Girls Camp Day 3 and 4

 The second morning we woke up to a gorgeous misty sunrise!

The YCL's gave their morning devotionals to their groups,

I warmed up water for hot chocolate for everyone,

And then Whitney and Abigail literally spent an entire hour cooking batch after batch of bacon and eggs for the whole group!  (we had 32 girls and 10 leaders!) I was proud of them for their hard work.  Also I should mention, in this picture you can see 2 of the wonderful and amazing leaders, Nicole De La Fuente on the left and Whitney Van Ausdal on the right.  LOVE these two!!

After we cleaned up from breakfast, we packed lunches and went on a hike!  The girls were not all super excited to hike, but they did great!

When we got up to a nice spot, we sat down and ate lunch.  Then Katelyn Katie and Sulice sang us a gorgeous 3-part harmony of My Own Sacred Grove, it made me cry!  And we gave the girls letters from their parents. and they had a little time to journal.

This was something so special.  After an afternoon of sitting under canopies during another rainstorm, I took the YCL's out to create their Faith Walk.  We had not spent time planning it, and if I hadn't insisted I think the other leaders would have just let it slide and not done it so we could get to dinner and our testimony meeting.  But once we got going working on it, the girls really pulled together and created a memorable activity.

I walked each girl blindfolded up to the start, and Aileen took their hands and guided them to the rope.  Then they went on their way and were met by people trying to help or distract them.  

The YCLs had a great time!  And I think they and the girls learned something from it.  here's katelyn guiding someone, and Whitney being tempted by Celeste.

Whitney ended up being the last one to go, so I got the most pictures of her because I was finally able to watch someone do it all the way.

Whitney was so funny too, she kept making hilarious comments like "bro, my life is so long!" (because as I walked each girl up,, I told her this was like her life.  There would be hard things but if you stay on the path you will be okay and make it safely to the end.)

After dinner we had our last campfire and skits, and a really great testimony meeting.

The next morning we were ready to go home.  Thankfully it didn't rain and we were able to pack up our dry tents. Here are some of the Cairns we made!

Goodbye camp!

On the way home we listened to Hamilton and everybody rocked out haha.  It was Whitney Kate Rachel Sulice and Katie so they all knew the words!  We stopped at an overlook: 

And right when we got home there was this really cool rainbow-y cloud!  I've never seen anything like it before! We watched it for a good 15 minutes or so, the colors were so beautiful!

Then later that afternoon was Aileen's baptism. It was so cool, Keira gave a talk and KK and S sang My Own Sacred Grove- it was gorgeous with the piano!  And it made Whitney Van Ausdal bawl- she hadn't got to go on the hike and she had never heard the song before.  The Bishop loved it so much that he asked them to sing it in Sacrament Meeting the next day. Camp was crazy but turned out good!

Girls Camp- Making the best of a Rainy Mess! Day 1 and 2

 What a whirlwind Girls Camp was.  Day 1- YCL day!  And I was in charge of the YCL's. My only official job for camp.  We arrived and set up the canopies and tents, intermittently huddling under the canopies while it rained.  The Theme was I Can Do All Things Through Christ, and we had balloons to spell it out. They were destroyed pretty much immediately!

Here's an excerpt from what I wrote for the ward history. :) 

The most memorable activity of the year for our Young Women was Girls Camp!  We had to change locations in April due to the long cold wet Spring.  We ended up going to Old Folks Flat, out past Manti. We had a large campsite with pit toilets and no showers.  We slept in tents and cooked our food on the fire/camp stoves.  It was pretty rough compared to other camps the girls had been to!  And then to top it all off, it was FREEZING and rained the entire first day, most of the second day, and part of the 3rd day.  The 4th day while we were packing up it was nice and sunny of course!! Anyway here's the girls weathering the first of the like 20 rainstorms of camp.

They were troopers though and we got everything ready.

We were able to modify my Covenant Path of Life activity and still do it in the rain! Here's the YCL's helping their blindfolded partners make a treat. Rowan, Hailey, Bella, Celeste, Keira, Natalie, then Katelyn, Katie, Sophie, and Aileen. Love these girls!!

And here they're blindly following me to the rope tying/covenants station.

After that, it poured rain for 12 hours!! So after 2 hours of slowly cooking pizzas in the Pizza oven that couldn't stay warm in the wind and rain, the girls went to their tent for the night. More from the ward history:

I’ll never forget checking on girls the first night, when we went to bed early because our plans were canceled by the rain. I opened a tent door, and all these worried faces looked up at me.  “What if it’s like this the whole time??” they asked. I wanted to tell them it would be fine, but I couldn’t!  I said, “well, if it pours like this non-stop, we can probably go home early. BUT, I want you all to pray that the rain will stop enough that we can still accomplish the purposes of camp!” And they must have, because even though we had to cut lots of activities short or modify them to be under our canopies, the next 2 days we were able to do pretty much everything!  We got to go on our hike and have reflective time in the forest.  We had our campfire testimony meeting and skits. And I got to watch the awesome YCL girls carry out the classes they had planned through rain delays, get up early in the morning to hang and dry out their bedding and then give devotionals they had prepared, lead their groups in cooking meals, and design and put on an AWESOME and inspiring Faith Walk for the other girls!  They truly had to fight through their own struggles with the conditions, and then turn around and encourage and motivate the younger girls.  I was SO proud of them!! What a difficult but positive growing experience Girls Camp 2023 was. 

The 2nd morning the rain stopped and the rest of the girls arrived! After getting their stuff into tents, our first activity was painting rocks with what strengthened us. The girls were with their groups, divided by colored headbands and led by a pair of YCLs.

It was pretty exciting to be there starting what we had planned for months!

We had hot dogs for lunch.

And then did stations.... off and on through the rain all afternoon!!  Poor Katelyn had prepared an awesome music station, but it was hard to keep her ukulele in tune and play and keep the girls on task and stop and start with the rain....she was discouraged but carried on.

We also did an exercise station and candle painting....

and a blanket tying service project, and LOTS of bracelet making!!

and skit practice while it was sprinkling

katelyn's group made and served dinner!

And it didn't rain during our campfire program, yay!!! Katelyn conducted.

Whitney gave a Spiritual thought (Celeste asked her to- we LOVE Celeste so much!) and her group did a hilarious skit- snow white and the seven dwarves and making righteous choices I think??

We sang funny songs

and then roasted smores for literally hours amid the most GORGEOUS sunset!

It was still cold but so beautiful and we were grateful we got to do our evening activities, unlike the night before!