Girls Camp 2010

"Be Strong and Courageous"

Girls Camp this year was an A.R.M.Y. theme A Righteous Mormon Youth. My good friends Ashley and Stefanie were called as camp directors and they both agreed that since my baby was only going to be 4 months old I wouldn't want to go, but they would be grateful if I would be a guest speaker. I agreed I would and they assigned me the topic of "Dress and Appearance" from the Strength of Youth pamphlet. Then the week before camp both Stef and Ashley called me and said they decided I just needed to come to camp, and with all the stress of Jon's stroke I couldn't have agreed more. So I ended up going Wednesday night then staying through Friday. I'm glad I did I get so much strength and testimony building from girls camp, and I look forward to any time being able to hang out with Ashley and Stef. The main guest speaker this year was amazing she was truly inspired. She is from Utah and she is paralyized from falling off a cliff. So her talk was about finding the possitive in your trails and getting through them. It really meant alot to me and since we had just gone through everything with Jon it spoke true to my heart. I couldn't thank the lady enough for the special words she gave.

I wanted to give a talk about modest dress that would be informative but not redundant. So from March till August I studied every talk and any information I could find on modest dress. I found several talks that taught that are bodies are gifts from our Heavenly Father and we should treat them with the respect of a temple. So that's what I based my talk on. I downloaded the 4 main talks that I liked the best and put them into a video presentation. I was really scared, but I prayed for courage and the ability to teach though the spirit. When I got up there it was one of those experiences you hear about all the time it just seem to present it self perfectly. I wasn't scared and things just came alive. I was really grateful for the experience and was glad it turned out like it did.

After Girls Camp I was asked to sing in sacrament meeting. I have sang in sacrament many of times but never by myself, and that has been a dream of mine for a very long time. When it came to it I was never brave enough to get up there, so I asked one of my leaders from when I was a young women if she would be willing to play for me. I kept telling myself for years if I get Nancy to help me nothing would go wrong and it will be beautiful. She agreed to help me and play the piano even though I changed my song twice. I picked one of the songs from the CD we used at Girls Camp " Valiant Faith" I practiced and practiced I knew the words by heart and I could even sing it with out the music, but when Sunday came I was scared to death. Nancy assured me that it was beautiful and everything would be fine. So I said a prayer that I wouldn't get scared and that my voice wouldn't crack. Jon told me a story just before I went up that is in the scriptures and now I can't remember who he said it was, but he said he was supposed to speak and he wasn't a good public speaker so he said a prayer and asked the Lord to help him. When he got up the spirit spoke through him and he sounded amazing and no one ever knew it wasn't him. So I took Jon's advice and said another prayer that my song would be like my testimony. Well I knew that the Lord helped me because my knees shook the whole time and my voice was very shaky, but no one in the audience heard it.