With its signal being carried through modern technology to more minds and hearts than ever before, the 159th Annual General Conference of the Church will convene in the Tabernacle on Temple Square in Salt Lake City Saturday, April 1, and Sunday, April 2.

President Ezra Taft Benson is to preside, assisted by his counselors in the First Presidency, President Gordon B. Hinckley and President Thomas S. Monson. President Benson and his counselors will address the various sessions.Other speakers will include members of the Council of the Twelve, and other General Authorities selected from the First Quorum of the Seventy and the Presiding Bishopric of the Church.

General sessions are at 10 a.m and 2 p.m. both days. The general priesthood session is at 6 p.m. April 1. Because of the nationwide shift from standard time to Daylight Saving Time, the Saturday sessions will be Mountain Standard Time and the Sunday sessions will be Mountain Daylight Time.

As in the past, all sessions of the conference will be televised via Westar 4 and Galaxy 3 satellites to more than 2,500 stake centers equipped with satellite receivers throughout the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. All sessions except the priesthood session will be transmitted via satellite to numerous cable television systems in the United States.

At last October's conference, sessions were carried for the first time in 12 languages via satellite. That innovation will be continued this conference. With proper satellite reception capabilities, Church units or members in North America and Hawaii can receive the broadcasts over Westar 4 satellite, transponder 12D (Channel 23) in the following languages (frequencies are listed in parentheses): English (6.8 MHz), Spanish (6.2 MHz), French (5.8 MHz), German (8.10 MHz), Tongan (7.38 MHz), Samoan (7.47 MHz), Portuguese (7.56 MHz), Laotian (7.65 MHz), Cambodian (7.74 MHz), Hmong (7.83 MHz), Vietnamese (7.92 MHz) and Korean (8.01 MHz).

Prior to the last conference, the satellite transmission was available only in English, Spanish and French.

For the first time, live satellite transmissions will be carried to Europe and Central America, according to L. Don LeFevre of Church Media Relations. As a test for possible future transmissions, the conference will be beamed to earth stations in Manchester, England; Frankfurt, West Germany; and San Jose, Costa Rica, via Pan Am satellite. The broadcast will be viewed in one location in each of those cities, with local priesthood leaders determining who may be present, LeFevre said.

Portions of the conference will be provided to commercial television and radio stations in the United States on a public service basis. In the Mountain West, KSL-TV and Radio will carry all but the priesthood session.

Church units in areas of the world where the satellite and other transmissions are not available will be able to receive videotapes of conference sessions soon after the conference, since the translations are recorded as the conference sessions occur. European languages are made available through the Church distribution center in Lynge, Denmark. Oriental languages are available from the distribution centers in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Taipei and Seoul. Spanish and Portuguese language tapes will be distributed throughout Latin America and wherever else they are requested by area presidencies.

Conference addresses are being interpreted into 29 langauges by translators stationed in the lower level of the Tabernacle, enabling non-English-speaking conference visitors seated in the Tabernacle and the north visitors center on Temple Square, and in the Church Office Building and selected local ward meetinghouses to hear proceedings in their own languages.

From three to five translator-interpreters will be on hand for one or more conference session for each of the following languages: Cambodian, Cantonese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hmong, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Laotian, Mandarin, Navajo, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Samoan, Serbo-croation, Spanish, Swedish, Tahitian, Thai, Tongan and Vietnamese.

Conference proceedings will be conveyed via sign language to a gathering of the hearing impaired in the Church Office Building Auditorium. All television broadcasts of general conference will be closed-captioned for the hearing impaired.

Language translators and interpreters are virtually all volunteers who donate many hours of their time in preparation for the conference as well as during the conference.

Also volunteering their time will be more than 100 ushers, providing assistance in the Tabernacle, on the grounds, and with overflow seating in the Assembly Hall.

A first-aid station will be inside the west doors of the Assembly Hall during the conference. Medical assistance is available during all sessions.

Abundant colorful spring flowers are expected to blanket Temple Square and the adjacent Church Office Building Plaza during conference weekend. Church landscape artist Peter Lassig said flowers expected to be blooming include tulips, poppies, pansies, forget-me-nots, violets, primroses, hyacinths, daffodils, crocus,scilla, wallflowers, chionodoxa, arabis and aubrieta.

Music for the Sunday sessions will be provided by the Tabernacle Choir, with Jerold D. Ottley and Donald H. Ripplinger, directors, and Robert Cundick and John Longhurst at the Tabernacle Organ.

The Mormon Youth Chorus will sing at the Saturday morning session, with Robert C. Bowden directing and Clay Christiansen at the organ.

Saturday afternoon's session will feature the BYU Combined Choirs with Ron Staheli and Mack Wilberg directing, and Cundick at the organ.

For the priesthood session Saturday evening, the Ricks College Centennial Priesthood Choir will sing under the direction of Richard Robison and Mike Belnap, with Christiansen at the organ.