Girls Camp

It's been quite awhile since I've gone to girls camp. Honestly, I haven't been since I was in the program as a youth. I really enjoy being part of the Young Women's program and girls camp was especially fun for me. I love working with these great women. It's amazing how completely different we all are, but somehow it's the perfect balance.


We went to Camp Zarahemla, I knew there were new missionaries serving there, but it was a fun surprise to discover that the new missionaries were from my home town, Kennewick. It just happened to be my Young Women's president from 15 years ago. Here she is on the left. It was a lot of fun to visit with her throughout the week.

It was fun to see the lighter side of some of our church leaders.

These ladies were the cooks. They were a riot all week and we had fun pulling pranks back and forth. Most of the jokes stemmed from a silly night at the beginning of the week where a bunch of us were helping the cooks wrap potatoes in foil. I turned around and noticed that there was a potato with an entire end that wasn't covered. I grabbed it and began to rewrap it, being careful to cover the entire potato in foil. The other ladies teased me about this and told me not to look at the rest of the hundred potatoes too closely. Once quick glance and I realized that most of the potatoes had peek-a-boo holes. I could hardly stand it and had to walk away to keep myself from rewrapping ALL of them. They thought it was so funny and jokes sprang up throughout the rest of the week. All of them including foil.

The girls were amazing and they seemed to be having lots of fun!

It's too bad the water was a little cold. I never tested it for myself, but the girls who did came out looking like this.
We decided to go green this year and asked all of the girls to bring a mess kit or plastic dishes that they could wash and reuse. This saved us from having loads and loads of paper waste. I laughed as some of the girls dollar store plates barely made it through the entire week.

I slept in a motor home and we had a little critter who decided to join us. We watched a chipmunk run up the steps and right through the open door one afternoon. We tried to scare him out but only had a few minutes before we had to race off and teach a class so we ended up leaving the door open a hoped he'd come out on his own. We didn't see much sign of him and assumed he must have left and we were very careful to always keep the door shut after that. Two days later one of the girls saw a chipmunk in the motor home looking out the front windshield at us. The door was shut and he was comfortably sitting on my bed. We were determined to get that little critter out, you should have seen the commotion. Jayne had a cookie sheet she banged as she hollered at him. Christie stuck her camera under seats and in dark corners to take pictures and see where we couldn't see with our eyes. I set up baracades to keep him from running back and forth and we finally watched him run out the door.

There he goes.

One of the silliest nights was skit night. Our stake skit was a lot of fun. Everyone really got into it and the girls had some good laughs. Stephanie was Miss Whimper and Wine, she claims she has seen her kids whine enough that it was easy for her to do, but I've never seen anything like it.

We had some great laughs, lots of fun, and we certainly ate well, but for me, the highlight was watching the girls and seeing how the older ones really run the camp. They are amazing and they are already such great leaders with strong testimonies. Their influence on the younger girls is crucial and their example is so important. I was very impressed with them. There was a great balance of fun and opportunities for the girls to grow spiritually. I can't wait for my daughters to be old enough to be a part of girls camp!