Saying goodbye to Young Womens :(

As many of you know, I was released from Young Womens last Sunday. It has been a very bittersweet and emotional time for me. I served as the President for 2 years. Some days it seems like it was forever, other days it seems like I was barely called yesterday.

I can still remember very clearly the day I was called. Matthew and I were meeting with the bishop for our tithing settlement.....and when we were done he just turned and said that he had a calling to extend to me and told me that it was as the President of the YW. I about died! I had never been in any other leadership calling before, or in the YW at all, so this came as a complete shock. Plus, I had just found out 2 days prior that I was pregnant with #4, so needless to say....I was overwhelmed! But I knew that this call was from God and that I could do it.

Almost immediately I fell in love with the girls and easily bonded with pretty much all of them. We had VERY few YW in the ward (only 6 at the time I was called), so I was constantly on the hunt for non-member girls in our ward who were YW age to add to our group of girls. We ended up having 3 non-member girls in our ward area participate in our activities, 2 of them pretty frequently. We had pretty frequent move-ins and move-outs, with 6 YW that moved out and 3 that moved in. So I had 14 girls at one time or another, with 10 being the most at one time. Even though everyone thinks that with such few girls, it would make it so much easier, it wasn't necessarily like that. We didn't have enough girls in any age group to ever be able to split up, so it was always everyone together on Sunday and at activities.....which meant that every lesson and activity always had to be appropriate for girls age 12-17! Besides the constant change of girls, there was constantly changes in leadership. I have counted up 16 different women that I served with in that 2 year period! And about half of those it was because they moved. I think I drove people out of our ward! Every time someone would move, and I'd replace them, the new person seemed to have a FOR SALE sign in their yard within a few weeks! ;) Good grief, am I really that horrible of a person to serve with?!?! LOL

So during those 2 years of constant change in leadership, with me being the only constant, the girls became pretty attached to me, and me to them. It was very hard to say goodbye. But ultimately I did sort of leave on my terms, if you really can consider it that. About a month ago I started feeling a sense of being "done". I talked about it with Matthew and he encourage me to talk with the bishop. So I did. I told the bishop what I'd been feeling, but made it VERY clear that I was NOT asking to be released, but that I pretty much felt like I'd done everything I had been called to do, and that I was basically at a crossroads where I felt I either needed to be released or I needed him to reassure me that I was still supposed to be serving in that calling. He told me he'd been thinking about me a lot the couple weeks prior and had been thinking and feeling the same things, but that he'd pray about it more and get back to me. I waited impatiently for THREE weeks! Then by mistake I found out from the new President (who was my secretary, and also happens to be one of my closest friends in the ward) that she had been called as my replacement. So it had been done, my end just hadn't been taken care of. But the bishop met with me later that day and made it official.....and then the tears began, and they still haven't completely stopped. I still cry from time to time. It still seems surreal. It's hard to explain the feelings unless you've been in my shoes, and hard to express everything I feel. I'm still trying to focus on the good things.....such as the fact that I'll now have more time to spend with my family, and have free time to do WHATEVER I WANT, which is great because I never feel like there are enough hours in the day to do everything I want or need to do.

I didn't quite get the closure I wanted at church the day they officially released me and sustained Christie.....so I threw myself (I know, I'm lame!) a farewell party last week. I had made a DVD of my favorite pictures from 2008 and we watched that and just got to sit and talk and reminisce and make one last final memory together. It turned out really fun. Many of them expressed their feelings of sadness and frustration and told me things like that they weren't going to go anymore because I wasn't there. (Only three girls went to the activity the day before. They went to Jump On It and one of the girls specifically told the new leader that called her to ask if she was coming, that "I'm not really in a jumping mood.") It was all of course very flattering, but I had to tell them that the best way to honor and respect me was to continue going and to give the new leaders the same love and respect they gave to me. They all vowed to finish their Personal Progress in my honor. Here's to hoping....but we'll see how that really goes.

The day I got released, I was reading the obituaries (for those of you who don't know, I'm an avid obituary reader), and there was one obituary that just jumped out at me that day. One part of it said something about how the hardest, but most rewarding calling she ever served in was as the YW President. That just struck me because I can't think of a better way to describe my time serving in that calling. I immediately turned to Matthew and told him to make sure to write that in my obituary when I die.

As stressful and frustrating as it was at times, I LOVED serving in Young Women's. I had SO much fun! I felt completely comfortable around all of the girls, and got to act like the biggest dork with them. I was not a very good girl during my teenage years, and in some strange way, I felt like I got a chance to relive my teenage years, but in a good, clean, fun way. And let's be honest, I look so young, I pretty much just blended in with the girls anyway. Besides all the fun stuff though, it truly was so rewarding to serve all of those beautiful young women. I learned so much from them and they were all such an example to ME and helped me strengthen my testimony of the gospel. I don't think I'll ever have another calling that I'll feel as passionate about......unless I get called again someday as YW President. Hmmm......maybe in a few years from now when MY girls are in YW. Now that would be fun!

