Your Amazing Race-Youth Conference

Friday was the Youth Conference:  “Your Amazing Race.”  Mark and I were asked to head one of the teams.  We met everyone Friday evening.  It was a casual evening, at least we were casually dressed.  There was a meeting in the chapel first, with talks and explanations.  Then we went into the cultural hall where the kids were divided into their teams.  We had a few minutes to talk with them- to get to know them a bit and they us.  Before dinner, there had to be a girl and a boy from each team to learn the etiquette challenge and teach it to the rest of the group before we could have dinner.  They all did fine with that.

After dinner, the kids all had to learn three dances, the Virginia Reel, Swing Dance and a Latin dance called the Merengue.  That one looked really fun.  Actually, they were all really fun.  After the kids learned the dances, they had to actually do them with three different partners from different teams.  The partners then had to sign their dance card.  When they got all three signatures, then they would turn in the dance cards to one of their group leaders, who then turned them all in to the stake leaders.  The first group who got their dance cards turned in got a 10 minute head-start.  It ended with a four-way tie.

No, we weren’t one of them.

The kids seemed to have a good time.  It was interesting to me to see how kids dance these days.  There were a few boys, particularly who have some pretty good break dancing moves.  I’ve been out of the loop with the youth for so long, so it was interesting.

We didn’t get home until 11:00!  And frankly, I slept lousy, but I was up around 6:30.  We had been given $5.00 for each person on our team to buy lunch for.  We had decided we would just go to the grocery store and buy the food for our lunch.  I got it cleared, so we knew it was okay.  I had wanted to make the hoagi sandwiches, but, we didn’t have time and it ended up being fine.

We got away late because some of our kids got to the church late, but we ended up having everyone.  The race was on.

Some of the challenges included meeting with the missionaries and getting pass-along cards.  We then drove them to a shopping center where they were required to give out their cards to strangers.  This is a sad commentary on me, but I told one of my girls when she completed the challenge:  “You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din.”  (Rudyard Kipling) I told her how scary it was for me to do what she just did.

At lunch, we spread everything out and the kids made their own sandwiches.  One girl wouldn’t eat anything, no matter what I said.  Finally, I talked to Mindy about it.  She just said, “Oh well.”  I caught her later eating pretzels.  I never really understood what the big deal was.

The service project they did was write to missionaries who are serving from the stake.  Then we went to an equestrian park and cleaned out trash cans.  There ended up being about 10.  One of them had maggots in it!  Ewww!  But we got the job done!

There were games and activities throughout the day, including learning three foreign phrases, one in French, one in Korean and on in Estonian. I think the phrase translated said:  "Stand in holy places."

We learned our Korean phrase.

The other scary thing they had to do was do a one minute commercial with two strangers and talk about modesty.  One of our girls happened upon a former high school teacher and he talked to her for about 30 seconds, but they couldn’t get anyone else to talk to them.

We ended up coming in dead last.  I didn’t care.  In fact, I don’t think we even finished, because everyone was waiting for us at the church. We got a group picture before we went inside.  I knew it would be hard to get us all together with everything going on.

They closed with a testimony meeting.  All of the adult group leaders had an opportunity to talk to the kids.  Mark spoke for us, but I did bear my testimony.

We had dinner after that and ended the evening with a dance.  Mark and I helped clean up.  We stayed for a while, but then went on home.

We stopped on the way home for a roast.  After a shower, I read a bit, but I was really tired and ended up going to bed fairly early.

It was a good experience for me.  These kids are being better prepared than we ever were growing up.  But then, I believe more is expected of them now.  The Lord expects our youth to be ready to serve missions at 18 and 19, and they are stepping up.  I'm really glad we got to participate.  Mark has a good rapport with the youth. I don't always know how to relate.  They're good kids, though.