CONFERENCE TIME IN SALT LAKE CITY

Dear Family,


The first week of April is always an exciting time here in Salt Lake. The General Conference of the Church is like a great reunion. Leaders from all over the world come into town for training. The auxiliary leaders come in, the General Authorities who are stationed all over the world, all the Area Seventies come in for instruction.

We saw Johann Wondra and his wife who came with another member from Vienna. They are so great and it was great to hear that Viennese dialect again.

There are missionary reunions all over the valley. My first mission has had a reunion for the last 51 years. All the churches are full of various missionary reunions. The numbers are lower so we will have ours in our home this coming Friday. It is hard to find an empty chapel on conference weekend..

Mom and I substituted in the Salt Lake Temple on Thursday and it was packed with visitors. You could hear English accents and accents from other lands. There was this young man from Peru who looked like one of those men in a painting of Aztecs. He brought some family names with a lot of "x's", "l's", "c's", "t's" and other letters in strange combinations that could only be spelled out loud. People were joyous in visiting this temple and there was such a good spirit there.

Speaking of the temple, the Salt Lake Temple will now open on Monday morning for sessions fro, 7 AM to 11 AM. Mom and I volunteered and were accepted so we will go now Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Hope we can do it. We start tomorrow. This session will accommodate conference visitors and other visitors who are here for a brief time and also the General Authorities who have Monday off. When I am done there in the morning, I walk over to the church office building and do my medical stint in the afternoon.

Conference was great and can be viewed on the Internet, The link is http://lds.org/conference/languages/0,6353,310-1,00.html and can be heard and seen in many languages.

I always love conference and when it was over, you sigh and think, "I really needed that"! I loved President Monson's opening greeting where he honored the full time missionaries of the Church and in the next breath thanked the volunteers who work behind the scenes to ensure that everything works.

We were thrilled of course with the calling of Neil Anderson to the Quorum of the Twelve. He is Kaley's uncle but we knew him before we knew Kaley. He is most appropriately suited for the calling and will fill the vacancy left by the passing of Elder Wirthlin. The church is growing throughout the world and there is a lot of Action in Mexico, Central and South America.

The talks were great and the counsel on provident living were on the mark. Great counsel and teaching on missionary and temple work and well as strengthening the youth of the church. I loved them all.

Priesthood Meeting on Saturday night has always been a Father Son event. I always went with my Father when we lived in New York and when we lived here. We did this as our family was growing up and the treat after is getting bigger. We had a bunch over Saturday night, Mike brought up his and Emily's boys, Doug and his boys came over as did Paul and his boys. Larry Manwaring from Virginia was in town and came over for a feast of London Broil, funeral potatoes, sourdough bread, Dutch Oven chicken and potatoes. We went around the table and asked each person what their favorite talk was and what they learned. It was fun.

April is packed with activities. I think there are 23 birthdays. Next Friday we have our Munich-Austrian Mission reunion in our home. Saturday is Mike and Rayanne's Easter Egg party along with my birthday party. So much going on. Get to the Temple this month if you can. May Heaven bless you all.

Love, Dad