I went through and picked out some of my favorite pictures from the last couple years, and here are some of my favorites.

Ahhh....Girls Camp! One of my favorite things in the world!! I was 7 1/2 months pregnant that year. I'd had a VERY miserable pregnancy and had been on Zofran the entire time. But Matthew gave me a priesthood blessing before I left and I ended up feeling better up there than I had my entire pregnancy.

Here's Youth Conference 2007. I was 8 1/2 months pregnant by this point, but was still very involved with the whole thing, including a LOT of walking the first day (at This Is The Place park and Temple Square), not to mention boating as you can see below.

I look like a dork in this picture, but I had to add it because it was such a thrilling experience. The Shumway's actually let me drive their very nice boat. What were they thinking? LOL I even scared myself a little! But it was so much fun!

On the last day of Youth Conference we did a service project of cleaning up trash around the church and park. It was amazing to see how much the kids were able to collect in such little time.

I was able to make arrangements for an amazing price to go to a school for the girls to have manicures and the leaders to have pedicures. This was my very first pedicure! Heaven!!!

For a combined activity with the Young Men, we rented out the ice rink at Noah's. We had SO much fun! The funnest part though was the drive there and back. I am extremely night blind (I probably shouldn't be allowed to drive at night!) and it made for a few scary, but funny, moments.

This was our only activity that we got every single girl to. We were making handprints in cement for a thing for New Beginnings. What a fun night!

We went to Jump On It for another one of our combined activities with the Young Men. Being a leader did not hold me back from jumping around like a crazy woman and acting like a silly teenager playing keep away from the boys with a foam ball and making a fool of myself. Don't ask.....

We got an opportunity to go to a session of General Conference last April because one of our girls that was not a member was taking the missionary discussions and they often give tickets to investigators. Originally they just asked me if I'd like to go with her, but then we were able to get a few extra tickets and take some of the other girls with us. What an amazing time we had!

Sabrina and Dani stayed late with me one night after an activity to help me clean up and we ended up talking and laughing til after 10. I thought for sure I was going to be "fired" after that. I had so much fun just having "girl talk" with them. It was exactly what I needed on that particular night because I'd had a really bad day.

Marissa gave us a photography lesson up at the Mt. Timpanogos temple grounds and then we took a bunch of pictures afterwards. Looking back, I think we maybe had a little bit too much fun and probably took some pictures of inappropriate behavior while being on the temple grounds. Oops! But we did get some very good pictures as well, such as the group one above and the cute one of me and Marissa below! :)

One of my favorite moments of Girls Camp.....meeting Sister Pryor! (She's the woman that plays the mother of the main girl in the movie "The Testaments". She's a convert and has an amazing story about her conversion. What an amazing woman!)

Another one of my favorite moments at Girls Camp. This picture was taken after our amazing, spiritual, and tearful testimony meeting. We're all a little red-eyed!

I love this picture! It was a combined activity with the Young Men where we went to Boondocks. It was pretty segregated of boys and girls.....except for Dallas. ;) I love that kid!!

This is at Boondock's too. I was so excited to see that the bathroom was named after me. :)

Here's our ward picture on the last day of Youth Conference. What an amazing time we had! All of the spiritual moments were the best. But I can't lie.....one of my other favorite moments was staying up late with the girls and sitting outside of the boys tent eavesdropping! Teenage boys are so weird!!

One of my favorite activities hands down....going to the gardens over at Thanksgiving Point. We went once each year. I wasn't able to roll down the hills the first year because I was almost 9 months pregnant. So this last year I was dying to do it. It hurt more than I thought it would, but it was a blast!

I just love these pictures. So beautiful!!! There are so many great places to take pictures there.

This was such a fun night, but it was FREEZING! We went to Cornbelly's over at Thanksgiving Point. I was trying to get a picture of all of us on the big rocking chair, but it didn't quite work. My dumb face makes me laugh, and I love Dani's cheesy face in the background.

This was from my farewell party last week. The girl on my right is not even in our ward. She's a friend of Dani's that we "adopted" into our ward. She came to a few of our activities and I consider her one of my girls as much as any of the others. So it seemed only fitting that she would come to the farewell party.

I had to sort through literally THOUSANDS of pictures to find these (it was a little easier because of having just made the picture DVD). On top of making all of the girls a copy of the DVD I made, I made them all a CD of the pictures from all of the activities (I customized each CD for each girl so it had only the pictures from the activities they were at). One of the girls commented that she hoped that one of the new leaders would be as much of a picture taking fanatic so that she can have the pictures of future memories she'll make in YW. Hey there's an idea to bring up with the bishop.....I can be the YW photographer! :)

(Sorry this was such a long post! Remember, my blog is my journal and it's intended to be something for me to be able to preserve these memories as much as it is for others to be able to read about them. If you've actually made it through this entire post, thanks! You're a good friend!!)