General Conference Treasures

Shortly after last General Conference we discovered this little treasure on the internet through the wonders of mass emailing.


A few weeks ago we were watching it again and I wondered, have they made a new one yet? Of course, I knew they didn't know who the new apostle will be - but just maybe . . .


What a treasure this has been to help my kids become excited about the apostles. We are looking forward to seeing the new video when it comes out after conference and the chance to get to know another new apostle.

Speaking of apostles this week we will be learning about the apostles to prepare ourselves better for General Conference. Here are some of the resources we will be using:


The Special Witnesses pages in the 2002 Friend was a Getting to Know (the Apostles) page.
January - Elder Jeffery R. Holland
February - Boyd K. Packer
March - Elder Henry B. Eyring
April - Elder Richard G. Scott
May - Elder Dallin H. Oaks
June - Elder Russell M. Nelson
July - Elder L. Tom Perry
August - M. Russell Ballard
September - Joseph B. Wirthlin
October - Robert D. Hales
November - David A. Bednar
December - Dieter F. Utchdorf

The 2006 Friend had Guess Who pages for Each of the Apostles.
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
December
The individual links take you to the text pages, but you can also get the pdf version by going to the main page for Friend.

Once we have learned a little bit about each of the apostles, and what their jobs and responsibilities are we need to better prepare ourselves for listening to their inspired messages.

In the March 2009 Ensign there was an article titled Preparing our Children for General Conference that gave some great ideas for turning General Conference into a spiritual experience for the whole family.

I've never really thought about what I needed to do to prepare for General Conference so this post by Bethany on Preparing for General Conference was really eye opening for me. I also liked this Pre-Conference Checklist included in General Conference Worksheet by Lisa Smith. Mostly my preparations for General Conference have fallen along the lines of how am I going to keep the kids quiet, happy, and paying attention.

Well, I have good news -

Some wonderful members have put together some packets to use to encourage children and youth to listen to conference. There are a lot of great ideas here - so remember, you can't do them all this time, but conference comes around again every six months (and by then your kids will all be six months older.)

2009 General Conference Packet by Melanie Day

General Conference Ideas/Packets/Games - on Sugerdoodle - this has a whole list of different activities

General Conference Activity Pages from The Idea Door.

General Conference on About.com

Make Conference Memorable by Mormon Mamma

How to Stay Awake and Interested during General Conference - by Bethany


If you are looking for more coloring pages this site - ldscoloringpages.net indexes the coloring pages from the Friend.

As you can see there is a plethora of ideas. I like bits of pieces of all of them, so I pick and choose what to present each time to my kids, each child is different, so each packet can be different. I hope that you can find something that will work for you and your kids.


I look forward to General Conference - and enjoy the time spent with my kids watching and learning. Last conference was the first time we had a DVR and so we took advantage of it and would stop oonference so we could discuss the talks, and take better notes as it was going along. However, I still find that I miss quite a lot while taking care of the younger ones, so I love listening to conference on my MP3 player. You can usually download the MP3's of the conference talks within hours and begin to absorb the messages. I also anxiously await my Ensigns and spend the next 6 months reading and rereading the talks, and taking notes and highlighting them. I truly treasure our inspired modern day scriptures. I hope that this will help you to also treasure the wonderful blessing of a semi-annual General Conference.