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!