Girl's Camp 2011, part 3

 Something that surprised me about camp was how well we ate. Shauna was our camp director and she made sure that we were really well fed. We always had three square meals every day, which isn't something that I'm used to, but up on the mountain I really wanted to eat at every meal. 

Sandy, Heidi, Taylor

Brianna and Sarah

Everyone had food assignments and clean-up assignments. Some of the girls were great at volunteering and chipping in, and the others learned a little about helping out, but every meal went smoothly. My favorite breakfast out there was a breakfast burrito and a few slices of orange. Lunch was always a sandwich, and that was fine by me, and dinner was usually something great. The last night, when the bishopric came up, we had steak and cobbler. 

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Every day, we got a little more dingy and gross. The ash and smoke and dirt all clung to us, and we all got various degrees of sunburn, so every morning we woke up feeling a little more disgusting. Enter Emilee. She kept us in line in the looks department. Well, at least our hair. Emilee does hair and was called upon to do hair every morning. When she volunteered to do something with my bedhead, I happily accepted and this is what she came up with: 

Cute, right?

This was the day that we got to perform our skit. We sang a revised version of the song from Tangled titled, "When Will My Life Begin?" We changed a lot of the words around to reflect the types of activities and hobbies of our girls, though. The thought behind singing this song was to share that everyone has a lot to do, so we need to be careful to not allow the business of everyday life to interfere with our spirituality. We mentioned visiting family, reading scriptures, preparing for Trek, and of course, we had to throw in a few funny things too. So we mentioned writing to a "cute elder serving the Lord somewhere" and had one of the camp nurses (who is from our ward) to help out in the skit where we mentioned visiting the sick...

writing an Elder and reading scriptures. . . 

taking care of the sick

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Amid all of the fun, shenanigans, and pranks, there were also plenty of spiritual moments at Girl's camp, and I'll remember those just as much if not more than the fun times. As I mentioned in a previous post, there was the day where all of the girls had their own sacred grove experience and wrote out their testimonies amid the aspens. In contrast, there was also an experience with singing trees. This was where each ward huddled around a tree during an evening meeting. We all walked in silently and after being told what order we would go in, we'd light up a tree with our flashlights and sing a devotional song. That whole area was dark except for the one tree that was glowing, and each song was in some way related to faith in Christ. . . It was really neat, even if the words that I'm typing can't do it justice. 

On our last night, before dinner and just before our bishopric showed up, Sandy told us of one of her plans for the girls. She set it all up so that the leaders would soak and massage the girls' feet, and this was finished off with brand new socks. Now, you might be thinking that this should have gone in with the silliness and girly-girl stuff that we did, but here's why it doesn't fit there: We read the scripture in Matthew about how the Savior washed the feet of his disciples, and we talked about how that was a huge deal. Not only was Christ their leader and their Savior and choosing to serve them, but He was doing so in the most humble of ways. It was a tender exchange to have to show the Savior their dirty calloused feet, but once the disciples understood why it was so important for the Savior to serve them in such a way, they allowed him to wash their feet and literally do a dirty work. Sandy had me read the scripture to the girls and then she did a great job of explaining how in this act she wanted the girls to not think of her, but of their Savior and how he would be there washing their feet if he could. . . of how as a Son of God, He is their salvation, their leader, and also their servant. 

And then, of course, there was our testimony meeting. Initially it was a mixed bag for me. On the one hand I was looking forward to it, but on the other, I was pretty drugged and out of it for the beginning of it. I was given a percocet because I was experiencing a pretty harsh headache. The percocet did not help. I only took half of a tablet after having eaten dinner, and I still felt woozy and a bit crazy. Emilee told me later that she kept looking over at me expecting to see me pass out. She said all the color drained from my face. I didn't know how I was going to get through that meeting and actually be truly present. 

As everyone quieted and started settling down for our testimony meeting, I started praying to feel better, to be able to share what I felt, and to be able to take in what others were saying. And you know what? I got my concentration back, and as long as I didn't move, I didn't feel like I was going to throw up. And I got a lot out of the evening. The other amazing thing was that I wasn't nervous at all when it came time for me to share my testimony. 

Nearly every girl shared her testimony, and each of the leaders did. I think all of the girls felt much more comfortable talking in front of everyone after nearly a week of togetherness. What I took out of it was how blessed we all are. These are all normal girls in so many ways. They struggle with self-esteem, with their schedules, with understanding boys, and with fitting in. But these are also girls that are unlike so many girls in the world right now. They all know the Savior lives and are all working on improving themselves and are staying away from bad situations. What an amazing thing it is, to know so many young women who truly understand that they are daughters of a Father in heaven, to know that they are each striving to do what is right when the world teaches moral relativity.

