General Conference 101

Note: This is a repost. I originally published this post in October, 2012, but I will probably keep reposting it each conference so you can get a little Conference 101. I enjoyed Tweeting General Conference the past two times I have done it, and look forward to joinging #TwitterStake again this year. Tweeting conference led to some really neat conversations in Oct 2012 because of the election - people were really interested in what we had to say. I hope to have some great conversations again this year prompted by tweeting conference. If you want to join in, simply post your thoughts from conference with the hashtag #LDSConf. Kathryn Skaggs from A Well Behaved Mormon Woman is usually at Conference tweeting live from the Conference Center's media room. It's a really neat experience. Hope to see you there!

I wrote up this series in the Spring to help people who are unfamiliar with General Conference get a little background, and to give you a few ideas for getting the most out of conference. In preparation for General Conference this October, Stephanie at Diapers and Divinity is doing a little series about the 14 Fundamentals in Following the Prophet. She asked me if I wanted to join in with some pre-conference posts, and I was excited, but kind of dropped the ball the past few days. I was going to try to make a whole week out of it. You will at least get a few posts. I’m kind of excited about some of the post ideas for this week. And I plan on making a bigger deal out of General Conference in the Spring.

Without further ado, here are links to my General Conference 101 posts, to help you get ready for conference -

-What is General Conference? – a little intro to General Conference, with some brief factoids and links to the available methods of viewing/listening/etc
-Preparing for the Feast – how to prepare for General Conference
-Conference with Kids – how to survive 8 hours of prophetic counsel with children. Yikes.
-note taking and conference – how I take notes at General Conference, and some tips
-What to do when it’s over – well, it’s just that – suggestions for keeping the conference message at the forefront of your spiritual life for the next six months

For your further entertainment, here is the General Conference info graphic the Church published recently and has been sharing all over social media. If you missed it, here it is:

Stay tuned this week for more General Conference fun!

General Conference 101–What to do when it’s over

I know this post is a little (okay, a lot) late. I have been procrastinating writing anything on the blog lately. More about that later.

So if you’ve been following the General Conference 101 series this season I imagine you partook of the goodness that is General Conference back on March 31 and April 1, 2012. You probably had a bunch of activities to help your little ones get through the sessions without too much fighting and whining, and if you’re like me, you took lots of notes.

So, now what?

General Conference isn’t meant to be one big meal that you eat once and then don’t taste anything like it for six months. It’s more like Thanksgiving – you know, with its big dinner where you overeat, followed by weeks of seemingly endless leftovers. The only difference?

I never get sick of General Conference “leftovers” -  in fact, part of the excitement for me is finding things in the talks during the “break”  between conferences that didn’t stand out to me during conference. So here are some ideas for how to partake of General Conference for six whole months.

First, set goals from counsel you received at General Conference. Write your goals out on a sheet of paper and tape them up somewhere you will see them every day. Mine are by my mirror in my bathroom. My goals are usually similar, and most of the time they aren’t actually goals – the are more habits that I want to develop. In fact, this past General Conference I actually divided the counsel I received into two lists: habits, and goals. The habits were things I wanted to develop – like being a better mom, praying more regularly, attending the temple more regularly, teaching my children spontaneously, being kinder to those around me, etc. Some of the goals I made after last General Conference were to read the gospels before this General Conference to learn more about the character of Christ (didn’t quite happen, but I’m okay with that, and I’m still working on it), finish the Book of Mormon before the end of the year, and write down what I want my children to say about me when they are grown. Those are just a few. Yours should be based on the inspirations that you received at General Conference.

Second, listen to the conference talks over and over again during the next six months. You can access downloadable audio files of General Conference either on the Church’s website or on iTunes. I like to run and instead of listening to music I will usually listen to the General Conference talks on my iPhone while I run. It gives me a great opportunity to listen to the words of the prophets over and over again to become really familiar with them. President Uchtdorf shared a story in the Ensign last fall before General Conference about a member of our faith who couldn’t think of anything a prophet had said recently. I want to know what the prophets are saying – it is amazing to me that we have living prophets who can give us the counsel God wants us to have right now. But what good is that counsel if we are ignorant of it?

