A week and a half ago, I went with my young men to stake young men's camp at Impeeza. Typically I'm not too excited about the stake young men's camps as I prefer to do a little more adventurous outings when I camp, and not be quite as scheduled. But I have to say, this year's camp was excellent. Bruce Orr and I had 20 young men with us, which was the largest group in the stake. I also think that we have some of the best young men in the stake as there are few issues with the young men, and the ones who do have issues, the other young men have learned to be supportive, accepting and relatively patient with them. Some of the fun things included a hike up to the top of Table Mountain for the deacons, fly fishing for teachers, a raft war for the priests, a game of predator prey, and the typical Impeeza activities (archery, climbing wall, obstacle course, zip line and canoeing).
Cimarron Deacons Quorum at the top of Table Mountain
My favorite memory however, was from an experience that was at the time a little frustrating. One of the young men had gotten involved with some stinging nettle during the predator / prey game played on Tuesday night. After a night that was uncomfortable and with little sleep, he was understandably in a poor mood the next day, even though the worst of the actual stinging nettle issue was behind him. After lunch, he started bugging me to let him call his parents to see if they would come and pick him up. I tried to encourage him to stay, as we were going home the next day anyways, but he persisted in wanting to call his parents. After trying to get him to see his parents position (i.e., driving 4+ hours for a non-emergency when the young man would be home the next afternoon), he still persisted, so I let him borrow my phone to call home. Thankfully the boys parent told him to tough it out. From that point on I tried to get him and another young man who was also suffering from some self imposed boredom, to get more involved. We went down to the dock and started a "King of the Dock" battle that lasted for a good 45 minutes, had a nice supper, and then all the youth planned an awesome skit for the fireside that evening. It was a McDonald's order rap that most had seen on the internet, that they did hilariously for the fireside. All of our young men got involved and it really served to pull them even closer together as a group. That night as we walked back to camp, the young man said to me, "aren't you glad that I stayed?" To which I said, "Sure, but aren't you glad that you stayed?" He said he was. I guess the lesson was that sometimes its better to try and make the best out of what can seem to be a poor situation, and in some cases you will blessed with the best experiences you have had all camp.
That evening I was informed that the youth were going to be woken up at 6:00 in the morning for a hike that they were to be informed was going to occur at 7:00. Around the fire that evening I told the young men of the 7 am hike, which was met with groans and requests to sleep in instead. I told the young men that the stake had something special planned for the hike, and that if they slept in they would be missing out. To which I was still met with requests to miss the hike. I then told them that this would be the only time that they could participate in the hike, and that they could sleep on the way home from the camp and that they could sleep all they wanted when they got home. I asked them why they would choose to miss the hike, which had the potential to be something special, for something that they could have at any time afterwards. I think that is like a lot of decisions in life, and one that I hope the young men will relate to their mission decision. Sometimes we are offered limited opportunities to participate in something that has the potential to be very special, but we look for reasons to not participate, because participation is not always easy. Or we are willing to miss out on something unique, because we want to do something ordinary.
Most of the young men started to agree with the reasoning and decided to come on the hike. Two of them came to me and asked if they could still stay in bed to which I said, I would prefer they chose to come on the hike because I had no desire to drag them out of their beds that morning. So they said, "So we can choose to stay in bed", and I said. "Yes, but that means I'll have to drag you out in the morning." They finally got the point that I would compel them to come if they didn't choose to. The next morning the stake young mens presidency came by at 6 am calling everyone to assemble in 15 minutes to "redeem their brethren in Missouri". Bruce Orr was out of his tent very quickly challenging our youth to be the first up to the meeting place. I think this challenge actually got a lot of the youth in the stake going, but our group was the first up and assembled. The hike was about 2 hours, and was a bit of a history lesson on Zion's camp. At the halfway point we had a testimony meeting. When one of Bruce's sons got up to bear his testimony Bruce turned to me and said, "This is new." It was a great way to end the camp.
Early morning hike with "Zion's Camp"
On the way home the youth wanted to go to a McDonalds to actually perform their McDonalds rap and dance in public. It was hilarious, the highlight was Jonathan Jeffries doing the worm with a pillow stuffed up his shirt on the floor of McDonalds. Here is a video, you can't really hear it very well, and its pretty shaky because I was laughing so hard. Bruce got one that was a little better.
