Greetings, Sisters,

Just thought I would pass on the ideas from a great standards night tonight in my home ward.  The girls have been doing "footprints" every Sunday in YW opening exercises where each girl who has stood as a witness of Christ during the week stands and gives a little explanation of what she did before sticking a construction paper shoe outline on the wall near the ceiling. The girls are trying to make a footprint border around the whole room by November, and they are about halfway there now.

A few weeks ago the girls (outside) dipped their bare feet into acrylic paint and then put their footprints onto a white tablecloth. They had the cloth on a table for display tonight with it's footprint border and bright footprints all over so the girls could autograph it with markers.

In a past mutual activity, the girls had made their own footprint by putting a bare foot into a styrofoam meat tray filled with plaster of paris (I think the counselor who works for an orthodontist was the expert helper). A week later they had painted the "sculpture." These were displayed tonight also.

A few weeks ago, the YW pres had assigned all of the girls to find out about an ancestor, further back than their parents or their generation, who had stood as a witness of Christ so they could give a presentation at Standards Night. In a funny way she told the girls that they had to give details; she didn't want to hear generalities.

So tonight, most of the girls were prepared, even the non-member, with a great experience to share. In our family's case, it generated a great family home evening of going through the genealogy and recounting stories for our daughter to choose from. In other families, they were on the phone to relatives all over the country and South America getting information especially if they had more than one daughter and had to show fairness by giving stories from both sides of the family.

The stories were memorable - mainline Mormon pioneer stories, family members who had prepared their descendants to receive the Gospel, etc., and the girls gave good presentations. (We even found out about a family related to us with genealogy records we don't have!)

The YW pres finished the evening with an experience today at the beach with her three young children: While she was walking along the edge of the water and trying to hurry up her kids, she turned back to see her young daughter trying to step in her mother's footprints before the water washed them away. So the mother started making deeper prints that wouldn't disappear so fast.

Then she compared her deeper footprints to the deeper testimonies of the Young Women and told them that the testimonies they gain will be a guide to their posterity, so it is important for the girls to be strong now.