2008 Mission Viejo Stake Youth Conference

Our youth were divided and sent to work on about 12 different service projects on Sat. morning. I went with Rachel's group. By the time their project was finished, this bin was full. The project consisted of painting bedrooms (I think the owners are going to regret having 14 & 15 year old kids painting their house - there were a few mess ups - oops!) clearing out and cutting down a ton of bushes, and disposing of rubble. I was proud of Rachel, she worked hard the whole 3 hours.

After the service projects, the kids got cleaned up and went back to the church for some classes. I think the kids had the most fun with the dance instruction class. They actually made the boys dance with the girls (novel concept). It was pretty fun to watch. Some of the other classes were "communication skills", "Spiritual Discernment", and "Creative Dating Ideas".
We had a husband and wife that spoke to the kids Sat. night after dinner. They were great talks! It was a wonderful, but exhausting weekend.

Carly participated in the team building games on Friday. The kids had a lot of fun, but boy was it HOT!! We had a major heat wave this weekend - we averaged around 100 degrees every day. The heat made everything we did outside really tough. The heat did zap the kids energy so they went to sleep as soon as they got to everyone's homes to spend the night. This was a good thing because we hosted 7 girls at our house. Rachel missed the games - she had volleyball practice.

Making new friends in the stake - Claire Facer and Kristin Campbell
They had a focusing type experiment for all of the kids to try. They had the kids write on one side of their wood all of the good goals they want to accomplish in life and on the other side everything that they might want to change. The kids each drew an "X" on the bad side of the board, they each concentrated, and they each broke their baord in half. It was amazing to see that every kid (and some of the adults) broke their board. Carly broke it on the first try! She was very excited! She also thought this took a little luster off all of the karate people breaking boards. She said it was easy!