Mission Possible: Special Agents of Agency

There's a reason everyone dreads getting that call to meet with a member of the stake presidency. You just never know what they're going to ask you to do. For us, it was Youth Conference.

We were in charge of Youth Conference! Gulp. It was November when we got the assignment, but it would be January before the initial plans started coming together. We'd met with the stake leaders to discuss possible formats, but they were expecting specifics at our January 21st meeting. This was an exceptionally heavy time for our family. I consider it miraculous that I was able to put together a plan and present it on that day, which was just one day before Jon's mom died.

I was inspired by a New Era article called, "Special Agents of Agency" and decided to use it as a basis of our Youth Conference. Jon and I decided our official theme would be, "Mission Possible: Special Agents of Agency." We designed handouts, posters and registration forms. It's a difficult task to coordinate several wards and branches. Just distributing and collecting registration proved quite time consuming and annoying.

 A schedule of events was set and many, many people called to help us make it all happen.

The youth were all assigned to one of four government agencies; FBI, Bomb Squad, CIA and Secret Service.  I made every registrant a badge and it was attached to a color coordinated lanyard to show which agency they were in, which was the group they would rotate with throughout the conference. The back of their badge outlined their agency's schedule.

We had a youth committee that we used to help us run the event.  They also starred in our fun "Intro to Conference" movie that Jon made:

 

At check-in, each of the youth was given a notebook to use in the workshops.

I designed a centerpiece for the tables and then turned over the assembly of them to the Stake YW leaders.

I also made two different photo booths for the youth to use throughout the conference.

Dinner was first on the schedule.

Then there was an "opening group activity" that involved several different activities that the kids did with their agencies.  Twinkie Art was one of them.

We had an amazing keynote speaker to cap off the night.  He is a real life special agent and he spoke of the importance of adhering to safety training, which for these youth is found in their Strength of Youth pamphlet.  He told many stories of his field experience and the kids were thoroughly enthralled.

After breakfast on Saturday morning, the youth rotated through four different workshops.  The presenters all did a really fabulous job.

The meals were served with great efficiency.

The Minute-To-Win-It games that we played after lunch were a huge hit!  We had people assigned to oversee this portion and they did a really amazing job.  Jon got the timer and music from the TV show loaded on his computer and he played it on the big screen during each game.  It was wild, crazy and LOUD!

I was incredibly relieved and utterly exhausted by the time all was said and done.  It was a great success.  And so, SO much work!

Here's to hoping we don't get called in to meet with a member of the Stake Presidency again anytime soon.