AFY: Days 2 & 3

Saturday at AFY got started bright and early with a counselor meeting at 8 am. After reviewing the day's schedule and talking some logistics, we were set off to check bathrooms and other areas to ensure everything was stocked and prepared for the day. Soon, it was time to go get our rooms set and prepare to meet our youth at 9.

I found poor Haven in our room puzzling over the morning devotional when I finished off my assigned chore. She had been at work all night and hadn't slept at all since the day before. Knowing she'd barely had an hour of rest since Thursday night, I was astonished that she was even there functioning at all. I assured her that I would do all I could to help her with the devotional and other events of the day.

The devotional went pretty well. Haven shared some experiences from her mission involving the morning theme of the Spirit and faith. I chimed in and asked some questions as seemed helpful, and the girls were all quite cheerful and involved.

Next it was time to begin the classes. We all started off together in the chapel to hear Emily Freeman, the wife of our former stake first counselor, who is an LDS speaker of some modest reputation for TimeOut for Women and such things. I've had several interactions with Sister Freeman in the past. For instance, she was one of the impetuses behind the John Moyle Walk we did as a ward and participated in that event, also talking in sacrament beforehand. Because I'd heard her speak before, I knew that she would be an interesting one to listen to, and I wasn't disappointed. In fact, her session was my favorite of the day by quite a margin.

Her main theme was that just because you can't see God's hand in your life, doesn't mean it isn't there. Learn to recognize God's fingerprints. She actually keeps visual reminders of His various fingerprints to keep fresh in her mind what God has done in her life and brought a few items to show us. One of them was a mechanical box with a series of wires attached.

The story behind this item started with her daughter, who was attending a college about 5 hours away. This daughter had an old, second-hand car that she used at school. One day, she had lost her only key to it somehow and couldn't find it after a long search. Because she needed something in the car ASAP for school, she had a friend try to get in with a coathanger, which ended up setting off the car alarm. The police were called due to the noise and were able to help her get the car open, but they still had no way to turn off the alarm.

It ended up that one of the officers recognized the alarm sound as an aftermarket installation that he'd dealt with before. He said he'd seen someone else with the same alarm being completely unable to turn it off when it went off no matter what they did. The daughter had been in constant communication with Sister Freeman through this, and Sister Freeman talked to a mechanic friend who confirmed that the alarm would likely continue even if she or her husband drove down an extra key to the car. Sister Freeman also discovered that removing the alarm would typically cost about $3000, which was close to what the car was worth. The Freemans didn't have the money to replace the car, which their daughter needed, and were at a loss for what to do.

While Sister Freeman was working through what to do, the officer was continuing to work with her daughter. After he made some calls, this officer had found a mechanic friend who agreed to come take the alarm out for only a couple hundred bucks. The alarm was safely removed and after prayer, the daughter was able to find the missing key, so the problem was resolved. So Sister Freeman kept the troublesome car alarm to remind her of the series of miracles that saved her family from financial burdens and trouble they couldn't afford.

She also showed us a picture of Christ lifting Peter from the water after he had walked upon it. She explained that when her son was just starting into Mutual, she had decided that she wanted to get each child a nice picture of Christ that was personally meaningful to him or her to place in his or her room. All the other kids had pretty quickly chosen which pictures they wanted, but they were having trouble with their one son. His favorite story of Christ was His interaction with Peter when he walked on water. Try as she might, Sister Freeman wasn't able to find prints of any picture depicting this story. After a few months of searching, she came across a recently released one that had been painted by Bishop Lemon's mom, Liz Lemon Swindle. So this picture hung in this son's room all through his teenage years.

When this son got his mission call, he was assigned to a tiny European country (I think it was Croatia, but I'm not positive on that) that was part of a much larger European mission. Since there were only a handful of missionaries serving in this small country, no one else in the MTC was training in the same language as this son. As a result, he had been struggling all through his MTC experience and was feeling discouraged as he made the journey to his mission all alone. He didn't have any degree of mastery over his language and wasn't confident that he could fulfil his assignment.

