New and Old

My callings at church for about the last five years have taken place with the Young Women.

I love working with these young girls - they are amazingly cool, strong, valiant disciples of Christ.

Their diligence in living the gospel amidst such adversity everyday is a testimony builder for me - I love and respect them immensely.

The first couple of pictures were taken at a fashion show the girls were modeling modest dresses in -

My lovely Laurels

My friend Kelsey being a ham while I try to catch a photo of her daughter - another one of my Laurels.

I have had the next pictures on my camera for YEARS.

Three to be exact. But they HAVE to be shared :).

When we lived in IL I also served in the YW, serving as the 2nd counselor in the presidency - allowing me to mostly work with the Beehives. Now they're like 16... crazy!! Anyway - loved them!

In our stake we not only had stake girls camp but ward girls camp as well.

The weekend of ward girls camp we headed up to the mountain... if you could call it that - and began setting up tents, doing the regular routine of getting settled. There had been weather advisories all day, but what's new in IL? There are always wind, rain, flood, tornado, advisories in affect and this weekend was no different -

except -

this time the weather followed through and it looked as if a tornado would soon be in our midst. 

One minute the sky was clear and the next we had crazy winds and rain from every direction. We rushed the girls toward the cars and drove down the mountain as quickly as possible. Half way down we spotted one of the girl's fathers who was coming to retrieve us and lead us to safety.

And lead us he did.

This particular family had quite a large business that dealt with creating machinery to sell to other businesses in order to produce cereal cuts out and other random things (I am probably remembering the specifics wrong so forgive me) - anyway we were led to safety as we followed him to their production warehouse. Huge garage doors lifted at our arrival and car after car flooded in to safety.

I felt like we were car thieves arriving at our meeting point after a hefty job.

The girls had fun walking around the warehouse and then going inside the office area where they were introduced to a prince from overseas that the company was doing business with.

We stayed there until the weather subsided enough for us to travel to the Bishop's house where the girls camped out on the basement floor and we tried to pass off as much camp certification as possible. 

Memorable event for sure :)

Beehives putting up the Leaders tent

Sunny weather...

All is well.

And then storm approaches.

Still smiling as we're headed back down the hill in the storm

Arriving at the ware house.
Does it scream the movie Fast and Furious or that other show with Nicholas Cage?

Doing a little warehouse touring

Traveling indoors to the office areas

Conference Room Time

Free pop from the vending machine  - Hurrah!

Hanging with the prince from a foreign land

Fun memories for sure!