Third, study the conference talks in depth after Conference. I do this twice, in effect. I get my Conference issue of the Ensign and get started right away reading through the talks, marking it up and writing notes in the margins. Then I participate in General Conference Book Club (GCBC) and I read the talks on lds.org using my LDS Account and My Study Notebook (I can underline and highlight and write notes, etc – and it syncs all the highlights and stuff to my iPhone Gospel Library! Cool, eh?!). Whatever you do – whether it’s online, in your Ensign, or your mobile device, find a way to read and study the words of the prophets. It will bless your life between conferences.

What do you do with the words of the prophets after General Conference?

Conference 101–note taking and conference

Once upon at a time when I attended Especially for Youth – a week long summer camp of sorts for LDS teens – I attended a class in which the instructor told us not to try to write down everything he said, but rather “When the Spirit moves you, write down what you are going to do!” I have tried to take this counsel to heart, and now when I listen to a speaker I try not to get caught up in writing down all the principles they talk about, or the words they say (unless it’s not General Conference and they say something in a way that I want to remember – you know, like a catchy phrase or a particularly clear explanation of something). The thing is – most principles that are spoken of in talks can be found in the scriptures, or in General Conference talks. So I try to concentrate on what the spirit is teaching me rather than what the person is teaching me.

During conference, rather than try to write down what the speaker is saying I try to focus on what the Spirit is teaching me by what they are saying. I usually draw a little arrow before a note if it is something that I feel the Spirit instructing me to do. For example, in my notes from October General Conference, I wrote this:

    Sunday AM Session

    President Henry B. Eyring
    Baptismal Covenants
->study the covenants I have made (baptism, sacrament, temple) Write them down
        * we promised to be charitable
        * we promised to be a witness of God everywhere
        * bear each other’s burdens
->BE FULLY CONVERTED
       endure faithfully (SERVE faithfully) to the end. Press on and live the gospel to the end.
     Steps to FULL CONVERSION – faith, read the Book of Mormon, take Moroni’s promise.
->READ the Book of Mormon and take Moroni’s promise. Read the Book of Mormon every year

That is directly from my notes. Your notes are probably different. I tried to write what I felt impressed to write down by the Spirit. I went back and read this talk and looked for some of those things. What I wrote wasn’t exactly what President Eyring said, although he did talk about covenants (and the list is word-for-word what he said) and he did talk about full conversion. There have been times where I have found something in my notes from General Conference that is so beautiful to me, and I want to share it with someone, but because I am a stickler for sources I will go back and look for that quote in the conference talk and I can’t find it! That’s when I realize that what I “heard” wasn’t what was said, but rather what the Spirit inspired me to write down.

Don’t worry about getting everything down word for word – these days, the videos are available practically the same day with transcripts available within the week. If you hear a phrase that really struck you, write that down and it will help you search that talk later (the “find” function on your browser can be an invaluable tool when searching Conference talks online). Or if there was a talk that you felt particularly inspired about, make a note so you can go back and listen to it or read it after conference.

I really like the counsel given in the General Conference Notebook that is published by the Friend. In the “After Conference” section it says “Write down… what [you are] going to do because of what you learned.” This, I think, is the more important thing to get out of General Conference – what we are going to do because of what we heard.

The March 2012 New Era published an article for teens on getting the most out of General Conference.

“If you decide to take notes, keep them short and simple so you can pay close attention to the speaker and to the Spirit. Consider writing down what the Spirit teaches you or some specific things we are counseled to do, not just the exact words of the conference speakers.”

For those of you participating in #TwitterStake (Mormons on Twitter during General Conference – tweeting conference notes with the hashtag #LDSConf) this is good advice – and probably more easily followed on Twitter (where your notes are limited to 140 characters) than on paper – but it is probably easy to get distracted from the speaker and the spirit if you aren’t careful.

I will be participating in #TwitterStake this year, and I’m pretty excited. I’m not sure how I will like it, but I think it will be a great opportunity.

How do you take notes at General Conference? Do you keep your notes simple? Do you take notes at all? Do you participate in the “tweeting” of General Conference?

Conference 101–Conference with Kids

If you’re like me, you love soaking in all the beautiful messages shared from our living prophets in General Conference.

If you’re like me, you also have little children who make listening to General Conference like listening for a pin drop at a shuttle launch…

Image Source: Elder Nelson's Apr 2011 Conference Talk

However! There is hope!

