We are His Hands

Last Saturday we had our annual Stake Women's Conference. This year was a day of service and the theme was "You are His Hands." My mom is the stake Relief Society president, so she was in charge of the whole deal, which means that since I am her unofficial "third counselor", I was pretty involved in the goings on that day.

After a wonderful session in the chapel with some inspiring talks and music, we all got busy in the cultural hall where many stations were set up for ways to be His hands. We assembled hygiene kits, sewed school bags, tied quilts, made baby blankets, stamped cards, sewed baby gowns, wrote letters to missionaries, collected canned food, and knitted newborn caps! There was a lot going on!

It was so fun because there was something for everyone to do. And you could try you hand at something you have never tried before!

My dad had a great time in the action as well. He spent most of the time sewing school bags on my parents' trusty old featherweight Singer (I have one too! Great little machine).

Mom and her counselor, and our dear friend, Nonie. Those ladies ran themselves ragged that day!!!

We wrote letters to all the missionaries from our stake serving all over the world.

Tying quilts. Even the Stake President got into the action!

I was in charge of the card making station. It was quite popular! The cards are donated to Ronald McDonald House Charities. Those ladies were having a great time getting creative!

The best part about the whole conference was getting to serve and visit each other at the same time! It was so fulfilling seeing about 100 ladies working away to serve, and to be able to visit and catch up with old friends at the same time. Some women moved from station to station, trying different things, and some stayed at the same station the whole time. But everybody was working hard.

Then it was lunchtime.

They provided sack lunches from Aspen Mills (totally worth all the service and work just for that! Yummy!)

Then Mom announced that because everyone was being so Christlike and working so hard, she wanted everybody to come up and have a little taste of heaven. That was when they opened the stage curtains to reveal this:

A lovely LONG table filled with all kinds of heavenly desserts! There was an audible gasp when the curtains opened. It was quite a surprise! The sisters wasted no time in getting up there for some deliciousness!

Mom put me in charge of the dessert table. I thought that since the theme was about hands, I just layered the tables with lots of lacy white table cloths then used my collection of old ladies' gloves to decorate the table, topped off with some blingy large acrylic diamonds scattered everywhere. The centerpiece was a Christus statue on a pedestal and a sign below that says "Charity is the pure love of Christ." It was a very pretty presentation, especially up there in front of the black stage curtain and under the bright stage lights. The diamonds just sparkled!

I think what made it so effective was that there were NO other decorations of any kind at the conference. It was all business! So when the curtains opened to an over-the-top pretty buffet of scrumptious desserts, it was just so fun!

My mom felt good about how the whole day went. She should! It all came together so well. The final count is still out on how many quilts, blankets, cards, letters, kits, school bags, cans, gowns, and baby caps we got done that day, but I know the Lord is so grateful that he got use of those 200 hands for those few hours last Saturday.

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