Arise, Shine & Sparkle

I have updated this blog post with links to our activities that go along with our theme and New Beginnings

I have never really been a girly girl but as I get older I am finding that I love anything that sparkles. So when I was searching through different blogs I totally fell in love with

I had been trying to come up with an idea for our New Beginnings, I went to http://goforwardwithfaith.blogspot.com/2012/01/arise-and-shine-and-lot-of-sparkles.html (one of my very favorite blogs) and it just hit me! I love it.
With our mutual theme being “Arise and shine forth, that thy light might be a standard to the nations” D&C115:5 this was the perfect theme. I also took it as being an “Action”, last year we spent all year searching for those things that were lovely, virtuous and in doing good, now is the time for us to stand and show our stuff “Sparkle”. So off I went in search of anything and everything that sparkled.

Our Purpose for the evening was to share with all of our young women, parents and upcoming girls, our theme, important dates to keep in mind, expectations when it comes to modesty and respect, personal progress, and our desire to read the Book of Mormon together with a reward system.

We decided on 3 topics we felt were the most important to focus on, they were 1) Media & Modesty 2) Personal Progress & 3) Book of Mormon- We decided to break our group into 3 separate groups (ahead of time) & have each group start in one of the above rooms- then rotate every 15 min.
Timeline: Started all together with a introduction of our upcoming beehives by their Mothers, they were asked to bring a basket filled with things that would tell about their daughter- it was great especially coming from the person who knows them best
We then introduced the theme by showing a clip from Sister Dalton A Message from Sister Elaine Dalton

We then all separated to our different rooms
Room 1) Media & Modesty- We wanted the girls & parents to know what we expected regarding these two topics- we introduced our basket

I found this on pintrest at “Be with the friends who are here” (I love pintrest) and what we expected as dress standards Efy dress code.

Room 2) Book of Mormon- We introduced reading the Book of Mormon together along with the rewards

Of course we changed it a bit and found it on Pintrest here Reading Chart We also had some visitors come back in time, a man from our ward dressed up as Nephi and talked about this important record, we also had a sister from our ward dress up as a Mother of a Stripling Warrior- it was so awesome, they both did an amazing job at personalizing these accounts and making them come alive & the spirit was so strong.
Check out our activity that went along with this:
Book Of Mormon Challenge
Our Activity for Book of Mormon Challenge- Mosiah

Room 3) Personal Progress- Our personal progress leader put together a short skit about personal progress that the girls could perform that night and pass off Individual Worth #5

At the end of the rotations we all headed back to the Relief Society room to hear from our Bishop and partake of all the wonderful food our Laurels made

Such fun decorating cupcakes, popcorn and pretzels (took us 2 nights)

Pretzels dipped in Pink Chocolate with lots of “Sparkle”

We decorated with lots of white Christmas lights in trees and on tables, we turned the lights off to give us a very beautiful scene- the treat table is always one of my favorites.