Beautiful to Him

Tonight we had our YW in Excellence. This is an annual activity where the teenage girls get to share the projects they have been working on through the year in the Personal Progress program. We chose the theme "Beautiful to Him" and used a beautiful EFY song with that title. The girls came up with the idea for the program and it turned out great. Usually the girls go up one by one and present what they have been doing. At times they get very shy and timid and get up and sit down as fast as they can. This year 2 of the girls came up with the idea of making it a talk show and the two "interviewed" their guests and asked them how their project helped them come closer to Christ and become beautiful to Him. They spoke about how the world views beauty on the outside appearance vs. how our Heavenly Father views each of us as beautiful.

A couple of weeks ago we had taken the YW to the temple for a "temple pondering" trip. So instead of going in and doing baptisms like we usually do, they brought their journals and scriptures and we gave them time to reflect, set goals, and pray. We took pictures of them and we also would questions. A few of the questions we asked were:

1. How does the Young Women’s program help you in your life?
2. Who is Joseph Smith and how do you feel about him?
3. Who do you know that has lifted themselves or others during a challenging time in their life?
4. What are some things you do to show that you know Pres. Monson is a Prophet today?
5. How do you feel about the Savior?
6. How do you feel about the Book of Mormon?
7. How do you remain unspotted from the world?
8. Share a testimony building moment from Scripture reading, Girl's Camp, EFY, Seminary, etc.
9. What does a Temple Marriage mean to you?
10. How does your understanding of the Atonement help you in your daily life?
11. How have you grown closer to the Savior during a trial in your life?

We took that video footage and the pictures and made a video for them to watch at YW in Excellence tonight. One of the YW were supposed to help us put the video together but at the beginning of this week she let us know how stressed and busy she was and that she was not going to be able to do the video. I was stressing out BIG TIME...then our Personal Progress leader said her college age daughter, who is currently without a job, would like to work on it for us. Talk about a LIFE SAVER! We also gave each of the YW a little mirror with the words "Beautiful to Him" in the center and we had a little flower hair clip on the side of it. This same leader's daughter and her other 2 daughters also painted the mirrors for us!!!! Talk about going above and beyond! They turned out so cute and I think the YW loved them. It turned out to be a great night. Now that I have that behind me I don't care WHEN I go into labor :)