I know this was a month ago, but I wanted to remember how it went for our first general conference here. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, every 6 months (the first weekend in April and the first weekend in October) our church has a conference lasting two days and takes place in 5 sessions. 4 of those sessions are for all audiences, one on Saturday evening is for the men 12 and older.
We always watched all sessions live via streaming on the internet or at the church house via satellite. Even growing up we always watched conference at the church and we had a tradition with another family to go out to lunch at a restaurant on Saturday in between the morning and afternoon sessions and on Sunday we would have a picnic lunch. General Conference was a signal of changing seasons, a time to reflect on spiritual matters. Granted attending is a bit challenging with two little kids, but we haven't missed a session. This was the first time I haven't been able to watch all sessions live.
We were able to watch the Saturday and Sunday morning sessions live (which begin at 10 am Utah time, which was 7 pm here) via the internet. But the afternoon sessions start at 2pm in Utah, which would be 11pm here. Both nights are school nights (remember, the work week is Sunday through Thursday here). So we couldn't start a two hour session at 11pm and have any hope of being pleasant the next day. Besides, anyone who knows me knows that I wouldn't have been able to stay awake until 11, let alone through the session. So we watched Sunday afternoon's session at church the following Friday and watched Saturday afternoon's session one talk at a time throughout the week.
Though the feeling of general conference was not the same and I missed it, I am so grateful to have the internet and that the church streams conference online. It wasn't too long ago that we had to wait almost a week before the talks were put online in print and longer before video was up. But now we could watch the talks any time we wanted. What a blessing.
A week after we watched general conference at church (which was almost a week later than it happened) we had stake (geographical area with 8-10 congregations) conference. Our stake is the Abu Dhabi UAE stake, and it covers 4 countries - The United Arab Emerits (UAE), Oman, Qatar, and Kuwait. Needless to say we could not all meet together in person. So members of our ward volunteered to host stake conference. The leaders here have grouped people together depending on where we live. Steve volunteered our house as a place to watch stake conference for those of us who live in or near Education City. We shipped our screen and projector (and they survived the trip). We also have a lot of space. So about 28 people came and we watched conference live via the internet. It was quite strange to watch it in our living room. But I'm glad that we were able to have it and participate, even though we couldn't go to Abu Dhabi.
Here's our set up. We didn't realize that our kitchen table won't fit through the door, so we had to have overflow by the stairs.
We always watched all sessions live via streaming on the internet or at the church house via satellite. Even growing up we always watched conference at the church and we had a tradition with another family to go out to lunch at a restaurant on Saturday in between the morning and afternoon sessions and on Sunday we would have a picnic lunch. General Conference was a signal of changing seasons, a time to reflect on spiritual matters. Granted attending is a bit challenging with two little kids, but we haven't missed a session. This was the first time I haven't been able to watch all sessions live.
We were able to watch the Saturday and Sunday morning sessions live (which begin at 10 am Utah time, which was 7 pm here) via the internet. But the afternoon sessions start at 2pm in Utah, which would be 11pm here. Both nights are school nights (remember, the work week is Sunday through Thursday here). So we couldn't start a two hour session at 11pm and have any hope of being pleasant the next day. Besides, anyone who knows me knows that I wouldn't have been able to stay awake until 11, let alone through the session. So we watched Sunday afternoon's session at church the following Friday and watched Saturday afternoon's session one talk at a time throughout the week.
Though the feeling of general conference was not the same and I missed it, I am so grateful to have the internet and that the church streams conference online. It wasn't too long ago that we had to wait almost a week before the talks were put online in print and longer before video was up. But now we could watch the talks any time we wanted. What a blessing.
Here's our set up. We didn't realize that our kitchen table won't fit through the door, so we had to have overflow by the stairs.
1 comment:
How cool that you got to host stake conference in your living room!
Since moving to Hawaii, I've developed a new conference tradition of napping between sessions. Ours start at 6am!
Post a Comment