Monday morning I woke up, showered, ate breakfast, finished packing for camp and felt really nauseous! I was part nervous to leave my kids, but mostly nervous about my aspects of camp being ready enough. Was I prepared enough physically and spiritually? I legit felt like I was going to throw up! I said many prayers that morning! We dropped McKenna off at a friend's birthday party then Dan took me down to the church to load up and leave with the other stake leaders and YCLs. I rode up with Melanie Mortensen, our stake camp director, and my 7th ward YCLs, Tayah Brown, Hailey Christiansen, Makayla Cardall, and Iris. We taped up signs along the way to make sure everyone coming up on Tuesday could find their way.
We arrived at Camp Piuta around 12:15 and ate our sack lunches, then we helped unload the food trailers. The YCLs worked on hanging the "Innergram" pictures around the Lodge. We learned about the crafts and copes course, then we had a delicious Hawaiian themed dinner and dessert. Melanie Easton gave a great devotional to the YCLs about making the most out of the week by being positive, smiling, and serving. We then painted nails, played with our walkie talkies and had a GIANT sleep over in the Lodge.
Overall, my impression of the girls was they were helpful and kind. Almost every prayer I heard the YW give mentioned helping everyone to feel loved and included. So cool!
Tuesday morning we cleaned up the sleepover stuff in the lodge and set up the tables and swag for registration and check-in. We had a pancake and sausage breakfast and the wards started to arrive around 10:30-11:30. Everyone ate a sack lunch that day. After lunch I worked on setting up my service project while everyone else was at the amphitheater for the welcome/rules/info ceremony.
Pictures: giant iPhone with icons for each ward, registration set up,
French theme night, and the zip line (on Friday)!
Brandi Wendle was a BIG help for me during the service project time. The 1st year campers came to me first during rotation time, then 2nd years and so on. For day 1, I showed them a video of potential Elders and Sisters from Zimbabwe singing "Called To Serve." I introduced what our service project would be and gave them the background info. Last, they began making sets of 7 outfits (all the same size) to put in the missionary suitcases. It was so fun to see their enthusiasm and it seemed like they felt like this job and project was worth while and important! Because the 1st and 2nd years were so enthusiastic, I ran out of work (clothes) for the 3rd and 4th years to make outfits with. Instead, they ended up sorting shoes. After clean up, I got to make the leather bracelet craft for the day. Then on to dinner!
Pictures: girls making the outfits, statue from the hike (on Wednesday).
The cooks were incredible and had a different theme every day! Tuesday was Italian: Spaghetti, salad, corn, and bread. After dinner, the YCLs were in charge of a game night then dance party! I kind of felt like I spent more time with my 7th ward girls than their leaders did that night. I found out a couple girls were already feeling homesick.
That night before bed we had a nice pow-wow with the stake leaders to debrief for the day and talk about what went well and what needed improvement.
Wednesday we had breakfast then got ready for the hike! I walked beside Kelly Sansom most of the time and enjoyed some great conversations. Half the hike was on a dirt rode, the other half was through bushes and up a pretty steep hillside. Our destination was a beautiful open meadow with a randomly placed statue of the Hindu god Shiva. No one knows how it got there or why it is there. But it's super cool to see out in the middle of nowhere. We had another sack lunch that day and I hiked back down with Kelly again, so we could both be back in time to set up our crafts and service project stuff. This time I had the 4th years first. They helped me unload all the sorted suitcases and put everything out in an assembly line fashion. I had a little bit smaller turnout this day due to many girls being overtired from the hike and needing to rest. In total, we ended up packing 14 suitcases!! 8 were 100% full! 6 were still needing 1-5 items. I had a pretty monster head ache after that...maybe because of the lack of sleep and overall tiredness and stress. Who knows? Later, I went and hung out with my ward for a bit. The dinner that night was American themed and we had hamburgers and hot dogs.
