I have felt impressed to write down the experiences I’ve had with youth conference and the general feelings I have over the whole thing looking back.
Last August, I was in charge of planning a high school reunion. With no money, very little help initially, and many insecurities this was very stressful and overwhelming for me. I concluded once it was over, that I was best suited “helping” or serving on a committee but leading or being in charge of a large activity such as this was simply not something I had been given the talents or ability to do. I prayed a lot about this, and had to try to develop faith that God would help me over come what to me seemed like a huge task to accomplish alone. Although relieved when it was over, I felt neither better for doing it nor like I had developed the talent that people need to accomplish putting on a large event. It was not a positive experience for me.
So it was with these insecurities and anxiety that less than two months later Cordelle and I were called to be in charge of Stake youth conference. Here is what i wrote in my journal about first two days after being called.
September 28, 2011
Today we met with the Stake President and BOTH his counselors. You know its trouble when all three of them are there. To be honest I wasn’t worried in the least, cause I was certain the calling was for Cordelle. But when they called us both to be Stake youth conference coordinators a couple of things went through my mind. First, is this a joke? I had just 2 months before pulled off a 10 year reunion for high school which to most people would’nt be a big deal, but I worried and stressed and tried to overcome insecurities and a weakness of caring too much about what people think of me or things I do. I soon realized what my most dreaded calling would be....organizing any type of event. I even remember thinking I would hate to have to organize girls camp or youth conference at a ward level. Naturally Stake Conference was going to be worse. I was sick to my stomach. I had heard so many stories about RS presidents feeling overwhelmed getting called etc. Odd as it may to be to some people. This was my calling that I knew would be hard for me.
The stake President then went into great detail about the process we were called and how it took many names and a lot of prayer to finally feel good about our name. I don’t think I realized then, but I really grew to appreciate the fact that he told this to us, because it later gave me strength to know I really was not just selected at random but God wanted US to do it. It was that simple. He would help us. I energetically told them I would accept the call, but I was still very nervous about it. Matter of fact, I went home and cried. Feeling just a bit overwhelmed.
To think about everything was just too overwhelming at first, but strangely through it all, it was a great testimony to me that God knew who I was. Only he would know that this calling would be so difficult for me and one that would help me grow the most. No one but He (and Cordelle) could have known that this was one of very few calling that would leave me smack bottom humbled with a complete need for God’s direction.
Cordelle and I decided that we would meet once a week on Thursday nights at 9:00 and talk about youth conference. We opened with a prayer and bounced ideas off each other and helped each other when one another was feeling overwhelmed or frustrated. I found this entry in my journal after our first meeting together.
September 29, 2011
After much thought, I tried to remember when I was planning my reunion and what I could learn from it. One of the lessons I learned was that when i was making progress or at least working on things, I felt better or more in control. So Cordelle and I set up a time for a weekly meeting where for one hour we would talk about youth conference, gear up for our next meeting or give each other assignments.
Tonight was our first meeting. And as overwhelmed as I was, I was SO grateful to not be doing this alone. I had Cordelle, who had experience in bishopbric meetings and making action lists and making things happen. He helped me realize there were differences between my reunion planning and this. First we had a budget, we weren’t starting from $0 hoping to get money through ticket sales. Second, I wasn’t doing it alone. Cordelle was called with me and he was fully invested in it as well and would help obviously every step of the way. And lastly, we were called by God. This was his youth conference and it will all work out and we just have to listen and be in tune to making it happen like He would have it work out.
I felt better about things after this meeting.
Now even though that meeting and some similiar to it left me feeling energized and full of faith and confidence that Heavenly Father would help lead this, all our Thursday night meetings were not quite so faith building. I remember times we would stay up late, frustrated and disagreeing. I would think something was important and Cordelle wouldn’t see the need. We would struggle how we were going to get an entire stake through the temple and juggle a schedule that combined wards but didnt have individual kids spread out all over SanPete county. There were more problems that came up than we could find solutions to, and there were many Thursday evenings we went to bed having discussed but solved nothing, feeling frustrated and wondering how this would ever work.
We knew however, we needed to start working with the youth immediately. So we started once a month meetings and I’ll tell you nothing scared me more. There was nothing more awkard and terrifying for me than being in a room of youth committee leaders, knowing they were to be involved in Youth Conference but still realizing it was us that would have to pull off their wishes. Then it didn’t help that our first meeting was filled with very little feed back or responses and a lot of silence. And once we did get them talking they couldn’t agree on anything. Here’s an entry from that meeting.
