new beginnings

One of the big events the Young Women at Church hold every year is called "New Beginnings." It's mostly for all the girls turning 12 and entering the YW program so they know what they're in for!! But also, it reinforces the purpose of the program to the other girls, and it can be pretty motivating.

We had our 2010 New Beginnings last night, and it was awesome!! Our theme was Dr. Seuss' "Oh, the places you'll go!" What a cool book and theme. Since the main purpose of YW is to help the girls achieve Personal Progress, the focus was all around that -- places you'll go with Personal Progress.


First, we had someone read the book. Then, our YW president presented all the exciting things going on Church-wide in YW this year. Basically, since they "redid" the program and added the value of Virtue (eight values now instead of seven!), they redid all the materials, the book of experiences, the rewards, the medallion, everything. She got to show off all the cool new stuff and tell everyone about it. I'm pretty excited to earn my medallion again! (I earned it when I was a YW, but since it's all "new" and I'm a leader, I can earn it again. I'm working on it.)

(Editor's Note: If you're wondering about all the terminology and stuff, I explained a lot of it here, part two of this post.)

Next, the main event of the night was a showcase of "places you'll go." If you work hard at instilling the eight values in your life, where will it take you? What can you do?

1. Faith -- go to the temple
2. Divine Nature -- go experience motherhood
3. Individual Worth -- go participate in Relief Society
4. Knowledge -- go get an education
5. Choice & Accountability -- go earn your YW medallion (finish Personal Progress)
6. Good Works -- go serve a mission
7. Integrity -- go provide leadership
8. Virtue -- go get nothing less than a temple marriage

It was awesome. We had eight mini-speakers come and they each brought a suitcase filled with things that helped them get where they were going, or things representing that goal. Then they all talked about it for a few minutes. It was so cool how it all tied in so well with the theme!

I worked on decorations for the event and I made the little flags that were on all the tables. The other organizers with me asked nicely that they be flags (instead of just signs or posters) since there were flags in the book --made sense, so I made it happen! I made the flags in Publisher then printed them and mounted them on colored posterboard to match the value colors. (Did you know they have metallic gold posterboard at Joanns? Seriously.) The crazy part was: how do I get them to stand up? Well! I wish I had a picture of this, but I taped the dowel rods to cans of chili and refried beans and green peas and then covered the cans with posterboard as well. It was AWESOME. Seriously, when I figured out how to get them to stand up on Saturday night I was giddy for like an hour. It was like discovering cold fusion or something. Very cool.

I also had to work hard to make the colors right and pastel -- the value colors are usually pretty deep and royal, so we got pastel and even neon fabric to put on the tables and I made the posterboard and the signs match that. I'm so glad it all worked out really well.





Our speakers all did a great job and were so inspirational. The Bishop finished up the night with a few words on how our possibilities are endless... and then the feast on whimsical and colorful sugar cookies and pastel marshmallows and skittles began. Hehe...


Wandering Nana who is awesome made all the fluffy tissue paper flowers. Basically, everything was on purpose and matched imagery from the book -- pastel colors, fluffy flowers, the flags, the huge mural, everything.

Other stuff:

• We had all the girls write a goal on a tag and we're going to attach them to balloons and set them off -- like this is our goal for ourselves and we're going to do whatever it takes to get it
• Wandering Nana made sweet take-home gifts for everyone; they were necklaces with "courage" on them, which is part of the theme for the year (be strong and of a good courage, from Joshua 1:9)
• All the publicity posters and invitations, plus the programs of the night's events placed on everyone's seats, matched that ginormous mural you see in the background -- they traced it and water colored it and everything! It was really a cohesive effort by everyone on the committee.
  
• We asked the parents of all the incoming girls to bring a suitcase full of things representing their daughters, and we put them on a special table. It was really cute, too.
• One of our girls actually did this -- a lot of the preparation -- for one of her 10-hour value projects. You go, Kali! She's one step closer to earning her medallion.
  

It was a great night. The girls had fun! It's also so nice to see all the hard work of preparation pay off. Oh, the places we'll go! I hope you have an awesome year and if you want a new beginning, take it.