Camp Liberty - teambuilding exercise

Last week we had our annual stake (equivalent of a diocese) YW (Young Women, girls from 12-17yrs) camp. This year the venue was the beautiful Bungonia National Park. Full of kangaroos and wombats that were easily spotted. Probably also full of snakes which I had been nervous about, but they had enough sense to stay out of our way. I was grateful about that since I was the camp nurse - my visions of having to treat snakebites thankfully did not happen.

On the first day there was a series of team building exercises, and my friend Tina and I were in charge of one. We had chosen a game involving plastic tubs and plastic balls of the type you find in ball pits. We only used 4 colours - 2 for each team so we could tell them apart.

We drilled holes in 2 tubs and threaded lengths of rope in different places. The ropes had loop-handles at the end for the girls to hold on to. They were only allowed to hold the rope by the loops.

The girls were in competing teams, 2 at a time. Our area was marked in a triangle with the start/finish at one point of the triangle and a cone in each of the other two points.

The rules were:

Teams were to choose one thrower. All the others would hold the bucket.

The girls were only allowed to hold the rope at the end/the loop and they had to work together to move their bucket.

The throwers stood 2-3 metres away from their teams and threw the balls for their team mates to catch in their buckets. Any balls that fell on the ground or bounced out of the bucket were lost.

 When a team had caught 5 balls in their bucket, they had to run to each of the cones before returning to the start area where they had to manoeuvre the bucket (without touching the bucket, and only holding the ropes at the end loops) to empty their balls into a third and smaller bucket. Again, any balls that fell out during the running around, were lost. 

With the empty bucket they were able to catch 5 more from their throwers.

We made the game a timed game, 5 minutes, after which we counted each teams balls. The team with the highest number won.

Unfortunately I had to settle for hastily snapped photos at the time, but hopefully they are enough to give you an idea of what we did.

Better late than never

As a convert to the church I only had a year and a bit in the YW programme and never finished my "Personal Progress".
When I was called to serve in YW a couple of years ago I decided I wanted to complete it both for my own benefit but also so that I could help the YW with their PP.

The programme had changed since I was a YW and I am so impressed with the current way. It is truly inspired.

Last week I received my medallion having completed 44 value experiences and 8 value projects.

do you hear the music?

Imagine learning the jive or the waltz, or the paso doble or even zumba. Imagine learning the steps and performing the dance without music. Envisage how mechanical the movement would be if you were learning to dance by going through the motions without the music in the background to add meaning and richness to your dance. I'm thinking that in addition to being more complicated, it would also be awkward and boring!

Yet, it this what I am teaching my children to do with the gospel? Are they learning the motions but not feeling the Spirit accompanying them, tutoring them, lifting them? Attending Church without feeling engaged?
What about lessons I give to the YW at church?

Some time ago I stumbled across this talk given at BYU Education Week in 2009 by dr A Lynn Scoresby on the "Crisis of Unbelief" among the youth of the church. As a mother and a YW leader this topic is extremely pertinent. The talk covers the importance of belief as a step on the path to faith, testimony and conversion. It covers reasons for loss of belief as well as how to help children and youth nurture belief. You can watch the talk here

Since October Gen Conference in 2011, I have been studying and pondering the importance of teaching by the Spirit. I listen to a lot of talks online and have another whole lot of talks and audiobooks downloaded to my iPhone so that I have access to inspirational and uplifting material any time. It seems that everything I have read or heard since then has brought me even more things to ponder and learn in that area.

I have to say that when they announced the new mission ages and the new youth curriculum in the October 2012 GC I had an overwhelming feeling of "rightness",  it made everything click into my place in my heart. I knew why I had been prompted to focus on this and to understand how vitally important it is to having the Spirit guide us as we prepare lessons, and to ensure we are truly teaching by the Spirit in. Both at church and at home. My children need me to arm them spiritually, to pack their luggage for their missions spiritually speaking, and also to arm them for the times ahead. This means that I need to prepare myself spiritually in order to be receptive, I need to study the scriptures, learn, strengthen my own testimony to put myself on ever higher ground. I have work cut out for me :)

 "Our children are learning to dance without hearing the music"

Feasting on the word

I loved Pres Uchtdorf's message in the Ensign this month about General Conference, particularly the story he relates in the first part: A member talked to his neighbour about how God speaks to us through His prophet and apostles, and how at General Conference we get to hear these special messages. When asked what God had communicated through the prophet at the last conference, the member couldn't remember. 

