Book of Mormon Read-a-Thon

    My stake did this last spring with our Laurels and Priests.  They loved it and so did I and I have been meaning to share this with everyone since then, but had misplaced my schedule.  I found it last night in my tax folder!!  Ha ha!  Anyhow, now I can share what we did so maybe you can do this with your youth.  I know another group did it with the New Testament this past fall and invited youth from any church to come join for the reading, food, and company.  (You will want to make sure you have plenty of snacks and good meals planned because it is a long day and a half!) 
   
    Our set up was a couch at one end of the gym with a couple of the singled comfy chairs most of the Churches have in their foyers.  Those would be for the readers.  You will have at least 2 microphones set up at this end also.  Then we had more of the chairs and couches set around in a big circle, plus large bean bag chairs or any other kind of reclining chair people had available that would be comfortable for hours on end.  Behind that toward the opposite end of the gym was where the snacks and drinks were set up, plus we had mini-trampolines, pogo sticks, jump ropes, tennis balls and a few things like this the kids could go do and still listen as they did, if they were getting tired. 

   So the basic idea is that you start reading Friday evening after school and go until about 11:00 pm, the kids go sleep at host houses (or their own if you live in a super small stake boundary area), and then meet back at 7:00 am to start reading again.  The host families were responsible for getting the youth to and from their homes.  Someone is always reading, even when breakfast, lunch, and dinner is served.  You read one full page at a time, then pass the microphone on to the next person.  The 2 single chairs up front are the reader and the next in line.  The ones on the couch move up in line and anyone else who wants to take their place takes the first empty seat whenever a page is finished.  We did invite guest readers so the youth didn't have to read out loud the whole time but limited them to 1-2 per hour.  They would stay for that hour and then could go home.

The schedule went like this:

Friday
5:00- Arrive and start (guest readers)                                Pages Title-25
6:00- (Guest readers)                                                         Pages 26-50
6:30- Dinner
7:00- (Guest readers)                                                         Pages 51-75
8:00- (Guest readers)                                                         Pages 76-100
9:00- (Guest readers)                                                         Pages 101-125
10:00- (Guest readers)                                                       Pages 126-150
11:00- Leave for night.

Saturday- (Eat breakfast at host homes)
7:00- Arrive (Guest readers)                                             Pages 151-175
8:00-  (Guest readers)                                                       Pages 176-200
8:30- Mid Morning Snack
9:00- (Guest readers)                                                        Pages 201-225
10:00-  (Guest readers)                                                     Pages 226-250
11:00- (Guest readers)                                                      Pages 251-275
12:00-  Lunch                                                                   Pages 276-300
1:00-  (Guest readers)                                                       Pages 301-325
2:00- (Guest readers)                                                        Pages 326-350
3:00-  (Guest readers)                                                       Pages 351-375
4:00-  (Guest readers)                                                       Pages 376-400
5:00-  Dinner                                                                     Pages 401-425
6:00-  (Guest readers)                                                       Pages 426-450
7:00-  (Guest readers)                                                       Pages 451-475
8:00-  (Guest readers)                                                       Pages 476-500
9:00- Guest readers)                                                         Pages 501-525
10:00-  (Guest readers)                                                    Pages 526-531

The End!

Collapse in Exhaustion (after cleaning up!)

 

This really was fun and an awesome spiritual experience for all who participated.

~Stacy~

What Heaven Sees In You

This last month in Young Womens the lessons have been on Virtue, and the girls learning what their worth is. To end it all a lady in our ward with an amazing voice came in a preformed this song for us. It had touched all of the girls...so much that not one of them had a dry eye when it was over. So I thought I would share it today because I love it! I think it's beautiful!


What Heaven Sees in You

Sent to this Earth

You were saved through the ages for this day and time.
Child of great worth
Child of promise, daughter of the Divine
Pure and holy in a little white dress
You were held in a cicrle and you were blessed
And the Father looked down
And the angels surrounded that place
They knew the truth, all that you could do
And you will too
If you have eyes to see what Heaven sees in you.

Dressed in white once more
Making promises to follow in God's way
So much lies in store
For the little girl who enters at the gate
Pure and holy in a little white dress.
You were led into the water and you were blessed.
And the Father looked down
And the angels surrounded that place
They knew the truth, all that you could do
And you will too
If you have eyes to see what Heaven sees in you.

Do you understand who you are
Part of the Father lives in you
And if you continue on this path
Every promise God has given will come true

Heaven on Earth in the house of God
So much fills your heart and mind
Woman of great worth
Woman of promise daughter of the Divine
Pure and holy in a long white dress
You promise forever and you are blessed
And the Father looks down
And the angels surround this place
They know the truth all that you can do
And you do too
Cause you have eyes to see what Heaven sees in you

Will you have eyes to see
What Heaven sees in you.

