General Conference

I was unable to watch general conference over the weekend. It was super sad. My aunt was in town (we never get to see her, she lives super far away), and she's my mom's sister (my mom's side of the family being strongly Catholic), so I didn't want to make waves by asking to go to a friend's house to watch conference. Plus it was homecoming weekend and I had waay too much homework to do and my parents wanted to do family stuff with my aunt......... *sigh* Life. So therefore I couldn't watch conference. (don't get me wrong, seeing my aunt and family stuff and all that jazz was awesome. But still)

So I downloaded audio podcast versions of conference talks on my iPod.

I haven't quite figured out the formatting of the podcast app yet (apparently Apple did some weird thing where they took podcasts out of the music app? And reviews of the Apple podcast app are terrible, so I got some other app. Anywho). But I kinda sorta know how to pick a talk and get it to play. I can't tell which ones go with which session or in what order and it drives me crazy, but that's okay. I turn the volume all the way up on my iPod speakers (I drive a super old car and dunno how to connect my iPod to the car's speakers) and listen to the talks that way on the way to school. It's not quite as loud as I like, and I miss stuff cuz of that (plus driving safely is a little more important in that moment than concentrating 100% on what the speaker is saying), but it leaves me in a good mood.

Which is like my substitute for seminary, seeing as how I can't do that, either (can you tell I'm frustrated with all this stuff I can't do?). Anywho.

So I really like the idea of having access to conference talks on my iPod. Even if I'd been able to watch, I still woulda downloaded them anyway. Cuz there's always those days when you need to go back and remember how awesome conference is. It's a long six months between conferences. And with the holiday season, I'm willing to bet that a lot of us will take some sort of car trip. I know my family will. Twelve hours in the car with my sisters? Yeah, not fun. So I "listen to music" *cough*conference*cough* and that helps a lot. (They don't know I'm converting. That would be awkward. So I just try not to let church come up in conversation....)

Even if you don't take a long car trip, I'm sure you could find a time when it's useful to have access to the words of the Prophet and general authorities. In the words of my speech teacher, the spoken word "goes out, and then falls" (or something to that effect, I can't quote her exactly). But if you listen to it over and over, you can remember it! You ever have that feeling when you're reading the scriptures and you recognize a passage because someone used it in conference? I have. I hear it in their voice, too. It's pretty awesome.

<3 Marie-Rose