Through my experience at Girl's Camp I gained a greater appreciation of what it means to be a part of the Young Women's organization, to be a small part of what strengthens these young women and helps them out. It is truly an amazing work, to help a young woman, because either way, teenage girls grow into women and what they are exposed to as girls will shape them into the women they become. There are more than enough negative influences and messages out in the world, which makes me that much more grateful for the positive things that Young Women's can do. If nothing else, if Young Women's is at the very least fun and entertaining, then we will keep the girls around good leaders and other girls who are trying to do their best instead of hanging out aimlessly or getting into trouble. At its best, Young Women's offers girls options, strength, friends, growth, opportunities for service, and a safe haven from the barrage of junk that the world throws at them. I'm glad to be a part of something so positive. 

Our last morning, we all scurried around packing things up and taking down camp. It was all quick and furious  and then the next thing we knew, it was time to head back home. We scarfed down breakfast and took snack food with us and divided up again into cars, and then it was time to face the real world all over again. 

Not as cute the last day, but my hair-do stayed in place while I slept!

View from the mountain

And then we were all home, and we all showered, and some of us got to nap. It felt great to be able to clean up and to sleep on an actual bed where I didn't have to worry about falling down and hurting myself.

*To anyone who read each of my Girl's camp accounts, congrats to you! Sometimes my blog can be my journal and as such it gets really wordy. If you have made it through all of that, you deserve a prize. Thanks!

Girl's Camp 2011, part 2

Continuing from my last post, there were a lot of fun activities besides embarrassing the newbies. On our first full day there, I got to run around with some of the girls as they went from station to station. They painted prayer rocks, we all got to learn how to properly tie a full Windsor and a single Windsor tie (now all the girls have a preference and can tell the young men in their lives which tie to tie for church), and the girls also did a fun service project of tying quilts.

Some girls got it right away.

Some people struggled before attaining victory. 

We also set aside some time for spiritual activities. One of my favorites was when small groups were led to a hillside and told to find a peaceful place to stop and write their testimonies. Everyone was given a piece of paper and a pen and got to listen to quiet music if they chose to stay close or if they wandered a little ways off, they could just take in the sound of the breeze through the trees as they wrote. There were no rules as to what you could write, you just wrote whatever you were inspired to record--your testimony as it stood right then. It was a really cool experience watching the Young Women considering what to write.

One of the adventures that lasted the whole time of Girl's Camp was trying to find our Stake's rock. Every year someone hides a special rock that has been decorated ("bling-a-fied" according to the Stake leaders) somewhere within the camp boundaries, and this year it was the Priesthood that hid it. The Girl's Camp stake leaders were the ones that decorated it, and every day we'd get new clues as to where it was hidden. The girls looked everywhere. Every day you'd see tons of girls scouring the hillsides, looking under logs, peaking into crevices. One day Emilee, Shauna, and I all went trekking through the woods and up some hills. I got halfway up a really steep embankment (in my galoshes!) and realized that I'd rather keep going up than try to get down. This won me the honor of being called a mountain goat by Shauna then and again a week later when she shared that story with our ward over the stand. But alas, we didn't find the rock that day, or any of our days there. One of our YW Micah got really bugged when she thought she saw the rock (it was shiny and looked to be silver) and she half ran, half fell down a hill to get to it before anyone else did, only to find that it was a mylar balloon. Sad day. The search for the rock also led to camp pranks. Our dear YW decided to paint a fake rock, and hid it near one of the other camp sites. Their thinking was that if another ward found that rock that they would keep it to themselves, thinking they'd found the true rock, and they would quit looking. And once one rock was made up and set out, why not eight more, to hopefully keep all of the competition back at their camps and not looking? Well, it kind of worked. We watched as one ward found one of the fake rocks and started dancing around, then stop, scooped it up, and ran off with it hidden in someone's jacket. That evening when we were getting ready to hear our devotional, that ward was called up to show what they had found. They excitedly carried it down to center stage where the Stake Leaders said, "You have found a rock! But it is not THE rock. Keep looking." And they were given a consolation prize of a box of cookies.

More silliness:

Please click on this to get a good look at the faces these girls are pulling.

What is most amazing about this photo is that the girl at the top of the pyramid (Andi) had climbed up there on a broken arm. Did I mention that we slept in pods? In bunkhouses that were glorified rail-car containers?
Well, this is what the girls' side looked like:

If you'll notice-- the roof was smashed in from the snowfall that winter and there were roll bars only on the top bunks, not the second level. Apparently our bunks were the only ones that bad off. And little Andi went rolling off her bed in her sleep, all bundled up in her sleeping bag. She fell down right on her arm. It was a good thing her mom was our camp director. She was able to be with her and hold her and help console her. Only we didn't find out for sure that her arm was broken until three days after camp. Yep. She was such a trooper that her mom thought it was just a sprain, but she was wrong. Andi wasn't our only nurse's station visitor, though-- another girl went home with a stomach virus. And another girl had to go lay down because of altitude sickness, and a few others had to get stuff for their sunburns. Never a dull moment at camp.

