Youth Conference

I have had the most amazing weekend!  The last few days have been awesome.  We had a massive 7 stake youth conference in our area.  There were approximately 1,400 youth that attended a three day EFY style conference.  I was able to attend all the events on Thursday.  It started with a welcome from our Stake President (because our stake was hosting this event) and our Area Seventy, Elder Risenmay; followed by Brad Wilcox.  Awesome.  Then the youth broke into groups to rotate through three other classes presented by Chad Kirby, a popular EFY speaker; a member of our Stake Presidency, Ryan Harbertson; and a local attorney with an amazing story of overcoming adversity, Trent Kunz.  The classes were excellent.  We had dinner before having a variety/talent show.  It was amazing.  Let me just say we have some youth with amazing talents.  There is actually a YouTube video of the entire show but it is about an hour long so you've really got to be dedicated to watch it!
We were hosting youth in our home because some of the youth came from hours away.  We had four great girls sleeping in our downstairs.  We got home late Thursday night but they were up and ready to go to a service project by 7:30 am.  I wasn't able to attend Friday at all.  I just dropped the girls off and picked them up late Friday night after a day full of service, classes, flash mobs, outdoor activities and a dance.   I saw pictures and I know the energy in the gym when I picked my girls up was awesome.  I love being around the youth because of their energy and vibrancy.  Yes, I feel old just saying that!
Saturday morning the youth were able to rotate through 6 Book of Mormon "vignettes".  These were productions of various stories from the Book of Mormon such as Lehi's dream of the Tree of Life, the People of Ammon who bury their swords, Abinidi and so forth.  I didn't attend any of the vignettes but I help on the People of Ammon one for a couple of months before switching to the finale vignette which was the Stripling Warriors.  I wish there was a YouTube video of that because it was so so great.  There was a voice over of Helaman describing his warriors almost verbatim from the scriptures while a spotlight traveled from group to group.  We had a small group of mothers with young children, a small group of fathers "laying down their weapons of war" and a group of warriors that ended with a dynamic display as if they were training for battle.  The capstone of this came when we sang Army of Helaman and 80 missionaries from our mission filled in the stage.  We sang the EFY medley and there were a few other musical numbers which were just fantastic including this one (starting at 3:27) which ended totally improv with Brad Wilcox, Helaman and Moroni joining the young men followed by all the missionaries coming back out on stage again.  I actually missed this one because I was in the dance room helping the children from earlier get out of their costumes!  So sad!
We went to dinner after this feast of spirituality while the stage was set up for.... NASHVILLE TRIBUTE BAND!!  It was so much fun being there for that.  Roy was actually able to attend with me for all of the stuff on Saturday.  We sat back and enjoyed the music.  If you go to NTB's FB page there are a few pictures of our event.  It was a great way to end a fantastic conference.  I feel so fortunate to have been a part of this event in even the small way I was.