Dear Sisters,

Earlier in the year I posted what our plans were for the Worldwide Celebration. Due to many scheduling conflicts in our stake we held our Celebration last night and it was absolutely an incredible experience. I will try and share most of the events of our day with you so this may be a little bit lengthy.

Our day began with a Young Women's Conference that went from 9:45am until 4:00pm. We had the young women pre-register for classes. They were able to go to six classes throughout the day. Two of the classes we had everyone attend. Here's the list of subjects we covered:

Journal Jars: Make journal writing fun (everyone attended)

Heart to Heart: Lip gloss class with friendshipping lesson (everyone attended)

Protect Yourself: Self defense and Personal Safety

Far Above Rubies: Straight talk about Chastity

Small Acts of Kindness: Serving those around us

First Comes Fun: Creative Dating

Believe in Miracles: Helping others find the gospel

Making Your Way in the Real World: Reverence and Respect

Preserving Memories: Family history and Scrapbooking

Keeping Your Cool: Preparing talks

Count Your Many Blessing: Overcoming Trials and Adversity

The classes were so fabulous. I'll send some separate posting regarding what some of our teachers did. We served a lunch to the girls and mid-way through the afternoon we had a cookie break where we took a group picture of all the girls that were there. One thing I was especially pleased about was that we have 158 young women on our rolls in the stake and 140 turned out for this event!

We will be mounting the photos in a paperboard frame and each young woman will receive one. I was asked by our committee to open and close the conference portion of the day. In my opening remarks I did an overview of the year we have had. We had some incredible experiences, including a tornado going through our camp at Girl's Camp this year. I used the scripture in Alma Chap. 5 which says: "Have ye received His image in your countenance? Have ye experienced a change in your hearts?" and encouraged all in attendance to be able to answer yes at the end of our day. For the closing I read the book "Will You Still Be My Daughter?" by Carol Lynn Pearson and related it to the love our Heavenly Father has for us.

This portion of the day then concluded with our Young Men joining us for dinner at 5:00pm  For the evening we had asked the young men along with parent's to share in the celebration. Here's how our evening went.

Opening Hymn: Come Follow Me

Introduction of the theme "Stand As A Witness" (yes we did have a prayer!)

Musical Number: I Know That My Redeemer Lives (we did a flute accomp.)

Introduction of Women of Scripture

Presentations were done by young women on Abish and Esther

Musical Number: Follow by Jeff Goodrich (we had an elderly brother in our stake that has a beautiful voice do this and he did it a cappella!)

Introduction of Women of Heritage

Presentations were done by 2 young women and 1 young woman leader on special women from their family history.

Musical Number: I Will Stand

Introduction of Women of Today

We had asked all young women to send us examples of how they have stood as a witness throughout the year. About 20 of them were chosen by the committee to be shared at this time. The young women who sent them in presented them to us. It was so touching to me to hear how our young women are representing the Savior in their lives.

Musical Number: I Feel My Savior's Love

The next thing we did was a slide presentation entitled Stand As a Witness in Service. Throughout this year we have taken slides of the many services our youth have performed. I had also purchased the slides of the Savior from the Museum of History in Salt Lake. A talented sister in our stake took all of these slides and put them together to Celine Dion's song "Because You Loved Me". It was absolutely INCREDIBLE. There was not a dry eye in the room as we watched our youth in service and our Savior in service. The events of this evening will be emblazoned in my heart forever.

For the closing song we had the young men join the young women and they sang the song As Sister's In Zion/We'll Bring the World His Truth. It is hard to express the feelings all of us had last night. My eyes were so puffy this morning because of all the tears I shed yesterday. So many times throughout our day I deeply felt the spirit. I hope each of you have the same wonderful experiences with your event.

As a handout we had written to Sis. Nadauld and asked if she would write a letter to the young women of our stake. She sent us the most beautiful letter and we read it during the opening of our evening and as each young woman left she was given a copy of it along with a bookmark that had the Stand As A Witness poem on it. We laminated the bookmarks.

If any of you have any questions please feel free to contact me!