Part of my professional training is in systems thinking and one of the tools that we use to monitor systems is known as a process behavior chart (PBC). It plots visually over time the number of occurrences that you are measuring. In October 2018 when I was listening to General Conference I noticed that there was a lot more references to the Gathering of Israel than I had ever heard before. Now being very analytical and quantitative and given the ease to search topics with the internet, I looked up how many talks had references to the gathering of Israel. In that conference there was eight references. Now being an average student in statistics I had to look back to establish a baseline for what is normal. What I found was very exciting. Below is PBC of those results including to April 2020.

So up until that point the most references to gathering Israel from April 1971 to April 2018 was three different talks. The average had hovered one until the mid 1980s and then dropped to about 0.75 for quite a number of years. The yellow line in the chart is known as the Upper Control Limit and the Green is the Lower Control Limit. During any part of that time any number that fell within those limits is expected, so when October 2018 had eight different talks that referenced the gathering that was approximately 2.5 greater than the expected maximum.

When a data point exceeds that limit and maintains it as is shown in the chart that signifies to the observer that a change has happened in the system. If this was just an isolated point on the chart then we have to search for what was the cause of that blip, but currently the data does not support that it was isolated.

Without being in some of those senior leadership meetings it is impossible to predict what the change is, but there has been a change. It is also interesting to note that several talks have occurred outside of General Conference that have broached the subject. Like Elder Bednar’s talk at the discussion on religious liberty or when President Nelson enlisted the youth in the Youth Battalion to gather in Israel.

Currently I am going through those talks to determine what the takeaways is from those talks to determine what the action plan could look like and I will share those here when I have them. But for the most part, this is a message for those that have ears to hear and for those that have eyes to see.