Lives Under Construction – Young Women in Excellence
Shared by:
Leighann Gilson
Draper, UT
Here are some pictures from the event
I didn’t get a shot with the sundae items on the table or with the displays from the girls set up. Also, we tied a caution tape bow around every other chair and I didn’t get a picture of that either. We had quilts on the empty easels – I’ll have to track down pictures of our quilts that we will be making and of the quilt squares that we gave out. Enjoy!
We used a theme that could be used any year – “Lives Under Construction”. We used 1 large roll of caution tape from Home depot ($18) to decorate with (we made bows and bunting with it). We placed tools and hard hats around the room as center pieces. We put up an old set of plans along the back wall for a back drop and had a some saw horses with shovels and such as additional decorations. We had 2 tables up in the front with large value colored flags behind them that had been made for us in past years. We had the girls bring something that they had worked on or a scripture they had read to display on those tables. Between the tables – we had a “temple” made out of corsage boxes filled with hand crocheted white baby booties. We have about 40 girls and I got 33 pairs done over the past year – but I know other wards who have had the Relief Society help with that duty. Inside the corsage boxes, there was a picture of the temple with a quote from a song called “Generations” By Sara Groves – “Remind me of this with every decision I make, Generations will reap what I sow. I can pass on a curse or a blessing to those I will never know”. We had 4 topics to speak about – Location (Facing your tent toward the temple instead of toward Sodom, Standing in Holy Places), Foundation (Building your Foundation on Christ), tools (using the scriptures and personal progress as tools in your life), Plans (setting goals with the Personal progress program – it helps you see the Plan that Heavenly Father has for you as His daughter and helps you make and keep plans for your self). The presidency each took one of the topics and then we had a YW bear her testimony on that topic. We introduced our YW construction project for the next year – building quilts. Each girl received a quilt square with a picture of the Temple in the middle and then quilt squares in the colors of the values that they finished this year. We will be giving quilt squares for Christmas, birthdays, for attending meetings, attending camp, etc throughout the year. We will complete the quilts to display next YWIE. We sang “They the builders of the Nations” for our opening hymn and had one of our YW play an arrangement of hymns that she put together for her Faith project. Before we gave them the baby booties, we told them that they were not only building their lives, but they were building the lives of future generations. I told the story of my husband’s family who had incredible pioneer roots, but one generation did not develop their testimonies as youth and left the church as young adults. Their children (my husband’s father) were raised without the gospel and my husband ended up thankfully being a convert at the age of 14 – knowing nothing about his roots. The sad thing is that his family has the alcoholism root running strong and one of his uncles died from his addiction while his other uncle has had a stroke and struggles with it constantly. Had his grandparents raised their children with the blessing of the word of wisdom and the gospel – they may not have had to experience that challenge. I told them that each stitch in those booties represent decisions they make everyday that will influence their future generations so as they display these in their rooms – waiting to use them – they can think of the lives they are constructing. For refreshments we served “build your own Sundaes”. It was probably the cheapest, easiest, and most impactful YWIE we’ve done in a long time!
Just thought I’d share!