Courage In Action: My two days as a Secret Agent (sorry it's really long)

As most of you know, my church calling is Laurel Advisor, which means I get an awesome opportunity to attend Youth Conference with the girls. This year the stake chose to make us secret agents in the CIA, which stands for Courage in Action. The YM/YW theme scripture this year is Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage, be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed for the Lord thy God is with thee, withersoever thou goest." They decided to emphasize what it means to be of good courage and taught us a lot about how courage requires action. We started at one of the buildings in our stake and received our special CIA T-shirts. After we had changed, one of the counselors in the Stake Presidency, President Farrell, welcomed us and we we were split into 7 color groups. I was in the green group with all of my girls and all of the Young Women leaders from our ward and then a few other young men and young women and leaders from other wards. The Stake Youth Leaders began with a skit where one person was the head and body, one was the arms and one was the legs. They had to get ready for the day and it was very enjoyable to watch someone else's arms feed, brush the teeth of, and otherwise prepare the face they couldn't see. The lipstick was probably my favorite part. Poor Natalie had lipstick all over her chin. Wish I had pictures, but the camera was in the car... dumb dumb dumb. After the skit we played get know you games with our groups. We all took group pictures and then loaded up the cars and headed up to the Ogden Boys and Girls Club for service. The Ogden Boys and Girls Club is a nonprofit organization that caters to the inner city kids. These kids have been through things I never even imagined when I was their age, but oh, the sweetness inside. They started at age 5 and went up to 12. The green group was paired up with about 10 kids ages 7-9. A lot of the kids are hispanic and bilingual. One little girl didn't speak any English, but luckily one of the leaders in our group did, and he helped her to communicate. We played the getting to know you games with them, then split for lunch. After lunch, we went through 8 different stations with the kids. They had tug-o-war, basketball, face painting, tag, slip n' slide, a parachute, the sponge passing game (you know wet sponge over your head and see how much water you can collect in a bucket), and then a station with popsicles and a rest. We then took a group picture with our kids and then the Boys and Girls Club leader came and talked to the kids about how special it was that we would come to play with them. It was an amazing experience and I think all of our youth left with a slightly bigger heart and a place in there for a new favorite. Some of those kids were just too cute!! When we were done at the Boys and Girls club, we headed up to our stake camp Zarahemla. We set up our cabins and then headed down to the lodge for dinner.