Young Women New Beginnings

When I was part of the Young Women Presidency in our ward we planned New Beginnings for our Young Women. It’s an annual event where we teach the the young women and their parents about the Young Women organization and Personal Progress. This year we had used boot camp theme, and it turned out pretty cute.

I designed the layout of the vinyl, and it was hard! Designing doesn’t not come naturally to me. Jann and Kristi painted the boards. When they were dry Kim, Joe, and I had a marathon of putting all the vinyl on. The whole project took forever, but we loved the finished product!

This was the mutual theme for 2010: Joshua 1:9, shortened to Be Strong and of a Good Courage.

Monica and Jann took care of handling much of the program. Then some of the Laurels introduced the new beehives that would be coming into Young Women in 2010 when they turned 12. It was fun because most of the new beehives actually had sisters that could introduce them!

After the introductions all of the Young Women came up by age group (Laurel, Mia Maid, Beehive) to get their dog tags.


Joe helped untangle some of the dog tags, and wore them so they wouldn’t get re-tangled. He looks good.

The cute new beehives for 2010!

Here are the cute ladies I was able to serve with, unfortunately they made me wear that ridiculous hat.
It was a really great program and I think that the young women really enjoyed it. Hopefully it got them and their parents pumped up to do Personal Progress!

Birmingham, Alabama Youth Temple Trip

In February we helped take some youth to do baptisms for the dead at the Birmingham Temple , because the Atlanta Temple is currently being renovated. It was our first youth temple trip, and it went pretty well! We had to do the baptisms in two sessions because we have such a large youth group, and the Birmingham Temple is a small temple. It went great though, and the youth seemed to really enjoy the experience.

Primary Christmas Presents

Since I'm in the primary presidency in our ward, I was a participant in coming up with and creating our gift to the primary kids and teachers.
A few months ago our ward ended up with several boxes of chair covers (the soft padded chair covers that everyone wants to sit on during stake conference if you miss your chance at a bench. . .) Anyway, you'll see what I'm talking about in the pictures. So the other counselor thought that she would take a box and hide it in our closet until we could figure out what to do with them, but she knew they could be used for the kids Christmas present. Well, after some thought and some internet searching we settled on making lap desks. Diana came up with our final design, and although it was ambitious, we decided to do it. And here's our final product after hours of building and help from lots of people, I think they turned out really cute. We had a little Christmas party for the kids on the 21st and gave the kids the gift.








































We used melamine for the white board part. You can buy huge sheets of it at a Home Depot type place and have them cut it for you. Then we had vinyl lettering made with the 2009 Primary theme "My Eternal Family" along with each child's name. We also gave the children a zipper pull with the theme on it, you can find it here, they are really small, but totally cute. Each year there are a new round of songs that the children learn from the annual Primary Program in Sacrament meeting, so we put those songs along with others, like the Article of Faith songs, on a CD so that they can learn them at home too.

Here's a picture of most of the primary kids with the primary president. It's not a little blurry, but still fun.













The teachers unfortunately didn't get as awesome a gift as the kids, but we still thought they deserved something good for all the work they do. When I was visiting Utah in November I saw that my father-in-law got a teacher appreciation gift (he's the music leader in their ward, awesome!), it was this cute bowl of Hugs and Kisses, with a little poem. I decided to steal the idea. I found these really cute ceramic baking pans at Michael's and Joe helped me put the gifts together. I think they turned out nice.

First day working

There we are, just after working our first Saturday afternoon at the temple.

We got to the temple a little before 11 to be set apart by the temple president. From there we were briefed about how the day would proceed and went to work. It was really interesting to see how the temple runs from behind the scenes. Joe and I have been patrons at the temple less than 10 times combined, so we still have a lot to learn, but I think this will be the best opportunity for learning. If you want more details you'll have to ask me or Joe in person. We were done a little before 5 and I was starving! We didn't know how to work in a lunch break, so we'll have to work on that next time. We'll be serving every first and third Saturday 11-5.

I'm excited for our testimonies to be strengthened, as well as our eternal relationship.

Church stuff

As most of you all know, Joe and I were sealed in the Salt Lake temple on October 5, 2007. After a few months of being here in Georgia we each received callings; Joe is the assistant ward clerk and I'm the 1st counselor in the Primary Presidency.
In March we were asked to talk in church on Easter Sunday. Joe was speaking about the atonement and I was speaking about resurrection. Apparently someone enjoyed our talks because a week or so later we received a letter to work in the Atlanta temple. It was a shock. I thought only old/retired people worked in the temple. After getting over our shock, we have decided that we will do it. We start on June 7th and will work every 1st and 3rd Saturday of the month.
I'll update again after we start.