October 8, 2011
So we’re a little stressed come 5pm (an hour before our meeting starts). Pres. Lovell calls us back letting us know that he will conduct the meeting and then introduce us. So we pretty much scrap our whole agenda of getting to know the kids, telling them their responsibilities, and then going into location options. We really have to have options of locations for them. I am now very grateful for all the effort and research I looked into so many places. I just have to organize all my notes about each one. Because most of them we can’t get into because our group is so large, others are things we really don’t want to do but would obviously if thats what the kids wanted. I was hard, knowing the youth could change everything just by their opinion and we would really have to be prepared for anything. I don’t know, our first option really was still Snow College but we were totally willing to make anything work.
So the meeting started and it was rough. With quick introductions everything was pretty much turned right over to us, so basically we were kind of conducting the meeting (which for some reason I was under the impression from talking to President Lovell we wouldnt be). So me, having strange issues with silence in large groups, just started talking and trying to lead the discussion somewhere. I was nervous and looking back I really should have just let them hash things out more, but NO ONE was talking. Once we got the ball rolling, things started to flow. But there was a problem, there were 2 kids that were so gung-ho about going to Snow (yipee) even though they had just gone there the year before. But there were another 2 kids that REALLY wanted to go camping. One girl in particular and she was convincing. She was a great leader but was definitely making things difficult to not go the camping route. Which I guess really wasn’t difficult because if thats what they wanted to do, we would do it. I just remember thinking in the middle of the meeting. We are NEVER going to come to a conclusion these two sides are dead set on their minds.
I remember kicking cordelle in the middle of the whole thing wanting him to speak up and take control of the way the discussion was going but he just sat back and let me frantically lead the discussion because like I mentioned I couldnt stop talking for fear of those awkward silences. Maybe I should read a book on leading a discussion.
We had to eventually change directions and talk about the theme. Thank heavens! This went much better and somehow the discussion turned towards temple. We had a boy (Bruce Crenkshaws son) tell of an experience where him and his family were in Africa talking with a man who had saved his whole life to go to the temple and he asked them how close they were to a temple. And they told him it was an hour a way. And amazed he looked at them and said, “you must go every day.” The boy started crying and it was powerful. It totally invited the spirit. And soon everyone was on board with basing our theme around the temple. We decided to let them go home and pray about a theme tagline with a scripture or quote to back it up and then come prepare next time with it to share. That went much smoother than the location discussion.
But here is was again...the debate between the campers and the non-campers. Even President Lovell chimed in and started to say things like, “okay if you want to base your theme around the temple, then where should we go?” Making it quite obvious but still they wouldn’t budge. So finally the same kid that made the temple comment said, we’re going to be here all night lets just vote on it. And so we did and by only a difference of a few votes, Snow College won. The meeting was over. Some people were probably frustrated but at least that portion was out of the way.
I left feeling very relieved. And totally in awe of everything at the same time. Was it awkard and stressful at time during the meeting, yes. But was it strangely also led by the spirit? I think so. Somehow we ended up where we wanted to be, but 30 minutes before then, I never thought it would happen. Its amazing to see people who have been in leadership positions in youth, they really know how to react to the youth well, be commanding and not intimidated. I’ll have to remember that.
So they had decided on a temple based theme and even though the rest of that meeting was crazy, there was a strong spirit in there and I KNEW without a doubt the focus of our youth conference was definitely supposed to be on the Temple.
Through out the coming months our youth came up with our Theme, “Get Ready, Get Set GO!” with an accompanying quote of President Monson about coming to the house of the Lord, where we can find rest for the weary and comfort to the soul. We eventually found some off campus housing at a place called the Park Place apartments for a pretty good price. I remember Cordelle mentioning to me in the car one day “wouldnt that be cool if we could take Park Place and the Go from our theme and tie it into the whole Monopoly theme? I remember thinking that would be clever but to tricky and complicated to pull off. Little by little though things started falling into that line and we were surprised ourselves to see the monopoly/temple thing kind of come together so smoothly that even now, we know it was not just our ideas.
