Every year for the youth, there is supposed to be an activity that is based off the For Strength of Youth. Last year, one of my counselors found this idea on Pinterest of doing a carnival all based off choices and that is really what the new For Strength of Youth is all about, the importance of our choices and how relying on our Savior and personal revelation to make those choices. We made the goal to do it this year and we wanted it to be a big event and have more youth involved so we invited 2 others wards in the stake to join us. There were aspects of the one that we found on the blog that didn't feel right so we made it our own. It was amazing working with the other two wards because there were more people to divide up games and food costs so bringing it all together was so much easier than if we had just done it with just our ward. We did a big carnival themed night with the emphasis and good, better, and best choices. All the youth knew was that it was a fun carnival and they didn't really know anything about the choice aspect of it which was part of them figuring out as the night went on.
Each ward was in charge of 4 carnival games (2 just fun ones and then 2 that had a spiritual aspect to them) and then also each ward was assigned 2 food areas. My two counselors took two of the games for our ward and the young men took the other two. I was in charge of the food for our ward and then of course being me and I love this kind of thing I did some extra decorating and painting to add some fun touches.
I painted these cute animal carnival characters to add some fun touches and then as you look at the pictures I also do the red and white borders that went above each door. These were things that weren't necessarily a part of the initial planning and set up but since I was in charge I wanted to do these and I'm glad I did because it added to the look of the whole thing.
As you look through the pictures, you will see there are red tables, blue tables, and yellow tables. This was done on purpose to help the youth distinguish between things. The youth were given red tickets at the beginning that corresponded with the red food tables/stations. They had 5 tickets to spend during the evening on whatever food they wanted. 1 food tickets=1 food item. We had cotton candy, caramel apples, nachos, root beer floats, and then lemonade and water (the drinks didn't cost them anything). We had 3 food tables set up for them to be able to sit and eat food at. Then the blue tables were just fun carnival games that they didn't get anything for doing and were just for fun. We had a basketball one, a nerf gun target practice, a bean bag toss, a cookie walk, a water bottle toss, and a toilet bowl toss. Then the yellow tables were carnival games that had a spiritual aspect to them. At these games the youth would receive tickets that they would collect and hold onto until the end. We had love your neighbor where the youth made cards for a children's hospital, spiritual cairns (rock stacking), guess the object (spiritual related object hidden in the box that they had to feel with their hands to guess what it was), a repentance obstacle course that was set up on the stage, a matching game of pictures from Christ's life, fishers of men (a fishing game where the fish had olden day and current day prophets that they had to guess), and then a books of the New Testament Hopscotch. We also had a photo area where the youth could take pictures with their cellphones and had props for them to use. All around the gym I had painted 10 different choice sayings to kind of hint at the importance of the choices that we make. They had an hour to do whatever they wanted. The idea was that it was fine if they just sat and ate food the entire time or just did some of the fun games. We were hoping that eventually they would catch on that at some games they got tickets and others they didn't and hoping that curiosity would want them to try everything out to see what it was all about.
I went Wednesday morning to do as much of the set up as I could. Thanks so much to Anna and Dale for coming to help and also two leaders from one of the other wards was able to help out. It went faster than I thought it would go. We were there for about three hours. Baylor did great with her little bike riding around or drawing while the set up happened. McCall also did pretty good crawling around or was held by different people. It was amazing to see it all come together! I love that aspect of planning and organizing a big event like this, the ideas and planning and meetings and visualizing what the whole thing should look like and then seeing it come to life!
(Some of these pictures were taken during the morning after the set up and then some were taken in the evening right before it started.)
McCall even took a little nap in her car seat during the set up which was nice.
The Bishops of each ward helped gather the youth in the foyer at the beginning. They were each given one of these bags with their 5 red food tickets.
It was so fun to watch the youth interact and have fun. You could tell they were a little hesitant at first but as the night went on, they got more into it. It was such an amazing turnout! I had some young women go that don't usually go to activities and there was probably around 70-75 youth there. We had stake leaders there and the missionaries from our wards. We had so many great leaders there helping and having fun with our youth.
Since Nate was out of town, the girls got to come and join the fun for the evening. Paige was great at helping with her two younger sisters. She carried McCall around for a while and then some of my young women were happy to carry her around for the later half of the evening. Paige loved the evening and went around doing games and getting food. She convinced Baylor to do a few of the games but Baylor wasn't a fan of all the people and sat by me for a good part of the night.
At the end, all the youth gathered in the chapel. I talked about the importance of good, better, best choices. A good choice was the fact that they were there and maybe they spent the night just eating food and visiting with friends, a better choice was doing those blue games that were just fun and you were a little more engaged in the evening, and the best choice would be for them to look at how many tickets they got by doing those spiritual games. I felt I was a little nervous and talked a little fast so hopefully at least most of the youth understood the concept of the tickets. This part I would have done a little different but it was fine. Then the high counselor over the young women gave some remarks about how decisions determine destiny especially that decade of decisions where you choose college/education, to go on a mission or not, to go to the temple and get married. Little choices can truly lead us to Christ! I made these little take away bags with some Hi-Chew candy to remind them of the evening and I even encouraged them to take one of those white tickets that they got and put it in their scriptures some where they go to get strength from Christ when they are unsure of what to do next. Christ will always help us with what's the next right step and each of those little steps truly help us stay on the path.
While we were in the chapel, the majority of the leaders stayed in the gym and cleaned up so when the youth went back in to eat some nachos (I got way too much so I encouraged them to go get some so that I wouldn't be eating cheese sauce for the rest of the year!) it was all cleaned up and we were all done and ready to go home in no time. It was a wonderful evening and turned out amazing!
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