January 10th - Relief Society Conference

 It’s hard to convey my feelings about our women’s conference. Words like “so wonderful, everything we wanted it to be, and the best day all seem trite, even though it was all those things. 

I’ll do my best. Adi and I headed up right after she got out of school on Friday. We stopped by the Milani’s to pick up a backup headset, grabbed Adi some Chicfila, and met the ladies in time for me to head to a fancy dinner with them. And doesn’t our logo look so good???

Dinner was so yummy and it was so nice to breathe and be calm and talk about our hopes and what we were most looking forward to. 

And then back to the hotel where it was all hands on deck! We round robin’d our thank you cards, writing out a note and then passing them around to be signed. Trish has Marriott points so we got to go in their super swanky lounge and get candy and soda and I ran into a sister from our stake there too. It was actually really fun running into ladies at the hotel all evening. Two ladies came up to us asking if we were attending the conference too and so we were able to give them the whole low down.  

Adi was invited on all those excursions, but she enjoyed a relaxing spa night in our room. ❤️ We sat in these chairs and talked through all the things and finally had to drag ourselves to bed because we had such an early morning but were having the best convos. 

We met up in Trish’s room for a prayer and to help carry things down and the we headed down! I think we met at 6:30? 

We threw our luggage in our back room behind our welcome counter and ran the rest of the day. 🤣

We each were in charge of groups and had our meeting times and marching orders. Rebecca handled all the teachers and room helpers. 

Chantelle managed the keynotes and historians. 

Trish had registration, Elizabeth facilities, and I did interpreters and missionary helpers. 

So registration was a nightmare. Around 8:50 I told Chantelle we weren’t going to be able to start on time because the lines were so long, so we both went back to help. Those cute missionary helpers couldn’t keep up. And then that’s where I stayed all day. It was really a mess with the lunch tickets and non lunch tickets and nametags were missing and people had gifted them and on and on. I was happy to be there and hang out with Trish for the day. 

We were able to snag a pic with Bonnie Cordon when she arrived. She asked us about our planning and what we would do differently if we did it again and gave us good counsel. 

We grabbed our lunches and ate behind our counter and I was able to catch 10 minutes of the counselors presentation and what I saw was really good. 

The only time I was stressed all day was right before our keynote session when I had been working on my interpretation technology for almost an hour and it still wasn’t working. I needed someone upstairs and someone downstairs to see if it was connecting and none of the ladies could help me. I felt like I had been helping with their tasks all day and when I needed support it wasn’t there. I was running upstairs and downstairs like a chicken with my head cut off. I finally spotted one of my presidents and enlisted her help and then when it still wasn’t working I called Paul. And then just talking to him I figured it out. It was so frustrating because I’m pretty good with zoom and I had practiced and knew how to do it. Anyway, then I needed my Spanish sisters to sign in to be ready so I grabbed more helpers and everyone I asked was happy to help and then I forgave the girls for not being available. 🤷‍♀️🤣

Behind the registration desk eating lunch with our cute missionary helpers. 

I think Debby snagged this one of our little stage. I think this was after I blasted the mic asking the sisters to be quieter for a second so we could make our Spanish announcement. Oopsie. 

With Barbara Morgan Gardner and Bonnie Cordon and Eme Martin. Heroes of mine- all 3!

Thankful that President Bracey gave me an in with Barbara! Her teachings have changed my life and I look up to her so very much. 

Maybe I’ll share some pics from the professional photographers we had- they were so good!

I was able to get a shot with Heather before she headed out - love her! I was pretty sure she spoke Spanish and I wanted her for my secretary to be my special envoy to the branch so I just asked her about Spanish at a stake meeting and the requested her and she took my little idea and blessed our branch so much! I’m so grateful she trusted me enough to go out on a limb. And that President Boyd did too for that matter. 

Heather grabbed one of me and my best senior girl. I’m so glad Adi came with me, even though I barely saw her. She picked the classes she wanted and loved the suffragette one the most. She checked in with me throughout the day and made sure I got lunch. She’s a gem. 

Heather asked me to write up something about my experience planning for our stake history, so I’ll share that here. 

  I loved working with the 4 other stake relief society presidents to plan our Regional Women’s Conference. We felt very led by the spirit through the whole process and were delightfully surprised with all of the yeses we received as answers to our many requests. 

The thing I looked forward to most was seeing the women (over a thousand!) come joyfully together to be buoyed up and strengthen their testimonies. I knew it would be powerful. 

We received so many responses from women that talked about seeing an old college roommate, friends that had met overseas years ago, and women they had served with. So many women made connections with important people that they didn’t know lived close by. 

Tiffannie Feuerbach, the Lexington Park Ward Relief Society President said “This is what heaven will be like! There were so many wonderful women, women that were roommates when I was in college that I didn’t know lived out here! So many women sharing their light!”

We need each other. We are stronger together, and I’m so grateful that we were able to gather as women of light. We gather Israel as we gather together.  

It was also a day of miracles. I’ll share just three. 

When the name tags to be placed in plastic lanyards were printed, they were “accidentally” printed as stickers. Then when we ran out of lanyards (because we had been sent the right number of boxes but with the wrong quantity inside them) we were able to use our sticker name tags. Tender mercy. 

I was in charge of arranging language interpreters. I had one sister and one brother as our French interpreters, but our French sisters never showed up. I felt bad that President Ferrell Martin wasted his Saturday. Then around 11;00, our keynote speaker Barbara Morgan Gardner texted looking for consecrated oil because she wasn’t feeling well. Guess who was one of only 2 brothers in attendance, and the only one not currently teaching a class? President Martin. Sister Gardner received her blessing and shared the most beautiful message with us. Heavenly Father always has a plan. 

We agonized about our lunch situation. We only had enough money to offer 1300 lunches. Our venue could accommodate more people than that, so we offered lunch tickets and non-lunch tickets to be able to offer 1900 sisters the opportunity to attend. The day of the conference also happened to be a day of Sister Marriott’s large funeral, and many other smaller funerals. We knew some of those sisters might arrive in the afternoon for the keynote speakers and we worried about giving those lunches away. We put off deciding until the last possible moment, when we gathered in a small back room and prayed together. The spirit was so strong. We finished our prayer in tears and agreed with 100% certainty that we were to offer every woman in attendance a lunch. I don”t know how many sisters actually got lunch, but I have no doubt that could have been a loaves and fishes miracle as we were blessed to share a free lunch with everyone, and there were 100 leftover for our wonderful Marriott employee helpers. I get teary just remembering the overwhelming spirit. 

Planning the conference was so much work. We planned for a year and a half, first meeting monthly, then twice a month, weekly, and every other day. None of us are professional planners. None of us had ever attended anything like this. None of us really knew what we were doing, but when you are on the Lords errand, you are always blessed. It was such a joy that at the end of that very long Saturday, the 5 of us said no question we would do it again. 

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