Monday, September 6, 2010

Called to Serve at Camp Koholowo

"Auserwahlt zu Dienen"
A year ago, I was called to serve in Young Women again and as always, it is my very favorite calling.  I love being with these beautiful young women who are intelligent, talented, faithful and true.  They have strong testimonies of the gospel, they love the Lord and know who they are.  They are a delight to be with, to teach and to serve. 
This spring, our Young Women received a "mission call" to Germany.  This year, our Stake Girls Camp theme was "Called to Serve."  Each ward was called to serve in a different country around the world.  We were asked to learn, "Called to Serve," in the language of the country we are serving, so we learned to sing it in German, "Auserwahlt zu dienen."
Here most of our girls are preparing to sing at one of the flag ceremonies.  We were blessed to be able to have all 28 of our girls at camp with us plus a couple of young women whose families have moved out of the ward also came to camp with us and we loved having them!  Our girls are amazing young women, they are kind, caring and supportive of each other.  They laughed and played together.   We had a missionary schedule at camp.  We got up each morning at 6:30 a.m. (well, most of us, anyway) We excercised and studied the scriptures, then dressed and went to breakfast.  We had seminars with some return missionaries, who taught us how to use Preach My Gospel and apply it to our lives today.  The spirit was strong and we learned so much. 
We worked hard and played hard.  The young women dressed up our YW President for the Miss Koholowo pageant. 
Swap was the favorite card game - with this many around the table, you had to be quick and alrert!
Cooking up some dinner
We didn't get much sleep, but we had a LOT of fun!  We had a beautiful testimony meeting the last night and the spirit was so strong.  The consensus seemed to be that this was the BEST Girls Camp ever!