Youth Conference 2011...Moroni's Quest

This past weekend Dale and I were able to participate in our Stake Youth Conference along with the girls.

Youth Conference was titled, Moroni's Quest. We spent the 3 days and reenacted stories from the Book of Mormon in chronological order.All the wards were in charge of a reenactment and there were some that were done by multiple kids in the Stake. They prerecorded all the speaking parts and music so the kids just had to get up and perform and not have to memorize their lines, it was their voice in the recording  though.

We didn't stay in wards though, we stayed in tribes and Dale and I were tribe leaders. Our tribe was 

The Smithling Warriors aka the Jimmerites.There were many creative tribe names. 

 It started off at the Stake Center and they did the story of Lehi's family and the slaying of Laban. 

We then headed off to a ranch that was owned by someone in our Stake about 50 miles west of us.

Some of our Tribe at the the church
Our lime green head bands were easy to spot

View from our tent when we arrived at the ranch

These guys were on the ranch. They pretty much got out of your way when you came by.
The longhorn that is in front is expecting

Our tribe at the first reenactment

 Day 2

Our tribe flag

Brittney and Marti
Brittney was in the "With all your Mights" tribe

Dale, directing our Ward's reenactment
He looks so official

This is our Ward's reenactment, King Noah and Abinadi
Makenzie is dancing for  King Noah in this scene and Brittney is fanning him.

Marti and Makenzie
Makenzie's tribe was the "Anti-Fight-Contrites aka no fights"

We are still smiling

Dale the Nephite Warrior

Dale the serious warrior

Makenzie the Lamanite warrior

Smile Brittney

Helaman and the Stripling Warriors Battle

Makenzie and friends in battle

Dale is dead
We knelt down instead of laying down due to all the cow pies

Our Tribe
The Jimmerites

The Jimmerites camp site

Root beer float time

After the root beer floats we headed back to the reenactment place.

They did the story of Samuel the Lamanite and there was Samuel on the wall preaching and the kids all threw paper bombs at him. It was fun. We then proceeded to another spot where the kids were all spread out and blind folded.

All the youth were blind folded while they listened to booming thunder

It was dark while the youth listened to the storm. 

They had them take off their blind folds and out of the trees with fog came a person all in white. It was a reenactment of Christ coming to visit. They man chosen to depict Christ was in a shining white robe and had a spot light on him. He came through the crowd and shook hands while the song, This is the Christ" was playing. You can't even put into words the feelings people had. After he departed we went back into our tribe camp site and had a testimony meeting. One of our youth commented, that even though it wasn't really Christ, they still wanted to touch him and another one said it made them want to be with him. It was a very spiritual experience for the youth and the adults. 

After the testimony meeting we looked up to a clear sky.

The kids laid on a blanket and star gazed

Some of our tribe star gazing

Jimmerite headband

Day 3

Breaking camp before breakfast and the final battles

Brittney lines up on the Nephite side for the flour battle
The flour bombs are made by putting flour into nylons and tyeing hem closed.
When you get hit with one they leave flour marks. You can pick them up and use them over and over

I got into the action

Brittney

Makenzie

She's getting excited to go home and shower

After the flour battle we had another battle between the Nephites and Lamanites where Moroni was the last Nephite alive and he buried the plates. they then had Moroni coming back to give the plates to Joseph Smith.

It was a great learning experience for the youth and hopefully they had fun participating in it. 

When we got home, we were hot and dirty. It was in the 90's this weekend and there was no running water at this ranch, they brought in port-a-potties and had coolers of water set up every where for drinking, but that was it! The girls and I decided to knock a layer of dirt off by jumping into the pool with our clothes on.

When we got home we jumped in the pool with our clothes on.
I kind of cheated, I took my jean shorts off and put my running shorts on

That felt good