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Youth Conference Highlights

Youth Conference started off pretty rocky. Wasn't organized, capture the flag was a mess, way too much free time, but it all ended on the high note.

To be fair, our family was pretty solid. With almost half being from Chelsea, I did get to know the youth of our ward better, while still making connections to other parts of the stake. Low point of our family had to be Clayton. To start off, we had a get-to-know you game of Loaded Questions. The craziest thing Clayton had ever done was jump off a bridge, with no water underneath, resulting in his broken arm. On his own he was sullen, hot, dehydrated and quiet, but whenever he got into a big group of people, he became the screaming, rude, arrow-shooting maniac we knew him as most of the time. It was a small blessing that he did not try to be in our skit. He was literally like a two-year-old, and had to be babysat most of the trip.

Other than that though, the first day went great. Despite having tons of free time, I was able to find people in my ward and family to hang out with who were easy to talk to and fast friends. I always tell Mommy that it's way easier to get to know people when you are forced together, and Youth Conference was no exception. Just like Interlochen, you find the people you will be hanging out with for the rest of the experience super fast.

Day two was probably the low point of the whole experience. Veiled from the truth that all the Youth wouldn't be getting into the lake till around 2:00, we had to fumble through 3-4 hours of other activities before getting to the stellar boat building activity. This is when I discovered that many of my family, mostly the girls, basically didn't want to do anything. They had an excuse for making every activity undoable, or I had to cajole them into doing anything. I don't know, unethusiastic-ness is just not really the Kennedy way. Like if we do something, we take it seriously, and when so many people around me wouldn't even participate, that was very frustrating. Mommy, Daddy and I were all very disappointed when, during the "broken bow" part of Nephi's story, when we had to make a bow from PVC pipe and had a competition to see what team could get the best score, our family got literally 0 points. Meanwhile next to us, teams are getting 12-13 points.

Everything was finally made better by the boat building activity. It was organized, to the point, and easy to understand. With our whole family working together, we made a practically unsinkable boat. We finally all worked together as a family, even the unenthusiastic girls helping by ripping and handing out duct tape.  The Leaf-hi was a sea worthy vessel, and was proven resilient when tested under the weight of 6 kids, only sinking when tipped off balance by the bodies inside. Although we didn't win in speed, we were by far the sturdiest boat of the fleet.

The conference only got better from there. Although hot, when we got back to our base camp pavilion, we continued the fun with diorama building. Using Peeps, pipe cleaners, some paper and markers, we made a kick-butt version of Abinadi burning at the stake. I'm serious, for like 30 minutes and using our whole family, we did really well. Of course, we didn't win, but the judges were biased more toward an explanation-based point system versus what they actually saw. But the young women at church today were blown away by our master piece which Mommy actually brought home with us :)

Just like the skit, family home evening was a perfect mixture of spirituality, planned and improvised lessons, and team work. Plus everyone was pretty tired from the lake, so it was way chiller than the day before.

Unlike many of the youth, I thoroughly enjoyed the hikes back to our camp ground. Maybe it's from spending summers at Interlochen, but I love hiking through the forest. Especially when it's getting dark, is a little cooler and it's not too long.

When we got back to camp, we started getting into the spiritual back end of Youth Conference, spear-headed by President and Sister Olsen, who always brought the spirit with their cute Sariah and Lehi reenactments, we had a practical representation of the tree of life. With mist simulated with fog machines, and temptations along our little iron rod, it was a very cool experience to finally arrive at the end of the rod and sit under the fairy-light lit tree of life and eat our fruit snacks. Although many of the activities were not planned to the fullest at Youth Conference, the ones that were planned, were very well done.

Having been invited to the "cool girls" tent, I discovered that I really liked most of the girls in our ward, and disliked a few. Morgan Cobb, a junior in high school, not only runs probably 10 miles a day, but is a math and science wiz, and wrote in her journal before joining the conversation. Although she and her brother were pretty quiet throughout all of youth conference, she was a fantastic witty addition to the conversation. Brooke, who came to out tent, but is in the Ypsi ward, is obviously a resilient young woman. Although interrupted and cut off by Sarah Read, she told this super sad story about how the young women in her ward have cut her out of their friend group, and how she had this toxic personality and that was why they didn't like her, but then discovered when she went to a camp in Utah, that she made fast friends. Brooke was seriously one of the best girls in our family and she just has all this self doubt, even though she is this super enthusiastic, upbeat girl.  Mattie Christie and Phoebe Gibb were also part of the conversation, and are both great girls, having included me in their conversation and activities throughout the whole experience, but after the conversation was dominated by Sarah Read, quickly yeeted out of there.

But despite all that goodness in one tent, Sarah Read, the girl in our ward who hadn't hung out with us the whole Youth Conference, dominated the conversation with her haughty attitude. I now know that she is a pole vaulter, "and knows anyone who's anybody in pole-vaulting in Michigan." She has a boy friend named Grant, who was apparently leading this obnoxious midnight singing across the camp, she's going to Utah for college and she is apparently an expert at making friends from boys. But, thankfully I've met the girls in the ward who really click with me.

We ended the whole experience with testimony meeting. It was interesting because President Ward at the beginning asked for everyone to limit their testimonies to "pure testimonies," only testifying of simple truths. It turned out really well though because I feel like more people got up because it was short and to the point testimonies. It went really well overall, and definitely ended on a high note. Plus the Kennedys definitely represented at testimony meeting. As Mommy says, people will be able to make their own judgments of us after that:)

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