History in the making might be one description of the 167th Annual General Conference, which convened April 5-6 in the Tabernacle on Temple Square in Salt Lake City.

President Gordon B. Hinckley presided over the conference and conducted the opening session Saturday morning, April 5, at which several major announcements were made. Taking turns with President Hinckley in conducting and addressing sessions of the conference were his counselors, President Thomas S. Monson, first counselor; and President James E. Faust, second counselor.

Twenty-one General Authorities and two general auxiliary leaders delivered a total of 29 speeches during the two-day conference, which included two general sessions each on Saturday and Sunday, and a general priesthood session Saturday evening.

In his opening remarks, President Hinckley noted that the Church has grown steadily and consistently since the day it was organized 167 years ago, with the membership now reaching nearly 9.7 million. "We have become a great concourse of people," he said. "We should reach the 10 million mark by the end of this year." The statistical report was given Saturday afternoon, and will be included in next week's Church News.

Congregations crowding into the Tabernacle and filling overflow areas in the Assembly Hall and North Visitors Center on Temple Square, and the Joseph Smith Memorial Building across the street to the east reflected the world-wide expanse of the Church. Individuals from many nationalities and ethnic backgrounds attended the historic conference.

Usually only a side note to general conferences, the weather became a headlining event because of its extremes. Members who gathered on Temple Square Saturday morning did so in a full-blown snowstorm, which dumped at least three inches on the Salt Lake Valley floor. Snow settled as a cloak on trees, flowers and shrubs that just days before had burst into a bright color wheel of blossoms. While the winter-like storm brought discomfort to many conference-goers clad in spring clothing, it added an especially photogenic accent to the flowering Japanese cherry trees, daffodils, tulips, hyacinths, candy tufts, crocuses and other blossoms on Temple Square. By Sunday, the square was bathed in sunshine and the snow had melted.

All sessions of the conference were televised via satellite. More than 3,100 meetinghouses throughout the United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, Haiti, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic were opened for members to watch conference proceedings transmitted to satellite receivers. All general sessions were carried live on KSL-TV, Channel 5, in Salt Lake City, and on tape-delayed basis on KBYU-TV, Channel 11, in Provo, Utah. All general sessions were transmitted by satellite to more than 1,200 cable television stations in the United States.

The Saturday and Sunday morning sessions were transmitted live to Europe; the priesthood session and Saturday afternoon session was transmitted on a delayed basis on Sunday, April 6. The Sunday morning Tabernacle Choir program, "Music and the Spoken Word," was transmitted live.

There are more than 150 stake and ward buildings with downlink equipment in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Germany, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Switzerland.

Church units in areas where satellite and other transmissions were not available will receive videotapes of conference through 44 Church distribution centers located in 13 international areas.

Portions of the conference were provided to commercial television and radio stations and cable networks in the U.S. and Canada on a public service basis.

Simultaneous translations of the conference were provided in many languages: Bulgarian, Cambodian, Cantonese, Croatian, 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.

More than 220 volunteer ushers provided assistance to conference-goers in the Tabernacle, the Assembly Hall and on the grounds.

The film, "Legacy," a depiction of the struggles of the Mormon Pioneers on their westward trek 150 years ago, was shown over the Church's satellite network between general sessions on Saturday in observance of the Pioneer Sesquicentennial commemoration. The film is shown year-round, Mondays through Saturdays, in the big-screen theater in the Joseph Smith Memorial Building.