Conference Weekend

Sunday evening of General Conference and the Church "campus" is a very different place than it has been the last two days. Very quite, no large satellite dishes on the street, and no crowds of people moving about. It was a quiet evening as the sun went down tonight.

Ed and I drove up into a Lamb's Canyon (east on I-80)just to see if we could find any of the famous fall colors. There was some, but it hasn't been cold enough to see the really bright colors. We took my mother with us and she suggested we come back through Emigration Canyon which was also lovely. It has been many years since we were on that road.

We enjoyed watching General Conference. We had tickets for Saturday AM and they were on the far left (facing the podium) but the 3rd row in that section. I saw Stan Ellis and asked the Guest Services woman standing behind the rope if she could tap him on the shoulder and let him know that we were there and would like to say hello. She asked the security guy and he said yes so she did and Elder Ellis was surprised and pleased to see us. He looked right at my badge and said, "I like how that looks!". We didn't know that they had been brought back from Brazil and are now in SLC and he works at Headquarters. So he said that we should have lunch sometime which would be lovely, but I'm sure he is very busy.

One of my nephews, Jared Hinton, is married to a sweet young woman from a Micronesian island, Chuuk (pronounced Chook). She was invited to translate for a couple of the talks in both the Saturday morning and the afternoon, but there was no accommodation for her husband, Jared. The translators are kept together between sessions and are fed and then they go back and are given the transcript of the talk they will translate to study. Anepo is 8 months pregnant so this was a difficult day for her but she really enjoyed the experience. Jared came to our apartment between sessions and we fed him and then we all watched the afternoon session on our little TV. It was great to have him with us.

Ed went to the Conference Center for Priesthood Meeting Saturday night with Derrick (our son-in-law) and his brother Seth while Autumn and I hung out together and then went to my mom's. We had many of the Mumford clan over to her condo for the traditional ice cream feast after Priesthood Meeting. It was great fun.

We also had a great week with our Tongan project. I have become faster and more accurate so that is good. There are 1100 records to get online and I have completed 85 of them. It would have been more but we didn't work on Friday because we attended a funeral. There are only 487 with image (pdf) files to put up so after I get those up it will go faster just putting up the audio (mp3) files. We may be able to be done with this part of the project by the end of November. There are some classes we are going to and devotionals, etc. so we don't have full days, but we think this is reasonable. We are very excited. I must admit that it still makes my heart do a little flutter when I make an entry and I get the little notification box that tells me I have just changed 482 records (or whatever the number is). I just hope that I am doing this stuff right!!!

I was talking this week with a missionary in the Church History Library and was told that it wasn't a day that they enjoyed because Wednesday is the day the anti-Mormon information they have is reviewed. I didn't ask too much about it so I don't know exactly what they do with it, but I do know that the Church keeps a copy of each and every piece of anti-Mormon literature (including op ed, pamphlets, lead articles, books, etc.)that is published anywhere they know about. It is important to know what is out there against us, but I am happy that I am not the one who is to review it.

The good weather stayed with us just long enough for General Conference weekend so we are preparing for a little colder and maybe even a little stormy weather this week. The high will be about 67 degrees. I don't remember what the lows are going to be, but it will be interesting to see how Ed reacts. He just does not like being cold at all. Oh well!!!

On Tuesday last week we had a special Temple Devotional for full time missionaries. It is really nice because it is held inside the large chapel of the SL Temple. Marlin K. Jensen again spoke. He gave a great talk about the importance of preparing ourselves to listen with our hearts to the words of the prophet. He cited some great examples of revelation given to prophets over the years that addressed issues that are now much more controversial than anyone would have thought. The most recent example he gave is the Family Proclamation which makes issues of gender very clear for the Church. At the time that was given, no one would have thought anything about a Prop 8 or taking the issue of marriage to the Supreme Court of the nation. So.....I tried to listen carefully. I am excited to have the Nov issue of the Ensign so I can read and re-read the talks given.

Until then, I will work on being worthy of the companionship of the Holy Ghost. I think that was a prominent theme that I heard. Anyone else have a topic that touched them? It would be great to share.