Arcadia Youth Conference 2015

Mom and dad had a fun weekend hosting, shuttling and participating in Youth Conference.   The theme followed the general YM/YW theme - "Oh, Ye That Embark in the Service of God, See That Ye Serve Him With All Your Heart, Might, Mind and Strength".  The Conf. started off at the Foothill meetinghouse with pizza (Monrovia Pizza Co., of course.).  The youth were divided into teams for a Service Scavenger Hunt.  In two hours we were to do as many of the couple-of-dozen items on the list.  The list included such things as sweep someone's porch, leave $1 where someone can find it, draw an inspiring chalk message on a sidwalk, pick up trash in a park, take cookies to an old person, sing a primary song to a family, read a story to a small child, wash someone's windows, sweep someone's kitchen, unload a dishwasher, leave a heart-attack for someone, write and mail a missionary.... etc..., etc...  Photos of accomplishing each item were instantly emailed to a central judge. (Good thing most of the kids had smart phones.) All the youth then met to bowl for 2 hours at a local bowling alley.

We had 7 lovely young ladies stay the night at 336.

Saturday morning we left at 7 a.m. for a wonderful breakfast at the Foothill bldg.  Then half the youth went to serve at a food bank in El Monte and the other half went down to the L.A.  Bishop's Storehouse and Deseret Industries.  When the two groups got back together at the end of the day, there was a telling comparison of the Bishop's Storehouse and food bank.  The Lord's way is clean, orderly, finely managed and perfectly stocked, while both give wonderful charitable service.  Back at the Foothill bldg. a 5 star dinner was waiting or enchiladas, fruit and salad.  The group was treated to a slide show of the emailed photos of service from the day before.  The closing testimony meeting was inspiring to hear.  The youth seemed to really be touched by their "service" Youth Conference as they embarked on the weekend's events and caught the vision of giving and serving.