His mission president picked him up at the airport and took him for interviews and orientation at the mission home. During his interview, the mission president told the son that as this fresh missionary had disembarked from the plane, he had reminded his president of Peter boldly jumping into the water to come to Christ and promised him that Christ would likewise lift the elder as he faced struggles. The president had no way of knowing that a picture of this story had long hung in the young elder's room or that it was one of his favorite stories, but it ended up being just what that son needed to encourage him to persevere in his mission.

She told several other interesting stories and had quite a few excellent lines. Overall, it was a highly inspirational session. I really enjoyed it and felt the Spirit powerfully. The next sessions didn't really measure up to hers. The second speaker was still good in his way, but he was way more concerned about being entertaining than I prefer. He was in fact, genuinely very funny, but not much that he said was particularly inspiring to me. His main theme was that it makes more sense to believe in God than not. The one thing he mentioned that sort of intrigued me was that the only doubt about the gospel that he felt was truly legitimate is that it's too good to be true. He said that he can understand and respect that concern, though others are usually rooted in other problems, like not being willing to properly study or exercise a particle of faith.

Playing Log, Tree, Bridge

So while I wasn't blown away by the second class, it at least kept my attention. The same could not be said for the final class. This was a breakout session with Brad Wilcox. The men and women went at different times. Brad Wilcox attended my first youth conference at Truman State in Missouri, and while that has been a long time ago, I have pretty distinct memories of him joining in with us in going down a huge waterslide they set up on the hill of a park area of the college. I can't remember what he said at the conference, but I had a reasonably good impression of him at any rate, so I was looking forward to hearing from him again.

Unfortunately, the experience this time was disappointing to me. He spent a bunch of time talking about how he'd instructed the men to ask the women to dance that evening and how the women should respond. It was mildly entertaining, but seemed like a waste of time to me as it dragged on at least 15 minutes. After that, he talked about self-esteem. I got tired enough of it that I pulled out my scriptures and just finished reading the Sunday School lesson that I hadn't gotten through entirely yet. So at least that part was helpful for me!

At ward council on Sunday, Bishop asked us each to talk about what we liked and how it could improve. One of the things I mentioned was how I personally didn't at all enjoy the Brad Wilcox class. Bishop basically said it was because I didn't need it, though I don't really think that's accurate. I think I struggle plenty often in that area, though perhaps less often than most women. Personally, I've just never heard a discussion about self-worth that I thought really addressed root causes or taught it from a helpful doctrinal standpoint.

Always, these self-esteem lectures area just filled with a bunch of sentimental platitudes that feel like a complete waste of time to me. All they do is try to alleviate symptoms by inflating women's opinions of self. So there's a lot of ideas like "you're a princess" and similar rubbish. While those kinds of things include elements of truth, divorced from substantive doctrine, they become trite very quickly. In fact, it often feels pretty insufferable to me to hear that sort of thing. It honestly has a patronizing tone in my mind, like we women aren't mature, smart, or tough enough to deal with real doctrine. Instead, everyone thinks the solution is to tie the problem up with pretty, flowery little packaging, but that simply doesn't work, in my opinion. All it seeks to do is contain the problem rather than really rooting it up with a powerful tool, and believe me, it is a problem that can't be contained for long, especially by the silly stuff we use on it.

My personal self worth has been far more positively effected by serious, meaningful discussion of real doctrines, like the atonement, than by a multitude of this other nonsense. As your mind is brought to consider things of real import, like the fact that Christ paid a terrible price on your behalf because of his perfect love for you individually, it's pretty difficult to feel completely worthless. If the God and Creator of this world was willing to lay down his life for me, then I would have to be pretty depraved in that moment to undervalue what He has ransomed. Personally, I believe correct doctrine, properly understood, has far greater potential for restoring an appreciation of personal worth than any series of feel-good pep talks ever could. Just my two cents. Still, I know that the Brad Wilcox class was very meaningful to a lot of the young women and even other counselors, so I'm ok with it at that rate, despite the fact that I disliked it. I found a way to take care of myself, so it's all good.