Last, but not least of the silliness-- a spinner game of jellybeans. You could land on white and get coconut or baby wipes. Or you could land on green and get pear or boogers. There were also options of getting marshmallow or rotten egg, etc, etc. A bunch of the girls were playing it and wanted me to try a few beans, so I did, but they were all the tasty ones. The rule was, however, that you had to eat whatever kind you got.

I wasn't interested in partaking of toothpaste or moldy cheese flavored jellybeans because I could guess at what those would be like, but I told the girls that I might be persuaded to try the centipede flavored one. I mean, who knows what a centipede tastes like, right? The other option for that was strawberry jam. I ate five strawberry jam flavored jellybeans in a row, so then Emily grabbed one, and as you might have guessed, on her first try she got a centipede flavored jellybean. Oh, the faces she made as she tried to choke it down.

Emily then decided that it was to be my fate to have to go through what she did. So she handed me red speckled jellybean after red speckled jellybean, picking out only the ones that could have been centipede. I ate sixteen delicious strawberry jam jellybeans. And it looked like there were no more red speckled jellybeans. Emily was ticked. But she found two more. The first, strawberry jam. But I finally got my taste of centipede and man alive was it disgusting. It tasted like the smell of fungus, dirt, dampness, and rotting leaves. It was horrendous. And I hear that there are pictures of me eating it.

But since I can't get my hands on those photos, I'll share a photo of Paige eating some other disgusting flavor:

Later, we just started snacking on the jellybeans when hanging out in a group as a sort of jellybean Russian roulette. Yep, we're weird like that.

Girl's Camp 2011, part 1

As promised, good and happy things. Namely, my adventures at Girl's Camp. Most of you know this already, but this was my very first ever experience at Girl's Camp. I joined the LDS faith at seventeen and missed going as a last year Laurel. (Laurel meaning a young woman who is seventeen or eighteen.) Having been called as a Young Women adviser and now the First Counselor in our ward's YW presidency, I had the responsibility and opportunity of attending Girl's Camp this year. Being totally honest, I was a little nervous about it. I had no idea what I was getting myself into or what to expect. I was worried that it was going to be like some of my early experiences with the YW organization, namely that there would be cattiness, gossiping, and cliques. However, our ward is not like that. Our Young Women all care for one another and they do their best to include everyone. I should have known better, but I was surprised by how amazing our Young Women really are-- they are an example to me.

Because people want to see pictures more than read a bunch about how all of us were touched and how every one of the leaders cried at one point or another (in a good way), I'll include a lot of fun photos.

I got together at the Vanderheyden home at 6:30AM. We had all the girls together and organized into cars and were on the road by about 7:30AM. We were at camp and unloading things by 8:30AM. After a night of not sleeping all that well, that was a really early start for me. The Stake's theme was about seeking after Eternal Treasures, so each ward got to represent certain traits and qualities through a gemstone. We were the Sunstones/Hot rocks. And Sandy (the YW president) had the sneaky idea of incorporating an underlying theme that all of the girls could get behind: The movie Tangled. And you know (if you've seen the movie) that it is a cute story, and they have this thing with purple banners with a huge yellow sun. . . so yea, we took that up as our symbol and used the movie in other ways, too.

Decorating banners.

Emilee placed a lot of yellow vinyl hearts on the purple bunting.

First day, so we haven't gotten a chance to get grimy or too sweaty yet. 

Our treats that we handed out to all the other wards.
Notice the banners in the background....

We also came prepared with rain boots and boy were we ever grateful to have them. Six weeks before we got there, the mountain was covered in over ten feet of snow. Feet, people. Even a couple of weeks before we were to arrive, there was at least a foot of snow everywhere. But our camp director had prayed and prayed and felt strongly that some people needed the experience on the mountain. Last year weather forced them to have move Girl's Camp to Pinto, UT. If you don't know where that is, I don't blame you. It is outside of Enterprise, if that helps. Anyway-- it is flat there and windy and apparently that is not what we needed this year. So after many prayers, it was decided that we would go up to the mountain, and after many more prayers, the snow melted in time. And with all that snow melt came the mud. But like I said, we were ready for it. While others had to delicately choose where to put their feet down, we could easily tromp down the trails without a care.

And, just because it was Girl's Camp, we also got to coordinate in other ways, like wearing matching purple hoodies with giant yellow suns on the back, putting sunflower clips in our hair, necklaces with suns as our name plates, yellow bandannas, and cute yellow and purple nails: 

By the end of our first day, all of the first years had their chance to get embarrassed in front of a crowd. This included the first year leaders. It is that song where you make more and more silly gestures while singing "eh too ti tah" over and over again and at the end you are flapping your arms like a chicken with your knees bent in and your tongue sticking out. It is really attractive, let me tell you. And of course, I have a picture. 

Silly goofy ridiculous fun. 

More to come soon. Like maybe tomorrow.