Sunday Special: New Beginnings

Yesterday during our third hour of church, which is normally when we have Young Woman's, we held our New beginnings. This is a program we do at the beginning of every year that serves as an introduction to Young Woman's for any girls who might be turning twelve during the year. Usually we hold this in an evening, but since we thought we had no new girls coming in this year, we wanted to make it a little simpler and keep it during church. However, we received a surprise just before we began. A girl who bore her testimony in sacrament meeting just that morning was turning twelve. So we went over the primary to confirm. They said yes, she was turning twelve this year. One of the counselors walked to her classroom with me and we pulled her out and asked her to come. As an afterthought, as I was closing the door to her classroom, I asked if any one else was turning twelve this year, and another girl over in the corner timidly raised her hand too. Surprise! Not just one, but two girls turning twelve this year. What a blessing for us. Neither of these girls has been baptized yet, they currently just come to church with their new convert parents, and so we weren't able to see on the church records that they were coming into Young Woman's this year. So we found their parents and then led them all to the stage, where we were hosting New Beginnings, since our YW room isn't big enough for all the girls and their parents and the Bishop.

Even with that surprise, we had an awesome New Beginnings. Our theme was "Adventure Awaits when you Come Unto Christ," inspired by the movie Up.  So we brought in some balloons, and our amazing counselor painted a picture of the temple landing at Paradise Falls.

Our YW president talked about how on our journey through life, much like Carl's journey to Paradise Falls, we might know where we want to go and how we want to get there, but life doesn't' always cooperate. Sometimes our plans have to change, but if we are working towards coming unto Christ, those changes will be for our benefit. Then each of our current young women and leaders presented one of the Personal Progress Values and talked about how that value can help us in our life when things don't go our way. We went with the bottle cap theme from the movie and pinned large bottle caps with the values on them to the curtain after each presentation. The young women always surprise me with how prepared they are for these programs, and some wonderful testimonies were born. It was a great program. 

Since it was Fast Sunday, we had take along refreshments: Bottles of soda with bottle caps, chocolate bars wrapped in these adorable wrappers, and some dumdum suckers to resemble balloons.  

We also assembled "adventure kits," which can be seen in the first picture, inspired by this cute blog, with a few modifications. 

It was a great hour and I hope we inspired the two new girls to want to come to Young Woman's when they turn twelve. The spirit was felt, and that is what was truly important. 

Sunday Special: Young Women in Excellence

Last night at church we had our Young Women in Excellence Program. Each year we celebrate the accomplishments of the young women in our ward. We decided on an Oscar theme this year, inspired by this blog post. Ours was very similar, we even had the same value cards in frames! The invitations stated "Black Tie Optional," and our attendees did not disappoint.

We had a red carpet through our foyer into the Relief Society Room, lined with lights. We wrote out the girls names on stars and laid those on the red carpet also.

In our room we hung some stars and twirls from the ceiling and had lights around the chalkboard.

We started the evening with a song and a prayer. After an introduction by our YW president, we had each of the young women come up and talk about a value of their choice, hopefully one that they have been working on throughout the year. Then, each girl presented an award to a woman in our ward who she feels exemplifies that value. We handed out star shaped ornaments to the ladies (and to the girls afterward) and thanked them for being a shining star in our ward. We wanted the awards to be cute and functional, so now everyone has a new ornament for their Christmas tree. I'm always surprised at how well the young women prepare their little talks for these events. The same thing happened at New Beginnings earlier this year. We don't always get to see it in class when they have to spontaneously answer questions, but when they prepare and read something, their testimonies shine through like spotlights (ha!). We have a small but wonderful group of young women and I love being able to work with them.

We also had each of the leaders give a small recap of one or more of the activities during the year that stuck out to them. Our Bishop gave some closing remarks and then we ended with a song and prayer, followed by sparkling cider and golden treats.

It was a wonderful evening and everyone had a great time. I believe we are going to try to make this an annual event.

Sunday Special: Book Of Mormon Challenge

Two of our girls both have their virtue goals completed, so to help them be motivated to finish the corresponding value project (which is to read the Book of Mormon), we started the Book of Mormon Challenge today, as presented by the blog Some Sweet Talking Girl (http://somesweettalkinggirl.blogspot.com/2012/04/book-of-mormon-challenge.html). This will be the first value project these girls will have completed, so we really wanted to make sure they stuck with it.

 

We gave each girl and leader a copy of this bookmark, which offers incentives for getting through different books of scripture. Once everyone (girls and leaders) is through, we get the reward! We may tweak a few activities as we go (this version is actually a tweaked one, the original is here: http://www.sugardoodle.net/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=7152:book-of-mormon-incentive-boomark&catid=5047:bookmarks). We attached a scripture tracking chart to the back also help everyone easily record how far they are. I think the girls are really excited and hopefully we can knock it out this summer!