EFY Experience this Summer!

EFY experience in Cedar City, Utah:

Bad Start:
I have to admit, I really botched the 1st night with the Councilors, BC's (Building Councilors), and Coordinators. The Sunday night devotional with a session director is usually the most spiritual night for the Councilors, because it is a chance for the Session Director to really teach the doctrine of the kingdom, and focus on their issues and things that will lift them and help them with their issues.

I took a different approach, instead of teaching, I wanted to get feedback from the BC's, Coordinators, and Councilors, and so I presented what I thought I would do for the week. That is when the rubber met the road, their looks of disbelief, laughter at the plan, and doubting head shakes were enough to inform me that I wasn't going to be their favorite Session Director. Most of these councilor's had just finished an amazing week with the EFY big wigs like Randy Bird, Brad Wilcox, John Bythway, or some other amazing Session Director that has been doing it for ever, so they were not ready for the rookie, who wanted to change they way they were used to seeing EFY run.

I started off by presenting that I wanted to have a virtue award that each participant would give to someone they really admired through out the week. The boy and the girl that received the most virtue awards would receive a special prize. They shot that idea down, because they said that people would feel bad at the end of the week because no one would selected them, or 298 kids would feel bad and 2 would walk away thinking they were great.

I made a compromise immediately as I realized that they were right. I think that they saw this as a weakness, but also that I was willing to listen to their suggestions, and make changes. The only problem with this start was that every other idea I brought up received the same sort of beating.

My next idea dealt Friday nights, as a councilor I had to breaking up kid making out sessions, inappropriate dancing, and PDA, throughout the week and hated it. (Maybe, I was just jealous I wasn't the one doing it J/K) I thought that I would put an end to that sort of stuff, so I had an elaborate plan to have whoever broke one of these rule stand up and give a 5 minute talk the next day at EFY. They shot me down again and told me that would totally embarrass those that broke the rule and so I had to change that idea too.

After getting shot down several other times that night, I totally lost the confidence of the Councilors and BCs and there was some major complaning and doubt that settled in their minds. I had lost their trust and I didn't have a lot of confidence as I stood in front of them knowing of their worries, especially since it was the last week for most of them that summer and they wanted to end on a good week.

I prayed that night, with great earnestness, knowing that I needed the Lord to soften their hearts. If I couldn't convince the leaders of the youth that I was spirit directed and that the rules I made up were inspired how could I ever get them to enforce the rules with the youth and see any sort of unity that week.

The Change:
When I woke up in the morning, it seemed like the fog had lifted. One of the coordinators stood up in the business meeting before the participants started arriving and gave the BC's and councilors the smack down. He called them to repentance and said that he had heard way to much complaining from the BC's and that if they didn't change their attitudes towards me and the week, they would ruin it for everybody.

It was a powerful talk and it gave me confidence that this wasn't my program, this was the Lord's program and he wasn't going to let me fail. He loved the youth too much and he would provide a way for us to implement some of the ideas I had the night before. What was amazing, was that someone said at another session that their Session Director made the youth leave their cell phones in their rooms so that they wouldn't be tempted to take them out during classes and text.

Everyone thought this was a great idea and it correlated with what I wanted to have happen that week. I presented the, "Go ye forth from Babylon," theme that night at the Family Home Evening message. The councilors all jumped on board. I reiterated the no PDS, making out, cell phones, or listening to music during classes. (I think next year I will make a challenge for them to put away all game systems or bad music for the entire week! We will see how I am received at that session?) Anyways, I changed the idea from giving a 5 minute talk to writing me a personal letter explaining why they had decided to break that rule, and then they needed to write me a page using scriptures, the Strength of Youth Pamphlet, or conference talks, explaining why that rule was so important to live, and a plan of how they intended on living it for the rest of their lives. (This suggestion was also given by the coordinators!)

Since, I learned from just presenting rules on Sunday night, I decided that I would get some youth involved in the sharing on that first night, so that they knew I was interested in them and their stories, and would love to call upon them throughout the week to help me teach. Brother Robinson came down early and said hello, as he was walking with me into the presentation he saw one of his students who had lost her father not too long ago.

Since, I was going to be talking about the importance of good friends, and about the importance of getting to know their best friends (Members of their family) better, I thought that her sharing her testimony about not taking your Dad for granted would be a perfect. I asked her, she said that she needed some time to think about it, and just before I was to get up on stage she said that she would be willing to get up in front of 300 people she didn't know and bear her testimony.

She testified of the importance of appreciating your families, parents, and spoke about them being her best friends! She spoke through tears her desire to take back all of the nights she went out with friends, and at times even avoided her family, and has been alot better about spending time with them. It was a powerful testimony and there weren't too many dry eyes in the audience.

