Youth

First of all, I've been looking at the statistics for who visits my silly little blog, and I want to say thank you to those who do.  And to those of you in Russia - wow.  So cool.  Isn't it neat how technology helps to make the world smaller and more connected?

Okay, now for the post:

In my church, we take turns serving in different unpaid positions.  We don't choose them, but we believe that our church leaders are inspired to call us to serve in those different positions.  A couple of years ago or so, I was asked to be in the Stake Young Women presidency.  A stake is a geographical region.  Within a stake are many wards (congregations).  Within each ward is a young women program, which is for girls between the ages of 12-18.  So what I do is work with the ward young women leaders who are part of my stake - does that make sense?

This evening we had a youth fireside (devotional?) for our stake.  All of the youth, boys and girls, from 12-18 years of age were invited to attend.  Unfortunately, there was not much of a turnout.  For those of us who were there, though, I feel like it was a really great evening.  There were five people who spoke, and the topic was service.  Two of the speakers were teenagers - one boy and one girl.  They did such a great job.  I was especially impressed with the boy who spoke.  He talked about how serving others is necessary for one to be happy.  He also made some comment like, "You can do all of the cookie-cutter [good] things, but if you don't give service that's all you are - a cookie-cutter."  He also mentioned how many people today are not accustomed to being served, which I think can be true. It's easy for us to be self-serving and to get so caught up in our busy lives that we don't reach out to others like we should.

I was just impressed to hear this boy, who seems to understand how wonderful service is and how necessary and important it is.  Teens can really be given a bad rap, but there are some very amazing ones, and I was glad to be with some of them tonight.