Helaman's Camp--Saturday

Saturday,

Saturday was short, but amazing. After waking up we had companionship study then individual study. We had given each of the companions in our zones short lessons to prepare for our zone meeting so they could teach each other before we taught them. After study time we went and had breakfast, the only meal there which wasn’t satisfying, cold, insubstantial, health cereal. It was obvious that adults had purchased the cereal, the only sugary stuff there was Coco Coco puffs and Lucky Charms, and there wasn’t enough for anyone. But that was ok because all the other food was so good. We then broke camp and had our zone meeting.

Richard told us this awesome story about hiking a volcano, Richard is a very good story-teller. Then all the groups taught their lessons, and I closed it up with this parallelism: The BoM testifies of Christ, Christ is the Son of God, We are Son’s of God, The BoM testifies of the Son of God, The BoM testifies of US, and by reading it we can learn how to make our imperfections like Christ’s perfections. I thought it was pretty sweet, but I could tell it went right over the heads of most the zone.

Then after a few brief remarks from the bishop we went to the end of the week testimony meeting. Everyone knows how sometimes during a testimony meeting there are periods where you have to wait for someone to get the courage to stand up and bear? Not at this meeting. There was a line 10 people long the entire 2 ½ hours, we only stopped because we had to get home. Every time I attend a testimony meeting I feel like I should get up and bare my testimony, I want to, but usually my fear of public speaking wins out. Not this time though, somehow I made it into the testimony line. A really strange thing happened when I stood up to bare my testimony. Up until this point in the meeting it had been rather calm, no wind, no extra noise to drown out the speaker. When I started to speak the wind started to blow gusts of wind so loud that I could barely hear myself speak, but I continued to talk and they only got louder. When I sat down, the winds quieted down and for the rest of the meeting were almost non-existent. It was very bizarre, but rather cool at the same time. I take it as god’s little way of saying “thanks for finally bearing your testimony like I’ve been asking you to” After the meeting all the leaders lined up in a line, Bro. Culliard first, the Stake Presidency second, and so on. We hugged every one of the leaders that had sacrificed to make such an amazing experience possible. Then we went home.

Just because the camp was done doesn’t mean I was, The Zone Leaders had to give a talk the next Sunday. I had been pondering what I wanted to say the entire camp, I listened to all the amazing things that were said by the other zone leaders and by Bro. Culliard at our various zone leader meetings during camp. I decided that I was going to merrily share stories from helaman’z camp and call that good enough. Sunday morning I went to  Missionary prep and decided that was’nt what I should speak about so I changed my talk completely and went on a whim and without a written paper to refer to. Instead I shared my favorite scripture and hymn, hymn 29, and Moroni 10:32-33. I gave a very good talk and I know the spirit was there.