Our Christmas Conference......

Tim and the Dallings left at 1:00 to go to the church to set up for our Christmas Conference tomorrow. The electricity had gone out while we were at lunch and did so again right after they left. I was in the dark for about 1/2 hour. Just as it went out the mailman came with a ton more packages that I needed to log in and get ready to take tomorrow. Tim came to get me about 3 o’clock to go help decorate and set up. The Welch’s had been there for several hours mopping the floors and the Fort Lauderdale elders set up the tables. We all worked hard until about 6 pm and were just finishing when a man poked his head in the door to ask what was going on. We told him that we had scheduled the building today to set up for our conference tomorros and he said, “We are supposed to be having our ward Christmas party here tonight at 7 pm. We just about died. Sister Dalling had called the scheduler specifically several times including that morning to make sure we were okay. I guess a wedding reception kicked them out of the Silver Lakes building and someone in the stake presidency told them our chapel wasn’t being used and to go there. We couldn’t stand the thoughts of taking apart everything we had done in the past 5 hours and having to do it all over again. However, the Christian thing to do was to let them have it so we took everything off of the tables, centerpieces, tablecloths, plates, napkins, and the silverware and let them set up and use the rest of our decorations. They promised they would put it back as they found it and they did. It is always scarey wondering if the building will be double booked. Last week there were 4 different things going on in the building the same evening: a ward Christmas dinner in the cultural hall, a small wedding reception in the Relief Society room, a single adult dance right after the ward dinner, and one other thing. What a nightmare. The churches here are not clean like they are at home so I will really appreciate our buildings at home a lot more now.
Our speaker was Brad Wilcox. He was a missionary companion of President Hale in Chile. He is now a BYU professor, an author, and a well known EFY speaker. He was fantastic. He is funny, full of life and very spiritual. He was released from being a mission president in Chile about 2 years ago. It was a great Conference despite the scarey start!