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| The Stake
did a Values Walk on the second night
of camp. They took each ward, one at a time. To set the
mood,
they played contempory, gospel oriented music during this.
Before each ward left on its walk, each girl and leader was given
a sandwich baggie which had seven colored rocks in it (to represent the
values). Each ward was taken to a spot in the camp where another
leader stood with one of the tiki torches which had a value written on
poster board on its corresponding color stapled around the base of the
tiki hut. A short talk on that value was given (maybe two minutes
in length) at which time each participant was asked if they were
willing
to commit/recommit to living that value in their life. If so,
they
were to take the pebble from their bag and place it in a bottle which
had
a decorated tag with the value written on it. Each ward
progressed
to subsequent sites where the same process was repeated for each
of the values. These bottles were then taken to the central
campsite where the stake put them on display to remind us of our
commitments.
The last night of camp we had our Indian Princess Ceremony. This is a 10 minute ceremony which welcomes first year girls and leaders into the tribe. A story is told of a young woman who wants to bring honor to her family, learn the traditions of her people, etc. One fourth-year girl is selected from each ward and is actually dressed in indian dress. They hold tiki torches and present a small pendant to each of the first year individuals. The song "I Walk in Beauty" is sung while the pendants are passed out. We use candles during testimony meeting. My husband made small wood block holders which were drilled to hold a small eight inch tapered candle. The girls truly loved this, and it was beautiful to watch the candles burn surrounding the campfire. Our testimony meeting ran t-h-r-e-e hours, so the earliest candles burned completely out. We gave each of our seventh year girls a candle of their own to keep with a small tag bearing their name and the phrase 'a keeper of the flame'. They received this candle in addition to the one that they lit during their testimonies. We asked two of our seventh year girls to
prepare a
spiritual fireside to last about 10 minutes in length each night
just before bedtime. We chose the topics we wanted them to cover
(resisting temptation/repentance for night one, increasing friendship
and
unity between the YW for night two, and the power of prayer for night
three).
Our two girls prepared thoughts/handouts/music/scriptures/stories for
each
evening's presentation. While they did these firesides,
they
had the other 7th year girls deliver what they call "pillow talk" to
each
girl's pillow, which was a small handout reinforcing what was covered
in
the fireside. As an example, the presentation on friendship had
as
the pillow talk a heart-shaped cookie wrapped in a baggie with the
thought
attached: Our squirt gun/super soaker water gun fight was a lot of fun and very welcome in the heat of the afternoon. We had no problems at all with this one. We used the Cracker Jack Theory, and taped a copy of that thought to a box of cracker jacks for each girl. MASH (Be All That You Can Be): - One of the wards in our stake adopted the name for their group, The Celestial Wannabees. The third day of camp, they ran around to all the wards with cut out photocopied bees on yellow paper (they must have made 200 copies or so in different sizes). Some were an inch in size, others were as large as four inches. They stuck tape on the back of each of these bees. As they came to our campsite, their ward screamed, you are being swarmed. They then came running at everyone and stuck a paper bee on everybody's shirts, stuck some on the cooking table, tents, etc. They also had some of their girls hand out pieces of the candy, bit-o-honey. At a post-camp party just last night, one of the just-released counsellors in our ward passed out a laminated bookmark which had a floral graphic at the top with the following poem. Blossoms
If all
God's blooms were hollyhocks, A pansy
glorifies the shade, If each
of us were asters blue, Whatever
flower you may be
Enjoy life as you go. Life your head, stretch your stem, And let your blossom show.
She then had added the following thought on
the back
for everyone, |