General Conference

I always look forward to listening to General Conference. I love hearing the direction we receive from our leaders. This year we tried something new to try to keep our kiddos engaged. We took an idea from pinterest to pick a treat for each apostle. We had sweet, salty, and nutritious.

We were tossed around a bit when it came to new announcements and instruction. A pretty big conference if you ask me! We learned that we will only be attending church for 2 hours in the future. WHAT! this is going to be amazing as a mom. Seriously. I have always tried my best to make church a joyful occasion, but to be honest, it is hard to even want to go when you have small kids. Cutting an hour out will change everything! To re enforce our learning at home they have given us a new Come Follow Me study guide to follow individually and as a family. I can't wait to do this!!
While listening and pulling out our treats Andy got really excited and pointed out that our treat matched the talk that had been given earlier that day. Elder Bednar taught us about how doing the small simple things in life to stay close to Christ we are building up a rope twisted together to keep us from being broken by hard things or Satan's temptations. He had lots of visual media which helped the image stick in the kids' head. So, once andy saw our licorice twists he immediately compared it to the talk. Love thats kid!

Another wonderful announcement from the prophet was a challenge to all the women in the church to do 4 new things...
* Media Fast for 10 days - To cut out all unnecessary and inappropriate forms of media in our lives. Use that time to spend studying, use it with our kids, or see just how much free time we have.
* More temple experiences. Attend as frequently as possible. Doing this will be wonderful after taking a little break because of pregnancy and having a newborn.
* Be more prepared and involved in RS. I really should take this one to heart. Although I can't get involved on sundays I can make more of an effort to attend the weekday activities and perhaps reading the lessons even though im not attending.
* Read and finish the book of mormon before the end of the year. With a social media fast and all the time I spend pumping and feeding Alex I should be set up pretty well to get e good start on that. My friend Chelsea made these amazing countdown charts. I love marking things off and I am hoping this helps me stay up to date and finish in time!