Help Your Kids Get Familiar with General Conference

First off, prepare your children for General Conference. When General Conference only happens twice a year it’s hard for small children to understand why the big fuss – it’s just another Sunday, right?

Find ways to make the weekend super special. We drew pictures of the prophets speaking from the podium on the Saturday and Sunday squares on our calendar. Watch talks online of previous conferences. Talk about how excited you are to listen to/watch General Conference. Mention the General Authorities by name frequently and even talk about principles from their talks. For example, “Last conference President Uchtdorf reminded us about how much God loves us!” (You Matter to Him, October 2011) It might even help to show them a picture of the prophet you are mentioning.

Have a special “General Conference” edition of Family Home Evening to prepare. Practice using your conference games (be careful not to wear them out!) and consider playing some General Authorities matching games. (find Jocelyn’s here and mine here) We usually watch the “General Conference Highlights” video from the previous conference and practice naming the apostles as they come up. The video is nice because it is short and has background music so the kids are able to tune in a little better.

Start including a plea for Heavenly Father to prepare your hearts for General Conference in your individual and family prayers. This will help your kids know that General Conference is important to you (my kids know that the most important things are things that we pray about) and I know these prayers will be answered as you prepare for General Conference.

V’s birthday happens to be after General Conference and today he told me, “I am so excited to hear the prophets talk” (cue proud mother smile) “because after the prophets talk it will be my birthday!!!” (cue “mother-fail” face…) So we need a little more work with that one…

General Conference Activities

Your next step before conference starts is to arm yourself with more conference activities than you would ever need. There are a lot of great suggestions around the internet for conference activities. Jocelyn at We Talk of Christ, We Rejoice in Christ has a lot of great ideas here. I am planning on using several of her ideas, especially the General Conference wall (anything that gets my kids moving during conference is good for them – little kids don’t sit still well for long periods of time!). I also made several writing practice sheets.

A few days ago we read the story of Alma (the formerly wicked priest) and the story mentioned that Alma wrote down all the words of the prophets. A day or so later, following my own advice from the first tip above, I mentioned to my son how excited I was to listen to the prophets. My son turned to me and said, “Will you turn the prophets on the TV so I can write down what they say?” I definitely could not say no to a request like that, so I pulled out some old Conference DVDs from 2005 and popped one in the DVD player. V grabbed some paper and a pen and situated himself directly in front of the TV and proceeded to “write” the words that Elder Eyring was saying. His faith and love of the prophets melts my heart every time.

So I made some writing practice sheets for some things relating to General Conference – “We listen to the prophets speak at General Conference” “Families can be together forever.” “Keep the Commandments” etc. You can print them here from Google Documents (no sign in required). You can also get to them by clicking on the image above.

Here is a sampling of the things I will be preparing for my kids:

General Conference Wall (from We Talk of Christ, We Rejoice in Christ)
Word Buckets (from the R House)
Gospel Picture Puzzles (from Bits of Everything)
Writing practice sheets (from My Soul Delighteth)
“Note-taking” station (this is just going to be their journals, and I will help them write down what they hear – we will probably have them listen to at least one of the talks from the apostles or a member of the First Presidency)

Some of these activities (the Gospel Picture Puzzles and the Writing Practice sheets) are going to go into our church bag for Sunday. I am hoping to get the writing sheets laminated so they can be wipe-away sheets.

The Friend publishes several General Conference activities. You can download them from the Friend website. I especially like the notebook. It is set up for kids to take notes either with words or with pictures. This can be a really good pre-writing activity for your kids. We plan on using the Friend notebooks.

Sugardoodle also has a plethora of resources.

We may even let the kids play some of the Friend’s online games during General Conference. The family computer is in the same room with the TV.

I am thinking of having them switch activities with each speaker, so they can realize that a new person is speaking. We will also continue our tradition of having a poster of the General Authorities where the kids can find who is speaking and put a sticker on the picture. They really like putting stickers on the faces of the General Authorities. When you think about them like grandpas it seems a lot more reverent than it appears… right?

The Friend had a cute activity this month with the pictures of the apostles for the kids to set up in their chairs, and a pulpit where they can move the apostle when they speak. I think I am going to make a sturdier version of this with craft sticks. We’ll use it in conjunction with the other activities. The more exposure they have to the faces of the General Authorities the better, I say.

