The Benefit of My Experience

My friend, Cindy Halibut, and I were once talking about how we were looking forward to working with the Young Women someday. We had so much to tell them! We wanted them to benefit from our years of experience!

Cindy's first calling after she was married was in the YW. One day she called me and said, "They don't want to listen to anything I have to say!"

So, fast forward to a few weeks ago. Our ward's fantastic YW president, Shiny Penny, asked me to give a short talk at Evening of Excellence about how my experience in YW influenced me in my educational pursuits. Which elicited from me an, "Uh...er...uhhhh".

The thing is, what I remember about YW is being the world's biggest ugly duckling, and a major weirdo for acutally having educational goals. So, I decided to ask some of my friends about their experiences in YW. Here are a couple of responses:

Super Mom--"I learned how to cook and sew."
Community Activist Mom--"I learned how to make a quilted cover for my Personal Progress book."

I think that YW is better about strengthening the girls spiritually these days.

Anyway, I had two or three weeks to think about what I was going to say, but unfortunately, I had a lot of things going on around the same time. One thing I knew that I needed to say was that the girls needed to know that they really are daughters of God, he really knows them and cares about them. That's something that I didn't really internalize until I was much, much older, and knowing it and living like I knew it would have changed some of the path of my life.

My role models when it comes to giving a talk are Susan Tanner, Shari Dew, Sharon Larsen and Jennifer Carter. (You may not know Jennifer Carter. She was in the Manhattan First Ward, and totally rocked talks.) I felt like my little Eve of Ex talk fell short of that. There was so much that I wanted to say, but couldn't really put together in the way in which I had hoped. It was also a little distracting to give my talk in the middle of a dinner, but the other speaker, Magnificent Melody, gave a terrific talk that seemed to go over perfectly.

And then the Primary Program--I have to say that it went fine, because I have really wonderful Primary children and board. For the first time in three years, all of my children did their lines gladly. Even my Sunbeams spoke! I think they could've sung a little louder and done the unison parts better, but overall, it was successful. I hope that I don't have to do another one for a long time.