2/11/18 Special Stake Conference

This morning we finished setting up the Special Stake Conference at the Inter-Stake Center. Elder Quintin L. Cook is the visiting authority. We, of course, had last minute tech issues. Above me Darren Eyering is trying to sort out why the projector is flashing off and on.

We've had issues lately with signals not being strong enough to be read clearly by the gear at the far end. We put a device on to boost the signal and the picture became solid. It was a blessing that we had enough of those. I don't think we had many extras.

Aside from that one issue the broadcast felt very blessed today. We worked hard resolving issues yesterday but that hasn't stopped new issues from happening in the past. Today, for the most part, everything worked. I'd give audio an A-. Only a slight hint of feedback but mostly fine. We fixed our past mistakes. No wrong name supers today and we remembered to test sound on the Spanish AND the English headsets. It was the first conference in recent memory that felt clean from a technical perspective.

From a Spiritual perspective it was great as well. Being on the tech crew, it is hard to get the most out of meetings but today I picked up a couple of things. Sister Cook told a hilarious story about a Family Home Evening they had when their kids were little. Sister Cook had this great plan, she dressed the family up. Her 3 year old boy was Moses, Dad (on his knees) was Pharaoh), the daughter (6) was the reader (with Mom's help). The boy would say "let my people go", Pharaoh said "no" and the daughter read the next plague. What could go wrong? After about the fourth plague though the three year old started to tear up when his dad said "No" again and punched him in the nose. Well, that event ended FHE that night. The point was that we all have set backs trying to teach our kids. They still had FHE the next week. We need to expect those kinds of challenges and be ready to try again.

Brother Cook talked about being more loving and understanding with our kids. He told about a time when his daughter missed her curfew. She was usually very punctual. They got concerned to the point that they kneeled and prayed for her safety. Shortly thereafter she arrived. As they heard the car pull in the driveway his concern for her safety dissolved into anger that she had not considered their feelings. In hindsight he wishes that his daughter could have seen more of the concerned dad and less of the grumpy dad. It turned out that she had an innocent reason for being late.

Heidi took this fun picture of Peter and Joseph.

Here is David, helping fix dinner. He is getting to be so grown up.