Youth Conference {Bear Lake}

Two weeks after girls camp, we were gathering again for another camp out. This time it was for Youth Conference. With our ward being so young, our Bishop opened up the opportunity for all ages between 12-18 to attend. This is our cute group of 6 girls (and us 2 leaders) that went this year.
{Emma, Marissa, Taylor, Lizzie, Adrianna, Brittni, Me and Nikki}
Lucky for us, the Smith's let us use their family cabin in Bear Lake to facility our Youth Conference so we didn't have a cost for location. What an awesome couple they are and I enjoyed every minute we had with them there.
Our theme for Youth Conference was what the entire church youth theme is "Be Strong and of a Good Courage" What a powerful theme it is! We used this theme to do a bunch of survivor type activities where they were broken up in teams. Each leader picked one leader/prophet in church history to teach their story of how they were strong and courageous and then acted out the story in some type of challenge. As the were competing from activity to activity the youth would collect a new piece to our puzzle. Our afternoon activities the kids gathered 20 out 25 pieces and come the evening we had a group activity for them to earn the other 5 pieces. The evening activity I taught the story about David and Goliath and the courage and strength David had as he pleaded with King Saul to let him fight Goliath. With Goliath being physically armed, David chose to be spiritually armed and on his way to the valley to battle, David grabbed his sling shot and 5 rocks. So to act out this story the youth got to shoot water balloons at "Goliath's". Thank you to our Bishopric and YM leaders for volunteering to be Goliath.
I think the men had more fun than the youth!
The next day was scheduled to go to the Minnetonka Caves in the morning with the beach in the afternoon. Long story short the Cave worker forgot his keys, so plan B became beach all day with yummy shakes when we were done. Aren't these girls so cute? I am so lucky I get to spend so much time with them. We spent probably 4 hours at the beach playing frisbee and tackling the boys off the tube brought by the Howards. We had close to 12 people on this tube at all times, usually trying to knock someone off or dunk the boys trying to tip us over or climb on. I haven't laughed that hard in a long time nor gotten that many bruises at the same time.

Like promised, after we were done at the beach we went to La Beau's for their famous shakes.
That night two more YW leaders joined us for testimony meeting. The mosquitoes noticed fresh blood and bit Bonnie right on the left eye brow. It swelled instantly, but it wasn't until the morning that it turned into a swollen eye! Hilairous
Before we left Saturday morning to come home, we had all the youth hold up their puzzle pieces. It spelled "Be Strong and of a Good Courage"
What a busy month filled with nothing but planning, preparing, packing, unpacking, cleaning, etc from youth activities but I can honestly say I had a BLAST and I am so grateful for my calling! I love spending time with the youth. I gain so much strength from them and I am constantly amazed at the strength they have been given to fight the daily battles Satan has put in their paths.