One interesting aside was that while we were in the Brad Wilcox class, apparently a crazy man had wandered into one of the foyers, doubtless attracted by all the cars and activity going on. He started yelling something about the church stealing his money, and Bishop Lemon basically had to manhandle him outside and keep him under control until the police came. I guess there are advantages to being 6'7" and therefore massive! The weird thing was that we didn't hear a peep of this in the session, though it happened in a foyer right outside the chapel we were in. I'm sad I missed it, because it sounds like it was much more exciting than the class I had to sit through!

Crazy Zoo. I think they were being salamanders here.

After the classes, it was time for lunch. I would have liked to eat as a company, but everyone else got their food before I did and quickly split, so that didn't happen. The only ones still lingering around when I got back to our room were Haven and one of the girls named Jade, so we all grabbed our food and went out to eat together.

This unstructured opportunity to just talk to one of the girls ended up being very meaningful to me personally. I've never been especially good at social situations in big groups, but I think I have skills that make me better than most in connecting one-on-one or with just a few people. Haven stayed long enough to eat before heading off to her car to grab half and hour or so of sleep, which she must have desperately needed. I couldn't fathom how she was operating at all after only a handful of hours of sleep over the last 72 hours!

Her departure gave me a chance to really dig into some things with Jade. We talked about some fairly cursory things at first, like gardening and food, but soon details enough about her family and life started surfacing that I could capitalize upon. I learned that Jade is one of 10 kids and often feels quite lost in the shuffle as one of the middle children. I could connect with her a bit being a middle child myself, though as the middle of three, I know that my experience was completely different than being one of many. Still, just being willing to actively listen and having even a modicum of personal experience to relate from made a difference to her, I think.

She also told me some troubles she's had adjusting to things at AF after having moved up from Orem. I could definitely relate to that, having moved during my high school years as well. Mostly, though, I just listened, offering a bit of support and reassurance as seemed to fit. After the lunch hour, I felt a strong connection to Jade. She was like me at that age in a lot of ways, with many similar experiences and traits, like the fact that she was a bit of a loner. Really, it was the first time that I felt like I was making a lasting impact as a counselor.

Once lunch was over, people began regathering to our company spot for the cheer and banner preparations. We read the rules over to them and were basically supposed to leave them to it from there, but our group seemed to be struggling for a concept. After a fair amount of time had been wasted dithering around with no real progress, I suggested that they might think about using the believe theme as a sort of acronym. They ended up running with that, adding their own pizazz to it as well. They had fun coming up with it, and fortunately, the banner progressed without much of a hitch. I was proud of how well they worked together to come up with something fun, and everyone pitched in one way or another.

During the cheer practice, the name tag of one of the boys swung up and hit the eye of one of the girls next to him. It was hurting her pretty bad and was definitely red. I was worried that her eye had been scratched significantly or something, so I took her inside to the control table Sister Birkeland was staffing. She knew my young woman, Eliza, quite well, and while Eliza was washing her eye in the bathroom we discussed the situation. Sister Birkeland told me that there wasn't really any appreciable medical staff on premises. Her main concern was that we make sure that Eliza contact her parents and discuss the situation with them to see if after consultation, they felt like medical attention was necessary. When Eliza emerged, her eye was indeed looking less irritated, and after consulting with her parents, the decision was made that she would stay. I was glad she wasn't hurting as much, and it did seem to bother her progressively less after not that long, but I was still worried about it for an hour and a half or so. I just didn't want to have it turn out to be a worse injury down the line.

We were supposed to take an AFY picture after the cheer/banner prep, but the leaders were still busy setting up for about 20 minutes after we were supposed to be taking the picture, so we counselors were left to entertain our troops. We played the hand tapping game for awhile, which the kids enjoyed pretty well, but after a few rounds, they were ready to do something different. Ben suggested we play missionary tag, so we grabbed another company to join us and started to play. It was really very fun. I haven't played missionary tag in a long time, but it's definitely a riot. We saw that a few other groups had taken our lead and were either playing the hand tapping game or starting to combine for games with other companies.

