Mysterious Ways

About three years ago(ish), I drove myself to our local chapel on a Wednesday night my first Young Women's Mutual night as an adult leader. It turned out that the activity had been cancelled, but I didn't know that in advance and neither did one of the girls. I think she was just about to turn 14 at the time. We hung out together until her parents were finished running errands and came back to pick her up-it was good bonding time for me as a new leader to have one on one time with one of the girls, but I know that (for very different reasons) we were both sitting there wondering what we were doing there in the first place. At the time, a few of her siblings were struggling as young adults with their choices and their testimonies and I had once been told flat-out that I would never work with the youth of the church because my example just wasn't good enough. Still, we clicked and I still remember that evening as a good time for both of us, even if we weren't feeling very sure of ourselves that night.

We would repeat this experience side by side at Girls' Camp later that year. She would spend most of it sick in the nurse's station in part because she felt bad, and in part to avoid a very difficult camper who was clinging to her.  Meanwhile, I spent most of my time trying everything to keep that difficult camper happy and wishing my young friend in the nurse's station felt better AND that she had left her South Park shirts at home. I hadn't been a youth leader for long, I had never attended a church-sponsored camp in my life and I found myself very unsure about how to deal with one girl's determination to ruin everyone's good time including her own, and how to best soothe the other one as she coped with constant allergies and migraines. (Fortunately, we had a great camp nurse who helped me manage both girls. I love her so much.) The difficult camper never did get into the spirit of things and has yet to return to camp. Then again, I'm not sure why any of us went back to camp after that first crazy year, but the next year and the next saw my first YW friend and I returning each time with fewer migraines and fewer other challenges and improving upon our camp experiences each time that we came.

Tonight, we sat side by side on the stand at church for a camp fireside. Me as a member of the Stake Young Women's presidency to speak to the girls and their parents about the spiritual aspects of camp, and and she as one of the older, more experienced Young Women to speak to the new girls about all the good things they would experience at camp and encourage them to tough out the hard times as she once did. We were both a little nervous to speak, but this time we both knew quite well why we were there and we were very glad to be a part of the evening's program. To be honest, I'm not surprised to find us still side by side three years later, but what a pleasant surprise it is to find us so much further along in our respective walks with God than I'm sure either one of us imagined three years ago in the hallway of that small chapel building.