That evening was a "choose your own adventure" activity. The girls were given a question with two choices. Most of the scenarios the girls were choosing between related to two good choices. They were real life scenarios and really made the girls think between good, better, best options.
Picture: all the leaders set up in the "web" with envelopes with the questions inside to give to the girls to read silently then choose their path to follow.
Everyone ended up at the same place in the end where we had a guest speaker speak about having a "perfect brightness of hope." We heard really good feedback from the girls about this activity and they liked how real life the questions and scenarios were. That night I also got to talk to DAN in Elder and Sister Long's trailer!! I also wanted to document a few tender mercies of the day. Melanie Easton lost the diamond out of her wedding ring. After many prayers she found it in her bag! Sadie Gunnerson arrived at camp after being lost for 5 hours trying to find us! Scary!
Thursday was a break for the service project, but I was in charge of teaching a lesson about the importance of journaling. I prepared a powerpoint about the health and spiritual benefits of keeping a journal. I shared some personal journal entries and cried a lot, which I didn't expect to do. I got a lot of compliments about my lesson afterwards. I even had a girl tell me her brother gave her a journal and she didn't know what to do with it, but now she did! Success! :)
After a Mexican themed lunch, we had the copes course! These were really fun team building games created by the Wendles! Unfortunately, my ward girls were not feeling well and they opted out of the games, which made me pretty frustrated. In the end, I just had to let it go and realize it was their loss for not participating.
Later that afternoon I headed into town (Kamas) so I could Facetime with Dan and the kids! It was so good to see their cute faces!! That night was the lip sync night! All the wards did such a good job and had really fun performances! Everyone loved our rap to "This Little Light of Mine."
We were so hard core!
I hung out with our ward for a bit that night and then they came up and visited the stake leaders all decked out in glow sticks to make themselves look like stick people.
Gorgeous views from the week!
Friday we had a French themed breakfast, then everyone had lots of free time so we could give everyone a turn on the zipline! Our Bishop and Jake Brown came up to camp to help as well. After lunch, everyone was super excited about the final craft of the week, the globes. I didn't have too much service left for them to do, so they helped me load the suitcases in the trailer, they helped sort the Innergram pictures by ward, and they helped me clean some paint off the tent picnic tables. That evening the bishoprics and stake presidency were invited for the final night of camp for dinner and testimony meetings so Dan and his parents came up to camp at about 5:20!!
After dinner, everyone stood around the lodge, grouped in their ward, with a small hand held light source. Dan's dad gave a message to the group first. He had each of their wives tell about their first kiss and how they knew they were supposed to marry their husbands. Then, each ward took a turn singing a spiritual song that had the word light, sun. shine, star,.. in it. The stake leaders sang "Like the Stars." Then everyone went to their own camp sites for their own testimony meetings. It was a wonderful experience to hear our ward's girls share how close they had become during camp and how their testimonies had grown.
We're very greatful to our friend Steffanie Holdstock for babysitting while both of us were gone.
I went home with Dan that night and thoroughly enjoyed my own shower and bed!!
While I was gone at camp, Ben lost is first tooth while eating a hot dog at Costco! (Editor's note: Daddy lunches for the win!!) Also pictured, a pretty sweet fort they built, and a nice hot walk around the neighborhood while McKenna was at Piano.
McKenna also had a grandma sewing class while I was gone. They made pencil bags and even had to sew a zipper!
Saturday we spent the morning enjoying being together as a family!
McKenna even let me practice braiding her hair. I still need a lot of work!
We headed up to Mantua that evening. The kids swam, ate pizza, showered, then watched a movie.
Sunday was baby Mila's baby blessing in Perry. We had a nice brunch at Jake and Ailin's house after sacrament meeting. Then we drove down to Bountiful for Reed's ordination! Can't believe he's already 12!
We caught the last 2 hours of our own ward. That afternoon we also stopped by the Dennis's home to welcome them home from their mission to Equador (their mission was hardest hit by the earthquake a few months prior).
Whew! A whirlwind week, for sure!
