General Conference

April 12, 2015

General Conference

General Conference has come and gone and the music lingers on.

How much of General Conference is music? For the three sessions the choir sang it was over an hour. This includes the congregational hymn. If you include Sunday morning's Music and the Spoken Word it would almost be an hour and a half. That is a lot of music.

There was also a new set of music to memorize as well. Memorizing is a weekly thing but this week was more than usual. I should probably add that to the list of things people should consider before joining the choir. Can you memorize music every week?

The messages and music were woven together so beautifully. So many touching moments and many uplifting messages. Some of the most moving to me were by Elder Nielson, Elder Holland and Elder Cook.

Since joining the choir I don't get to engage online with other members during General Conference. I was watching Conference like that for years. It is however a great blessing to have a reserved seat in Conference for at least 3 sessions. It seems like the past few years there has been a stronger push for social media engagement during conference. This post has some memes from the choir. It was great to see these.

Miracles happen too. I really wanted my mother to attend the Sunday morning session and up until the final hour I did not have tickets until I was contacted with two tickets for her. Two of the songs from Sunday morning are family favorites. "Consider the Lillies" and "The Holy City" were both songs my father loved. He even played the Holy City with the trumpet with my sister accompanying him on the piano when I was younger. It was a great blessing to have my mother attend. She told me later that the last time she was in the Conference Center was 15 years ago for the first General Conference session. A few weeks later my father passed away. She talked about how she was able to reflect back on the past 15 years and see the Lord's hand in her life. Blessings flow for sure.

This Conference had another first for me. During the last General Conference General Authorities spoke in their own languages. That was neat. This year there was a dissenting vote during Conference when sustaining the First Presidency. It's not the first time this has happened and won't be the last but it was a first for me to see it happen. Still, the work goes forward.