Thousands of Latter-day Saints from many lands and cultures are converging on the grounds of Temple Square this weekend for the Church's 167th Semiannual General Conference.
The conference comes at a time when the gospel is being preached more widely and with greater success than ever in this dispensation.President Gordon B. Hinckley and his counselors in the First Presidency, President Thomas S. Monson and President James E. Faust, will in turn conduct the general sessions at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. MDT Saturday, Oct. 4, and Sunday, Oct. 5, and the priesthood session at 6 p.m. Saturday.
All sessions will be held in the Salt Lake Tabernacle and televised via satellite. More than 3,200 stake centers and other Church buildings throughout the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, Haiti, Jamaica, and the Dominican Republic are equipped with satellite receivers.
General sessions will be carried live on KSL-TV, Channel 5, in Salt Lake City, and by tape-delay on KBYU-TV, Channel 11, in Provo, Utah. In addition, general sessions will be transmitted via satellite to more than 1,200 cable television systems in the United States.
With proper TV satellite reception capabilities, Church units and members may receive the conference broadcasts via Galaxy 4 (Channels 23 and 13) or on Galaxy 7 (Channel 8) in English, Spanish, French, German, Cambodian, Cantonese, Haitian, Hmong, Korean, Laotian, Mandarin, Navajo, Portuguese, Samoan, Tongan and Vietnamese.
The Saturday and Sunday morning sessions will be transmitted live to Europe; the priesthood session and the Saturday afternoon session will be transmitted on a delay basis on Sunday, Oct. 5. The Sunday morning Mormon Tabernacle Choir program, "Music and the Spoken Word," will also be transmitted live. Craig Jessop, associate director of the choir, will conduct.
All Europe transmissions will go in 11 languages on Intelsat K. The English and German may be picked up on privately owned dished in Western Europe. In areas of the world where satellite reception of conference is not possible, videotapes of conference sessions will be available to Church units through Church distribution centers.
A newly produced motion picture, "An Ensign to the Nations," which tells the stories of faith and sacrifice behind the worldwide growth of the Church, will be telecast over the satellite system 15 minutes after the conclusion of both the Saturday and Sunday morning sessions. The film will also be shown on KSL-TV at noon Sunday and on KBYU-TV, Sunday at 7 p.m.
Following are interesting facts about the conference provided by the Church Public Affairs Department:
Translation: From three to five translators will be on hand to simultaneously interpret for conference sessions in each of the following languages: Bulgarian, Cambodian, Cantonese, Croation, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Haitian-Creole, Hmong, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Laotian, Mandarin, Navajo, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Samoan, Spanish, Swedish, Tagalog, Tahitian, Thai, Tongan, and Vietnamese.
For the hearing-impaired, proceedings will be available via sign language in the Assembly Hall. All TV broadcasts will be close-captioned.
Volunteers: More than 220 volunteer ushers will serve on Temple Square during conference.
Music: Music for the conference will be provided at the Sunday sessions by the Tabernacle Choir, under the direction of Jerold Ottley, with John Longhurst and Richard Elliott at the organ. The Mormon Youth Chorus will provide the music for the Saturday morning session, with Robert C. Bowden conducting and Bonnie Goodliffe at the organ. Saturday afternoon's session will feature a choir comprising families from Church units in Farmington, Utah, conducted by Jane Fjeldsted with Linda Margetts at the organ.
