The Price of a Leader

Achievement Days (now known as Activity Days) twenty-five years ago consisted of me showing up, doing whatever my leader had planned, then going home, usually with a craft or treat in my hand, and always with a smile on my face. 

When I graduated into the Young Women’s program not much changed.  Then one day when I was a fifteen-year-old Mia-Maid I watched as one of my leaders, Sister Crawford, came in with an armload of stuff for the mutual activity.  It briefly crossed my mind that my leaders probably did a lot more to get ready for a mutual activity than I had ever thought.  They were the ones who gathered all the supplies for craft night, put together our Laurel Legacy cook books, organized our temple/shopping trip to Portland, called people for service activities, and cleaned their house countless times before we came over.  I wondered if they enjoyed preparing so much for an hour and a half activity. 

After ten years I received my answer.

I was recently called to be the Activity Days leader for the 10-year-old girls in my ward.  I just showed up to the first activity, my partner did all the work.  Then she got released.  The next activity was all on me. 

I decided to center it on General Conference and thought it would be fun to decorate General Conference notebooks.  So with Pinterest as my crutch, I went to work. 

I spent hours creating the Apostle labels.  I cut them each out, then laminated them, and then cut them out again. 

I made the cute handouts and tied them on the Gatorade bottles.

Making and cutting out the labels for the books didn’t take too long.

Finally, I Modge Podged printed paper to composition books for the girls to decorate. 

All of that took me about 3-4 hours.  And that’s not including preparing my lesson, and rounding up all the glue sticks, double-sided tape, and stickers. 

As I was preparing the activity I was afraid that the girls wouldn’t like the idea.  They wouldn’t really use their journal, or listen to General Conference.  But I had to try.   My goal was to hopefully help them realize what an awesome privilege it is to have a living prophet on the earth today, and to record some of their feelings as they listen to him.

I was therefore surprised when, bringing out the journals, excitement emanated from the girls.  “I needed something to keep my notes in!” one girl exclaimed.  “My old journal is full!” another girl added.  “This will be perfect!” I heard one girl say. 

Apparently their primary teacher had challenged the girls to keep notes during General Conference, and many of them “had” to watch more than one session of General Conference. 

As I watched the girls attack the stickers, put the apostles’ pictures in order, and glue buttons to their journals, my joy was full.  I helped several girls put the pictures of the apostles in their journals, found the star stickers for another girl, and glued buttons on another girl’s journal. 

Words can’t describe how happy I was to see these 10-year-old Daughters of God so excited to be preparing journals for General Conference. 

Such creativity! 

All of the hours I put into preparing this one-hour activity was worth it.  And I’m sure that all the hours Sister Crawford, Creer, Plaisted, Mahaffy, Ostler, Merkley, and all my other leaders put into mutual activites were worth it too.  When you see your girls, no matter the age, having the time of their lives, anything is worth it. 

I love the stickers!