Young Women happenings

In August the Tucson LDS Temple is going to be dedicated. We are getting pretty excited about it. There is an open house where it will be open to the public June 3-24. After it is dedicated, it will be a place where church members in good standing are allowed in to perform special ordinances like being sealed as an eternal family rather than just "until death do us part," or baptisms for our deceased ancestors who didn't have a chance to be baptized while they were still alive. My kids have been looking forward to the temple as we've stopped by a few times during construction to see the progress. Megan talks often about "when the temple is done we can go inside!" And now it's almost time!

 I am extra blessed to be working in the Young Women program at church right now. It is an exciting (and super busy) time. In conjunction with the temple dedication there is a cultural celebration that the youth in the area get to participate in. It involves a lot of singing and dancing and highlights some of the history/cultural ties of the church in our area. We are starting to practice next week and it will take up most of our weekly activities for the next few months. With Girls' Camp coming up in July, as well, we have had a busy month or so with Girls Camp kickoff, Cultural Celebration kickoff, ward YW campout to do fire/cooking certifications that we can't do at camp, all on top of our regular weekly activities. But I'm happy to be a part of it.

And actually, now that I think about it, our YW campout turned into an un-campout.

 We went to set up tents to claim our campsite that morning, then were planning on returning in the evening with the YW. The wind was so strong we decided to just stake them down, then when we returned in the evening the girls could put the poles in and erect the tents fully. But as we were almost done staking down all the tents some ominous clouds had rolled in and it looked like it would rain. We decided the tents would fend off water better if they were erect, so we put the poles in one and as soon as we were done a gust of wind came, ripped out half the stakes, and turned half the tent inside the other half. We gave up on the poles and went with our original plan, leaving them just staked down.
When we got home I checked the weather, and the wind wasn't supposed to start dying down until 10:00, getting manageable around midnight. Besides the problems with the tents blowing around, we were worried about fires, since the Sawmill Fire was still burning south of Tucson, and we didn't want to start a new fire on the north side. Skipping the fire would thwart the whole purpose of our campout, which was to do the fire certification and camp cooking that can't happen at Girls' Camp (because of the cooking facilities, and because fire restrictions in the summer often don't allow for fires at Girls' Camp). All the preparation for the campout was already done by our awesome camp director and her assistant, but after much debate and discussion we decided to skip the camping part of it. Luckily one of the leaders had a great connection who had a farm with green grass and a big metal firepit that served our purposes just fine. We had a great evening out there, went home to sleep in our own beds (yay!), then got together in the morning to cook breakfast on camp stoves then head out on a nice in beautiful weather.