my current calling right now it the personal progress advisor for the young women in our ward. it is so much fun! i was a little nervous at first about how i would be able to teach girls that were not much younger than myself and to help them understand that the program is really meant to show them how loved and blessed they are- how our Heavenly Father really seen them as His Daughters.
i have officially been in young womens for a year now, and i have decided that i really need to write down and document what i do! the ideas that i have come up with (although they are so not original) can not only be useful for me and the activities i plan, but they can be useful for a) other people who are teaching youth groups and b) it can be a resource for myself later on down the line when i am trying to find different ideas for my own daughters.
this is how we do young womens:
each month has a virtue.
*September- Integrity
*October- Virtue
*November- Faith
*December- Divine Nature
and so on....each month just follows the trend-- not necessarily starting over at the beginning of each new year.
the first tuesday/ mutual of each month we do a personal progress activity where we either do a value experience altogether or we start a value project.
one month out of the year is devoted to New Beginnings and another one is devoted to Young Women in Excellence. --I will get to those later....
something that we just started doing (and i am really hoping it will last) is called Midnight Madness. my mother in law is actually the one who gave me this idea. one night over the summer we all meet at one leader's home and we crank out as many young women experiences as we can. -- i will touch more on that later too....
also, every three months, we meet with the girls to discuss their goals: short term (for the next month), middle length (for the next three months), long term (for the next six months), and yearly (to be finished with by the end of the year).
thankfully the church has come out with numerous ways to help wards encourage the girls to finish this program and there are many other sites out there that give their ideas as well. hopefully this site will help do all of that and also be a place where you can share your ideas as well.
i love the personal progress program and i love the young women of the church- i admire them and their strength through the many hard ships that they have to endure in this life. the least i can do is try to be a good leader to help them become stronger and get through some of their rough roads.
Young Women in Excellence
I am so excited! We are planning our YWIE for this year and I am in love with the theme. "Running your Marathon". Hopefully I will be able to post about what all we are doing because I really feel like this year is going to be a lot of fun! I so love working in the Young Womens. I really feel like it is has blessed my life so much.
Young Women in Excellence turned out to be awesome! As I said before, we had the theme : Running your Marathon. The room was decorated like a marathon or race would be ( in a more simple fashion), the speakers were both marathon runners, and the refreshments were orange slices and granola bars with gatorade as the drink.
Have a look :)
So the whole room had a road going through it, like it was the path that people would run on. And all the girls were given a runner number as if they were real runners. In their little intro, we announced what projects they did and how their projects helped them become closer to their Savior.
The speakers were given a scripture to go off of and somewhat of a topic. One of the scriptures was Joshua 1:9 and the other was Isaiah 30:31 (i think, I don't remember at the moment).
The closing speaker was the Bishop who tied it all together really well. He talked about all the spiritual things that are there for the girls along the way to help them to the finish line. The finish line being our Savior, Jesus Christ.
At the end we awarded the girls with "medals"- the Young Women Logo necklace.
And then at the end we had refreshmants!
It was a TON of fun and I am so glad it is over. Now to start thinking of the next activity!
March 2011
This year has been fun in young womens so far! We have done some new things that also some old things but I really feel like my girls are getting something from Young Womens. One very satisfying things that has come from Young Womens was a letter that came from one of my girl’s parents- she e-mailed and said that her girls work on Personal Progress every Sunday. They read their scriptures every night and they are just excited to be sisters and daughters of God.
Oh my goodness! What a great feeling it was to hear that! It makes me want to do my job the best as I can and even better! It reminds me how grateful I am to be in Young Womens and how strong these girls are.
In January we set goals for 2011- I had the girls make book marks for their scriptures and write their goals on the back of the book marks. There was on short term goal, one long term goal, and two goals for personal progress. On the front of the book mark was the 13th Article of Faith since that is the theme for this year and the year in big bold letters.
In February we had New Beginnings. The theme was Come Unto Christ- we had tons of pictures of Jesus all around and some cute mood lighting. We also had a big banner that said Come Unto Christ in the front. Each of the members of the presidency got up and talked about difference aspects of the Young Women’s program and how it would take the girls closer to Christ. We also had all of the Laurels and some of the Mia Maids get up and bear their testimony about how the Young Women programs has helped them learn more about their Savior. It was a really fun night and we had some comments from the girls that it was the best New Beginnings they have every had.
