Quest for the Best - Youth Conference Highlights

I spent last Thursday, Friday and Saturday with 9 Young Women from my ward at Youth Conference.  We traveled to Springfield and joined with that Stake for all events.  I realize that I should have taken a lot more pictures, but I've included a few with a rundown of the activities over those three fun days.

Thursday:
The conference kicked off with a service project working with autistic kids.  I was impressed by the youth.  They were enthusiastic and I heard many positive comments afterward. We did some team building activities with the youth after the autistic kids went home.  After we changed at our host family homes, we had a speaker then dinner and a dance.  Of course, the youth look forward to the dances!  This one was really fun with a Hawaiian theme and lots of fun activities throughout.  (Sam came in 3rd in the hula hoop contest!)  The dance was held at an indoor pavilion in a very nice park.  We had the most beautiful sunset that evening as our backdrop. 

We got a little lost trying to get back to our host home that night, but everything worked out in the end.  Whew!

Friday:
Scavenger Hunt at a park and the U of I Springfield Campus.  Okay, this was SO fun!!  I was a group leader to 11 youth.  We had a sheet of paper with all the things we had to find.  There were about 35 things in each location (the park and the campus) that we had to find and take a picture of with our whole group.  I had the camera so I got plenty of pictures from this.  Here are a few of the things we had to find:

A broken column sculpture

A window with a circle in a triangle

Human checkers

A blue Stage Door

A Boat Dock

Triple X

A picture of an animal found in Antarctica, Africa, and South America (Who knew, right?)

My group won the scavenger hunt (yay for us!) and we each got a candy bar for our reward.  There were only 2 things out of the 70+ on the list that we didn't find.  :)

From here it was pizza for lunch, then we changed into Sunday best and the afternoon was spent attending four different workshops.  Jeff and I were asked several weeks ago if we would teach a workshop on scripture study.  I had no idea at the time that I'd be attending Youth Conference with the Young Women so it was fun to see Jeff when he came up on Friday.  I think our class went well.  We taught it four times and the youth seemed to enjoy it.  The other classes were on Higher Education, Dating and Communication, and Dance Instruction.  (The youth learned how to Salsa and then they played several songs during the dance that night for the kids to practice their moves!)  Again, the evening ended with dinner and a dance.


Saturday:
We managed to pack everything up in the pouring rain and then spent the morning at the church for breakfast, a speaker, and testimonies.  The speaker was Brother Mike Bednar (Elder Bednar's son - he's in our Stake).  He spoke of the importance of choosing the best things (going along with the "Quest for the Best" theme) and shared a quote from his dad,

"It's good to know, better to do, and best to become."   

Good counsel, for sure.  After testimonies, it was lunch and then home.

A great three days!  I can tell this calling as YW President will be filled with lots of fun adventures.  We're off to a good start!