This past weekend was really wonderful! I wondered if since I had been to Education Week this year at BYU, if TOFW might be a little anti-climatic, but boy was I wrong. There is just something about 1800 women in a room with speakers geared just to women that cannot be matched! After telling Alan about every speaker and giving him all my notes he said.....They need to have a Time Out for Men! He might be right about that!
We started out Friday afternoon as soon as I got off work at 12:30 pm and headed to the Dallas Temple to do a session! It was so nice to be at the Temple with these two friends and even more special when I realized that the Witness Couple were a disabled couple. Melted my heart, because you guessed it I imagined how cool would it be if Aileen could do that! The woman had down syndrome, and the man had some other mental disability, not sure what, but it was a very cool experience!
Then we checked into our Hotel, which I can't believe I didn't take a picture but it was a Marriott Courtyard in Plano/Richardson, Tx. By then we were starving so we went to "On the Border" for dinner and had great food and fun company!!!
Next we were off to the Plano Convention Center for the Friday night Concert and speakers. It was so fun that so many ladies from our Ward were able to come, car pool and sit together it was awesome! The neatest thing for me personally and the thing that made my experience complete was that my sister, Elizabeth, came to be with me all weekend for TOFW! Memories of the last time we went, and that it was with Mom, flooded us and it was a special time.
Thank you ticket fairy for making that dream possible!!!
The only embarrassing thing that happened was I had been saving 20 seats for all of our Ward to sit together, and had to leave to go meet my sister at the door to give her a ticket and when I came back there were 3 ladies sitting in the seats that supposedly the person I left in charge to "guard the chairs" was suppose to be saving.....so I asked them if they were sitting in our chairs and they were concerned and said, "Oh, I'm so sorry we thought it was our group's chairs" to which I found out they were with our group only from 6th Ward!!! Ooops! My bad! So I apologized profusely and they laughed and thought it was funny.....thank heavens and much to my relief. The next day they were saving chairs on Saturday for our group and when I came to sit down I told them they had my total permission to tell me I was sitting in their area.......they were so cute and said "no, no, no, give yourself a break!" What sweethearts!
The speakers were amazing! I spent too much money on their books and CD's I had never heard Hillary Weeks in person so that was awesome! Micheal McLean is always good. I loved hearing from the Photographer that did the photo book "Reflections of Christ" and his new book "Another Testament of Christ" was so beautiful and very touching. I bought it for my Dad for a Father's Day/Wedding gift since I had not done anything for them at the time of their Wedding! He did love it and so did Barbara! They had new speakers on the tour this year and they were fabulous as was of course Brad Wilcox. But the most touching speaker and the one I cannot stop thinking about was a Sister from Sri Lanka, West Africa. It was very humbling to listen to her story! I was so glad to be part of this incredible weekend!
1 comment:
My friend and I stayed at the same Marriott Courtyard in Richardson! Another 2 women from my ward stayed there too. The only disappointment was that breakfast wasn't available until 7 AM and I had to be at the Centre at 7:15 AM Saturday.
TOFW was awesome! There aren't enough superlatives to describe it.
I was hoping Michael McLean would sing his adoption song since our youngest grandson is adopted & will be 2 this December. Louie has brought so much joy to our family - and I told Michael that!
I got a kick out of Virginia Hinckley Pearce - so down to earth, warm, and had good things to say that apply to us.
Mariama's story is incredible - what she survived and that she still can laugh about parts of it. I am so grateful our women generously filled 500 hygiene kits for Hope's Doors.
Brad Wilcox's perspective is different from mine and I enjoyed learning more about the Atonement. I will definitely be using that chapter 6 from his book (that I bought after TOFW) in my Institute BOM class. As you know, teachers are always learning and sharing.
We are so blessed with the gospel, family, and friends.
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