I love General Conference: April 2017

I LOVE General Conference.  It is our favorite weekend of the year.  My kids look forward to it so much, probably as much as I do, because no one has to wear church clothes and we get to make a whole bunch of yummy food and chill at the house and just be together.  General Conference is a large gathering that is broadcast to every member of the church across the globe.  We listen to talks from church leaders and hear the inspiration and encouragement we need for the next six months.  It is amazing.

Traditions are what is keeping us sane with this transition and moving time.  We are in Texas and doing the things that we are used to doing is a stable force for all of us.  The daily things like saying prayers and reading scriptures as a family really help all of us feel like we have structure.  General Conference is also one of those things.

Some of my favorite traditions are ones that have grown out of the last few years as we have lived in Utah.  The whole community honors this weekend and there aren’t other competing activities that you usually have to deal with.  A few years ago we started doing a Saturday morning family run.  We would run over to the local junior high and run around the track and the kids would run, chase each other, and play around on the bleachers.  Everyone got some good exercise, got their wiggles out and then we could head back to the house ready to eat some cinnamon rolls or pancakes or whatever we had ready to go.  We ran this Saturday morning as well, and it felt so good to get some exercise in.

I have tried lots of different things to keep the kids engaged from treats for each different apostle’s talks to activity packets, to hands on activity stations.  I think it is all an exercise in trial and error and what your kids need to stay engaged.

As my kids have got older, I have become lazier on all that prep.  The only preparation that sounds really fun is to think about food.  I love making breakfast casserole, cinnamon rolls, muffins, and any other breakfast/brunch thing imaginable just because it’s fun.  It takes a lot of work to put together all the different stations, and in the end it wasn’t keeping my kids going.  So I simplified.  I bought a simple notebook for each kid and they took notes on speakers.  If they took notes on an apostle, or the prophet, they would show me their notes and after the amen, could grab a small treat (a dum-dum sucker or starburst) from the treat basket.  Very minimal prep on my part, but my kids really got into it and over the course of years, they have become good note-takers.

I loved this conference because I feel like there were lots of crystallized doctrines that helped me understand more the Lord’s capacity to love and how deep His mercy and forgiveness are.  Some of the takeaways for me:

• These is no one that left on the sidelines in the Lord’s church.  He needs all of us using our voices and unique gifts.  It wouldn’t be a choir without all the voices.  Elder Holland’s talk (here) is one of my favorites.  I know that the unity and harmony we all wish for in the world can be possible in a society where we love God and put His commandments, his cues, his directing… first.  He is the only one that has a true picture of how all the pieces, differences, struggles, pains, joys- work together for good.
• The world we live in is not an easy one to navigate.  We need the voice of the Spirit to guide us and that means we need quiet places to cultivate the listening and FEELING that the Lord wants us to have.  He wants to heal and help us, but we have to let him.  Elders Rasband, Stevensen, and Oaks all talked about His important role.
• It is the simple things that make a difference.  Our prophet Thomas S. Monson PLEAD with us to make reading and pondering the Book of Mormon a part of our lives every day.  It will strengthen us and make us stronger.  It will help us develop strong testimonies and great faith as we apply its teachings.

Even better than the conference itself is the chance to dissect and study the talks and learn how to make them a part of me.  I am grateful every day that we have a living prophet on the earth who can tell us the mind and will of God.  I am grateful that while I learned so much listening, it will be worth ten fold to me as I let each talk settle and rest in my mind.