Can you get to the temple by chance?

Girls were split up into groups and put into leaders cars that were equipped with a dice and a pie tin (to roll the dice in). The goal of this activity was to get to the Draper temple in 45 minutes. 

Rules: The dice has to be rolled before every intersection. If you roll an even number then you go right, if you roll an odd number then you go left, and if you roll a 1 then you go straight. After 45 minutes, all the groups were supposed to meet at the temple regardless of where the dice took you so that we could start our devotional. 

None of our groups made it to the Draper temple (though my car DID make it to the Jordan River temple, but that was just a fluke). The point of this night was to illustrate that getting to the temple has to be planned and premeditated.... you cannot get to the temple just by chance. You have to make all of the right choices and live by the standards in For The Strength of Youth. When we all got to the temple, we talked about the How, the When, and the Why we go to the temple then had some of the leaders bear their testimonies about the temple and how important it is to make the right choices to get to the temple (don't forget the personal progress plug. You can pair this activity with almost any of the Choice and Accountability experiences). It was beautiful. I even got a bit teary, which doesn't happen very often. 

That would have been a wonderful close to the activity right? But we went one step further. 

We had a leader bring 8 balloons, one for each of the value colors. 

We took the girls pictures with the balloons and the temple...Holy cow they loved it.

Then we whipped out our Sharpies out and had each girl write a promise on their balloon about what they would do to get to the temple and... we let them go and watched them float away. 

Such a powerful night. And we've got the pictures to prove it. 

Bad Habit Bonfire

We all have bad habbits that we have to CHOOSE to get rid of... this activity was to help us do just that.

We got all the fixin's for s'mores and drove ourselves up the canyon to have a campfire.
The girls were in charch of using their camp skills to build the fire, but before we started cooking we had a quick devotional.
We based our devotional off of an article that Joseph B. Wirthlin once shared in the Ensign.
We explained that bad habits can sometimes keep us from having a burning testimony then passed out paper and pencils for the girls to write their bad habit on. Then each girl threw their bad habits on the fire. The important thing to notice is that while the papers were burning, our fire burned brighter.
So the moral of this object lesson is that when you get rid of bad habits that keep you from feeling the Holy Ghost, your testimony grows stronger.
Then we had ourselves some s'mores.

I had 11 s'mores, a personal record. No big deal.

p.s. We got this idea from right here. Check it out.

Back to School BBQ

Combined activites are fun.
This one was exceptionally fun.
We had a BBQ in a leaders back yard, all typical like.
Then we split everyone up into teams and played pictionary...with chalk...on the sidewalk.
We soon learned that there are some pretty funny things you can do with chalk that you can't do with a pen.

School Shopping

Shopping and Choice and Accountability go hand in hand right?

We split the girls up into pairs, two girls with one leader. Then we asked the girls where they wanted to go shopping and drove them to that store. Each girl was given $50 in fake money and was told to find a MODEST school outfit within that budget.

When we were done shopping we all met back together and looked at all of the pictures of the outfits that the girls put together... we had some skilled shoppers!

After reviewing the outfits, the leaders chose one girl that exercised the most thrift and awarded her a super cute back to school kit that one of our leaders put together.

Then we shared a thought about making righteous choices, including choosing to be modesty. We paired this activity with Choice and Accountability experience numbers #7 (but it would be easy to include #2 and #5).

Modest is hottest ya'll. 

Standards Night Live

We named this Choice and Accountability activity Standards Night Live, for very obvious reasons.

Step One: Fill a room with lots of comfy seats/bean bags.
Step Two: Make lots of popcorn and get other movie treats/drinks (our leaders went to the movie theater and bought us REAL movie theater popcorn, so yummy).
Step Three: Watch Standards Night Live by John Bytheway. John is so very good about saying things in a way that just make sense, especially for the youth. This cheesy trailer even says so.
Step Four: Introduce Choice and Accountability #3 from the Personal Progress book.

Step Five: Lead a journal writing. Have the girls pull out their journals and start writing the things that come to their minds as you ask questions about the blessings and responsibilities of agency, their understanding of agency, and the consequences of choices and their actions.