You Know Your Kids Best

Remember to make sure you prepare activities that your kids would be interested in. Jocelyn has a cool “build a Lego temple” activity – but my kids would probably just throw the Legos around the room… Sugardoodle has a bunch of coloring pages, but my kids would probably just rip them into little pieces and scatter them around the room. So not every activity will be appropriate for your kids. I think V might enjoy the Lego temple project some time when he’s a little older, and maybe some day my kids will enjoy coloring – for right now they are really into writing, matching games, and puzzles – you’ll notice those are most of the activities we will be doing.

What activities are you going to prepare for your kids? How do you prepare your kids to be ready to watch General Conference? Feel free to link to your favorite websites and activities for conference for kids!

General Conference 101–preparing for the feast

(This is the second post in the General Conference 101 Series at My Soul Delighteth)

So now that you know what General Conference is, and how to participate in it, let’s talk about how to prepare for it. Last time in General Conference 101 I mentioned that anyone can find something in General Conference to touch them individually.

President Jeffrey R. Holland said this, “If we teach by the Spirit and you listen by the Spirit, some one of us will touch on your circumstance, sending a personal prophetic epistle just to you.” (I highly recommend his entire talk as pre-conference reading – I plan on re-reading his talk before conference starts next weekend)

What we find, and how deeply it touches us is largely dependent on our own preparation. “Behold, you have not understood; you have supposed that I would give it unto you, when you took no thought save it was to ask me.” D&C 9:7 If we are just expecting to turn on our TV at 10:00am Saturday morning and be spoon-fed revelation, we’re probably going to be missing out on the actual feast that is available. You have to prepare for the revelation which is readily available at General Conference.

The first suggestion I would give you in preparing for the upcoming General Conference is to read past General Conference talks. Study the words of the prophets from previous conferences. If you want to value the upcoming conference, learn to value the previous conferences. One of these days I want to start reading conference talks going backward in time until I have read the conference talks from every conference there has ever been. I’ve only got probably 10-15 years of conference really under my belt, since before then I wasn’t really mature enough to sit through 8 hours of conference.

Here are some talks I might start with:

- Until We Meet Again
- As We Meet Again
- At Parting
- It’s Conference Once Again
- Till We Meet Again
- As We Meet Together Again
- An Ensign to the Nations

Also, here is the General Conference Highlights Video from October General Conference:

My next suggestion is to prepare questions you need/want answered. Now, don’t think that by preparing questions you will get word-for-word answers from the prophets to these questions. However, as you listen to the prophets the Spirit can and will help you know the answers to your questions, whether or not any particular speaker specifically answers your question. President Dieter F. Uchtdorf’s counsel in last September’s Ensign explains it this way, “Answers to your specific prayers may come directly from a particular talk or from a specific phrase. At other times answers may come in a seemingly unrelated word, phrase, or song. A heart filled with gratitude for the blessings of life and an earnest desire to hear and follow the words of counsel will prepare the way for personal revelation.” I would even say to write down the questions you have. Ponder those questions daily for at least a few weeks before General Conference and let the Spirit prepare you to receive the answers.

My final suggestion for preparation is to prepare your children and prepare for your children. I don’t naively mean that you can actually prepare for your children the way you will prepare for yourself. What I mean by this is that you make sure your home (or wherever you will be participating in conference) is going to be a place where your children can get as much out of General Conference as possible – and will be content enough to be occupied with simple games, with paper and crayons, etc so that you are not too distracted from General Conference. I don’t expect General Conference to be perfectly calm at my house with small children, but I know that if I prepare well enough for my kids, they will at least let me listen to a few talks. The next post in General Conference 101 will be resources for enjoying General Conference with children.

How do you prepare for General Conference? Do you have questions that you find answers to at General Conference? How often do you study previous General Conference talks?

General Conference 101–What is General Conference?

Because I love General Conference (seriously, it’s probably my favorite holiday, after Christmas and Easter – and it even occasionally coincides with Easter! Now all they need to do is move fall General Conference to Christmas, and we’ll be set!) I will be posting “Conference 101” – a series about General Conference and how to prepare and what to expect and how to keep your children focused. I’m pretty excited to gather all these resources – for my own benefit as well as yours!

