What made this conference historic is that all young women and older from 8 years and up were invited to the conference. First time that has ever happened. There will no longer be three separate conferences but twice a year will be combined for Primary, Young Women and Relief Society.
Lynda Ann called and said that she had been offered 6 tickets to the General Women’s Conference at the Conference Center and would I like to join her and the girls. I told her that if I didn’t have any assignments in my home stake that I would love to. The only assignment I had was to sit up on the stand with President Little along with the Stake Primary and Young Women’s Presidents so I past the assignment to my first councilor and accepted the invitation. I met Annie, Mallory, Abby and Hayley downtown at the Red Lion Hotel to park one of the cars (Emmi couldn’t come because she had to work). We all climbed into one car and headed over to City Creek to park our car, have a bite to eat at the food court and then walk over to the conference center. Some fun pictures:
Some pictures of our walk through the temple grounds. The temple grounds are so gorgeous. The evening was practically perfect temperature wise and we had no wind. Bonus for this time of the year.
The conference was wonderful and as always, there are uplifting talks and spiritual moments where the Holy Ghost testifies to you personally that what you are hearing is true. There were two comments that I was impressed with. One was from Sister Oscarson who said, “If there are barriers we ourselves have created them. I invite you not to love each other more but to love each other better.” What wonderful advice. The second came from Sister burton who said, “The best way to strengthen a home is to keep your covenants.” Certainly good advise for all of us. My mother was a great example of one who kept her covenants. She was a convert to the church and once she embraced the gospel, she lived it. We didn’t have family home evening every week, daily scripture study and family prayer every day, but her example of always accepting and fulfilling her callings, going to the temple every month and caring about our neighbors certainly taught me about her strength of devotion and her testimony of the restored gospel. I can’t count how many times I would go to her bedroom in the evening to share something with her and find her on her knees praying. I remember the scriptures always on the kitchen table where she would read them in the morning before leaving for work. I will be forever indebted to her for accepting the gospel and bringing me up in the folds of the church.
Now, on a lighter note, I have to tell a story on Annie. Whenever we go downtown, I always make Lynda Ann drive because I HATE downtown as I’ve stated so many times in the past. Parking was free Saturday evening so we had no one at the booths making sure you took a ticket or paying on your way out. I have to say that none of us venture downtown that often and are not all that familiar with the parking. So as we are leaving the underground parking garage, we worked our way up the ramp and realized as we come out that we took the ENTRANCE instead of the EXIT!! As we reached the top to go onto South Temple (or somewhere there abouts) there was a car just ready to come down the ramp. Thankfully he hesitated just in time to let us sneak past and obviously realized at that moment that we were going out the in!!!!!! We all had a good laugh at that. As we drove on Abby said, “I saw the sign that said “ Do Not Enter”. That made us laugh even harder that Annie and I sitting in the front seat both missed it and Abby who wasn’t even driving noticed the sign. But no harm done. We all made it home safe and sound and grateful that we are members of the church and that someone was watching out for us.
The one below is what I’ve done so far. Since I took this picture I’ve completed the the little guy on the left. Love this Christmas scene.
