Girls camp

It's hard to believe that girls camp is over! We have been thinking and working on it since November and now it's done! It's a strange feeling. This is a long post... please don't feel the need to read it all... I don't want to forget all the details...

The week was wonderful! Everything went so smooth. Our theme was "Daughter of the King" We tried to help each YW know that they are daughters of Heavenly father and he loves them. We named each of the levels after a disney princess. I went up on Monday with the other stake leaders and the YCL's (youth camp leaders)... I love monday! So enjoyable. It's a great time to get to know all the ycl's and other leaders... We did some training and did some archery! Yes, the pictures in the little movie are real! I got a few bulls-eye's! When i got the first one, the men helping us thought it was total luck... but the second one proved them wrong!

Tuesday morning the rest of the girls arrived. I think we had 138 girls this year. We had a great stake activity that day. We took the girls through and activity called the "Lifeline". You start off blindfolded and you are given some instructions and then you are asked to think of the most precious thing in your life and then you are given an egg to represent that thing... Then you hold onto a rope you follow it through a maze that represents life... there are tempters that try to trick you and try to take your egg and get you lost... then there is the still small voice that helps you back on course if you ask for help. It was a great activity and it really helped the girls to look at their lives and think about what is important to them and think about the temptations they have and decide how they can face them. It was interesting to be on the side where I watched some girls give up their egg so freely and some held on for dear life... some asked for help often and some never did... do we do that in life??? I was able to reflect on my life and see areas I need to work on. We were able to talk about this activity the rest of the week and relate different things to it... that pretty much took up all of Tuesday. Tuesday night my presidency helped do a little fireside for the 4th year girls...

Wednesday the girls worked on certification and did crafts, went on the zip line and rock wall. We had some rain in the afternoon and it actually helped us slow down a bit... it was kindof nice. But at about 5:00 I started to stress out because we had a big fireside planned that night and it would not have been as good if we had to have it under the pavilion... It was a test of our faith! We decided to call our Youth Camp Directors in our tent with all the other stake leaders and have prayer... we prayed that the fireside would be able to go as planned and that the girls would have a spiritual experience... While we had dinner the rain returned for a bit... then at evening flag I told the girls not to bring their poncho's to the fireside! I was a bit surprised when those words came out of my mouth! We started our fireside talking about virtue, our new YW value... we gave the girls a piece of gold fabric and asked them to write down their commitment to be virtuous on their fabric.... they wrote things that they might want to work on or change when they got home. While they headed up the hill for the rest of the fireside my counselors tied all the fabric onto this torch Heather made.... it was so cool. At the upper amphitheater we split into 5 groups and rotated through 5 different speakers. One of them was Mary, the mother of Christ and she talked about how she needed to be virtuous to be the mother of the Savior. Then the next one was Abish and she talked about the strength that she had to have... (the cool thing about Abish is that the women we asked to represent her, had studied Abish and painted a huge picture of her several years ago. The painting has been hanging in one of the church museums and she had just gotten it back... we had no idea about this when we asked her to be her! She was able to bring the painting and talk about it) The next was Mary Fielding Smith and she talked about being virtuous and making it to the temple... she talked about the hardships of building the temple in Nauvoo and then having to leave it... and then she talked about her journey to Salt Lake. The next one was the women who had committed adultery and she talked about the atonement... the last one was a sweet gal in our stake was just a few years older than them and she talked about how important it is to study the scriptures to stay virtuous. After the 5 rotations we gathered back together and listened to our wonderful Stake President for a few minutes. He did a great job as always! After President Schlauder, we had our 3 YCS's bring up our torch we had just made and we sang "High on a Mountain Top". You are probably all wondering if it rained or not during the fireside??? It sprinkled for about 2 minutes... just enough to scare me and give me doubt and then I said another prayer and it stopped for the night! It was a great lesson on faith for all of us!

Thursday was fun... John and Ashley came up to help Jeff Vance lead the 1st years on their hike... It was great to see them! We had terrible cell service this year, so I had only talked to John once. The hike was fun and it gave me a chance to get to know some of the 1st years. JOhn had fun trying to scare the girls! Thursday afternoon all the Bishops arrived and we played a fun game with them... After dinner we split into wards and had a Bishops Fireside. The girls loved being with their wards for the night.

Friday was fun day! We played princess games and had a few other activities. That night we split into our levels and had testimony meetings. I went with the YCL's and they were amazing!! Their testimonies are so strong!

Saturday we packed up and came home! I was home by 10:30! We had a few girls get sick and go home, but other than that we didn't have any major problems!! YAH!! I love my calling!! I love that I get to spend a week with these wonderful girls and leaders. I wish I could explain each picture in the slide show to you!! I will post them on facebook with captions...