It started with the challenge cards I guess. We felt strongly that we needed to start preparing the youth before conference for the temple. I think it was the youth that suggested we have some sort of competition. And so came the challenge cards. Cordelle being the graphic designer that he is knew one way this youth conference was going to be different was, it was going to LOOK cool. ( I usually would roll my eyes, but in retrospect he did do an amazing job branding, designing and organizing all the agendas, sigs and packets that I think gave everything the feel and look we were hoping for). So he created the challenge card looking like a small monopoly board but having questions and challenges about the temple, discovering newfamilysearch.org, becoming familiar with temple standards found in the new FSOY pamphlet etc. It was from the challenge card that we finally dove in and accepted the fun idea of using the monopoly theme along side of the temple.
Now I wish I would have continued keeping a journal like I did at the beginning but there are some very special experiences that i will never forget and some life lessons that I hope I can always draw from as we planned and prepared for youth conference.
As one might assume, there was much prayer that went into youth conference but I’ll tell you, the times I prayed for things like “please help us to figure out what to do with youth conference” nothing really happened; no progress was made. But when I took specific parts of youth conference, with specific questions to the Lord, ideas and inspiration would ALWAYS come as long as I was working at it. Let me give some examples. I knew we needed to have some sort of kick off but as much as I racked my brain, I could not figure out what needed to happen. I discussed with the youth committee the idea of having them introduce the theme in a spiritual way but I wanted to do something fun as well without distracting for the spirit. One day I was exercising and the idea came so strongly to do a fireside before youth conference where the youth taught the youth. One youth would talk on getting ready to go to the temple, one on staying set with the temple as their goal, and another on actually going to the temple. It was so clear that this was the answer to spiritually kick off the importance of the temple so at our next meeting the youth committee all volunteered to fulfill all the needs for the spiritual kick off the Sunday before. Amazing to me. Weeks passed and still I was having no luck in how to kick off the youth conference on Thursday. We tried to get ideas from the youth and from past YC leaders, but nothing felt right and in line with our theme. I was frustrated and finally decided to start praying specifically about the kick off and to guide me to an idea or something to go off of for this kick off. Then one day I was running when the idea struck me if we were going to do a monopoly themed youth conference, then why not create a monopoly game to play. And that was it. I couldn’t come up with anything more but I had an idea I knew I could build on. I was so grateful for this and i knew as insignificant as it seemed, God knew my immediate concern and he helped lead me to an idea. What was fascinating to me was that details would not come until I sat down and worked and worked on this game. Little by little as I put forth my effort, more and more ideas would come to me and I knew then that both the more spiritual and the entertainment sides of youth conference could be led by the spirit to create an uplifting environment for the youth.
When the adult leaders were called from each ward we didn’t know any of them and yet we assigned each of them a task or to be in charge of an activity the youth had decided they wanted to do. Even this action, unbeknownst to us at the time, i truly believe was directed the Spirit. We were at first apprehensive. The couple over the hike said they weren’t really into hiking, the woman over the food told us on numerous occasions how she had no idea how to even begin planning food for that many people and was not comfortable with it. The couple over the temple was pretty overwhelmed thinking they needed to collect 750 names for the kids to do baptisms and had had more experience doing food for large groups of people. One couple for the games didnt seem happy with their assignment and we were left with another activity without a leader. And although we thought more than once to switch things around, Cordelle reminded me that just as this calling was hard for me, sometimes for people to grow they needed to step outside their comfort zone and be pushed a little. And to this day, I know they each were called to where they were supposed to be. Each rose to the occasion and went far above and beyond anything I thought they would do with their portion of youth conference. It could not have gone better.
As time grew on hiccups came up like the movie which we could’nt get rights for so we ended up putting together some fun youtube clips followed by some powerful mormon messages that I think went over well. And things just started to fall into place.
