Over the summer, I attended a meeting for the stake temple and family history committee where I was the only YSA who show up. So while I talked with our senior couple and high councilman, I felt like I had my best possible chance to push for my own agenda, which I felt like I had at least some inspiration in. :) My proposal was that we put together a family history conference for the stake. My stake back in Virginia did one of those each year, and I felt like it was a great opportunity to provide excellent info for members while also drawing in many non-members in the community. I thought it would be a good thing to try with the YSA's as well. I have reasonably good persuasive skills, so naturally, I was able to carry the day on that and get it set as our major agenda point. When the other YSA's showed up in subsequent meetings, they also jumped on board.
We decided to settle on a date pretty far in advance to secure the entire building and leave ourselves plenty of time to work out details, so October 21st was settled upon. The first order of business was to secure a keynote speaker, which we hoped to be someone notable that would draw in YSAs. I was thinking someone like John Bytheway or Brad Wilcox would be ideal, but I was also okay with the idea of our temple president or something. Since I don't have a lot of connections in Utah, I wasn't sure about how to go about securing someone, but fortunately our senior couple was willing to tackle that task.
For our break-out sessions, I thought that tech-heavy themes like DNA research, family history apps, and using social media for family history would probably most appeal to our YSA members, but I only half won this battle. The other committee members had other suggestions as well, so while we did settle on DNA and apps, we also went with a class on FamilySearch basics and a discussion of family history work empowering temple work.
Fortunately, everyone else did a good job of securing many of the speakers/teachers. Our senior couple was able to secure Suzanne Adams, who worked for Ancestry in the past and currently worked at FamilySearch, as our keynote speaker. I was excited to hear from her because of her awesome family history credentials, but I did have some concerns that since she's not especially well-known outside geneology circles, she probably wouldn't draw out newbies who weren't already engaged in the work. President Caldwell, our stake presidency member over family history, suggested a couple he knew from his home stake that often did classes about family history. One of the girls on our committee had suggested the more doctrinal class because she thought her bishop would do a great job teaching it since he teaches EFY or something. Later, it seemed he wouldn't be able to do it, but thought maybe he could get one of his coworkers to participate. I was hoping all this would fall through so I could ask Bishop Lemon to do it, but the coworker unfortunately panned out, so I didn't get the chance.
I suggested we ask my friend Krista, who was the center director before me, to help out because I've always found her lessons to be really great. I also recommended a girl in our stake who used to be in my ward who also majored and worked professionally in family history. With these individuals contacted and confirmed, we were pretty set on all our speakers.
The last piece to worry about was food. The stake agreed to pay for us to feed everyone lunch as they often do for various events. I knew that food was often a strong motivator for people, so I thought this was an important element to provide and advertise. The issue was trying to estimate how much was needed. The stake had catered the Institute Kick-off event in late summer, and it was by far the most who have every attended Institute. They had prepared to feed 400, and there really wasn't enough food for everyone. Because I knew that food tends to bring people out of the woodwork and because there had been such huge turn out for that Institute event, the others and I thought it would be better to shoot too high than too low. I didn't think we'd have as many as Institute, but I thought it might be wise to have enough for 250 or so. Our high councilman, Bro. Barnes, was good enough to make the catering arrangements with Chic-fil-a for us.
As the time drew near, I started getting more concerned about attendance. We learned too late to do much about it that the local school districts would pretty much all be on Fall break at the time. We'd taken care to avoid UVU's fall break, but I hadn't thought about the public school breaks since, I didn't think that would effect many YSAs. Thinking about it closer to time, I started to worry that it might have more of an impact than we'd originally thought since many of our stake members live with their families and therefore might be more likely to go on vacation when younger siblings were out of school. Also, I'd talked to a lot of people about the conference and had heard a lot of various excuses about why they couldn't go. All this together made me uneasy about the attendance, so I made some extra efforts like putting out flyers at Institute and telling everyone to bring their family members too. I also contacted every person involved with either family history/temple work or publicity in each ward to get them to help us spread the message through Facebook, text groups etc. I hoped that in addition to all my prayers, some of these efforts might help us to pull out a better attendance.
The Friday night before the conference, we took care of set up and a bit of decorating. We still prepared for a large turnout, but I did once again voice my concerns that we might be over-preparing. Everyone else didn't seem to have the same concerns, however, so I just hoped for the best. The day of the conference, I went an hour to help with last minute set up and to be available to help address any teacher needs and such. As the hour drew nigh, I became uneasy because there were only a couple people waiting in the chapel right before we were supposed to start. The food was one of my big concerns in a much smaller attendance. I didn't want to waste stake budget if we didn't have to. I suggested to Bro. Barnes that it would be a good idea to see if we could cut back our order from Chic-fil-a pretty significantly. He thought it would be best to wait a few minutes in before calling to see if a bunch more people didn't show up somewhat late. I thought immediate action would be wise, but was willing to let him make the decision in the end.
My other more significant concern was for our speakers/teachers. I knew that they had all put in a lot of work to prepare for us, and I also had a sense from having taught at times myself how disheartening it can be when very few attend your class. At that point there wasn't much I could do about it, however. As we began, there were only a handful of people there, and at least half were other speakers or committee members. It was a sad sight in the cavernous chapel.
