New Beginnings

About two weeks ago our stake had a special meeting to make some changes to the ward boundaries. Our ward got a bunch of new people added from a neighboring ward, since we have been such a small ward. It's exciting to get to meet all the new families, and especially the new young women. Our young women just about doubled in number! And our beehives did double: now we have 8 beehives, with 2 more joining us next month and another in May.Well, this change came a week before our New Beginnings program that we had been planning for a while. So we had a week to scramble and get things together to include 12 new girls in the program (including getting T-shirts ordered and made, which turned out to be its own little adventure that our wonderful YW president took care of).
The night turned out pretty good. Since the mutual theme for 2010 is "Be strong and of a good courage" we focused on the "be strong" part and did a basketball theme (NBA: New Beginnings Association), focusing on how the young women can be strong and beat Team Satan with the help of the For the Strength of Youth standards, and the Personal Progress program. The beehives were in charge of presenting the theme and did a cheer, then talked a little about how the theme helps them be strong and of a good courage. The beehives were also in charge of concessions and refreshments, so we passed out popcorn before the "half-time entertainment" (the leaders did a cheer, then we watched a slide show of the last year), then we had cupcakes decorated as basketballs for dessert.
Here you can see the boxes of popcorn the girls carried around to pass out popcorn (along with the big mess that my kitchen became with the popcorn flying everywhere):
It was a fun evening and we have a great bunch of girls!