Well, it happened! And it was a great success! The night youth conference ended, I had the very best sleep I've had in a long time. I guess the secret to a good night's sleep is utter exhaustion, haha! Seriously, though, I had a remarkable experience helping to carry out my first youth conference as a stake adult leader, and I learned a LOT from it.
Here are a few notes from the weekend:
Theme was from a quote President Monson shared in April's Conference--"Choose the harder right, not the easier wrong." Using this we decorated with lots of traffic signs, traffic cones, and caution tape. Easy and fun.
The stake Young Men president, a couple of my presidency, and I showed up the Thursday night before the dance to hang lights and put up tables/chairs.
Following afternoon, the day of the dance, stake youth committee made signs for decorations and helped decorate the gym and entry way at the church.
Stake dance Friday night was well-attended, close to 50 which is very good for us, and almost 25% of those attending were guests that youth had invited. I kept myself busy keeping water pitchers full and handing out ice cream sandwiches and ice pops! There were many other adults there to help, which was great, too.
Saturday morning we gathered again to go on service projects available through the local DART organization. The former stake YW president helped set these up through the JustServe website, and it was awesome! The organization we were serving gave supplies, water, instructions, and lots of help to us. I was impressed by how much was accomplished by 30-40 kids in 2 hours. One group worked at a preschool (the same one Rhiannon attended when she was little!) painting and doing yard work. One large group of girls spray painted donated chairs, and then the third group had (I think the hardest) job of sorting through donations at the local thrift store. It was eye-opening during training for that--gloves and face masks were handed out, and we were told we'd be trashing EIGHTY PERCENT of the items donated--wow!!!
After two hours we went back to the stake center for a delicious lunch spread of pizza, fried chicken, mac n cheese, apples, salad, and orange drink. One of my counselors, my secretary, and two former stake YW ladies took care of that entire meal while the rest of us were scurrying around at the service projects. It was a huge relief to not have to give a single thought to that meal--they did an amazing, fantastic job with it!!!
Just after lunch there was a little time to kill, which COULD have been a major problem, but instead we asked all the youth there to help clean up after the lunch, take down decorations, and put tables away. It made for a VERY quick exit for the rest of us when everyone went home afterwards! I was also grateful to Brother Wonnacott, a bishopric member from one of the wards, who did some impromptu games with the youth, too.
In the afternoon we had 3 rotations or classes. One was a "movie room" where the youth watched several inspiring Mormon Messages and Church website videos around the theme of choices. Then I took a room, and my high council representative Kevin Evans took another. We read "Choose Your Own Adventure" type scripts to the youth that we had written, and let them choose which option to take at different decision points. It went really well! I wrote the following quote really big on the chalkboard in my room: "DECISIONS DETERMINE DESTINY," which is also a wonderful talk by President Monson! Then I showed a picture of me taken on my 16th birthday and shared my feelings that I would be forever grateful for the choices that 16-year-old girl made at that time that blessed my life immensely in the future.
Finally, we had a short testimony meeting. It was wonderful to hear their thoughts--these youth are amazing, spiritually strong, and obedient!
Rhiannon and I were home 30 minutes after the activity ended, tired and happy!
