Time Out For Women

I was supposed to attend with my mother, grandmother, aunt and cousin. As it turned out I went alone. That fact seemed to be rubbed in many times when people could not believe I wasn't saving the seat next to me. Not quite as much fun this way. I tried to call dozens of people. Most were already going, some never got back to me. It really should have been a shared experience. As my tone may hint, I was a little bummed to be without family or friends. The Friday night event was amazing though and I was glad that I had shown up anyway. We heard from Kenneth Cope, Hillary Weeks, Chieko Okazaki and Carolyn Rasmus.

Sister Okazaki was so funny. I had been privileged enough to meet her in Hawaii and though she would never remember me I felt a connection to her. She turned 82 on October 21 and this is how she started her talk.
"I have five boyfriends that I spend my time with now days. I wake up in the morning with Will Power and then I go and visit John. After awhile Charlie Horse come to call and he takes up a lot of my concentration. Then "Arthur Ritus" pays me a visit, but he doesn't like to stay in one place for very long so he takes me from joint to joint. By the time he leaves I am so glad to go to bed with Ben Gay."

- "Life is like a roll of toilet paper. the closer you get to the end the faster it goes. Make sure to live joyfully."

Two very important principles of the gospel are Free Agency and Love.

God will not override of agency even to bless us or he would cease to be God. Overriding agency was Satan's plan . Satan chose to walk away from God and become The Deceiver and the Adversary. This was his agency.

Establish a pattern of prayer and make your home a library of learning. Make sure that your children know that prayer is an ongoing conversation with the Lord.

Hillary Weeks was absolutely amazing. She is beautiful and absolutely hilarious. She commanded the crowd and if no one else was there, the conference would have been worth the price of admission. She sang some beautiful songs and shared such a sweet testimony all with the gift of humor.

She said:
-Prayers are always answered. Sometimes exactly as we predict, sometimes in ways we could never have expected and sometimes with a 'no.'"

-God knows us. He knows our names. He could walk in to this room and call any one of us by name. He cares enough to know us by name and her cares enough to know all the details of our lives.

Carolyn Rasmus is someone I had never heard of. She gave a beautiful talk about God's love and mercy for us. I took the most notes on her talk.

She said that when the old testament was being translated from Hebrew to English the scholars came across a word that had no translation in English because it was so complex with multiple meanings.So the translators invented a word to encompass the entirety of it's meaning: at - one, meaning to bring everything together: atone

She said the power of the atonement can make a difference in our lives. It can increase of faith and dispel our fears.

There was really so much more, but alas . . . you really had to be there to appreciate it all. If TOFW comes to a town near you grab your loved ones and go. It is worth every penny.