I love EFY!! This last week I was in Ephraim and I think it was probably my best one yet, even though they've all been wonderful! I had another group of 14-15 year old girls (I think it must be calling in life or something because I am never with the older girls) and I loved them so much! My group this week had sooo much personality and were all very loud and extremely hyper, which was funny because I'm just the opposite, but we were all best friends! We had so much fun. I felt like they were all my little sisters, except not quite as good as Aubree because she's irreplaceable of course, but we really got so close. It made me laugh when they would come tell me their boy stories and it made me cry when they would confide some of what they dealt with at home and I just loved everything about them. I got home on Saturday and it felt so good to be home with my family and sleep in my own comfortable bed, but it was really hard to go to sleep without having a devotional and singing a hymn and praying with my girls. I guess it's sort of like a mini-mission. It's hard to go back to real life after you focus so much on the gospel and have a set schedule where you're kind of separated from the world. Mom thinks EFY has ruined me because we went to a play last night and it seemed so offensive to me! I guess it's just because I haven't watched tv or had to deal with any of that stuff for a while. I'm glad though, it's so much easier to have the Spirit and feeling the Spirit makes me feel so happy. :) It's the best feeling in the world! It's funny though because every week I get so scared and nervous the night before the kids get there. I always feel really overwhelmed and like I won't be good enough...but then it always works out alright. That's one thing our session director talked about a lot this week, how sometimes when something really good is about to happen where you can make a big difference Satan works on you to make you too scared to follow through so you just have to keep faith that everything is in the Lord's hands. One of my friends just got home from his mission and in his talk he said his mission president told him that when he's feeling fear about something he should just think, "Why would Satan want me to be afraid about that?" That's something that has helped me alot. We have so much potential but a lot of times we let our fear stop us from growing. Just something to think about.... :)
So anyway, this week our company's name was "Raised in Incorruption." yeah...try coming up with a cheer for that one! It's not easy trust me. We had 12 boys and 12 girls and it was great to watch how they interracted and changed throughout the week. There were some at the beginning who struggled and thought all the spiritual stuff was a "waste of time" but through prayer and the spirit it was amazing to watch how their countenances changed. I loved it! They were all really good friends by the end of the week and we had a blast together.
Oh I just remembered a funny story that was a classic EFY moment. On Tuesday night we were having our devotional and my BC came to observe me. She laughed when she saw who my girls were because she said, "Usually there are one or two girls in a group who are the spunky, loud ones, but you're whole entire group is!" But it was great anyway and it was good in devotionals because they all loved to participate, maybe even a little too much at times when someone would tell a story that reminded every other girl of a story and everyone wanted to share. Good times. So anyway, on this particular night when I was being observed we finally got to a point in the lesson when everyone was really focused and the Spirit was there and I was silently cheering that we were making progress...and then a centipede started crawling up the wall. One of the girls said, "Ew what's that?!" Then Aralie (the girl in the picture below) jumped up said, "Don't worry I'll get it!" and proceeded to take off her flip flop and start slamming it against the wall and the floor where little pieces of centipede were flying every which way. Add to that 11 other screaming girls jumping around and you get a very spiritual experience. :) ha ha ha It was so funny it made me laugh even though the mood was completely destroyed. But yeah, that's a good summary of efy for you! oh and did I mention that in the boys dorm on pizza night after devotionals it ended in a 2 story pillow fight?
Scripture study every morning is one of my favorite parts. We have a little lesson taught by one of the counselors about different things we can do to make scripture study more effective then we get 30 minutes of personal study time. It's so nice to have that much time set apart every single day. I wish it was easy to keep that schedule in real life! It's so cool to read the different stories and have those "ah ha!" moments when it makes sense and applies exactly to something you're experiencing. I had some of those moments/tender mercies this week. Did I mention how much I love efy? :)
After a week of barely any sleep at all I'm always exhausted by the time Saturday rolls around. I was going to drive straight home but I was too tired so I stopped by the Manti temple and took a nap there. It was sooo pretty so I took a few pictures! I love temples too...even more than efy.
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