General Conference is coming up, this Saturday and Sunday! It’s especially for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but anybody can benefit from the speeches given at this conference. It’s a conference where leaders of the Church share holy truths for inspiration and guidance, based on the teachings of Jesus Christ. It’s held the first weekend of October and April every year. You can learn more about it and watch it here.

For our Family Home Evening last Monday, we read a Liahona magazine article together, which I love. It’s 7 days to preparing your family and home for General Conference. Check it out here. Since we have fewer than 7 days to General Conference I’m calling it 7 steps. so you can squeeze in the steps in fewer than 7 days. I love the idea of treating General Conference as a special holiday weekend with special food, decorations, and activities/family traditions. We often have cinnamon rolls, and for the fall Conference I sometimes serve chili on one of the days. I usually do some kind of charcuterie board for both days for the breakfast that people can munch on throughout the morning session.

We used to do Conference Packets of activity sheets but my children have outgrown that, now that my baby is 15. But I just realized that with my grandchildren close by now I could make some for them! For all ages, I like to have a world map puzzle or a puzzle of Jesus on the table so if if people want to listen and keep fingers busy besides taking notes they can do that. That can help certain people stay awake better than taking notes.

This website has a ton of ideas of family traditions for General Conference. Check it out! Here’s another one, over here. Don’t be overwhelmed by all these ideas, maybe just pick one new one to try this weekend. I have a friend who does a General Conference store like the one mentioned in the first afore-mentioned link, but as a young mom with a lot of little kiddos that might have driven me crazy with getting that ready and keeping toddlers out of the stuff. Conference packets and building toys were enough for me to keep them busy.

So far I haven’t had special decorations just for Conference, even though I like the idea. The decorations I do are usually my fall decorations of autumn leaf garlands and pumpkins, but I do like the idea of hanging a banner up and having family members write one or two teachings or invitations on it that they notice. I might do that this year. I also love the banner shown below of the Twelve Apostles but I’m just not that ambitious right now to make it on top of all the other things I want to do.

The article I just referred to mentions a new activity I hadn’t thought of, which is to “Pray about something you can sacrifice to better receive God’s word,” for example, social media, for a specific amount of time, like over the weekend. Day 4 step is to give thanks for how your life has been blessed by previous General Conference teachings. Then it says, “You might even record your thoughts in your journal or share your experiences with loved ones.” I love these ideas. I usually take notes, like in my journal below, but this time around I went to pay more attention to the thoughts I have as I take notes.

If you want more ideas on how to celebrate General Conference time, go here to my pages about it. I’ve got General Conference Wits and Wagers here, which I plan on playing this weekend. We sometimes play General Conference Jeopardy! within a few weeks after GC, using the updated one that Montserrat of cranialhiccups.com usually gets up within a few days after the event. Also check out the pages of questions on how you can prepare your family for General Conference in this book coauthored by Emily Belle Freeman shown below. They start on page 259. They basically are, “How will you prepare a space for your family to learn? What special food will you serve, and what activities could you do between sessions?” Oh yeah, there’s always the question of what to do between sessions besides eat, LOL.