Conference Miracle

Every Mormon parent with small children knows that conference weekend is no longer a weekend where you relax, lay back and enjoy being spiritually fed. Conference instead becomes background noise to an already noisy household and for every morsel of spiritual food you get, chances are you’re getting real food spilled on the carpet, caked on your clothes or thrown in your face. Well, this weekend was no different until this afternoon – today we experienced a miracle! We had three families over for dinner and conference. The Sadler family brought a delicious salad, the Elder family brought fantastic dessert, and the Bednars brought peace and quiet! As much as we LOVED the food, the peace and quiet ended up being invaluable!

How did they do it? Well, I won’t give them ALL the credit because in fairness Ben, who accounts for half the noise, was asleep and that was our doing; but our other half of the noise, Keely, was completely conquered by Jeff and Anne. They attended the morning session of conference at the church and then came to our house for the afternoon session. Keely developed a quick crush on Jeff and when Anne got up from the couch Keely quickly moved in. She settled herself as close to Jeff as she dared and then sat still, shy and silent for the rest of conference. Anne was a great sport about losing her spot next to Jeff and even scratched Keely’s back through about half of conference which completely won Keely over and made her one content little girl with two happy parents!

So, what did Keely learn in all that silence and reverence? When Shawn asked her what her favorite part of conference was she responded, “Dad, I didn’t understand a thing they were saying!” What did we learn? Well let’s just say that we invited Jeff and Anne to every conference session, church meeting, family home evening, family scripture study…