Eventually, they were ready to take the picture. They'd laid out flags designating the letters AFY and arranged all of us inside the boundaries. then a drone buzzed around for awhile to take the pictures. After that, it was dinnertime. Fortunately, this time, we were able to keep everyone together to eat as a company. Dinner was pretty quick as they were trying to get us back on schedule.

After that, we played "night games," though the sun was still totally up for a few more hours. The kids enjoyed those quite a bit. We counselors had never actually practiced the game, so I was a bit apprehensive about having to explain them just from our written instructions, especially as some of them didn't make much sense to me. Fortunately, Ben had done AFY in previous years, so he knew the games well already and was able to explain them.

Log, Tree, Bridge. This picture actually shows an example of each position.

The game we all like best was Tree, Log, Bridge, which involved the first person standing tall a few meters from the start line, the next person running around the "tree" then laying straight on the ground a few meters in front, then two people running around the "tree", leaping over the "log," and forming a "bridge" by joining hands. Everyone did this course in succession across the playing field, with the last person dropping their previous position and becoming the new runner as everyone became strung out. We did it as a race against the other companies also assigned to that activity and before they started hard-core cheating, we always won. Then we did variations with just one of the positions a few times as well. The kids had a blast every time, and we counselors had just as much fun encouraging our companies, trying to keep the other companies from cheating, and just general banter.

Next we did Giants, Elves, and Wizards, which is basically a large version of Paper, Rock, Scissors that we all thought wasn't really that fun as it involved a lot of down time. The last game was another race called Crazy Zoo that involved having everyone cross the playing field in some strange way supposedly related to an animal. That one was moderately fun, but not as good as Log, Tree, Bridge.

After the games, it was time for the cheer competition. I was really proud of how well our company did, though we didn't win. Also, I was pleased that our kids didn't break any of the rules, unlike quite a few of the other companies. Mostly people just ignored the rule about not doing lifts. Admittedly, the lifts looked cool, but it was better to lose doing the right thing than win doing the wrong thing. We were excited that they did at least win 3rd place in the banner competition.

The dance immediately followed. The counselors in our company were on "passion patrol" duty first, which basically meant wandering around the dance floor making sure people were acting appropriately. I admit, it was a pretty weird role. I felt like a total creeper just gazing into the crowd. After our shift was done, I only danced a bit before heading into the halls, which much cooler. You wouldn't believe how hot and stinky that gym got after not that long! After I went out, I didn't feel much desire to return. I was quite exhausted, for one, having not slept all that well the night before, and with the full day of constant activity. I knew that we counselors were going to have to complete a full cleaning of the church after the kids left, so I decided to start getting a bit of a jump on it.

While doing most things early would have been pretty pointless, I knew that at least checking that the women's bathrooms were properly stocked would be helpful. I was glad that I did, because they had been hit pretty hard through the day. Most stalls needed at least one roll of toilet paper replaced and one of the toilets had, in fact, been sitting there clogged up for who knows how long. So I got that unplugged, and supplies refilled, so I felt good about that.

I also happened to run into my friend, Amy, helping the 1st counselor in the stake and his wife bring a bunch of food into one of the kitchens. I joined in and helped them with what was left. I thought it might all be involved with AFY somehow, but learned that there were some big changes going on in the stake the next day and that a Munch and Mingle was being planned for some of the members, so getting a little heads up on that was interesting.

I really didn't have energy or desire left for dancing, so I headed back to the foyer that our room was attached to and just chatted with some of the other counselors who were there patrolling the outside doors to watch that no one tried to sneak in or out. It was fun to meet several people from the Hillcrest ward. Ben also ended up out there for awhile, so it was nice to get to know him somewhat better as well. We were all a bit mystified on how we were going to get our kids calmed down and spiritual for our night devotional which was scheduled immediately after the dance.

All log variation on Log, Tree, Bridge. You can see the other team cheating in the background. There's photographic evidence!

Fortunately, that didn't end up being as much of a problem as I anticipated. As the girls came in, I just took a moment to talk to them about their experience at the dance, and then reminded them about some of the earlier events of the day. I had felt impressed during the dance that we should sing a hymn, so I'd grabbed some hymnals from the overflow. Our topic for the devotional was believing in Christ, so we sang "I Believe In Christ." It started out a bit rough, but got good along the way and definitely invited the Spirit.

