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SUNDAY FIRESIDES

YM/YW MISSION:  -   - We called each YM and YW on a mission.  We had 3 missions- I used missions from where members of our ward had served.  We had a Navajo, Brazil, and Tiwan mission.  We made name tags for each youth.  They had to say goodbye to their parents at the chapel door.  The opening prayer was "Called to Serve" . We then had the Stake Mission President and his wife welcome all of the youth on their missions(posing as a mission president and wife) they gave a small talk on what will happen on the mission and the importance.  We then separate into missions where they spent the first 15-20 minutes in the "MTC" learning how to introduce themselves and the church in the language assigned to them.  Then we had 3 5-10 minute workshops they attended.  1- Cooking ideas for the missionary in case a dinner appt falls through. 2- ironing and basic sewing- hemming and buttons.  3- Q & A:  We had 3 recent returned missionaries ( within a year).  The kids wrote down 2 questions and put them in a bowl.  The RM's pulled out a question and answered them.  After that they went to the RS room to watch the movie "Called to serve" or another missionary movie by the church.  The Bishop ended the night with his testimony of missionary work and what the kids could do here and now.  We ended the evening with "We'll Bring the World His Truth." It was a great evening.  We had no  refreshments- It would have spoiled the spirit.  Kelli

STAKE MUSIC FIRESIDE: -  On every fifth Sunday our stake holds a fireside for all youth. Our stake youth council gave every ward 2 months to prepare a  musical number to be performed that night at the stake fireside.   We began  with a youth speaker talking about the power of music in our lives, good and  bad and followed the speaker with 9 musical numbers that could be presented  in the chapel.  Big success...standing room only!

BOOK OF MORMON BATTLE: -  We as the Young Women and Young Men are having a "Book of Mormon Battle."  We are counting pages for the next 3 months to see which group reads the most.  Then at the end, for the joint activity, the loser will make and serve dinner to the loser.  To help start off this challenge, we had a fireside to help them become familiar with the Book of Mormon stories.  We had it at one of the leaders home and told the youth to bring their scriptures.  The laurels presidency had previously picked 7 stories from the Book of Mormon and each written a discription of the story.  We then divided into groups (Beehives, Deacon, Leaders, etc...) and each had to perform a skit on one of the stories the Laurels had assigned us.  The leaders did their own skit, so the youth were on their own.  They did a great job and everyone had fun learning the Book of Mormon stories!

SUNDAY EVENING DISCUSSIONS: -  We hold monthly Sunday evening decisions.  We take turns having them at the YW President's  house, the YM President's  house and the Bishop's house.  The bishop leads out a topic and it falls into place from there.  I have asked the Bishop to use the "For the Strength of the Youth" booklet as a base.

YOUTH INVOLVED DISCUSSIONS: -   Our speaker was from our ward. He pulled together a panel of 2 adults and 6 kids.  He started the discussion by letting all the youth write down questions on family relationships. It was great. The kids in the audience also enjoyed putting in their $.02 worth.

YOUTH QUESTIONS: -  For our next fireside we have asked the youth to write down gospel related questions that they would like answered or are stuggling to understand.  We have put a fish bowl in the young women's room for the questions to go in.  It almost full already.  We will probably have to screen the questions however the youth are pretty excited abouth this.  The bishop will conduct the fireside and be the ultimate authority on the answers but we want the youth to  answer each other's questions if possible.  They are pretty excited about it already.  We probably have a speaker fireside about once or twice a year.

MORALITY/DATING/MODESTY: -  We did a great one last month, where we spent the month having the youth write down quesions about dating, morality and modesty, submitted them all to our bishop.  He organized them, and that night read the question and gave his answer.  We called it "Ask the Bishop".  We also told the kids that since our bishop was the leader of the ward, whatever he said goes.  We had a great turnout, the kids asked great questions although the thing we found was that they really wanted specific rulings about what constitutes a date, etc and it was informative!

PICTIONARY: -  One of the youth  firesides  I really enjoyed was playing  "Pictionary"  with  gospel themes.  We did it at one of my
counselor's homes,  and the setting was perfect and everyone had a great time.