Wonderful YSA Conference

This weekend I went to an amazing YSA conference. On Friday night we had a barn dance including square dancing. Then Saturday morning we did service projects. That was the one place where they could have organized better. I was in a group that went and helped out at a temporary shelter. I got to sort some stuff and clean and organize the laundry room. I also worked on weeding, especially in the sidewalk cracks.
Our initial plan was to rake leaves, but we thought they had rakes and they thought we would bring some. Among many things I learned is that to do a good service project you have to put in lots of prep time. It is all the harder with YSA conferences where people often decide to come at the last moment. Then conference was not even publicized until the middle of October.
Although we could have probably done more if we had come with better resources, there were multiple service projects, one involved distributing coats, and one involved going to a nursing home and visiting the residents, and there were a few others. We definantly avoided one of the most common problems I have seen with service projects, having too many people to do what needs to be done. You can get an aura of a good service project, because if you focus you can appear to be doing more, however the way they did this, with less focus involved us actually doing more good. I have never been as fully impressed as I was on Saturday morning that even small acts of service are good, and that it often takes a lot of background work to get things done.
Another thing I realized is you may have to start with a small project, but if you do it well, the people will trust you more in the future.
In the afternoon we went on a cruise in the boat, The Michigan Princess. We held a dance. Some of the girls wore very formal dresses and it was quite impressive. We also had wonderful food. The Grand River has too many low bridges to make it very far, but it is quite a beautiful river.
In the evening we listened to President Brian Ritchie speak. He gave a talk about following the Lord and also explained how the Lord's system of Zion is that we care about others more than ourselves and we make no poor by networking everybody to success.
It is a far cry from those I have known who saw networking as the alternative of developing friendships.
On Sunday morning we had sacrament meeting. We went extra long, had lots of speakers including Brother Robison, the father of the Bishop of the Lansing University Ward. The Elder Brother Robison was president of the Lansing Stake, an area authority seventy and President of the Spain Malaga Mission.
I met lots of new people and it was a truly wonderful conference.