Sister Adams' presentation was really very good. She'd put together some great statistics and thoughts about the blessings of family history and temple work. I was just sad that more people didn't get to enjoy the benefit of her well-prepared message since there were only 10-15 people total in the chapel by the end of her message. It was disappointing to me, but I consoled myself and some of the other stake leaders afterward with the thought that at least that many were able to partake of the spirit of her message. Fortunately, Sister Adams herself didn't suggest any disappointment, though of course, she may have just kept that to herself.
As the attendees and teachers moved in to break-out session rooms, I spent a few minutes consulting with the other stake leaders. Midway through Sister Adam's message, Bro. Barnes had ducked out to call Chic-fil-a. Fortunately, he had managed to get a hold of them in time to cut back on a bit over a third of the food, but all the cookies had already been made and most of the sandwiches were already cooked, so we were stuck with those. I felt better knowing that we wouldn't be out for the full original order and still had hope that quite a few more would show up in time to catch some of the break-out classes. After looking in on the classrooms, a couple of the other leaders and I ended up in the family history empowering temple work class because it had the fewest attendees. The class was pretty good, though obviously it would have been much better with Bishop Lemon teaching! Two other people came in part-way through, so the class size was reasonable before the end.
The next session, I went over to the apps class, since I was quite interested in hearing what was covered there. I thought that class was quite outstanding. They did a great job of explaining to joys of the FamilySearch app and also went through a good number of the affiliate apps listed on family search. I learned about several that seemed pretty useful. I also liked how they talked about deciding which apps to get and which to skip. They'd had a lot of experience with people who had bought quite a few apps that they couldn't really understand or use effectively or which didn't really meet their needs. They offered some great advice about how to avoid this trap and successfully evaluate each app. This class was quite well attended when I went. I'd say there were about 15 people in that one class alone.
For the last break-out, I went to Krista's class on DNA research. Her lesson was excellent, as I expected. She showed us some interesting data from her own family. She showed us how to interpret the data outputted from the test. One of the cool things she showed us was the comparison of relation between her and her siblings. She talked about how the centimorgan range between them all put each firmly in the full-blood sibling range, but that some were more related than others. She helped us unearth that she has twin sisters after looking at how close their centimorgans were. She also demonstrated that she shares more DNA in common with her brother than her other siblings. Also interesting was seeing the variation in ancestry between her siblings. Her sisters had a far higher percentage of British DNA than the rest while she and her brother showed higher German percentages. One of the main takeaways I got from her class was that there is huge value in family groups doing the testing together. While one person may have inherited one type of data, a sibling's results can really help paint a much more complete picture for the whole family. I learned a lot of very interesting information from her class! There were, again, about 10-15 people there, which felt like a pretty decent showing.
Sadly, I had to leave before Krista's class was over since I needed to go help with the set up of the food, which Bro. Barnes had picked up. It turned out that no one had attended the temple class I went to first for the last session, so that teacher also came in to help with set up. We had things well in order by the time the attendees started coming in for food.
The lunch really was delicious, there was plenty for everyone, of course. Chic-fil-a catering really is quite good, I would say. We had a good selection of sandwiches, wraps, salads, and cookies. Everything was very tasty and I think everyone found items they could enjoy. At lunch, we had around 40 people eat, which I thought was decent attendance overall. Obviously, I would have loved to have many more come, but personally, I wasn't too sad about the overall attendance. The other stake leaders were more discouraged after the fact, but I was glad to throw a more positive light on it all. Part of the reason I was happy about it all, was everything I heard from multiple attendees during lunch. Everyone I talked to was excited about all the good things they had learned and what they had felt through the Spirit. We also got to hear some very good remarks from President Caldwell at the end of the lunch hour encouraging each of us to share what we had learned with someone else in the stake. I hoped that would be another good way we could spread the knowledge and Spirit of the event throughout the stake.
Fortunately, many stayed to help with clean-up, so it was much easier than set-up. We certainly had an abundance of food left over. That was too bad, but with the next day being Sunday, I was confident that it wouldn't last long in our YSA-only building. That turned out to be an accurate assessment, because almost everything was gone when I went back and checked the kitchens after FHE on Monday. So that oversight on our part wasn't the end of the world, I reckon, since it all was enjoyed by stake members at one point or another.
Though I was sad that the attendance for Sister Adams was poor, I think it was a positive experience overall. I had a great time and as far as I know, many others also did. I did also learn some useful things should I ever plan something similar in the future. At the top of that list is to plan food a lot more realistically! I'd also be much more careful in planning dates. While you can't avoid every conflict, we probably could have chosen better if we'd been more careful. Another point I would focus on differently in the future would be to plan only very practical skills classes in the future. People attending a conference like that aren't generally looking for a pure doctrinal class that is basically like Sunday School. We only had a handful of people go to the one we'd planned like that over the three rotation periods while the other skills-based classes were quite full each time. Were I to do this in a single's ward setting again, I believe I would have also pushed the entire time later and perhaps just slate the lunch in the middle. We started out with very few, but had a decent turnout by the end.
I hope the stake will do another conference or something similar in the future, though I probably won't be involved next time. By applying some of these lessons from this year, I think it could become a helpful annual event over time that could grow a lot. But even if they don't pursue it again, I'm just glad we were able to accomplish what we did this year!
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