Youth Conference 2016

Austin and I had the awesome privilege of being pilots/co-pilots for the largest bi-stake youth conference on the Palouse! About 290 youth. The theme was "Fly Right" from Elder Hales' April 2015. We acted like ma and pa for the trek but it was definitely not as strenuous. On Friday, we did some get to know you activities (some better than others) that we had to plan but we also had some good laughs and great competition with the hula hoops and human knot.

After lunch, we had classes on spiritual and temporal checklists, dating, and signs of the times. First, I was surprised at how many actual pilots there are around here. I didn't realize that Schweitzer engineering was like a mini Boeing. So they had several pilots come in and talk about things pertaining to their job and relating it to making choices, etc. Then they did a get to know you activity, learned a dance, had dinner, and then had the dance. We chaperoned at the dance in the hallway and tried to make sure people didn't leave the building or wander through the classrooms. Let's just say it was an eventful evening trying to manage all of that;)

Saturday was at the challenge course, which was at someone's backyard essentially. He owns several acres. It was beautiful! We finally bonded as a squad doing these activities despite a lot of the kids getting after each other when they failed yet again to do the spider web challenge haha. Austin and I weren't allowed to do things for them but my main focus was to get them to speak positively about each other-I didn't realize that would be such a challenge! All in all we had some good laughs with tire swings, team wall, ants on a log, and more. After lunch, we did the second half of activities which involved fly swat frisbee. It was like ultimate but with a small frisbee and a small noodle that you had to "swat" to deflect it from the other team. And the whole point of the game was to knock down the other team's bottle.

We did a hike that we had to make decisions on which route to take to get there. Gorgeous view at the top. It was amazing. Then afterwards, we did a crash scenario and groups of youth had to decide to stay and wait for help or walk and get help and then decide what the most useful items would be for them.

Overall, we loved our experience! We're so glad we did it. The youth here are really amazing.

Our awesome crew

 

Playing Fly Swat which is a twist to ultimate frisbee

Austin captured this from the background. One challenge was to get your whole team over the wall. Developed several bruises from that. :)

Tire swing challenge

Getting across the "pond" on wood slats.

Spider web challenge. It was interesting to say the least!

The dating class on Friday. 

Because the theme was fly right, all the kids got these awesome glasses. I just happened to find one laying around. :)