As I've mentioned, Emma, Jared and I went to Ut for General Conference. Before I left I had so much to do. I left a to do list of things for my hubby to finish up for me and prayed for a miracle to get me out of a mess I created. I mentioned that I had a new thing I was doing. I had been praying for a way to be useful and I got a call from a friend that is working for the NM Mission of Mercy. I got roped into being the chair of the volunteer committee. Before I left I set up to participate in a service event put on by the city of RR to get the word out that we needed volunteers and donations. The only problem was that I forgot I was going out of town. It took forever to hear back from the city so I was getting everything ready the night before I left. I also had to find someone to spend 4 hours of their saturday at the event so that I didn't have to look like a flake in front of the city or MOM. It's nice when you work with someone who also believes in the power of prayer and we were able to find someone to do the event. Seriously, my brain just does not work sometimes! It was actually pretty miraculous. I said a couple of prayers. I called my friend. She said a prayer. Her phone rang 1 hour later with another friend that had been saying prayers that she could be useful and did she have anything she could do. (Insert awesome quote from conference about the power of prayer- I know there was one - just can't remember right now)
The very first thing we did when we landed in Ut was to go and see the progress of the Provo tabernacle temple. A serious engineering feat. My heart is drawn to temples, so I had to see it in person. You can even still see some charing on the bricks from the fire. It's going to be beautiful.
Saturday morning we watched conference at my in-laws and boy was it amazing. Elder Holland knows how to start off conference with a bang. I will have to write something up about it, I've been too buys to go back over my notes to do it now - plus I missed Sunday afternoon because of traveling. Immediately following saturday mornings session, we hopped in the car, picked up my niece and headed to conference. It's quite the experience weaving thru the sea of 20,000 people. It was raining and pretty cold, but it really wasn't that bad. I love the photo bomb in the middle picture. We were sharing our umbrella with that group of girls and they repaid us with crashing our photo. Nice :0)
We finally made it into the toasty safety of the conference center. The only thing I could think about was that I was glad that we were on the top so that if the magic floating level fell under the weight of all of us, I wouldn't get crushed like the people below us. Nice thoughts eh? I've been in the conference center a few times and it never ceases to amaze me at the volume of people gathered in 1 building that all believe in a living prophet.....or at least most of them.
The funnest picture for me is the close up of the stage area where you can see the security people...who are there specifically for people like me....I got to see all my favorite apostles....small as they looked from my vantage point....but see them I did and I was in the same room and that was enough.
Jared was intrigued with the protestors we encountered on our way back to our car. He thought it was pretty amusing. He said something like "yeah, because we are going to come out of a building where we just heard the prophet and had a spiritual experience and we're going to say, 'oh man. I was so wrong. Please let me join you.'" Ummm, first of all, awesome that he was thinking that. Second, did he just say he had a spiritual experience? Act natural, just act natural- was what I was telling myself.
My niece that just returned from her mission and wrote home the most amazing and spiritual letters spent saturday night with us. I was really wanting to watch Priesthood with the boys downstairs, but I decided to put people first and chillax on my obsession with not missing any of conference. Besides, if I would have been at home Nate would have taken Jared to the church to watch it and I wouldn't have seen it anyway. I'm used to just reading it when it comes in the Ensign. Jared, however, kept running up the stairs to tell me all the amazing stuff that was being said so it was making me jealous. I did watch Elder Oaks' talk in my bed later via my iPad because I couldn't stand not seeing it any longer. Technology is seriously amazing and so was that talk. I mean seriously! I want to watch all of the PH talks now because I heard they were all fantastic....at least my son thought so.
Sunday morning my niece returned to watch conference with us before we left. My other niece -which is also her sister- came too. We had a very nice time. All I could think about was that I was going to be highly disappointed because my odds for seeing Elder Bednar were going down with the announcement of each speaker. When his name was finally announced I squealed and offered up thanks for that tender mercy for fulfilling my one request. I didn't get to see him speak live on Saturday but at least he wasn't speaking while I was on an airplane flying home. Uchtdorf gave an amazing talk in that session with him as well. So good. Seriously conference was amazing. There were definitely some themes running thru and I came away with way more than 1 quote. There were so many things I thought "oh, I really needed to hear that and work on that this year." There were also some moments where thoughts and feelings I've had were confirmed -
which is really cool.
Jared was having a hard time not fidgeting Sunday morning. The worst problem was that he was playing with a very loud plastic water bottle. He kept sucking all the air out and slowly letting it fill back up. We were all about to kill him. It was understandable because he sat thru 6 hours of conference the day before so grandpa ran upstairs and grabbed his special George for him to play with instead. It was really cute but we had to try really hard to sneak a picture of him. I had a really good one of him playing with it, but when I got up to go to the bathroom he erased it from my iPad. Not cool!
We also got to play with my niece's dog, Charley, who was super cute. I blame her for my impulsive decision to get a dog! :0)
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