I then felt impressed to ask them how they have seen the fingerprints of God in their lives. They really opened up in a new way from there, with one girl talking about how the Lord had watched over her family immediately after her sister went through a stillbirth of the first grandchild in the family. Another talked about how the Lord had supported her and her family as her father fought cancer. One of our girls shared how coming to AFY and making such good friends there had allowed her to see God's fingerprints as she had been dealing with some rough issues at home like her parents constantly fighting. She was so grateful she'd been allowed to come as she was actually only 13, so well below the official age limit, but had still felt complete acceptance and support from everyone, which had given her a feeling of peace that she didn't often enjoy.

As I listened to these stories, I was filled with love and admiration for these girls. I was strongly struck by how strong their faith in God was already, strong enough to get them safely through some really tough situations. In fact, even in their tender years they'd already gone through more than I can claim I have. I could see how as a generation, the Lord truly was preparing them all for great things. They were definitely stronger than what I saw in my own generation at that age.

I commented that their stories were wonderful demonstrations of how they had already cultivated and demonstrated belief in Christ in their lives and explained that both in those great trials as well as the small ones, consistently building their trust in Christ would give them the fortitude necessary to endure well. After a few quotes from the lesson, I shared with them how my time with them was one of the evidences of God's fingerprints in my own life. I also expressed my love and appreciation for them, and more importantly, testified that God loved them even more and was very intimately involved in their lives. I hadn't meant to cry, but it kind of took me by surprise as I felt a wave of some of the depth of love Christ has for them, so I was kind of a mess. It continued in that vein as I bore my own testimony of Christ and the power of believing in and serving with Him. It was a pretty seminal moment of the weekend for me, and I think everyone else felt the same.

A round of Giants, Elves, and Wizards

 
The last event of the night was announcements and singing the theme song again, but we missed some of that because our devotional ran late. We were in time for the song, at least, and it had a much different feel as we sang it than it had the previous night. Having learned from the night before, the kids were pretty good about clearing out quickly, and we counselors got on cleaning. We were in charge of some vacuuming on the side we'd occupied along with taking down the door tags and tidying up our rooms. One of the guys knocked out the vacuuming, and though I personally excused Haven, knowing how little sleep she was running on, despite having caught some more sleep during the dance, it didn't take me long to straighten up our rooms.

I was pleased to hear that the other chores had been quickly knocked out by others as I was also eager to leave quickly. It was still after 11:00 by the time I got out. On the previous Sunday, I'd noticed that no one had signed up to bring lunch for Bishop and his secretary the next Sunday. That seemed sad to me, so I signed up, though I was unsure how I could get it done on top of AFY. So I'd made a plan to just make pizza, as that seemed like the simplest thing as I didn't have time for a bunch of cooking. I started on that as soon as I got home, and though it took some extra time to throw it all together, I only got to bed maybe half an hour later than I would have otherwise.

Ward council came too early for comfort the next day, but it was fun to talk about AFY there, as I mentioned a bit earlier. The youth had all been invited to come to our ward and bring their parents if they wanted that day, so everything was planned to put our best foot forward. I had told my girls that I would wait for them in the foyer, which I eagerly did right up to when the meeting actually started. I was very disappointed that not a single one appeared to have come. It felt just the same as it always did on the mission when investigators you were expecting don't show up. As it turned out, there were only about 20 youth that actually came, so while a much bigger turnout would have been great, at least some were positively exposed to a YSA ward.

Sacrament was great with some really good speakers, including a talk from Michael Gray, a paralytic member of our ward who speaks with his iPad and a short address from Bishop. He had told us in ward council that he would be teaching one of two Gospel Doctrine classes that day, so I and many of the others had quickly piled into that class, which was of course, excellent.

