable difference between this year and last year’s classes is the simplified schedule. Classes held on Friday repeated on Saturday, with very few changes to presenters.
Held in the Salt Palace Convention Center, the temporal well-being courses focused on bridging the gap between “temporal stability and spiritual strength,” the conference website said. Presenters for this topic included BYU professors, professionals in their fields and returning conference presenters.
‘Life’s not a highway, but a beautiful winding trail’ by Ulrike Mitchell
An exercise sciences professor at BYU, Ulrike Mitchell talked about life being more like a beautiful, winding trail than a straight highway. She grew up in Germany and gained a PhD in exercise sciences from BYU in 2005.
During her presentation, Mitchell stated that temporal well-being is made up of several different parts: laying a foundation for the future, creating space for growth, increasing in self-reliance, navigating life decisions, living intentionally and finding joy in the present.
She demonstrated these points by talking about different parts of her journey when these points or skills were developed. Throughout the journey, Mitchell stressed some things that have helped her, like an education, a good attitude and being present.
“The journey is the point,” she concluded with. “And you’re shaping who you are — one step at a time.”
Ashley Gold from Orem, Utah, resonated with Mitchell’s part about not postponing happiness, because she sees it a lot in her life.
‘Your search for financial security: 8 guiding questions’ by Brad Herdt
In a presentation that felt more like a one-on-one consultation, Brad Herdt from Deseret Mutual Benefit Administrators gave eight questions that he poses to clients when they come to him for financial advice. Herdt is a certified financial planner and holds many other similar certifications that makes him a financial planner at DMBA.
What stood out to Adam Hill from Midvale, Utah, was that financial security is a gift from God and to not cut Him out of the finances. “It’s not guaranteed, but it can be that we can own and that we can achieve with Him,” Hill said.
Herdt pulled many publicly available Church resources that can help in finding financial security, like budget templates and debt calculators. He ended by teaching the audience guidelines for setting financial goals — make the goals specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound.
‘Shaped by the struggle: Adapting to the stressors of the last days’ by Seth Bigelow
Seth Bigelow, a senior manager over health services for Church employees globally, stated that he hoped his audience understands that stress is not a bad thing but necessary to lead a meaningful life.
“How we feel or the way we frame the demands and hard things in our life dictates how we actually respond to it,” Bigelow said when talking about the mindset around stress. People’s capacities for stress are different, but capacities can be grown as stress is approached healthily.
He left the audience with four things to consider when dealing with stress: reframe it, reprioritize, recharge and reconnect. Bigelow stressed the reconnection point, as that is when young adults are supposed to check in with Jesus Christ.
“You are here for a reason,” Bigelow testified. “You’ve got this. You were meant to carry this, but you were not meant to carry it alone.”
‘JustServe: The transformative power of community volunteerism’ by JustServe — Innovations
The JustServe team held small-group discussions during its presentation. They first addressed that service can transform the volunteer in five different ways: through their identity, through their impact, through their connections with others, through personal and professional growth and through a sense of fulfillment.
The small-group discussions reflected on how their service has transformed them as well as how they’ve seen that in people around them.
One member on the JustServe team said that he hopes that the young single adults leave the presentation knowing that they can make a difference in their lives but also in the lives of the people around them.
