Humor.

Always open with a joke unrelated to your talk. Remember, The Savior said. “They that are whole need not a physician; but they that are sick.” So remember how every one of your ward members are severely spiritually sick and that humor is the best medicine.

Humility.

Remind the congregation how humble giving this talk makes you. Explain how you “almost said no.” That, you finally accepted the Bishop’s counsellor’s invitation to talk after, for no reason in particular, being humbled. Express how reading the General Conference talk they gave you, taught you more compared to 3 months ago when you heard it half-asleep on the couch in your underwear.

Foreordination.

Explain exactly who you are. Share your full name, your spouse’s name, each of your kid’s full names, and your pet’s name. Share any inside-jokes about your kid eating something they shouldn’t. Share how it relates to a gospel story you heard when you were 13. Be sure to explain how inferior you are to your spouse and how they are truly the spiritual pillar of your family even though you know who the boss really is.

Make sure to memorize your genealogy fan-chart and any important relationships or connections to general authorities. Doing this lends credence to the truth-napalm you’re about to lay on the congregation. Plus, it gives the congregation something to look forward to. Maybe one day, they too will be the niece or nephew of the President of the Church’s cousin’s in-law’s wedding photographer.

Consummate.

People will love hearing about your achievements. Definitely do not mention any failings you might have or stories where you applied a gospel principle to a situation and the outcome was less than blissful. If necessary, pull stories from your mission and if you didn’t baptize anyone, just make a companion’s story your own. Nobody will know the difference.

Enumerate.

Show the congregation how blessed you are temporally by following gospel principles. Make sure to read your talk from a new iPad. You can blame any pauses in your talk on “it’s new and I don’t know how it works yet, haha!” If you have an old iPad, go get a shiny new one. Justify the expense because it’s for church and not just to get your kids to be quiet during sacrament meeting.

Narrate.

Remember the facebook post you saw telling a story that boosted your testimony and sense of righteousness in yourself? Share that. It doesn’t matter if the story is factual or not. In fact, share three. Good stories come in groups of three.

Conflagrate.

Unleash the searing fire of the Holy Ghost by using a thesaurus to replace words in your talk with new words you’ve never used before. Don’t worry about looking up the definition. Just find and replace to sound more eloquent. The congregation doesn’t know what those words mean either. I mean, how could they? You don’t even know those words and you’re the one teaching them! They are too busy being baptized by your elocution to fact-check you.

Thankimony.

When you share your testimony, be sure to be thankful for the blessings you enumerated previously. Thank the bishopric for the opportunity to preach from the pulpit. Thank the congregation for their support in you doing your calling which you keep forgetting to do. Remind them that if it weren’t for their constant reminders you’d get nothing done!

Last of all, don’t worry. You’ll do great!