summertime

yeah, so iʻve been bad about updating my blog. i was home for the summer and that was great. the best part about it was that I got to be an efy counselor at southern virginia university for two weeks. it was amazing, but it was also really really hard. operating under not so much sleep is not something i do well. but i had some amazing experiences nonetheless. i worked with incredible youth and counselors.this is my first group--called "see not." we had three counselors-myself, whitney, and ricky. it was a pretty big group, and ʻll admit, i never really got everyoneʻs names down. All the youth were great--i could sense their testimonies even if they didnʻt share them all the time. i really enjoyed getting to know the eight girls that i was assigned and was so excited to run into heather the ot

her day at jamba juice in the wilk! I had two girls from wv in my group, another girl was the

daughter of one of my momʻs bridesmaids, three were from my old stake in virginia, and then there were two that i had no connection to, but they were so sweet and i love them all! they were so good and patient as i figured out the ropes of being a counselor. i loved seeing them co

me to greater testimonies of their savior. i also got to know some of the other counselors--especially jenn and amy. the three of us became fast friends when we met at the materials table, which we rocked. we were in charge of getting everyone the dvd, handbook, and cd. btw, the efy cd this year is one of my absolute favorites. everyone told me that the first week would be an incredible experience, and it for sure was...and every time they said, just wait for week two, ʻcause youʻll be singing a different tune.

....and i was. week two, while still an incredible experience, was at times excruciatingly difficult. i was struggling with where i was going to end up after fall semester (iʻm an early worrier). the youth that week were also on the whole, much more difficult to deal with than the week before. but, i heard horror stories about earlier in the summer. at least no one hog tied their counselors with duct tape and carried them off, or hung other youth out windows (that seriously happened). thankfully, my group--feast upon-- was again wonderful. this week i worked with the younger age group of 14-15 year olds. i was afraid that i would be with a bunch of silly, squirrelly kids, but ohmygosh they were great. this week i was so much better at names this week. it helped that the group was a lot smaller...one of the smallest that week actually. it was just my group of eight girls and ericʻs twelve boys. they were all amazing. one of the boys was actually from my home ward, which was fun.