May and July Madrid Temple Missionary Conferences

As mentioned in earlier blog posts, we are in charge of the dinner and decorations for the monthly Madrid Temple Missionary Conference. We suggest a theme to President Tenney, and then after he approves the theme we create table decorations based on it.

The theme for May 2013 was "Gifts of the Spirit." We made a "gift box" centerpiece for each of the tables. The gift tag said "Buscad diligentemente los mejores dones" (Seek ye earnestly the best gifts) D&C 46:8.

We decorated the six dinner tables as shown here:

At our table, we enjoyed the company of Sister López and of Elder and Sister Riggs, new employment missionaries in Madrid:

Left to right: Beverly, Sister Riggs, Elder Riggs, and Sister López

Elder Riggs was a missionary with Scott in the Andes Mission, almost 50 years ago. They recognized each other when the Riggs came to the temple and Scott happened to be at the recommend desk. The Riggs are a wonderful addition to the Madrid Spain Mission. (Elder Riggs worked with Sister Felícita Álvarez in San Martín de Porres, Lima, Peru, for a period of seven months, during which time Sister Álvarez supplied references to him that let to 39 baptisms. Scott had the privilege, several months before that, of teaching and baptizing Sister Álvarez.)

There was no conference in June because the temple was closed for two weeks during that month. For July, the theme of the missionary conference was "Putting On the Full Armor of God."  We made a gingerbread castle for each table. (The castles were emblematic of the many Spanish castles we have seen during our travels.) On the walls of each castle, we "painted" (in frosting) a picture of a soldier in armor. This picture which we placed on each plate explained the parts of the armor, as given in D&C 17:15-18
:

This is one of the castles:

And this is what each of the tables looked like after we set everything up:

It was a lot of work finding the ingredients for gingerbread here in Spain. For example, we couldn't find molasses so we made our own, from honey and brown sugar. We also had to go to a special American store to purchase powdered sugar.

We have a wonderful time making decorations for the tables and feel that the decorations add to the spirit of the missionary conferences.