General Conference

This year Keri posted several images depicting different principles of the gospel on one of our dining walls to start us thinking about topics that may be shared at General Conference this October. 

We also spent several weeks singing the names of the 12 apostles, as my kids mostly know the three members of the First Presidency. We sang it to the tune of "Smiles" in the Latter-Day Saint Children's Songbook. It goes, "Packer, Perry, Nelson, Oaks, Ballard, Scott, and Hales, Holland, Bednar, Cook, Christofferson, Anderson makes twelve."  This really worked well for our kids, especially our four-year-old, Rhys.

We spent many evenings playing a game to get to know our latter-day prophet and apostles better.  We laid out their pictures and played Don't Eat the Prophet!--a take from Don't Eat Pete! If you don't know what either of those are, I will explain--we put a treat on every picture. Someone who is "It" leaves the room and everyone else decides together who the designated apostle is. "It" reenters and begins to eat treats off each picture, in any order they choose, as we name the apostle pictured. When they take the treat from the designated apostle, everyone yells, "Don't Eat the Prophet!" It's a blast really and quite yummy too.

During two sessions, which we were happy to watch from home, our kids used bingo cards with key words/pictures and listened for them from the speakers. For another 2 sessions, they held a picture of the speaker, if it was an apostle or the prophet, and then taped it to the image depicting that principle of the gospel that we had posted in the dining room.  They did better this year attending to the speakers which was great.

We left up the pictures so we can discuss those talks/topics during our Family Home Evenings for the next few months.  We've found it to be a good way to revisit the important messages that were shared and to just keep gospel topics in our everyday conversation.

My (Keri's) favorite message of this October's General Conference was given by the prophet, President Thomas S. Monson, entitled "We Never Walk Alone". In speaking about the ever available power of prayer and scriptures study, he shared this gem:

"Your Heavenly Father loves you—each of you. That love never changes. It is not influenced by your appearance, by your possessions, or by the amount of money you have in your bank account. It is not changed by your talents and abilities. It is simply there. It is there for you when you are sad or happy, discouraged or hopeful. God’s love is there for you whether or not you feel you deserve love. It is simply always there."

I love that.