I had the opportunity to be the assistant Stake Camp Director this year, this was probably my most favorite camp I’ve been to, out of the 14 times I’ve gone! The director and I really wanted new things that the girls hadn’t seen before, so we worked really hard to come up with great classes and experiences for these girls, and we would like to share it for anyone that may be looking. Camp Theme Women Warriors We had 3 sub themes that we focused on each day Women of Faith, Women of Strength, Women of God Purpose of camp was to help the girls see that they could do anything the Lord asked them to do, and they can do hard things. We created a slide show with images of “Women Warriors” to introduce the theme. We talked about qualities of a warrior, then talked about REAL women Warriors in history, they did exist. They were rare, but powerful, usually impacting their tribe, or country for generations to follow. We based our decorating off of a Native American feel, kinda boho, which was trendy this year so it’s easy to find lots of things to go along with the theme. Tuesday: Women of Faith day, Warrior initiation day! The stake leaders and YCLs camp up Monday to get camp ready, and then we took them to the lake just to have fun for a couple hours. We had a jet ski, pontoon boat, lily pad and a ski boat. It was an awesome afternoon where we had a chance to bond with the girls a little that we didn’t know very well. Tuesday morning the wards arrived, we gave everyone time to find their cabins and then we had morning devotional and camp orientation. Then we started our activities. Women’s Self Defense class: This was totally awesome!! A sister in the stake teaches women’s self defense and she relates it to the gospel, being able to listen to the spirit is a huge part of her class, and she tweaked it perfectly to fit in with our Women of Faith day! Warrior endurance: (Short hike) We renamed everything for one to sound more exciting, for two, to keep a little mystery in the week, and for 3 so they didn’t see something like a hike or service project and have time to complain, it was just; here is this thing! I think it helped girls to just be in the moment. After lunch we had crafts and our spiritual/sit down class. Crafts: Only 2 crafts this year, dream catcher key chains, (SO cute!) and walking sticks (sticks harvested from my parents forest) First class was about having self confidence, and changing negative thoughts in your head to positive thoughts. Second class was about finding your “inner peace” like Po from Kung fu panda, we talked about meditation and did a guided meditation at the end. A couple hours of free time, and dinner, and then we had our evening devotional. YCL skit The YCLs had a skit for every night at camp that they had been working on, all continued from the night before and correlated with the daily theme. They were AWESOME!! It was like watching a mini episode every day! Then we did bag skits with each level. 4 leaders brought a bag of props and random items. Each level got to do one skit during camp. They got their bag of props and had 30 mins to come up with a short skit to preform that night at devotional. It was totally optional. It was just to give each of the girls an opportunity to get up in front of everyone if they wanted to. The girls had fun with it! Awards We gave out 2 awards each night. The clean cabin award, each day at a random time 2 of our leaders would look at all the cabins, the cleanest cabin got a cooler full of drinks for the night. This was a HUGE hit for the younger girls! It really made clean up a breeze on the last day! Girl on Fire award. This was EVERYONE'S FAVORITE!! Every day each girl and each leader got to submit one girl for girl on Fire. This was for anyone who you had seen go above and beyond, or stand out in any way. Every day after dinner, before devotional our two 18 year old leaders (who were the back bone to camp this year!! They weren’t YCLs, but they weren’t cabin moms, they were like the stake assistants. They were the runners. And they went from sun up, to way past sun down!! Seriously THE best!) they would read all the submission and pick 3 for the night. Any one that was really special they saved for the ultimate girl on fire on the last day. They played “this girl is on fire” and during the first verse they would read the girls who won, and what they had done, and the girls would come up to the stage, and then as we got to the chorus “THIS GIRL IS ON FIRE!” everyone erupted and sang and danced! And the energy was crazy exciting! Celebrating these awesome girls up on stage! This year we gave them each a water bottle filled with red and yellow wrapped candies, and a super cute dream catcher bracelet. Totally epic award!! So fun! After the crazy and the fun we had our spiritual thought given by one of the stake leaders each night, also correlating with the theme and events of the day, and then we would sing our theme song. I will have a separate post about that. This was one of my favorite thing about camp this year! Faith Walk After devotional we had our faith walk led by the YCLs. They each took a value and were stationed around the camp. The younger girls walked from