A Song That Has Impacted My Life Activity

 Even though it was nice to have a break from Activity Days & Young Women's over Christmas break, it felt good to get back into our normal schedule again this week. For Activity Days the girls decorated these notebooks/journals w/ super glittery paper and talked about goals. Usually I blog while I wait for Autumn to be done, but today I made copies for Young Womens & got the supply closet restocked and organized.

 

We had a really neat activity tonight for Young Women's. If you look close you can see one of the girls is holding a big machine that has a CD & cassette player. We talked about music and the impact it can have on us for good or bad. I gave each of the girls a sheet of paper to write down a song that has impacted their life in a positive way and then the story behind why.

 

I went first just as an example and shared with them "The Olive Tree." The story behind it is that I had decided I was NOT going on a mission when I turned 21. One Sunday I was in my sister's dorm room (we went to the same college for one semester) and I was just laying on her bed. She had some church music playing and this song came on. The Spirit was so strong as I listened closely the words and I knew in that moment that I was supposed to serve a mission. The tears flowed freely and I just KNEW! That one song changed my whole life, b/c serving a mission is one of the best things I've ever done.

 

I wasn't sure what the young women were going to share, but it ended up being a very spiritual and insightful activity. A lot of them opened up about very personal things. It didn't have to be "church" music per se. For example, one girl shared the song "Try" by Colbie Calliat (such a powerful song & video) and talked about how she listens to this song when she feels the pressures of the world trying to make her feel like she's "less than."

The Spirit was definitely there as they shared their testimonies through music. It was such an easy activity to do in the sense that there was hardly any preparation work to do. But I've found in my experience that the simple yet spiritual activities tend to be the best.

 

I always try to get a picture of our activities together so we can use them in the slide show at the end of the year. I forgot to get a picture before I turned everyone loose. So I just grabbed whoever was still in the hall (the young men jumped in too) and took this picture. I'm thankful I get to serve w/ such great youth.