Things I'm happy about this week

OK, these are some of the things I'm happy about this week. If you don't mind I'll start at the bottom. My hair looked fabulous on Sunday, I took the time to curl it all. Yes all of it!

The second thing is- This absolutely awesome flower appeared on a plant that I never liked all that much previously. Beautiful things can come from plain ones!

The third thing is that I am getting better at drawing in color. It's much easier than black and white, but I think one day I'll be equally good at both.

The fourth thing I am extremely excited about. Camp is coming!!!!! And this year, as it is my fifth certified year I get to be a YCL (youth camp leader)! The picture above is my YCL notebook. I got it last night when our leaders kidnapped my friend Nannie and I away to a surprise/secret meeting. Almost all the other YCLs from the stake were there. Our camp theme this year is "building rainbows" by making and keeping sacred covenants. And we are using care bears as the fun thing to represent it and the temple as a more serious symbol. Our fun camp song is going to be Kermit the frogs rainbow song, and our spiritual one is 'Baptism (aka I Like to Look for Rainbows.) My ward gets yellow (good works) and funshine bear. The YCLs get white (faith) and cheer bear. The YCLs also get zip up hoodies as well as T-shirts. There is still some indecisiveness as to what color the hoodies will be and whether or not the T-shirts match our wards (mine would be yellow and that's what I want) or white for the YCLs color. I want to still feel like part of my ward so I'm all for the yellow shirt. YCLs also get to go up a day early, do two skits (one with ward and one with other YCLs) and we get to do a ton of cool stuff and decide important things etc... I am SO excited. However, we also have a lot of responsibility. We are pretty much in charge of a lot of things. I have been assigned to lead our testimony meeting. An honor, but it makes me a little nervous. I absolutely love testimony meeting though, so I'm glad I get to do it. Our pre-camp challenge this year is to memorize 'the Living Christ, testimony of the apostles.' We as YCLs have been especially encouraged to complete this because we are the examples. It shouldn't be a problem for me though because, guess what, I'm already more than half way through! I'm memorizing it for a Personal Progress project, so I was happily surprised to find out about that at our meeting. Anyway, sorry about how long that was, and I could have said more, but I am way excited. A few years ago the prospect of being a YCL scared me so much that there was absolutely no pleasure in the idea. But I have grown a lot since then, and now the opportunity is more exciting than scary. I am glad we have a small stake, that will make it easier. And I know all of the other YCLs and our adult leaders are all amazing. I just hope that we can all work together to be good examples for the younger girls and help make camp a blast!

Now to close my very long post, here is the last happy thing that I'm going to mention. A quote from Sheri Dew.

"...no woman is more persuasive, no woman has greater influence for good, no woman is a more vibrant instrument in the hands of the Lord than a woman of God who is thrilled to be who she is. I like to think of us as the Lord's secret weapon." (Stand Tall and Stand Together, Ensign, Nov. 2000)

So ladies, you are the Lord's secret weapon. Stay sharp! I knew it!