Twice a year, our church has what is called general conference. Instead of attending church, we spend the weekend at home watching a live broadcast of our church leaders in Salt Lake City speaking to us and members throughout the world and sharing spiritual messages and counsel. Conference weekend has always been like a holiday to me, right up there with Christmas and Thanksgiving (really!). We always come together as a family, eat lots of food (including traditional favorites like scones for breakfast, Mama's tacos and Marie Callender's pies), and partake in a great spiritual feast as we listen to our Prophet and the apostles. And the music, oh the music! It is one of my favorite parts. I love hearing the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sing, and am so grateful for beautiful music that inspires and helps us feel the Spirit. Conference is a chance to receive encouragement and inspiration, and to ponder on the things we can do in our lives to improve and be better.
I have always loved general conference, and now as a young mother look forward to it even more. The first general conference after my husband and I moved to Texas, so far away from all of our family members, as the broadcast started and the pipe organ started to play I got a little teary-eyed with joy at the opportunity to receive counsel from my Heavenly Father. It felt like coming home!
This weekend was wonderful. We had lots of fun with our little family. We made a giant board game (Candy Land) - haha, we are nerdy - and played hide and seek with our kids! They loved it!
We watched general conference on Jonathan's fun projector and basked in the joy and inspiration. We were so glad to have friends come over and watch with us during a couple of the sessions.
The kids colored and played the "I Spy General Conference" game that I made up as we watched. It helped us to pay attention and listen for different topics that were discussed! We also got points for finding things like certain colors of ties, the organ, and my Aunt Ruth singing in the choir. We racked up enough points to earn ice cream cones!
We fried up some tacos (with my secret family recipe that goes back three generations) and ate with our good friends the Blairs.
The men went to Priesthood meeting while the mamas watched a chick flick at our house (and the children ran around like crazy, turning off the lights and shining flashlights and screaming and playing with every toy in our playroom - such happy chaos!).
We ate an entire apple pie with our good friends (hot out of the oven with ice cream, yummy!) and then stayed up late playing the Wii. Oh, and all 5 of the children were still awake when they left at around 11:00. Talk about grumpy children in the morning, but what a fun memory :) We are so grateful for wonderful friends to celebrate holidays and conference with :)
Find all of the general conference addresses here!
