New Beginnings

Here is the mural we made for the front of the room.
We had six girls in attendance. They pose here with
our stake young women's counselor.

The front of the room taken from the back.

A display of some of the new personal progress materials

What better refreshments for the "jungle" than fresh fruit!

Wednesday was New Beginnings, "It's a Jungle out There". It seemed like we had a lot of stress putting it together, mostly because we all work during the day and had trouble getting together to work on things. It went well though and was fun while it was going on. My biggest problem was that I had a fairly long talk. During the first half of it I covered the 2010 theme and tied it into our New Beginnings theme. We talked about how there are a lot of dangers in the jungle, but the girls also run into dangers in the world today. These can be mostly avoided by recognizing them and knowing what to avoid. The second half of my talk was about the new personal progress program. We mentioned that the values covered while doing personal progress help the girls avoid those dangers they face. We also covered many of the changes and tried to answer any questions the moms might have. Well, the talk wasn't really my problem. My problem was that I started it out with a little bit of a scratchy throat. By the time I was finished I had basically no voice at all. It's a couple of days later now and my voice is just beginning to come back. I still can't sing; the Relief Society is supposed to sing in branch conference tomorrow. Oh, well. I'm just glad I will be able to actually talk when the stake YW leaders meet with us.