Tradition: General Conference is Special

One thing we have tried to do in our family is to make General Conference weekend special. We talk about conference in the weeks leading up to it. We treat these particular Saturdays and Sundays as different. It's not time off from church. We've tried to instill to our boys the importance of listening to our prophet and church leaders: if we believe that we have a prophet on this earth, and he speaks to us twice a year, why wouldn't we make it a priority to listen when he speaks? This is something that is important to our family.

We have a special breakfast tradition each morning. We don't answer the phone during conference. We have special activities. We spend the weekend as a family and we listen to the prophet. Even when the boys were toddlers and couldn't understand or sit still (and usually ended up in another room playing), we did this. If we can avoid it, we don't plan outside activities that will interfere with our watching conference. This fall, my husband and older son will begin the special tradition of attending the priesthood session together.

Obviously life happens. My husband must sometimes see patients on Saturday mornings. It's not his choice, but it happens. As our boys get older and get involved in sports or other activities, things could happen to interfere with our Saturday tradition, and force us to make decisions, but I hope not.

Lest anyone think that our General Conference weekends are one long spiritual event, you need to know that we have two active, young boys. As much as I would love them to sit through 8 hours of conference and have momentous spiritual experiences, they don't. I don't, for that matter. But, I take a lot of comfort from Elder Bednar's talk in October, 2009 and I hope for consistency. I hope that our boys will remember that we made watching General Conference a priority in our home, and from that experience, they will learn to love it and look forward to it like we do.