Why I Believe Wednesday: Girls Camp

I know it's Thursday, but my week is a little off...better late than never, right?  :) 

I L.O.V.E.D. young women's camp (camp for 12-18 year-old girls through church) every summer.  It. Was. The. Highlight.  Especially once I was a counselor, I went a little crazy planning fun activities and spiritual lessons--in fact, being an EFY counselor was pretty similar in that regard.  Feeling the spirit wasn't always the focus of every activity when I was younger, but by the time I grew up the Stake had really pushed hard to make it not only a time of survival/first aid/hiking training but also a week where you felt the Spirit everywhere.  Yes, there were silly camp songs, and weird camp crafts, always the drama between different youth and/or adults, and playing spoons or phase 10 while munching on "forbidden" snacks.  All of that was precious, too.  :) 

I loved in particular the year that the adults and youth leaders put on a real-life walk-through of Lehi's dream.  I was one of the guides, dressed in white and silent, while we led the girls through the mists of darkness, across gulfs, and past the great and spacious building, all while their friends pleaded with them to just let go of the iron rod and help them up.  They begged and reached out to them, and it was a hard lesson to teach because you could just see the conflict in their eyes.  Of course they wanted to help their friends, as we all should--just not if it means you have to pull away from the Lord and what you believe to do it.  That building of people mocking also made quite an impact on me.  I haven't been openly teased much in my life, but I sure can understand the pressure--sometimes more intellectual than social--to take your eyes off the prize.  Then, when we ended up at the tree of life, and we shared hugs with friends and sisters and sang songs that invited the Spirit, you can't help but cry.  I know, cliche, crying at girls' camp--but it does happen, and there's nothing wrong with that.  :)

That's just one moment, of course--I remember being a first-year youth leader and my best friend and I had all these ideas about what we were going to do and how things were going to be...and then we found out we were in charge of two sisters with moderate physical and mental disabilities.  What a tender thing it was to lead them, to see how wonderful being wrong about your ideas can be.  Their sweet smiles, and easy laughter, and always giving out flowers, touched me.  There was also the year that my friends and sister and I were on the music committee, and we were charged to rewrite the lyrics to "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" to make it about young women's.  The four of us sat down and easily wrote the words--too easily for them to really be just ours.  Another time, we sat in the woods and opened a meeting with the Stake President with the song "Joseph Smith's First Prayer," and as the verses drew to a close the birds and wind itself were still and you could just feel the spirit there, quiet, powerful, and true.

Nothing helps you believe more than feeling the Spirit testify of Christ.  While I don't have any great and singular story to tell about girls' camp, I love the memories and the friendships I made there, and I love most of all that I always came away from that too-short four days with a renewed desire to keep close to the Lord and to do His will.  Especially at a difficult time in my life, learning the temporal and spiritual survival skills and then getting to teach them to others really shaped a large part of who I am and what I know today.  I just know that Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, are real.  They live, in bodies of flesh and bone, and love us more than we can really ever understand in this lifetime.  But I love that they provide moments like those--choice human experiences--that help us along the way.  That is why I believe.