--Michelle--

Daughter of a King

For girl's camp this year the stake had the theme, "Daughter of a King."  They asked each ward to have the Young Women learn the song "Daughter of a King" by Jenny Phillips.  The very first time I heard the song it brought tears to my eyes.  I just wished that everyone of those young ladies knew this and believed it.  The lyrics to the song are so true.  This world would be such a different place if everyone heard and believed that they are a Daughter (or Son) of a King, and not only that, but a King that knows them each individually, and loves each of us.  

For a few months we practiced this song, (and I had a hard time staying dry eyed) then when it came time to go to girl's camp we all had it memorized.  I had the opportunity to go up on testimony night and all of the girls in the stake performed this song for us.  Oh what a spirit it brought to the meeting!  We had an opportunity to sing it again this week in Sacrament meeting and my girls did such a WONDERFUL job!  

I wanted to share this with you, and I wish that I had a video of my girls singing it for you, but I don't, just know that they sounded like a choir of angels.  

I hope that as you listen to this song, you will know and remember that you too are a daughter of a King, a Heavenly King, who know and loves you.

~Rachel~

Young Women- Personal Progress Tracking

    I was put into my wards Young Woman's program about 3 1/2 years ago as the secretary.  At the time, they were not really keeping track or having a lot of progression with their personal progress.  I thought maybe if there was a visual reminder and reward system (in a way) that might encourage them to work on it.  I thought I would try a sticker system and every time they would pass off one of the experiences and/or projects we would place a sticker on the chart.  I go a couple of poster boards and started working.  So the specs of the poster are this:
  Top area and bottom area are 7 1/2 cm
  Name slots 2.2 cm in length by 9 cm wide
  Each experience and project slot is 1 cm wide- you will need 54 of them.



To make all of this fit, you will want to turn the poster with it turned wide, not long for all of them to fit.  I used a sharpie between each name slot and in between each each value.  I also used a sharpie on the slot for the projects.  The rest of the slots, I just used a black pen.  This way, I could tell the difference between the values to place the stickers on.  The first version, this is as far as I went, but I think I have perfected it in the past 3 years.  Here are the other suggestions I would suggest to add.
       At the beginning of each value, at the top of the slot, add a small letter to indicate the value in that section.  I used the color of the value too.  Faith- F (Black since it's a white board!), Divine Nature- DN (Blue), Individual Worth- IW (Pink or Red), Knowledge- K (Green), Choice and Accountability- CA (Orange), Good Works- GW (Yellow), Integrity- I (Purple), and Virtue- V (Gray-also because most marker sets don't have gold!).  I learned this one because when one of our girls graduated or moved out, we would cut their name out and send it with them to remember.
     When I originally wrote everyone in, I left a couple of blank spots in between each group just in case we had any move-in's.  I also did put all of the leaders on the chart too because we really do encourage the leaders in our ward to work on Personal Progress with our girls.  I have learned that we need to have blank name inserts we can just put over a previous leaders name if they are released before they complete any of their things.  I have had to do this a few times now.
     The latest idea we have had is to cut each strip separately, laminate them, put a magnet on the back, and place it on a galvanized steel sheet.  You can buy the galvanized metal sheet at Home Deopt for $9.34.  We have recently had one girl graduate, two girls move out, one girl baptized, two girls move up from primary, and two new leaders brought in.  Needless to say, they were not all right in a row.  This would mean a lot of chopping and taping of the poster, thus evolved the magnet board.  This way, when someone from the middle group moves in or out, you will not have to cut up and repair the poster.  You can make several extra so when you get new beehives, you can just add them to the bottom!



   So here is our final poster with all of the stickers attached (minus the names for security purposes!).  This worked so well for our group of girls.  You will be surprised how inspiring a few stickers can be towards reaching a goal!  We have had 5 girls completely finish in just 3 years with 3 more within a few more experiences or projects of it! 

I finally finished the magnet board part of the poster!  Doesn't it look awesome?  It did cost a little more than I had planned on.  The sheet metal at the actual store of Home Depot was $19.97, not the $9.34 as advertised online.  We needed an extra 4" and a 12X8" piece was $7.97.  I used a white picture frame molding that was about $0.71/ foot for the front. 



The back side, I used 1/4" pine plain trim and attached it with screws and finishing nails.  I attached the wire hanging brackets to be able to hang the entire display on one of the doors in the Young Women's room.

 

Hope this can help your group too!

