This past weekend, we watched General Conference, a big fat conference our church has twice a year where the Prophet and other leaders of our church broadcast speeches and messages all over the world by internet and satellite.
We watch church on TV for 2 days at home in our pajamas. This year my mom made the kids a big tent to watch from and to be honest I slept through most of it in my sleep-deprived haze. I’m glad the talks are available online for later review because I could not keep my eyes open most of the time.
One talk I will NOT forget involved one church leader giving his solemn testimony of the Book of Mormon while holding the original copy that was read by the Prophet Joseph Smith and his brother Hyrum at the time of their martyrdom in the early 1800s. Not only was it an extremely powerful talk, but as a former librarian, I will always remember it as the talk that gave historians across the world a coronary. I wonder exactly how many seconds after he finished speaking that a team of archivists swept in with special dusting cloths and archival quality Ziplocs.
Getting ready for the conference, Magoo and I were looking at a picture of our Prophet and I asked him if he knew his name.
“Yeah…ummmm…no.”
“It’s President Monson.”
“Nope. That’s not it. It’s something with a train in it.”
“A train?”
“Yeah. The prophet’s REAL name has a train in it.”
I was dumbfounded. I tried to prove him wrong.
“There’s no train in his name. His name is Thomas S. Monson.”
“YEAH! Oh YEAH! He has a THOMAS in his name.”
So I wonder if President Monson’s other friends ever refer to him by his REAL FULL NAME, Thomas “The Tank Engine” S. Monson.