Thursday Temple Trip

Last night for mutual was our temple night to do baptisms for the dead, which replaced our regular Tuesday night activity. Unfortunately I wasn't able to attend, as I couldn't find a babysitter for my son. It sounds like everyone had fun, and I'm sure they all enjoyed going to Tito's Tacos afterwards, which is tradition in our ward and a Los Angeles classic.

If you would like, you can learn a little bit more about baptisms for the dead here or here.  For those who are fortunate enough to live close to a temple, this is a regular activity. Our youth are usually able to go once or twice a year with the stake.

Out of town - Cupcake wars Round 2

Last night for mutual I was unfortunately out of town.

We had so much fun with cupcake wars last time, that we decided to do it again. But this time we invited the young men to compete against us. I heard that the young men won, which was a shock to me! It sounds like everyone had fun. Sorry I can't give you any details.

Blindfold Karaoke

Last night for mutual we did blindfold karaoke. I know that name sounds weird, and I wasn't sure what we were getting into either, but it was a really fun activity. It's pretty simple: each person takes a turn with a blindfold on and headphones in and turned up loud (not loud enough to deafen but enough to drown out other sounds). Then you record each person singing their song.

All the girls were kind of embarrassed at first, so we had one of our leaders go first. Then we alternated girls and leader. By the end the girls were having so much fun some of them wanted to go again. We all got a laugh during the performances and then again watching the videos. We even had one of the young men come in at the end and want to participate also. We promised that all videos would be deleted afterwards, so I have nothing to show you from the night.  It was silly and fun and a good night for everyone.

72 hour kits

Last night for mutual we worked on 72 hour kits. Unfortunately we only had 1 of our young women show up, but we helped make some kits for the other girls also. To begin, we talked a little about why we need to be prepared. We live in Southern California, where earthquakes or wildfires could easily strand us. So having something on hand is very important. We talked about what things we needed in our 72 hours kits. We brought food and assembled food bags for our kits, which was kind of fun to do together. We used the list from this website. My kits has been neglected, so this was a great activity for me, and hopefully very informative (and not scary) for our young woman.

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. 

Yoga Night with Relief Society

Last night for mutual we combined with our Relief Society sisters (the woman's organization of the church) for a yoga night and healthy eating demonstration. We had a really good turnout from the Relief Society, so it was a great night. Our RS president invited one of her friends who is a professional instructor to come help us do a simple routine. Everyone brought their own mat or was able to borrow from someone, although most ladies said they were inexperienced with yoga. A few ladies didn't make it through the routine, but everyone seemed to enjoy it. The 3 young women from our group who showed up are all dancers, so they had almost no trouble with it.

After our yoga session, we had a quick cooking lesson from one of the Relief Society sisters. She made a quinoa black bean mango salad for us that was delicious. We also snacked on some fruit afterwards too.

It was a wonderful night and I think everyone had a great time! Thank you to our Relief Society for all their help!

Combined: The Amazing Race: Come Unto Christ Edition

Last night for mutual we participated in the Amazing Race! This is one of my favorite TV shows, so I was especially excited to be able to put this together. Well, I don't know if I should say put it together, because I was fortunate enough to find this amazing activity here on Sugardoodle. Basically I just had to print everything off and set up a few things around our church building. I was pretty sure we wouldn't have that many youth show up, so I eliminated a few of the tasks (like the faith fall), and we only raced with 2 teams. We also didn't email any of the pictures and make a slideshow afterwards (not that tech savvy).

This activity was a big hit! Some of the youth were skeptical at first, but once we got going everyone had tons of fun. We had 2 adults go with each group. The youth either picked  a number 1-18 or randomly drew an envelope out of their packet. They then had to complete whatever challenge was inside. Each challenge coordinated with a section from the For Strength of Youth Pamphlet (learn more about that here). Some were simple reading and writing, others had more physical activities. Points were awarded for each activity. I left assigning points up to the discretion of the leaders with each team. If there was little or no effort put in they were allowed to dock points. The teams had to be back in the Relief Society room at 8:10 sharp or they were docked points also. The winning team won some "gold nuggets" (Rolos). And everyone who participated was able to "partake in the love of Christ" (heart shaped Reese's, hooray for clearance valentine's day candy). Our YW President spoke to us about coming unto Christ after everything had settled down. We actually got some responses out of the youth, which was so nice to hear. It was an awesome activity. Thanks again to Caytee at Sugardoodle for putting it all together. They couldn't stop talking about it afterwards.


I currently only have pictures from 1 group, hopefully I will have some from the second soon.

Modeling a modest outfit

After the floor maze. This was really hard they said.

Balloon portraits of themselves.