~Stacy~



Kick Water Ball

 We just had another great Young Women's activity this week.  Since it is summer now, and we live in the HOT south, you have to do things to keep yourself cool, so we played 'Kick Water Ball'.  You could also call it 'Kick Pool Ball'. 

Objects you will need:  3 small plastic pools.  We had a couple of blow-up pools and they did not work well!  You could use a blow-up one for the end though. . .  One large bouncy ball.  You can find this a Walmart for about $4-5 if you don't already own one for your children.  One (or more slip-n-slides), and a fairly large backyard or church lawn.  Hills are fine, so don't shy away from a yard because it has hills! 

Setup:  1st, 2nd, and 3rd bases are the 3 plastic pools filled with water.  The slip-n-slide is then set up from 3rd base to home plate.  If you have more than one slip-n-slide, connect them because you might need extra room, especially if you are going down a hill.  If you are working with hills, have home to first going up the hill and 3rd to home going down the hill! 

Objective:  Each team member kicks the ball and runs to first base and then has to SIT in the pool.  They are not safe until they have done so!  They cannot run onto 2nd until that have done so, even if it is a home run!  They continue around the bases until they reach 3rd, then they slip-n-slide down to home plate.  If the other team throws the ball and hits them, or touches them with the ball, they are out.  If they don't sit in the pool before going onto the next base they are out! 

This was so much fun.  We spent the first half of the night just slip-n-sliding down the hill, but the game was so awesome, we wished we had started earlier!  I would also recommend, if anyone has them, also use personal floatation devices (not the arm floaties but the whole bodies ones or the little boat shaped ones) to cushion as you go down the slip-n-slide.  It really does start to hurt after a while and this helps!  Soap is also fun!

~Stacy~

Family Feud

   We played "Family Feud" last month at church for our youth's joint activity.  It was a blast.  They had so much fun and even the few kids who said they wouldn't play had joined in by the second round and were very active!  I put together this power point for it and it turned out awesome.  You are welcome to use the one I have made or change it to fit your needs.  The basis of the design was hyperlinking between the question slide, the answer slide when the "family member" selects a correct answer showing the points awarded, and finally to the full answer slide.  There are about 12 slides at the end that are all church based questions.  They are not in the same "we survey 100 people" style.  Instead, you can use them as a bonus or speed round and award them so many points for each correct answer.

  What we did was break them up into 4 families, or enough to make about 4-5 people on a team.  We had two games going on at once, one at either end of the gym.  We had both computers connected to a projector, projecting on a white board.  We also had a caulkboard at each end to keep score.  You could use an additional white board for this purpose if you have access to that instead or would prefer it!  To start each question, the first person, or next person in line for each team would listen to the question out loud and the first one to shout their name would get to answer first.  If they answer correct, their team gets to answer the questions until they either answer them all correctly or get three strikes.  If they answer incorrectly, the question is then turned over to the other team for their first member, or next in line to answer.  If he/she got it incorrect, we would continue going down the line until one team had guessed a correct answer.  Once that part was established and the team was answering questions, if they ever got to three strikes, the question would be turned over to the other team who fot to discuss the question and have the person who's turn it was say the answer.  If they choose a correct answer, they steal all of the points from the other team.  If not, we would just move onto the next question and the first team would keep all of the points they had earned.

  We played about 2 rounds with regular point values, then had a round with double points, then a final round with triple points.  Whoever won after the 4th round moved on to the winners bracket and so forth.  I don't know if this is totally the correct way to play it, but it worked for us.  The kids were totally talking smack to each other and everyone got really involved.  It was a lot of fun for everyone.

  I'll give a couple of instructions for changing things.  First, if you want to put what youth group it is, that is the first slide and you should be able to just type without messing anything up.  The second to last slide has the "High Councilor in Your Stake".  This could really be any leader group you want for your area, just change the question accordingly on each slide.  The important part though is on the second through the second to last slide of that group, I just put "Name" on all of the spots.  Make sure not to undo the underline or you have undone the hyperlink.  Just put your curser right at the beginning of the 'N' and type the name you want and then delete the 'Name'.  The last slide is also not as importand but just try not to move any of them or they will be off from the question slide.  I have made it so when you go from page to page they are all in the same spot.  The last thing to be careful of, make sure your curser is right over the box or the underlined answer or it will start taking you to random slides and the kids will be able to see the other answers.  The first slide in each group has and "End" box on the bottom right which will take you to the last page with all the answers and point values!  If you have any questions or want to give feed back, please leave a comment!  I would love to hear from you!

https://skydrive.live.com/view.aspx?Bsrc=SkyMail&Bpub=SDX.SkyDrive&resid=6784ACB8E0ECD580!126&cid=6784acb8e0ecd580&app=PowerPoint

~Stacy~