station to station and got a mini devotional about the value and a woman Warrior from the scriptures that helped teach us about the value. This was quiet and reverent. They had jar lanterns for each group to carry with them. It was truly awesome to hear these Laurels bear testimony and fill us with the spirit station after station. They totally blew me away! We ended back in the chapel (our big in-door multi purpose room that was our main gathering place) where one YCL wrapped it all up. Glow in the dark games Each evening we had glow in the dark games for the girls and each morning we had early swim. These girls just kept going and going!! The activities after dinner and before breakfast were optional, but the girls LOVED them! We were very fortunate to have leaders that were available for kick ball, volleyball, swimming, and impromptu karaoke! I, on the other hand, was wiped out and had to opt out of the late and early festivities. So I was grateful for the leaders that were able to play with the girls! Wednesday: Women of Strength Warrior training day! We met at the fire pit for morning devotional before breakfast, for a quick spiritual thought, and blessing on the food. This is also when the camp director and I would get up and talk about the activities for the day. At breakfast we had face paint crayons and several simple options for the YCLs to choose from. They picked a design for their group, and during breakfast the YCLs put “war paint” on each of the girls. They all loved that! Our 4th years ended up with long mustaches. They are hilarious! Then we began our warrior training! Everyone rotated through archery, knot tying (classic old school girls camp certification), spear throwing, learning how to build a fire, and ultimate archery tag. We instructed the teachers of each rotation to tell the girls the things they do today will effect them tomorrow! That intrigued most of the girls. The fact that it was a race got leaked, but it was not what they expected! Spears The Spears were one of my favorites! It was the spear from the spartan race, you can get info on how to build and throw it on Pinterest. It was important that each girl learned how to throw the spear because during the race they were going to be expected to do it before their team could leave that station. To make a target the spear had to stick into the hay bale and the handle not touch the ground. 1 cm off the ground counted! Just so long at it did not rest of the ground. The more athletic girls got it right away and LOVED it! But the …less athletic girls ended up standing in the back ground. After about 20 Mins I asked who had not made a target. Hands slowly went up as eyes went down. They didn’t think they could do it. So we brought them all to the front and coached them individually. One girl would not follow through. So I told her when she throws it to stay there like a statue until the spear hit the target. She tried it the next throw and made her first target!! There was jumping and screaming and much high fiving!! That was EXACTLY what we wanted those girls to experience!! EVERY girls that stuck with it and tried and persisted was able to make a successful target! There was one girl, that I know of, that was unable to make the target. She threw it once and said “I can’t do it” and never tried again. Definitely a lesson to be learned in that! Archery Tag The archery tag was SO fun!! We also had a slack line put up next to it for the girls that were waiting to play. (That was for the race also but they didn’t know that) If you are interested in archery tag, you can buy the equipment your self off of amazon for about what we paid a professional to come in for 3 hours, FYI. After lunch we had our craft/spiritual class rotation. We had someone come in who I believe is a youth counselor, she specializes in working with kids that deal with anxiety and depression. Her class was AMAZING!! It was full of hands on demonstrations of what the brain can do! The girls really listened too! I could hear the things she taught come up in conversations through out the rest of camp! She just dropped into our lap at the prefect time! Someone needed that class, I have no doubt! Then free time, dinner, devotional, and evening festivities! Just like that day before. Fire competition: This is where the “training” started coming into play. One of our priesthood men took over the fire instruction class for us. That was not planned, it was spur of the moment, but he couldn’t have been more perfect! He is a physics teacher at a local school! He was amazing! We split the girls into their race teams for the next day, and gave them each a bag of kindling. They built their fires, and then we strung a piece a string above their fires with two wooden skewers. The object was to burn their string till it broke. This was the determining factor in the order they got to start the race the next day. Thursday: Women of God Warrior Adventure day! After breakfast we had the race! It was patterned after “The Amazing Race” but we did it to the theme of Lehi’s Dream. I will do a separate post on this as there was a LOT of moving parts, it was the most difficult thing at camp to plan and coordinate. It was “all hands on deck” that day! Everything that they had been doing and learning throughout the week came into play during the race! It was really cool to see everything come full circle and to see the girls put into action things they learned from their classes and activities! There was a slight mix up though. Each team was numbered. They had a series of 16 stations that they had to move through. At each station there was a challenge. Once they successfully completed the challenge, they got their next “Route info” ticket. Each of these tickets was numbered with their team number. The mix up happened when the teams went out the door for their first stop, some of them got the number of the order they were going out, the number of their placement from the fire competition, instead of their team number. Then at the stations they were given their team number and everything started to crumble! We had planned for 2 ½ to 3 hours for this activity, and 40 Mins into we had to stop the race and regroup. We ended up doing our 'after lunch' classes right then and moved the race to after lunch. During the classes we collected all the tickets and put them back into order and back in the correct envelopes for each station. My heart stopped a little when the race was falling apart, cause countless hours went into to making it work! And the girls WANTED to do it! But the other leaders rallied together and we got everything back in place! We started again after lunch and everything went prefect that time!! After the race was free time, and then BISHOPS NIGHT!! BISHOP’S NIGHT: I didn’t realize that this was more of a local tradition, but it has ALWAYS been the highlight of our girls camp!! Bishops are invited to join us for dinner and festivities of the evening. They are usually asked to participate in something in front of the girls. This year we made it a competition! We are hoping to start a new tradition. We made a small trophy for the winning bishop to keep on his desk in the bishops office. We bought a 4 inch “Captain Moroni” figurine cast in pewter. And fixed him on a small wood plaque with a little metal engraving “Girls Camp first place bishops night” with instructions on the bottom to bring it back next year to girls camp, to see if he can keep his title of 'first place' and reclaim the trophy! Since the girls learned SO much this week we wanted to give the bishops a shot. Points were awarded for each thing. First was a watermelon speed eating contest. The girls had to do this in their race. 1st 2nd and 3rd place were awarded points. Then it was the spear throw, not as easy as the little girls made it look! And then archery. Then we went inside for evening devotional and we did the awards ceremony with the added awards for the race. We made “medals” out of ribbon and candy. 3rd place got individual size candy, 2nd place got candy bar size, and 3rd place for movie candy size. We called them up and placed their medals around their necks. We presented the winning bishop with the trophy. I loved it because the bishop that won had JUST been called only a week or two in advance! It was a great way to establish that relationship with the girls! I was the speaker for the evening followed by our awesome stake president. I used the explanation of the t shirt design and the birth of our camp theme song as the basis for my devotional. Because it is exactly the point we wanted to get across to the girls this week. I will go into detail of the song in another post. To explain the T-shirt’s is just started talking about how we use symbols in the gospel. And how the Native Americans used symbols. I showed them a pic of a feather, which symbolizes trust, and strength. Then the symbol of the great spirit, or God. The symbol for brotherhood (or in our case sisterhood) and then we put our t shirt design up on the screen. Which is a combination of all of those symbols to create one simple design with not many words, but if you understand the symbols, it says Women Warriors Women of Faith (trust), Women of Strength, Women of God, and girls camp. When I threw the t shirt image on the screen the all erupted!! Mind blown! It was great! Testimonies After devotional we separated for ward testimonies with their bishops. Some had fire pits, some had tiki torches, cause we LOVE testimonies around the fire, but we did not have enough fire pits at the camp ground, so we improvised. And it worked pretty well! Then we had our Epic Dance party back in the chapel till midnight! So! Fun! And so exhausting! Lol and then some of our AMAZING stake leaders took the girls for a midnight swim!! Epic day! Last day was pretty low key. After breakfast we met for our closing meeting. We awarded the ultimate girl on fire awards, who got the water bottles AND blankets that we had made during the race. And then we watched a slide show video of the week! One of our 18 year olds collected pics from leaders and girls all week and made a totally awesome slide show!! We sang our theme song all together one more time, had a prayer and finished cleanup and check out. All in all it was a pretty amazing week!! We put a lot into it, and we would love to share to with anyone looking for ideas for camp.