Friday we gathered at the church in the morning. Then we went to Temple Square for a little while. We had a short tour by a couple of missionaries. Honestly--I'd never been to the basement of the visitor center with the Christus. I hadn't even ever thought about looking downstairs. But, lo and behold--there's some pretty cool stuff down there.
We also had a demonstration of the amazing accoustics in the Tabernacle.
When we got to the NAC, we unloaded and got oriented. Then we ate our sack lunches.
The first thing we did after lunch was a service project. Some of our group worked on making stands, or poles, for some movable shade. They used old tires, filled them with quick-drying cement, and stuck some big tall wood poles in them.
The rest of us pulled weeds. Now, that may not sound that hard. But, we pulled weeds where there are weeds EVERYWHERE. I mean, the NAC is in the middle of those sage brush hills. It's not like the place is a manicured garden and we were pulling weeds from a flower bed. No, we were pulling weeds where weeds ARE the vegetation. Ha!
After we did our service project, we gathered again and got prepared to do an "Amazing Race." They divided us into three teams. We only took twelve youth, so we had four youth in each group. We had two leaders go with each group. One leader was asked to participate in each of the stops.
I went with Mark, two boys, and two girls. Mark was the one that participated, I just followed and encouraged. It was amazing to see our youth work together. I didn't expect our group to click as well as they did--but they were working together so well I wanted to squeeze them and couldn't stop cheering them on!
Our group lucked out and got to the climbing wall first. The climbing wall turned out to be a bottle neck for the other groups. We got through it first and managed to finish all the other stops. No other group had time to finish the rest of the "race."
These were our activities....
- Climbing wall: three of our team had to climb the wall--blindfolded.
- Wheelchair course: filling up a pitcher of water one cup at a time--from across the parking lot.
- "Traffic jam": the youth stood on a log and had to rearrange themselves according to birthday--without falling off the log.
- Moving hay: moving hay, eight bales, from one place to another, all team members had to help.
- Skis: walking on "skis" from the road to a marker about 50 yards away, using teamwork.
- Horseshoes: getting three ringers.
- "Whale watch": all team members had to balance a large platform for ten seconds.
Our team really worked together. I mean, they listened to each other, they provided ideas, they didn't put each other down, and they cheered for each other. It was amazing!
After dinner, we had a very informal fireside. Bishop talked to us for about 45 minutes. And then we bore testimony.
It was a great, great day.
Mark and I didn't spend the night because we had obligations back home the next day. The youth stayed Saturday and had some more fun and did some more service. I hope they all realized how wonderful they are, how much they can help, and how much they are loved.
Instead of posting pictures here, you can go to our SmugMug account and look. You can see pictures of the service projects and each of our activities.
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