Youth Conference 2010

Now that I have sufficiently recovered, I will report on youth conference. It was fun and uplifting experience!

Our theme this year was "LIFE: It's more than a game!" One of my assignments was to make these "life tiles" to go around the gym with different things on them that are good choices in life, ending with making temple covenants. There were 24 of those, poster sized. They took me awhile to make but I thought they looked pretty good as part of the decorations. Another assignment was to make the big banner for the wall with the theme on it.

You will have to take my word that I did these things, as I did not take my camera to photograph the evidence! Duh...

The youth made a little "path" out crepe paper on the walls connecting the posters, so it looked somewhat like a gameboard. They also had "boxes" made of colored electrical tape on the gym floor to enhance the gameboard feel. Gee, sure wish I would have thought to take pics. It looked good though, trust me.

Thursday night we had a nice opening meeting where the theme was introduced, and then a dance in the gym. It was great to meet some of the youth in the stake, although it will take me awhile before I remember all of their names.

Friday we started off with a service project in one of our metroparks, eradicating garlic mustard. That would have been great if I had ever really learned what it looked like. I had a hard time identifying the stuff! After the service project (and whining that came with it), we ate lunch and played games in the park. It was hot. The kids had fun, but after a few hours they were exhausted. Then back to the church for a nice taco bar and an outdoor dance.

Yesterday (Saturday) was an interesting day. We had workshops all day at the stake center, broken up with games here and there. The workshops I was able to attend were fantastic. In the middle of the workshops, a college student came in who was doing research about the church for a project at school. She wanted to know if she could interview one of us. They went looking for Sister Mendenhall but in the meantime they asked me to meet with her since I was a returned missionary and thus perhaps (???) used to answering questions about the church. Man, I am rusty. Thank goodness I got rescued after about 10 minutes, and I stayed and listened while Sister Mendenhall skillfully handled all of the questions (she works in public relations as well, which is helpful!). Here is what I learned: Keep it to the basics! :-)

Last night we had a nice etiquette lesson and "formal" dinner (on real plates even, lol!) and a slideshow of the youth conference experience. Everyone was well fed and excited for the testimony meeting, and as we walked from the gym to the chapel, I could see the youth stopping and looking down the hallway asking, "What is that??" There was also a very distinct smell involved. I got up there and noticed this vapor hovering near the ceiling. Not normal....although I wasn't sure if it was a fire or some sort of chemical. At any rate, it didn't seem like something we should be messing with. The stake YW president was not far behind me, and a counselor in the stake presidency not far behind her. They took a look and said, "evacuate"...so we had all of the youth go out on the front lawn and 911 was called.

I won't go into all the details but it ended up being quite the ordeal - several fire trucks, at least 1 ambulance, and 2 news stations there! Apparently there was an electrical fire in the A/C system. Eventually we decided to hold the testimony outside, and all of the youth were moved to the back of the parking lot, where we had a really beautiful testimony meeting where they shared their feelings about youth conference and the gospel. They are great youth. I am so glad I was able to get to know them better over the past few days.

After the testimony meeting, we were allowed back into the building to get our things and clean up. Some of the youth snuck over to the media vans and were interviewed, and we were the second story on Channel 7 last night! As I watched that news report, I couldn't help but thinking that all of this was a blessing in disguise: If we had not been in the building, the fire may not have been recognized for a very long time and the building could have gone up in flames. Also, thankfully we were moving as one group from one room to another, so there weren't people scattered throughout the entire building - evacuation was easy. Everyone was so cooperative, and some people actually had their car keys on them so they were able to get blankets out of their vehicles to lay on the pavement so we could have a somewhat comfortable testimony meeting. And all of the channel 7 viewing area last night was able to see strong and courageous youth who looked clean and beautiful sharing their feelings about what had happened. Some of them later admitted to me that they were very nervous through all of this, but none of them ever showed that, and I was impressed with them. Great kids.

Now, I'm giving myself a 24 hour break (except from mothering, of course) and then I'll get to work on girl's camp....