A Little Lesson in Spirituality

Sunday: A cool, draining and interesting day. It began as normal- the 3 hour church block. Because it was fast Sunday the ysa put together a break the fast at our spiritual mum's house (what they call their ysa leader). Camilla drove us over. Everyone had brought a dish to share. We had everything from curried sausage to taro to french bread and salads. It was really yum! After dessert the meal turned into a ysa planning session where they planned the next few activities. This was the last ysa activity for one of the young men who is leaving next week for his mission (stake conference is next Sunday) so after eating and planning we had a mini testimony meeting. It was awesome... at the start but then each person started taking 10-15 minutes per testimony... and with about 20 ysa well it turned into quite the meeting. Funny because after about the first hour I was done... after the second well I was very done... by the end of the third.... yup you get the picture.

 It is incredible to see the church and the faith of the members. Especially the youth. Missionary work is  honored like nothing I've ever seen and there are so many young people preparing to serve. Maybe we should take lesson from the faith of these people.

So if that extra testimony meeting wasn't enough then there was another ysa activity later that night at 7. We went straight from the break the fast (that started at 3) to the ysa activity.

This activity was pretty cool- it was a ysa discussion. One person is in charge of leading the discussion. For this month a girl was in charge. She began by showing us the mormon message by D. Todd Christofferson where he talks about the gardener cutting down the little current bush so that it could reach its full potential. During the discussion we talked about how we can know what Heavenly Father wants each of us to become and how we can achieve that potential. We looked up different scriptures as groups and then shared what we learned. She ended the discussion about an hour later by showing one last mormon message- better things to come by Jeffery R. Holland. It was a really neat experience. Everyone was surprised when I told them that we don't have these ysa discussions where I come from.

We didn't get home until after 10 and I was definitely glad to be home! It was interesting to see how important church activities and group togetherness is for these people. I love it even if it is a bit long sometimes... :)