Young Women's Conference-"Arise and Shine Forth"

So, a couple of weeks ago our Stake had what is called Stake Young Women's Conference. It's like a mini youth conference, but only for young women. It's not a standard activity done in the young women's program, but the Bloomington IN Stake has done it for years and it's a much loved activity among the young women. When I was called into the Stake Young Women's Presidency they handed over this activity to me to plan and take charge of. I guess the President and each counselor take turns planning and leading certian activities and the counselor I replaced was in charge of YW conference, so by default I got this activity. I have to say that for several months this conference was source of serious stress for me, but the actual weekend went very well and the girls I think had a great time. We did this year in Terre Haute since I was in charge. Typically, it's done at the Stake Ctr., but I think it was a nice change for some of us who always travel the hour+ to get to the Stake Ctr. (And it helped me greatly to have it locally with having to work full time.) The girls traveled in on Friday night and we had a brown bag fashion show and then we housed the girls friday night at members' homes here in Terre Haute and they came back saturday morning for a fun day filled with a keynote speaker, workshops, and a service project. The theme was "Arise and Shine Forth". The keynote speakers and workshops were tailored to fit with that theme and then the girls did a service project where they made Christmas Ornaments for Hospice patients of the Wabash Valley(Terre Haute). The weekend was a lot of fun and we have great girls in this stake that truly know how to "Arise and Shine Forth"! Below are some fun pictures from the weekend.


With the brown bag fashion show we took brown paper sack from Krogers and filled them with misc. things like garbage sacks, ribbon, scrap fabric, duct tape, beads, tissue paper, and any other fun things I could fine at the dollar store and then we labeled the bags after stores like Gap, Buckle, Old Navy, etc.... Then we divided the girls up into teams of 2 or 3 . We gave them like 20 minutes to dress one girl up and design her outfit and then the others were in charge of announcing her as she walked down the runway. This group here won first place...they were so funny! The group had the store Buckle and they decided that their model would go after a "hobo" look...she even had a "hobo purse" (white garbage bag). The girls had a great time with the activity.






These two girls just barely came into Young Women's. The conference was the first YW activity they had taken part in. They were so excited to be there.....it was nice to see that excitement!







The girls had a great time coloring the wooden ornaments for the Hospice patients...and they did a great job....the ornaments turned out so cute!











Here I am with some of our leaders throughout the stake. We have awesome leaders and women in our stake that are amazing examples to the young women and me!