Faithful flock from far and wide to attend conference in S.L.

Twenty-one thousand conversations hushed.

Twenty-one thousand people scrambled to their feet.

Twenty-one thousand pairs of eyes zeroed in on one man, walking briskly — for an 82-year-old man — across the Conference Center in Salt Lake City.

Thomas S. Monson, president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, acknowledged them, smiling and nodding, as if he was greeting, not a faceless crowd, but a gathering of old friends.

"I got chills," said Kristina Hobbs, a 19-year-old college student from Arizona, of the moment she and the crowd shared with President Monson. "I could feel in my heart that he was absolutely a prophet of God."

It was for this moment — and for the opportunity to hear President Monson speak — that people flocked Saturday to the LDS Church's 179th Semiannual General Conference.

Some came in cars, driving hours from all corners of the United States — Florida, Virginia, Oregon, South Dakota. Others caught flights from faraway countries like Japan and Peru. They include:

 California: Andromeda De Mexico stops, abruptly, in front of the Salt Lake Temple. She throws both hands out and cries to her daughters and husband, first in the Spanish of her native Mexico, then in English.

"The Temple!" she declares simply, reaching up, still clutching her tickets to general conference, to wipe away tears. She goes every Saturday to the LDS temple in Sacramento, Calif., where she lives, but, she says, there's something different about being in Salt Lake City, where her church, after being shooed from state to state, finally put down roots more than 160 years ago.

"We almost didn't make it today," she says. The family's car broke down in Reno, Nev. The mechanic told them they'd blown a gasket.

But the De Mexicos always go to conference.

"It's very special, you know, to hear the words of the prophet," she says, as she pushes her way hurriedly through the crowds of people waiting to enter the Conference Center. "He is the closest person to heaven."

So the De Mexicos knelt, as they've been taught to do since they joined the church, and prayed. An hour down the road, she says, there was nothing wrong with the car.

"I asked God to get me to Salt Lake," she says, "and he did."

 Hawaii: Tony Suafoa, 22, is "tripping out" in the parking lot. He's seen the Conference Center on television. He's seen photos of the Salt Lake Temple.

"But now I'm standing right here," he says.

Suafoa, who came to Salt Lake from Hawaii with his wife, figures the LDS Church saved his life.