I love serving in the Stake Primary, but when one of your counselors is released to be Primary President in her ward, and your secretary asks to be released for personal reasons, and you submit names for replacements but don't hear back, and then you have a Stake Activity Days event to plan for all girls 8-11 (about 100 of them), it starts to feel a bit stressful. I did hear from my Stake Presidency, and they let me know that they had felt it was time for me to be released, but wanted to wait until after the activity. I was perfectly fine with that, having just about completed my fourth year in the calling, and it was refreshing to know what was going on. So my counselor (whose son was getting married two weeks after the event out of state and then having a reception here a week later, and who was also renovating her home and starting a new job) and I pulled up our bootstraps and got planning. We called on a lot of people to help us out!
We decided to use our Stake's theme for the year as our guide, and so ours was "The Temple: I'm Going There Someday." We started with getting nametags (the color assigned the group they'd be in) and then building temples out of sugar cubes while all were gathering. I gave a short introduction to the theme, and then they headed off to rotate through six classes.
One was a cupcake decorating class. First, their teacher went through cake ingredients and related them to preparing to go to the temple. (Cake mix=obedience [Follow steps to get best results], oil=service [story of widow and Elijah], eggs=prayer [story from Friend], water=faith in Christ [Living Water], etc.) Then they decorated cupcakes (which I had purchased premade!) and put a temple chocolate I had made on top.
They made a craft by putting craft paper and then a vinyl temple sticker onto a tile with Mod Podge.
Another class was about preparing for Baptisms for the Dead (what it is, the interview, how you can feel when you do it, etc.) They wrote letters to their future selves about how they will prepare.
In this class, they heard a story about how each day, you build your own "temple" brick by brick by the things you do and say. They passed off two Faith in God goals when they thought of someone who they admire and listed the qualities they like, and then wrote one on a wooden "brick" to remind them to try to be like that person. They also wrote a thank you note to that person for being a good example for them. (Hello, Tessa in the yellow shirt and Caytie in the grey, at the round table!)
We were going to have them go to the Family History Library to look up their families, but when we learned it only has six computers, and the hassle it would be to have everyone set up their own accounts before the activity, we changed that class to a game, like a cake walk, with phrases of how you can prepare for the temple.
The final class was a power point about temple trivia, and the teacher provided plenty of candy for correct answers!
After the rotations, we fed everyone lunch (which was sub sandwiches we had purchased premade, juice, chips, and their cupcakes).
I think everyone had a great time, and hopefully the girls left feeling more prepared to go to the temple. I'm grateful to have served the Primary kids and leaders of our Stake, and I'm also grateful someone else will have the chance to do it as I look ahead to a year of being a PTA president... (More on that later...)