Also in February I set up all of the girls to be on the personalprogress.lds.org website so they could use that if they wanted to. I felt like the girls are on the computer so much anyway, this would be a perfect way to keep them completely in-tuned with their progress. Some of them really like it, others really like the book. It was a very simple thing to do and easy to use. If you would like help getting started let me know :)
In March, we went back to the basics, and with Choice and Accountability #1 we taught the girls how to pray and how to study. Then we read all of the required scriptures and spend the rest of the time letting the girls study on their own and pass things that off that they needed to pass off.
Now it is Camp season so our activities will be sparse but I am way excited for our next one- we are going off of Integrity #3. There are tons of scriptures to read but we are going to have the girls act them out, each will be in a group, they will read the story together and then act it out for the other girls and then explain why each story has to do with Integrity. I will let you know how that one goes.
Next Sunday is the Young Women’s general broadcast. Our stake is also going to be recognizing the girls that have finished or are close to finishing their young women medallion. We wanted to have as many girls finish as we could so we have been encouraging them like no other to try to finish or at least do as much as they can- we probably have about 5 girls that are going to be recognized and it has been so fun to see them all working really hard to finish for this night! I am thinking of having a big ice cream party at the end of the year for all of the girls- for each value that you have finished, you get to add a topping to your ice cream…or something like that, still fun for everyone but the girls that have been working really hard get an extra treat.
The speakers were given a scripture to go off of and somewhat of a topic. One of the scriptures was Joshua 1:9 and the other was Isaiah 30:31 (i think, I don't remember at the moment).
The closing speaker was the Bishop who tied it all together really well. He talked about all the spiritual things that are there for the girls along the way to help them to the finish line. The finish line being our Savior, Jesus Christ.
At the end we awarded the girls with "medals"- the Young Women Logo necklace.
And then at the end we had refreshmants!
It was a TON of fun and I am so glad it is over. Now to start thinking of the next activity!
March 2011
This year has been fun in young womens so far! We have done some new things that also some old things but I really feel like my girls are getting something from Young Womens. One very satisfying things that has come from Young Womens was a letter that came from one of my girl’s parents- she e-mailed and said that her girls work on Personal Progress every Sunday. They read their scriptures every night and they are just excited to be sisters and daughters of God.
Oh my goodness! What a great feeling it was to hear that! It makes me want to do my job the best as I can and even better! It reminds me how grateful I am to be in Young Womens and how strong these girls are.
In January we set goals for 2011- I had the girls make book marks for their scriptures and write their goals on the back of the book marks. There was on short term goal, one long term goal, and two goals for personal progress. On the front of the book mark was the 13th Article of Faith since that is the theme for this year and the year in big bold letters.
In February we had New Beginnings. The theme was Come Unto Christ- we had tons of pictures of Jesus all around and some cute mood lighting. We also had a big banner that said Come Unto Christ in the front. Each of the members of the presidency got up and talked about difference aspects of the Young Women’s program and how it would take the girls closer to Christ. We also had all of the Laurels and some of the Mia Maids get up and bear their testimony about how the Young Women programs has helped them learn more about their Savior. It was a really fun night and we had some comments from the girls that it was the best New Beginnings they have every had.
Also in February I set up all of the girls to be on the personalprogress.lds.org website so they could use that if they wanted to. I felt like the girls are on the computer so much anyway, this would be a perfect way to keep them completely in-tuned with their progress. Some of them really like it, others really like the book. It was a very simple thing to do and easy to use. If you would like help getting started let me know :)
In March, we went back to the basics, and with Choice and Accountability #1 we taught the girls how to pray and how to study. Then we read all of the required scriptures and spend the rest of the time letting the girls study on their own and pass things that off that they needed to pass off.
Now it is Camp season so our activities will be sparse but I am way excited for our next one- we are going off of Integrity #3. There are tons of scriptures to read but we are going to have the girls act them out, each will be in a group, they will read the story together and then act it out for the other girls and then explain why each story has to do with Integrity. I will let you know how that one goes.
Next Sunday is the Young Women’s general broadcast. Our stake is also going to be recognizing the girls that have finished or are close to finishing their young women medallion. We wanted to have as many girls finish as we could so we have been encouraging them like no other to try to finish or at least do as much as they can- we probably have about 5 girls that are going to be recognized and it has been so fun to see them all working really hard to finish for this night! I am thinking of having a big ice cream party at the end of the year for all of the girls- for each value that you have finished, you get to add a topping to your ice cream…or something like that, still fun for everyone but the girls that have been working really hard get an extra treat.
