It was a wonderful thing to take two of my daughters to the first Women's Broadcast. Apparently, girls age 10+ had been invited in the early 1900s, and this was the first time girls aged 8+ were invited.
I could tell that they had tried to garner a larger audience. More singing, more videos (two! in that short-- well Megan thought it was long-- 80-minute meeting), and shorter talks that were much more broad and sweeping in their scope. I know it's hard to appeal to audiences of such varied age and walks in life. I think they did a pretty good job.
The overall theme was to be on keeping covenants. They hardly touched on this, in my impression. I thought they talked more about how we are all daughters of the same God, making us sisters, and that lending an inherent bond that means we will suffer together, rejoice together, and need to help each other-- no matter our age or station or walk. We were reminded that we had all entered the gate to Eternal Life through baptism, and that we all started on that path, some of us more recently than others, but that we should work to help and strengthen and love our sisters to keep them on the path, and help them endure trials. Helping hands and hearts to hasten the work of God.
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| Zoë, me, and Megan after the Women's Broadcast on March 29, 2014. |
Zoë seemed to really get a bit out of it, and was impressed that we all needed to help each other- young to old, old to young. Megan was tired, had sampled too many treats at the social beforehand, and had a difficult time sitting for the 80 minutes (they ended at 9:20, ten minutes early!!! I wish more church meetings could be like that!). But, she said she really felt the spirit during the singing. I have to echo that- the songs and the words were really powerful and quite moving. I could also feel the Holy Spirit testifying that I am a Daughter of God, have a lot of work to do here, and that I am a Sister in Christ with all those who seek Him.
The only blight on our evening was the one hour drive home. There had been a winter storm advisory (meaning, possible but not likely horrible weather of ice, sleet, rain, snow, etc.) We were eating dinner before we left the house, and it started to rain. Ten minutes later, the water on the deck had started freezing in clumps as the rain fell, then the rain turned more to sleet and the deck was covered in slush. We headed out 15 minutes later to rain/sleet and the roads were wet and a little slushy, but not bad. We reached the stake center 30 minutes after we left our front door and as we were pulling into the parking lot there were GOLF BALL SIZED clumps of SNOW! It was the weirdest thing. They were soft, wet, and fluffy, but HUGE. The 5 second dash to the door of the building from our van left all of us plastered with snow. When we left 2 hours later there was 2 inches of snow, and the flakes were still wet and falling, but not quite as big in size. However, the roads were COVERED in snow, meaning even with tire tracks, there was no visible road. It was slippery, wet, and scary.
The freeways and highways were COVERED, too. We drove 30-45mph on the
freeway the whole way home; I was white knuckled. We slipped a few times, plowed through slush, passed up cars going 25. I was especially nervous about the exit ramp and the hills near our house. I was afraid if I had to slow down too much I would lose traction and not make it up the hill! That thing happened when we hit the light at Bronson Hill Road- a car was driving 15 mph up the hill (maybe got caught at the light?) and a car and I had to slow down to not hit it, and that made my tires slip and start spinning to try and maintain enough momentum to keep going up the hill. Megan commented (she had a running commentary on the drive home, little chatterbox!) about how some people say that when it rains, it is God crying. Well, this white thick heavy slick stuff must be a giant sneeze!!!!
Thankfully we made it home, not in a ditch like 3 cars we saw on the drive home. And it only took us twice as long as normal. I was so depleted, I fell into bed and asleep almost immediately.
And woke up to this...
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| White Pine in our back yard. It was so coated with ice, the branches looked like they were going to break off! Then, a thick heavy coating on snow was on top of that. |
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| It wasn't too cold, but the wind was blowing. We had just finished shoveling snow. |
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| The wind blew the wet snow so hard that it stuck in an odd pattern on the shed. |
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| Ice-coated and Snow-covered raspberry branch (one of the few the bunnies didn't eat). |
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| Blue Spruce- seems to have held onto more snow and less ice, but both still there. |
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| The snow is on the north side of the trunks. This is at the back end of our property, behind the ditch. |
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| Travis tries to help the trees by knocking snow off the branches. Can you see the wind pattern in the snow on our house? The playground is also covered in ice and snow. |
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| This is the edge of our property, looking out over the empty wilds. We hope the people who bought this land in the fall won't develop any part we can see.... |
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| The birch tree really catches the water droplets. It was so beautiful seeing rows and rows of water drops frozen. |
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| Close-up of birch. |
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| This is the ash tree in our front yard. The branches normally curve, but I don't think quite as much as they do when coated with heavy ice. |
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| Close-up of birch tree. |
It took Travis and I 45 minutes to shovel half the driveway. Then he went around and tried to knock snow and some ice off the evergreen trees so the branches wouldn't break (hopefully!). He couldn't get much off the white pine because each blade was coated in ice, and even with the snow gone, there was no way to get the ice off without breaking off the needles. The spruces weren't as heavy-laden, but still coated. I took the pictures (above) while he worked. Now he's off to church and I need to get ready. I think I procrastinated as long as I could in the hopes that church would be cancelled. I guess the roads are better away from us. I think we had 4-6" in our driveway (depending on where it drifted). And it was HEAVY wet stuff. Wish we had time to build a snowman this morning!
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