The last month before youth conference was an extrememly busy time for us. Cordelle’s work took he and I to Carlsbad for a week and our wedding invitation buisness was at its busiest part of the year. I remember Cordelle looking just beat every night trying to finish printing things for youth conference, finalize all the last minute plans on top of his regular job, his work conference, 3-4 wedding invitation orders a day and his new calling in the young mens. It was around this same time that I had been miraculously blessed with peace and comfort in regards to youth conference and our roles switched a little. I was able to to comfort him and reassure him that things were going to work out. I felt a great confidence that we would accomplish all we would need to with the assuraty that we had done our best. I just felt peace and no anxiety (which was HUGE for me, with the event we’d been planning coming up so soon.) I attribute this to a few things. First, I started to memorize the Living Christ as part of our stake’s goal this year and as I did so, it helped me recognize and rid myself of negative, doubting, or discouraging thoughts that I knew Satan would use to make me feel hopeless and defeated about youth conference. When I started to receive thoughts that I wasn’t capable of this calling, or that things would be a disorganized mess I repeated in my mind the parts I had memorized and those negative thoughts disappeared. I tried to focus more on my own personal testimony and ultimately what I really wanted to get out of youth conference, and that grew and grew until I, more than anything just wanted the youth or even one youth to grow an appreciation of the temple. That was a big moment for me. Despite all our planning and details....I grew to a point where I only wanted that assurance for one youth....and then it all would be worth it. And although there were probably many, by the tender mercies of the Lord I was able to come to the knowledge of one such youth that had an this experience at the temple.
Not even a year ago, a mother in our stake was killed in a car accident and her daughter was attending the temple with her ward at youth conference. During their little chapel session before doing baptisms a member of the temple presidency came down and asked if he could speak with them. He spoke gently about when we come to the temple we can become close with those who have gone from this life. He told of how proud they are when they see us being worthy and doing this great important work. With the passing of her mother this young girl sat in the front row with tears on her cheeks and a message she knew was meant for her and this ward. The couple in charge of baptisms at the temple later asked the temple patrons if this was common for the members of the temple presidency to come down to the baptistry and the temple patron said, the only time they come down is if they are requested by their bishop to. So this couple took the Bishop aside and commented to him how cool she thought it was that he had asked a member of the temple presidency to come down and speak to his ward about what he did. The Bishop then told her, he never spoke or requested anyone to come and speak. Surely God knew that girl and that ward, and through a special prompting led the member of the temple presidency to offer a tender mercy to her from the Lord. Hearing of that experience made all 9 months of planning and worrying worth it. I believe all in that room will never forget that experience.
I saw a father come down from Enoch to walk the temple grounds with his son who was not worthy to get a temple recommend so he wouldnt be alone while the rest of his ward were in doing baptisms. I was touched by that.
I overheard a kid tell his leader at a meal, that the coolest part of youth conference even with all the other fun activities was attending the temple. Another youth who was baptized only a week prior got to attend the temple and was amazed by the whole experience as well. There is no doubt in my mind that despite all the other great activities, it was the temple that made all the difference.
Cordelle and I loved working on this together. He was organized and knew how to relate important information, I was a little OCD and wanted to see progress every day since we were called. He was rational when I was overwhelmed and I’d like to say that I was optimistic when he needed that assurance too. It was an amazing opportunity to meet once a week and discuss something that was important to both of us, a call from God. We later mentioned to each other what an impact that would have on different aspects of our lives if we would meet once a week to report and discuss things like our children, our marriage, our own personal testimonies and worthiness. I hope that is something we really do do, because progress happened when we met and talked and that was invaluable to me.
I learned that there is no greater motivator than faith and no greater defeater than doubt. When I had no idea how things were going to pan out but pressed on, working one little wrinkle out at a time, things progressed; I progressed. When I worried and doubted and sat and pouted instead of working on the problem, things were stagnant and nothing got done. I learned that there will be things in our lives that are too overwhelming to try and solve or have peace about by looking at the whole picture, but if we can break it down into achievable pieces that we can handle right now, or a part of the big picture that we can pray about and work towards right now, then slowly those little pieces will amount to something great and that big picture wont seem as overwhelming.
I met some amazing people through all of this and saw just how precious and invaluable people who serve with all their might have. It has made me very aware of the importance of supporting others in their callings and doing our best with the parts we are called to to help the church grow and progress overall. I know people have talents that can bless the church and when they use them or discover them through serving in callings we all benefit from theml
I NEVER thought I’d say this, but I am so grateful we accepted this call and did the best we could have done with it. I felt many times that God knew me and my concerns and knew the concerns of the youth of this stake. I knew from that first meeting where President Brough told me the process of finding us to issue the call that God knew this was calling was for me. I hope I will never forget the lessons I’ve learned on faith, work and acting on the promptings of the Holy Ghost. I am truly grateful for callings that stretch us and make us more than we could be on our own.
