Youth Conference

So I had the opportunity to be a "Mom" and help with the church youth this year for Youth Conference. The theme was the Game of LIFE: Live it Happily. It seemed like a silly theme but it turned out to be so good and applicable.

The first night we divided into 'families.' I had 13 kids and the 'dad' never showed up! The first activity was to come up with a name, cheer/chant, and a car. Since the theme was LIFE, we wanted to build on it and decided to be the Lifesavers and have an Ambulance as our car. Our cheer was 3 siren sounds that built up until we yelled "Drop that Heart Beat!" "We are the life savers, come to save the day, we stick up for each other, Make sure everyone's okay. We got that BOOM BOOM BOOM!!!" Yeah! We rocked it! We won best cheer/car.

The next day we passed out snacks and loaded up the ~50 kids+adults into 6 cars to hike up Namsan Mountain to N.Seoul Tower. We meet with a great couple who gave us 4 checkpoints/crossroads in life and pointed out that what we are doing and choosing to do today, now, effects future choices and our life later. Happiness is a choice! We all had a great time. The weather was good and the kids were good sports. It was tough getting up but just like in life, it seems hard and you might not want to go on, but it is worth it.
We made it back and had breakfast and started our workshops. They split into 2 groups and switched classes. My family's first class was about marriage and why it is important, not only because you will be with that person Forever and make every decision with them but, what traits you want in your marriage later, you need to cultivate NOW.

The next class was a fun one! They opened it with playing Stick Pull. I got whooped by the Sister teaching and one of the Young Women, but redeemed myself against the 'big sister' in our 'family'. It is important to have fun in life. Just as the sting is not always strung tight in a bow or it will lose it's elasticity, the mind must not always be strung tight. But it is important that our fun be "wholesome recreational activities" and not worldly or destructive.

Break for lunch and on to two more workshops. A great one, When Life Throws You a Curve-ball. It opened with an awesome object lesson. Do you like Chocolate Chip Cookies? How about cocoa powder, salt, or baking soda? Those things alone are nasty, so she make some cookies without them and they were bland. Just as trials and hardships are bad when they happen, they are what help shape us and help us to become better. They are where we learn and grow. It is important to listen to the Holy Ghost so you don't have to go through trouble necessarily, but that when you do it isn't always bad.

Then a lesson that I can't really tell you about because I was falling asleep. We were all pretty beat by this point... So we got all the kids together and walked over to the new Community Center and let them play for an hour. There were computers, video games, ping pong, pool, and all sorts of games. Shoot, half of them went running on the skate park.

We got to the field and put together a skit out of 5 random things in a bag. Ours items were: paper hole fixer stickers, an empty box of gummy snacks, cassette tapes, a stocking, and a bottle of syrup. Really? Ok...? Well we had taco salad for dinner and started our fire and performed our skits. They were all very interesting. One had to do with a pizza order. Another was a shopping trip to make kimbap. Since there was one kid that was Obsessed with butter and was therefore nick-named Butter, they decided to add him as butter. "First lay down seaweed, add rice, and then... 70lbs of butter?" :D A good inside joke! The best one was an Arizona Jones spoof. A kid was tied up and A.J. had to go through to get to the treasure. "Avoid the lights." And he turns off the flashlight someone was shining. At the end he opens the secret passage and a girl "Ahhh!"s the box of Life and he takes it and walks off. AMAZING! Ours was just weird. It opens with three people doing the cheer of another team which makes a cat irritated and scratches them giving them white stickers on their face and falling over. Doctor! Gasp! It's the Warrior's (other team's name) disease!" Bring in the syrup bottle and the rest chase the cat with the stocking. "CUT! Great! Perfect shot." And the director pulls out a tangle of tape. "Oh well, that's life!"

Around the fire we sing and eat candy. Then we hear a great fireside about life is a marathon but sometimes you have to sprint to catch up or make it through something. He also touched on most of what they had learned earlier in the day. It was inspirational. Next came glow-in-the-dark Capture the Flag which wore them out for the rest of the evening...until time for cake and ice cream. And guess who took home the left over ice cream!!? They tried to throw it away! The three tubs of left overs were able to be smooshed into one. YUM! Oh, but back to Youth Conference.

The next morning we got there late because Hunny wanted to sleep in. We readied and made it to the temple. The District and Temple Presidents spoke to them before they did baptisms for the dead. Half went in and half went to a workshop/lesson and then switched. Lunch couldn't have come fast enough. We were starving. It was very relaxed after lunch because it was raining. The kids either just hung out or watched The Other Side of Heaven. I had not seen it before and we didn't get to finish. It was Testimony Meeting time.

Mostly everyone was grateful to be able to gather together as youth and have good clean fun. One last speaker before an Awesome Slide show of the conference by none other than the great Hunny!

Beat and exhausted we cleaned up and packed up and took home a ton of food. We had a great time and were glad to help. We have a great group of kids and hope they had a great time as well.