Youth Conference 2015 - Day 1

Wow! What a great weekend! I will admit selfishly that I didn't really want to go - I would much rather stay home with the family, enjoy a round of golf on Saturday morning (Father's Day weekend) and not be with a bunch of teenagers. But it turned out to be a really great weekend. We had some incredible experiences and it was fun to watch all of the kids grow and learn from each other. I really did enjoy myself!

Day 1 - Thursday (6/18/15)

• We started the day by meeting at the chapel at 8am. I had just returned from a business trip to California the night before. Our plane was late, so I didn't get to bed until around 2am, but was up at 6am getting packed and ready to go! Crazy!
• After breakfast at the chapel, which also included as many 12-13 year olds as possible, we split up into three groups for service projects. One group went to the Hopkins home to help them get their house ready to sell. Another group went to the Woodwards home to help them get their home ready to sell. The final group, my group, went to a non-members home to help her move her boxes from the garage down to the basement and various other parts of her new place. She was a very nice lady, but she's been through a rough time recently, her husband left her for another women. She has a severely autistic son and a daughter who loves to paint. It felt really good to do the service project and all three projects went really well! I'm glad that I was with the older group of kids - they all worked really hard and did a great job!
• We left for Winter Park around noon. The traffic was actually pretty bad and we didn't get up to camp until around 3:30 - yep - it took well over three hours to get up the mountain! But the drive was fun. I drove Jeremy Huff's truck and took some of the boys with me. We had a good time talking and laughing all the way up the mountain.
• When we arrived at camp, we checked in, unloaded our gear, and then headed over to the softball field to play some games. It was really fun. We played "Red Rover", "Human Slinky", "Tractor Tag", and "Dippity Dip". We also had everyone do some "cheers" for their rooms. I think the kids actually enjoyed the games a bunch. It was fun!

• After games, we almost loaded EVERY youth (all 21 of them) into the Bishop's van! They didn't have to drive far - it was just fun to load up the "clown van".
• Around 5:45pm, we went to the cafeteria and had dinner. The food wasn't great, but it wasn't terrible either. Everyone ate well and then we headed out as a group to the mini-golf course. This turned out to be one of the highlights of the trip. Over the course of the next 3 days, I think we played over 100 holes of mini-golf. It was really fun!

• Poor Sierra had a pretty rough time the entire trip. On the first day, she couldn't hardly walk due to her knees giving her problems. I carried her from dinner up to the mini-golf course. She tried to play some, but ended up sitting it out. Poor girl. We gave her a blessing that night and she turned around quickly - feeling much better in the morning!
• The final activity of the day was a fireside on temples by Brother Rowley. He and his wife drove all the way up to do the fireside and he did such a great job. He's a very humble man, a great speaker, and he really did a great job with the youth. I'm so glad that he came up - he just really touched everyone's heart with his message. He even brought parts of the temple so that everyone could touch them and look at them. It was very cool to hear about how the temple it built!