We met at the Halxxxx's house at 8:30 am the first morning. Sister Halxxxx is from our ward, and in charge of buying all the food for the whole stake. That is a huge responsibility, I don't know how she did it. She didn't complain once, even though she was stuck in the kitchens with the hot ovens the whole time. So on the way to Girls Camp, we stopped at Sam's Club and helped her shop for everything. It was a lot of food for 200 people for 11 meals. We ate lunch there too. Their berry shakes make me happy inside. Our camp was called Camp Sherwood.
I got really homesick on my first day of camp, like I always do . I don't like camping at all, so thank goodness for the spiritual stuff and friends. Kennedy and her mom Gloria came too. I was so excited for Gloria to come. Me and Tashi had to give devotionals every night for our ward and were in charge of teaching certification classes for the younger girls. We were hoping it would cool down during the week, but to no avail. It didn't cool down much at night, and it was very hard to fall asleep and stay that way. It didn't rain at all the whole time we were there too, which is a miracle! It rains so much here. If it would've rained, it would've cooled down, but the humidity would've gone up, the mosquitoes would've come, we'd hahve been muddy, stuck in our cabins...not a pretty picture.
We had so much to eat at all of our meals. And there was so much junk food. And I was bloated with liquids. I gained so much weight there I think. I didn't get many bug bites either. Our first lesson was really good. It was about listening. And if you don't listen to people who need to be, you are depriving them of psychological oxygen. The second lesson we learned to have a perfect heart, and in the 3rd & last lesson, I learned that faith is a prerequisite for purity. Sister Skog came from our ward to teach a hair braiding class. I learned how to tie knots on top of your head. In my second class, I learned how to make homemade Almond Joys. They were so good. My last class was yoga. But I forgot that I had signed up for it, and forgot a yoga mat. And I was dumb and wore tight jean shorts to the class instead of stretchy, comfortable pants. And I'm already inflexible, so I could barely do these stretches without feeling like I was going to rip my pants. And it was making me sweat a lot for some reason, I was using somebody elses's gross mat, and I was thinking, why did I sign up for this again??? When all of the sudden, our teacher made us do some really relaxing stretches on our back. Then we were told to just lay flat on our back and close our eyes and focus on our breathing. She made us do it for 15 minutes, so of course we all fell asleep. I felt so good when I woke up.
The first day, I only sat on the beach of the lake, but the next 2 days I was in the water!!! It was really gross, but it never got too deep, and cooled you down. The lake was for all the surrounding camp grounds, so there were people with tattoos and alcohol and cigarettes and boyfriends and girlfriends all over each other in the water, and it was like, WE'RE AT GIRLS CAMP!!! This is not supposed to be happening! It's funny how seperated from the world you become at Girls Camp. There was also zip-lining and spelunking in caves, but I didn't do either of those.
And I finished reading the Book of Mormon while I was at camp. I had started at the end of January. One of the nights, we had a youth leader meeting, and we ate so much candy that I got sick to my stomach. We had flushing toilets, showers, and no campfires. We slept in cabins with bunks. A few wards were in charge of each meal for the whole stake. So it wasn't really roughing it except for the heat.
We planned our skit last minute. We got it on video. Tashi was a character called Mr. Tashimoto. It was hilarious. All of the skits were hilarious. I wish we could have filmed them all. I got a little tan from going to the lake.
I am so glad Gloria was at camp. She was my positivity and humor that I needed to get me through. We had to show the Bishopric our skit when they came up the last night. Our Bishop reminded us to stay virtuous and to remember there was a boy being prepared out there to marry us someday. I thought we were going to have a testimony meeting with them, but we didn't. And I had taught the girls about testimonies, so I was a little disappointed. I thought if I brought it up, people wouldn't want to. After the Bishopric left, we went back to our cabin. Eliza, who isn't even quite 12 yet, asked if we could have a testimony meeting right then and she wanted to go first. And her testimony was so cute. And then we all followed after her. I had such pure, innocent girls at camp that obeyed me. (Maybe I had to remind a few times, but nobody disobeyed me).
What if I get called as a leader next year???!!!!