(I had to admit to myself that I also cannot remember what was said. I remember how I felt, but not the particular message.)

The neighbour was shocked - "You mean to say that God speaks to man today, and you can't remember what He said?!?"  

---

Oh yeah, it sounds bad when you say it like that, doesn't it?

"I've found... that when you're trying to learn from the Lord and you feel an impression from the Spirit... it's important to make a note so it will note be forgotten. The more you not only hear but abide by what you've been told, the more the Lord will give you. It will come more and more rapidly and you will begin to hear and feel those impressions of the Spirit more quickly than you have previously done"
Elder Gene R Cook


"The prompting that goes unresponded to may not be repeated. Writing down what we have been prompted with is vital. A special thought can be lost later in the day through the rough and tumble of life. God should not, and may not choose to repeat the prompting if we assign what is given such a low priority as to put it aside"
elder Neal A Maxwell
("Press Forward" p 122)

I am going to Feast on the Words of Christ when I attend conference.... in fact I am going to use it as a value project for My Personal Progress, and I have made myself a notebook. Normally I would scribble in my journal, but I have thought that if I have a separate notebook, it will be easier to refer back to over the next 6 months until the next Conference.

And then, as I prepared for my YW lesson on Scripture Study today, I felt the Spirit teaching me several times, bearing testimony to me and guiding me in my preparation. One of the things I felt strongly about is the need for a scripture journal for the girls, somewhere for them to write down their questions and impressions. So I while in notemaking mood, I covered some exercise-books with scrapbooking paper.

They proved popular in the lesson. I hope they get put to use!

I believe

YW M3 L29 A Change of Heart handout

I had a lot of fun making these. I used the same tutorial as for the heart in the post below, but I changed the dimensions of the paper ever so slightly to a 8x4 cm rectangle. I made 2 different handouts, haven't quite decided which one to use yet. Instructions can be found here.

The first handout has a quote by Marvin J Ashton:
"An honest heart will lead to a change of heart. Spiritually speaking, a change of heart is not only desirable, but essential for eternal life. The Book of Mormon describes the conversion experience, which all of us must have, as a "mighty change in us, or in our hearts, that we have no more disposition to do evil, but to good continually (Mosiah 5:2)"

The second handout has a quote by elder Dallin H Oaks: "Testimony is to know and to feel. Conversion is to do and to become"

YW M3 L 30 Scripture study

I have been looking forward to teaching this lesson for ages. If there is one thing I would love for my YW to have, it would be a love of the scriptures - to have them come alive and to be a source of testimony, knowledge, guidance, strength and comfort.

My focus in the lesson will be on Feasting on the Word -  I will be bringing in some truly scrumptious triple choc fudge brownies to illustrate as well as this cartoon by Snoopy - someone who seems to do 'feasting' really well! I am planning to discuss ways to get the most out of scripture study, questions to ask ourselves while reading so that we truly understand and liken the scriptures to ourselves.

Still pondering  the details...

For another handout I will use the one above (from LDS Handouts). Quite a few of the girls have notebooks where they are gluing in the handouts from the lesson to save them so I am happy to provide.

obedience and airplanes

Lucky me, I get to teach the Young Women in our ward! My special group is the 'Beehive-class', the 12-13yr old girls. This week's lesson was on obedience (to the commandments) and as always they impressed me with their thoughtful comments and questions.
There was a doozy of a question of whether I would sacrifice my children if God required it of me....   obviously inspired by the story of Abraham and Isaac.

For a handout I used this idea here . I loved the quote by elder Robert D Hales using airplanes as an example:

"Just as aircraft pilots must obey certain rules to avoid disaster, there are laws, ordinances and covenants we must understand and keep as we go through earthly life if we are to reach our goal of eternal life. As important as it is for an airman to develop an automatic response to warning indicators on the instrument panel, it is even more important for us to learn emergency procedures to the warning lights that go off in our personal lives".

("Return with honour" Ensign Nov 2001)

I'm grateful for all the preparation that pilots do in the simulators preparing for worst-case scenarios. (Hopefully) you'll never see pilots in an emergency situation completely unprepared, frantically flicking through the manuals trying to find a way to avert disaster... a great lesson in how it is better to Prepare and Prevent than to Repair and Repent.

My little squadron of airplanes ready to take off......   so much fun to make.