It was a powerful night, it seemed that the councilor's faith in me and the ideas I had for the week were accepted. It was such a rewarding experience to feel like the Lord had soften their hearts and His spirit had been present in the meeting, and all of us were edified.

This first teaching night to the youth kind of just happened. I know that the Lord was involved in the presentation, preparation, and conclusion of the night. It was amazing in fact every talk I gave in EFY was written the night before I gave it. Not that I hadn't prepared all summer to teach at EFY, but on Monday night, I had the participants write down things that they were struggling with that they wanted me to address throughout the week. It was a great tool to use in my lessons, reading from their papers, and Tausha and I even got a kick out of reading them on Monday night. Some of them were pretty hilarious like the one that said, "I struggle with girl, they all want me!" and various sundry comments about friends, immorality, and even some great one's like, "How can I be a better missionary!"

The other issue I had going into this week was that Tausha was not interested at all in going. I had to make all of the tending arraignments myself, and she was not excited about spending the week with me down at EFY with annoying teenagers. She felt like if she was going to find tenders for a whole week that she should be laying on the beach, especially because she wasn't getting paid a dime from the entire experience.

Well what I realized is that even Tausha's got into the EFY experience, I mean, I guess she was stuck with me so I guess she just realized that she might as well make the best of it! She started reaching out to two health councilor's who hadn't been included as much the week before. As they worked on gluing the virtue awards together for me, they bonded and became best friends throughout that week. Tausha even took, "Pride and Prejudice," over and watched it with them one night, while I was visiting the boys in their night devotionals.

Tausha had a great week, she got up in front of the kids and danced, she went to all of the classes, and got so involved with the health councilors that I even had to stop her from talking during one of my talks! (It was hilariously embarrassing, but I could hear her talking louder than I could here myself talking!) She leaned over to me after the week was over and said maybe we can go to Virginia next year.

It took a while for me to figure out how I was going to do present the virtue award because it was so earnestly shot down on Sunday night, so it took me a little longer to figure it out. I decided that everyone would have to earn their award and they would not be able to keep more than one award, therefore as soon as they got their virtue award they had to give it away. That way everyone would be looking for new people to meet, and look for people doing service so that they could give away their virtue award. Participants would then be called up to share a story of someone helping them and so all the kids were reminded daily of the power of service.

The theme for the week was, "Let virtue garnish thy thought unceasingly, and then shall thy confidence wax strong in the presence of God..." D&C 121:45. I had them repeat it every morning and I think most of them had it memorized. The virtue award idea caught on fire! One councilor named Glen had a great group of 14-15 year olds in his group. As they were eating lunch they noticed that their was a guy with special needs who was sweating from head to toe, because kids were stacking up trays on a table. They came in way to fast for him and he wasn't able to get all of the food off the trays, so that he could separate all of the utensils.

One of the BC's mentioned that Glen's group would be late to the devotional because they were helping the man with special needs clean off all of the trays. I announced this great act of service to the youth and told them to follow their examples! It was an amazing week. We only had one kid who almost was sent home. He put a chocolate ding dong in his councilor's oven and turned it on high for several minutes!

The ding dong caught on fire and could have caught the whole building on fire if the councilor hadn't smelt it from all the way down the hall. They entire floor stunk of burnt ding dong, and the ding dong that started the microwave had run out of the building. We tried to be as rough with him as possible, telling him that we would probably have to send him home. He waited as the coordinator's called his parents and the EFY Director to see if we needed to send him home or not.

We asked him what he thought he ought to do to help make up for what he had done, and he said we would be willing to pick up trays after lunch and miss his free time. We thought that would be a good idea and wasn't sent home, but had to pay for the microwave. The funny thing about this idea is that everyone else just thought that he was being nice and serving everyone so he had about 50 virtue awards in his pockets and couldn't get them out fast enough!

Well to make a long story longer, councilor's started coming up to me throughout the week and especially after Thursday night's lesson on the Atonement and said that the had had the greatest week of their EFY experience. I don't know if they were just saying that, or if they really did, but I know that it was the Lord's mercy and help that made that week at least bearable for me. I don't know how I would have done it without HIM!

Thursday night, I shared the analogy of my Autistic son Luke grabbing a pyrex measuring cup that Tausha had boiled in the microwave and burned his hand with a 2nd degree burn. At the insta-care, the lady had me hold Luke down so that she could tare the skin off his hand because it was dead and the blister need to be removed so that it wouldn't get infected and so new skin could grow. As I held my son, I remember seeing his face looking up at me and his eyes saying, "why are you doing this to me, don't you love me?" I felt the atonement in a way that I had never understood before and I know that that story came to me at EFY the night before.

All in all, this week was one of the greatest experiences of my life, and I will be forever grateful for the Lord's trust in allowing me to spend some time with the youth and making a living out of it. I feel so blessed!