I figured that the best place to start is with the basics, so the purpose for my first post will be to explain a little bit about what General Conference is.

If you don’t know already, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) believe that God has a living prophet on the earth today, as well as twelve apostles (who are just like the twelve apostles that were called to be “fishers of men” when Jesus lived on the earth). see Article of Faith 6 here This is an amazing blessing, because a prophet is the mouthpiece of the Lord, and it means that if we listen to the counsel of the prophet and try to follow that counsel, we will be following the Lord and we will be blessed. see more about following prophets here 

Since it’s so important to listen to and obey the prophets, we should have a way to hear them speak regularly. One of the ways we can “hear” the words of the prophets is to read the First Presidency Message published each month in Church magazines called the “Ensign” and the “Liahona”. This message is usually pretty short (although the magazine typically contains many articles by the apostles and prophets, as well as other Church leaders, and Church members), but it comes every month like clockwork. You can also read it online at LDS.org.

I don’t know about you, but if there were living prophets on the earth today I would not want to only read a little blurb once a month from them. I would want to hear sermon after sermon from them!

And that is exactly what we get at General Conference.

Twice a year, in the spring (usually the first weekend in April) and then again in the fall (the first weekend in October), the entire world (including Church members) are invited to join together to listen to an entire weekend of prophets and apostles speak (as well as other Church leaders).

General Conference actually starts a few weeks before the general sessions with a special session for either the Young Women (in March) or the Relief Society – the women’s organization (in September). Then the first “general” session of the conference convenes at 10:00am (Mountain Time) on the Saturday of Conference weekend. The second general session is at 2:00pm (Mountain Time), and then at 6:00pm on Saturday there is a Priesthood session for all Priesthood holders – both Aaronic and Melchizedek Priesthood holders (that translates to “all men and young men ages 12+.” Then Sunday has two more general sessions, again at 10:00am and 2:00pm.

Each session is 2 hours long and consists of speakers from the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, as well as members of the Quorums of the Seventy, auxiliary presidencies (Young Womens, Young Mens, Primary, Relief Society, and Sunday School), and the Presiding Bishopric.

Total that up and you get 8 hours of soaking in prophetic counsel (not counting Priesthood session and the special sessions for the women).

It may seem like a long time to sit and listen, but I crave it. I can’t get enough of it! And when it is over I can’t wait to get my copy of the General Conference Ensign so I can read the talks over and over again. Above is a picture of my October conference Ensign. It’s not nearly as marked up as my April 2011 Conference Ensign was, but I did most of my study of this conference online using the “study notebook” at LDS.org.

The conference takes place at the LDS Conference Center in downtown Salt Lake City, UT. It used to be held in the Tabernacle, but in 2000 the Conference Center was completed and the conference moved there. It seats over 21,000 people, whereas the tabernacle only seats about 7000.

How can you access General Conference? There are a lot of different methods.

Watch it Live
- You can stream live video and/or audio at lds.org
- Bonneville Communications (the company that broadcasts General Conference for the Church) has availability information on their website for cable, satellite, and radio broadcasts across the United States
- You can check BYUtv’s website to find out if your cable or satellite provider carries BYUtv, or you can just watch live streaming on BYUtv
- in Utah you can watch conference on the local station, KSL-TV
- you can even watch General Conference live on Facebook. How cool is that?

Watch/Read it Later
- videos of General Conference are usually available online (on LDS.org and on YouTube) the same day as the broadcast, with transcripts usually available within a week or two. You can find out more about the availability of General Conference materials on lds.org
- the Conference issue of the Ensign is available toward the end of April/beginning of May and can be purchased at any LDS Distribution Center, some bookstores in Utah (and probably Arizona and Idaho) and online at store.lds.org
- audio, video, and pdf podcasts are also available

Participate in the Conference Discussion
- blog about Conference!
- join in the General Conference Book Club at Diapers and Divinity!
- Tweet about conference using the hashtag #ldsconf

No matter how you participate, I am sure you will find something to touch your heart. How much you find, and how much it touches you is up to you, and I’ll share a few tips for preparing to get the most out of General Conference in the next post in this series!

What does General Conference mean to you? How do you participate? Where do you watch? Do you listen to/watch conference over and over again through the six months between sessions, or is it a one-weekend deal for you?