The lesson discussed the lead-up to Abinadi's death, and one of the questions Bishop brought up was was Abinadi successful in his mission? Someone responded yes, because Alma listened and then converted many more. Bishop agreed that this was a positive result of Abinadi's mission, but didn't define his success. What made Abinadi successful was that he faithfully executed the mission the Lord had given him. This tied back into a lesson that Bishop often teaches: you can't judge an inspiration based on it's outcome. For us, the task is simply to do all we can to quickly follow the promptings we are given. Whether the results are what we expect or not, God gave us those ideas for His own purposes, which often times we won't ever understand or see in this life.

In Relief Society, I ended up sitting in the back near a sister who had barely moved in to the ward. Partway through the lesson, I was thrilled to realize that Jade was in fact sitting on the front row with a few friends I didn't know. I couldn't believe that I had somehow missed her, but was very happy to see that she had come. It was a tender mercy, certainly. I later learned that she had slipped into the very back of the overflow after the sacrament was passed and then had quickly moved to the opposite Gospel Doctrine class afterward. I was delighted that she had attended and felt the Spirit, but I regretted that circumstances were such that we didn't connect at the beginning of the day as I could at least have directed her to the better Sunday School class! Oh, well. I guess it wasn't meant to be.

AFY that night kicked off with another counselor meeting. It was a pretty tender one, as earlier that day, Bishop Hucks had been released and the Hillcrest ward had been dissolved with boundaries being redrawn through a portion of the remaining stake. The Munch and Mingle had been designed to allow the new and old members of the three wards that were affected get to know each other. It was clear that it had been quite a day for poor Bishop Hucks, and he was pretty choked up about how glad he was to have had the chance to work with all of us as his final hurrah in the stake. He asked us to share what we had learned from the experience, and there were some wonderful thoughts given. We were all pretty affected, and hoped that it would bode well for the rest of the evening.

We were supposed to meet up with our companies, then go together to the fireside for the night. As counselors, we decided to leave just Haven and Ben to collect the youth while one of the other guys and I saved some seats for our company in the chapel, since other groups were already doing that, and we were sick of our company ending up in the back of the chapel. So we ended up getting spots right on the front right-hand rows, which suited quite well.

Jade and a couple of the boys. Sadly, I can't remember their names now!

The fireside was with John Bytheway, who I have also heard before at an Education Week up in Rexburg many years ago. I was hoping that his address would be less disappointing than Brad Wilcox's had been, and he delivered. I did like the thoughts he shared, which centered around the Tree of Life vision. One thing he said that I thought was cool was that 25 of the 28 "come unto me" references in the scriptures are in the BOM, which confirms Elder Bednar's assertion that the main theme of the BOM is an invitation to come to Christ. Overall, I thought his talk was great, though perhaps a little too polished, which doubtless comes as a result of having presented it who knows how many times. I preferred Sister Freeman's more warm-hearted delivery to the rest, for sure.

Testimony meeting was next. This was arranged into four groups of three or four companies. Things started off pretty steadily, but after about 30 minutes, most of the kids that are easy to get up had already gone and we were starting to get silent lapses for awhile. We'd been asked during the logistics phase of the counselor meeting to refrain from bearing testimony, as the time was intended for the youth, unless we felt specifically impressed, but as the lapses started to get longer, a few of the counselors started getting up. That was fine, as I think they shared good things and at times helped get the ball rolling again, but I personally felt the restraining influence of the Spirit. Rather than getting up myself, I channeled my spiritual energy during the silent moments into praying that my girls would get up, as only a couple had already done so.

Bishop Lemon had evidently been making the rounds on the meetings and had slipped into the back of ours during a short silent spell. A few bore testimony before another silent spell descended, so after awhile Bishop got up and bore his testimony. So that was a pretty positive result of the silence, as ours was the only meeting he spoke during, apparently. Another positive result was that eventually several others of my girls did get up, which made me very happy.

I loved hearing from each of them, but only Jade's drew out my tears again. During hers, she specifically expressed gratitude for having been blessed with great counselors who had helped her feel the Spirit, and I knew that she was largely speaking to me. It was pretty overwhelming to have such clear evidence that despite my deficiencies, I had made a real, positive impact on at least one person over the weekend. Jade also powerfully witnessed of important gospel truths like the atonement of Christ and the BOM. Hers was definitely the testimony I most needed to hear that night.

