BYU Women's Conference 2010

Sunday, May 2, 2010

This week I went for the first time to Women's Conference down at BYU. Josh's family goes every year and I was so excited to go with them. It was Candy, Jamie, Heidi, Tiffany, Hilarie, Grandma Dance, Janine, Shelley, Joanna and me. All ten of us had a wonderful time together. All of us except Jamie drove down together in a suburban and had such a great time on the way there. We got there and met up with Jamie who had driven up from Vernal the night before. Opening Se3ssion was great and Julie Beck (Relief Society General Pesident) was a great speaker. Our firt class we went to on Thursday was "There are Two Lasting Bequests We Can Give Our Children: One is Roots, the Other is Wings". It was pretty good and was given by a woman and her two adult daughters. Then Jamie, Tiffany and I tried running to the next class we wanted, "The Work of Creating SomethingBeautiful", but we couldn't get in. So we had lunch and went early to the next class. The class was good, "Choose Your Love, Love Your Choice." It was about loving your spouse in all kinds of life situations. I enjoyed it. Then closing session came and Renata Forste was the speaker. She was hiolarious and I enjoyed her talk very much. She spoke about self esteem and how commercials were geared towards women improving themselves, but men commercials are about recreational acivities. It was a very insightful talk. Before she started,an namd Daniel Beck sang a couple songs and he had a great voice. Afterwards we grabbed some dinner and then headed to lower campus to do some service kits. Janine, Joanna, Shelley and I boxed up hygeine kits for a while, then met up with everyone else. They wanted to go back and do more kits. So we went back and got split up. Jamie, Tiffany and I end up on an assembly line for school kits and it was a ton of fun. Hilarie had been walking a ton that day and ended up having swollen ankles. We grabbed some EMT's and asked for an ice pack. They asked why and we showed them cute pregnant Hilarie's swollen ankles. AWW! They helped us out and we made sure she was taken care of. We had to go to the concert, so we tied them on with some caution tape. HAHA. Hilarie was a great sport about it though, I'm glad she had such a good time. We took off to the concert and got there just in time. The other ladies had saved great seats. Hilary Weeks, Alex Boye, Dallyn Vail Bayles, Michael McLean, Mercy River, and the Fab 5 (cloggers) performed. My absolute favortie was DAllyn Vail Bayles. His voice is very similar to Josh GRoban, and his performance was amazing. His wife had thier baby like the day before and so he had such a cute story to tell about almost not coming to perform nd how she told him he needed to stay and being on the phone during the birth. He only sang a couple songs so he could get on a plane and home to his family and newest little boy. He sang this song about his son that was wondeful! I'm going to try finding it online. I also enjoyed the Fab 5, they are great dancers! It was a great first day and we all fell asleep very quick! Well, except Jamie who had to stay up to write a paper. YUCK! Sorry Jame...
Friday morning was little bit of a slow start, but it was good. I had mini waffles at the hotel that were wonderful. We were a tad bit late toopening session, but it was okay. The speakers were Barbara Thompson and Silvia Allred. They spoke about humanitarian efforts and charity works. They shared tos of videos and stories about Haiti, Chile, Katrina, Samoa, some parts of Africa, and the Dominican Republic. The stories were incredible and I really enjoyed both of thier talks. Our first class we all went together to do service and listen while we did it. But once we got there they only had one room open, so only one class was being broadcast. Darn. Heidi and I decided to g to another class instead, "Sacrifice and Selflessness in Marriage". Jamie and Tiffany met us there after staying behind to proof read and turn in Jamie's finals paper. The talk was good, but not what we expected. It didn't seem to fit the topic we thought it was about either... so it was a bit confusing. But all well. We skipped the second class again and had lunch instead. The third class we went to was by far my favorite of the whole two-day conference. It was called "I'm Thankful to be Me" and was given by Janet Preece Gleave and Rosemary Thackeray. It was amazing, and we took like 5 pages of notes. I learned a lot about loving myself and not putting myself down. The biggest lesson I learned was if I wouldn't say it to my best friend, don't say it to myself. And also, to learn to take and give compliments without saying things like "thanks but I wish I would have...". Be sincere! We headed to closing session, but grabbed ice cream along the way. I got a ix of cookie dough and peanut butter cup. My two favorites besides vanilla :) Clossing session was really good, and the speakers were Elder Dallin H. Oaks and his wife Kristen M. Oaks. She is the cutest lady ever! Such a sweetheart! Thier talk was enjoyable and really captured the theme of the whole conference, which was "Choose Ye This Day to Serve the Lord" Moses 6:33-34. And then we sang I Know that My Redeemer Lives. It was a wonderful ending to such a great conference. Thanks to everyone for coming, I hope you all had as great of a time as I did!