When I was growing up I lived about 20 miles from Temple Square in Salt Lake City, Utah. Twice a year General Conference would be held in the tabernacle on Temple Square but my family typically watched it on TV; all the sessions were available on one of the regular channels and we could just watch it from the comfort of our home. If I remember correctly, I only attended conference in the tabernacle two or three times, the last time being my freshmen year of college when I took a friend who had never been to conference in person. The crowds were large and the seats were not particularly comfortable; unpadded, wooden pews. Besides, there were a lot of people who traveled a lot farther than I would have had to to be able to attend at the tabernacle.
In 2000 the church finished construction and began using the new Conference Center, just north across the street from the Tabernacle. It can seat 21,000 people whereas the tabernacle could only seat 3,500 and the seats are padded. It also has no pillars, nothing blocking anyone's view from anywhere in the auditorium. A much nicer space.
But at the time it was completed, we were living out of state and our ability to get there was limited. When we're out visiting family we often visited Temple Square. A few years ago, while we were out there, we even toured the conference center but that was the closest we ever came to being there. There was one year, when I took one of my kids out and handed her off to her aunt, Brombeere's sister. Brombeere's brother was there for the hand-off and offered me a ticket to a session, since it was right at the right time of year, but I turned him down; I was there alone and wanted to spend the limited time I had with family so I didn't go. So, yeah, the Conference Center is over 20 years old and we've never attended a session of conference in it.
We've wanted to attend conference in the new conference center but it just never worked out, mostly because of the timing, which was limited by the cost of getting there. Until this year. This year we decided to go and it happen to coincide with when conference is held. So we looked into getting tickets so we could go. Normally you get tickets from your local stake so we checked with our stake and found the seating options were pretty limited. We had talked to our family living in the area and decided who might be able to attend with us so we needed a big block of tickets but what our stake had available wouldn't accommodate everybody. Fortunately, Moosbeere was able to get a big enough block of tickets from his stake.
Having never been before we had no idea what to expect as far as getting there, dealing with traffic and parking, and getting into the building and to our seats. But all that happened with no complications or great difficulty, it went much better than I expected. We ended up in our seats with about 15 minutes to wait before it started.
Because it has not been that long since all the covid restrictions have been lifted, and because the church is pretty conservative about such things, attendance had been limited so the auditorium wasn't full to capacity, but there were still a lot of people there. But in the section we were sitting we had a big choice of where to sit. It was nice. Our view of the pulpit was pretty distant, but they had big monitors on the walls so you could still see the speakers just fine, as well as from at home watching on TV.
It was nice to have been able to attend in person. It was a new experience and much more comfortable than it had been in the old tabernacle. I'm glad we went. And I'd be willing to give it another go if we happened to be there at conference time again, even if they were seating to full capacity. They handled the crowd very well. It was a good day.