At the close of testimony meeting, it was time for our final devotional. As counselors, we'd already decided that for our last devotional, we didn't want to split into men and women, but would rather keep everyone together. I was really pleased that we made that decision because it changed the meeting pretty fundamentally, though I don't regret that we hadn't done it earlier.

Just a candid after devotional. Tristan in the middle and Haven on the right side were two of the other counselors.

Jordan, a member of my ward who had actually been preparing to teach for weeks, was technically the one who lead out, but he has a very formal style that doesn't suit itself well to the youth audience. Ben had mentioned the night before how he'd really been working hard in their devotionals to engage the boys more by making interjections periodically. Knowing Jordan well, I realized that was probably needed, so in the end, Ben and I mostly facilitated the discussion while Jordan filled in with the quotes. The lesson was on the atonement, and we were able to have a good discussion on some of the salient points and also answer a few questions from the youth. I was happy that they felt comfortable enough to engage with us in that way.

Because we were on such a good level with the lesson, we all felt fine with running over somewhat again, so we were the last company in to the end of the night meeting. It was certainly bittersweet for all of us. Singing the theme song one last time felt even more tender than it had the night before. Everyone was sad to see the weekend closing. Fortunately, this time we weren't rushed out like other nights. In fact, we were encouraged to go eat any leftover food from the weekend outside, so most started to move that way. Our company had already decided that we wanted to get one last group photo in our room after the group meeting, so rather than heading for the food, we made a beeline back.

We got our picture, then there was plenty of hugging all around and exchanging of addresses. I was pleased to see the kids making connections to each other that I hope will continue to last. Technically, we'd been advised to not give our personal info out beyond perhaps letting the youth connect on Facebook, but when Jade asked me for my number and regretfully said she had no social media presence, I of course gave her my number. She hasn't abused it, and I'm glad that I've been able to maintain some contact with her. From there, everyone gradually and with some hesitantly dispersed.

It was sad to see it all ending, but I was so grateful that it happened and had all gone off so well despite my fears during the lead-up. Ever since I attended EFY myself, I'd wanted to be an EFY counselor at some point, but due to needing to work heavily all the summers I was in college, it looked like that would never be a possibility. Now, I am far beyond the permissible age, so I'd long ago resigned myself to the fact that it was one desire that would never be fulfilled. And yet, here, so many years later, I was given a chance to have the equivalent of that experience, granted, in a different way than I would have expected, but still just as valid none the less. To me, there is a great personal lesson in that. God does not disappoint, and He will gladly fulfill even our small righteous desires according to his timetable, even after any active hope has faded. Just remembering that one simple fact has the power to see me through many a dark and difficult day.

As a member of the Meadowbrook Ward, I've been blessed with a lot of fantastic opportunities, most notably in these large-scale events that periodically come up. While I've loved each of them for diverse reasons, there are ways in which this was my favorite of all of them. It didn't hurt that it wasn't so focused on a physical challenge like the John Moyle Walk or Trek! The spiritual focus was a big part of the difference, plus the fact that it was integrally centered on serving others rather than eating up a bunch of resources for ourselves. Sharing with so many others one of those amazing opportunities that we in the Meadowbrook ward enjoy so often made it pretty special. Knowing that it is the last one of these experiences that our current bishopric will participate in with us also made it unique in a bittersweet way.

I'm so grateful that I had a chance to participate in AFY, I'm grateful that everything came off about as smoothly as could be hoped, despite plenty of bumps in the road in the early phase. The Lord truly had His hand at work in so many elements of that weekend. I don't think there was anyone who walked away from it without catching something of its spirit. I believe the plan is to continue with AFY yearly to groom high schoolers more effectively for attending a singles' ward. It may even get scaled up across the entire stake with different areas and wards being combined on separate weekends. I just hope that such a good idea won't get lost in the shuffle since both the bishops intimately involved this year will have been released. It may be a lot of work to put on, but I think that the payoff was very good all around.