Youth Conference 2009

(not sure why this has taken me all week to post!) We had youth conference last weekend and it was a blast! Our committee did such a great job planning it! The theme was Hero's, "not all hero's wear capes" was the tag line. We had an amazing service project! Mack McKnight in our stake is on the board of directors for a community center in town called "The City Impact Center". It used to be a private church school and the Trinity church donated it to the city as an outreach place for teens. It has collected a lot of junk over the years and needed some good cleaning and fixing up. The couple that runs the place mentioned to Mack that they would love to find some people to help them and Mack said he knew who could do it.

A former NBA player named Jerome Williams does some basketball camps at the City Impact Center and he is the chairman of the NBA's community service group... so he got involved and he happens to go around to schools talk to kids about who their "hero's" should be! We chose our theme before we knew anything about him and the city impact center.... pretty cool.

So, Friday night we had Jerome come speak to the kids about hero's. He did a good job. They played a little video about his NBA career and talked about his nickname, "Junk yard dog". After he spoke, President Worthen talked for a little while. He did great as always. Then the kids played a few games and had a dance.

Saturday morning we all met down at the City Impact Center and got to work. It was a little crazy getting 200-300 kids to their working groups, but we did it. We had 25 different area's that needed work. In less than 4 hours, the kids had painted the front of the building, painted new parking lot lines, painted curbs and light posts, painted a stage, painted storage rooms, cleaned out about 5 classrooms of junk, organized clothing, cleaned a kids playroom, scrubbed lockers, bathrooms, showers and a kitchen. It was amazing!! The kids worked so hard. I never saw anyone complain or goof off. They filled a whole DI trailer and a huge dumpster with stuff. We fed them lunch and called it a day. The kids had fun getting autographs from a few NBA players that were there and Mayor Goodman even came by! We were a little worried that he would have a Martini in his had...hahha... luckily it was only 9:00am. Mack worked real hard getting donations for the project... we could not have done this without all his hard work!

Saturday night a guy came and sang a few songs and told a few jokes. I think the kids enjoyed that. Then we watched a slideshow of the weekend... And to top the weekend off we listened to our wonderful Stake President speak. He did a great job! We are so lucky to have such great leaders! President Schlauder and President Worthen were both working so hard with the kids at the service project. I know that meant a lot to the kids to work side by side with them. They are great examples of hard workers.

Sunday morning is always the highlight of the weekend... testimony meeting. The kids have amazing testimonies and it is so rewarding to hear them.

Getting started....

The Stake YM/YW Presidencies sang a silly song... (not my idea)

Can you tell I was really stressed out at this moment...

( that's a story for another day... i faked my anger pretty good!)

My cute Ashley...

JYD giving Mayor Goodman a tour...

Kids working hard!

Mitchell scraping paint off... with lots of people watching him!