Ask in Faith - Stake Standards Night

In the early 1800s a fourteen year old boy came across this scripture:

James 1:5

"If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not, and it shall be given him."

The very next verse continues . . .

"But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed."

This verse inspired this young boy, Joseph Smith, to ask God a question. He wanted to know which Church was true and which to join. This prayer resulted in a vision where Joseph Smith saw our Heavenly Father and His son Jesus Christ. Throughout the next few years, Joseph Smith translated the Book of Mormon and restored the true Church upon the earth. Because he "Asked in Faith" Joseph Smith "has done more, save Jesus only, for the salvation of men in this world, than any other man that ever lived in it."

Yes, this sounds a tad melodramatic, but it is absolutely true and how it was emphasized to the youth of my Church. This year, the theme that has been chosen for the youth to focus on is "ASK IN FAITH." Jordan and I were asked to present to the 14 and 15 year olds in our stake the importance of this theme. We prepared for a LONG time and put together a fun little activity/presentation that made the theme new and exciting. Our hope was to motivate at least a few youth to really take the challenge of asking in faith seriously and put it to the test.

Our stake started out with a little opening exercise and showed this little video that the church put out to introduce the theme. It's a cute little clip and I liked that it seemed to have real questions and real answers. Click the link and it will take you to the theme homepage with the video on it.

After the opening exercises we split into groups. Jordan and I had the 14 and 15 year olds. They told us around 20..... we had 34. Needless to say, it was a bit of zoo. We started off with a little video clip. This was an optional detail in our plan, but we needed a little hook to get things calmed down after the transition.

I also included the LINK to the video in case the embedded video doesn't work. I tend to run into that problem with everyone, including myself, except for my Mom's ipad.

Jordan showed me this little clip a while ago and the more I watched it, the more I began to notice little details and really liked it. We had the youth share with each other something they really enjoyed from the clip. They were a bit timid to share, but we expected this. We tried to make this little clip an ice breaker. The video quotes Joseph Smith as he is recalling his experience before the First Vision. I really like how it talks about how even though there was a lot of confusion and a lot of churches' that wanted him to join, that he stood 'aloof' from them all. I felt that this was especially applicable to youth and really to anybody. Sometimes we are so desperate to belong that we aren't as 'choosy' about who our crowd is as we should be. Good things sometimes take time.

After the video we did a little activity where we split into 2 groups and studied the word ask and faith. We had skittles, M&Ms, and starbursts, took our groups and asked questions, encouraged personal experiences, and had them create a visual. The visual was simple, but we wanted them each to have a little 'something' that they learned or touched them.

As a little handout, we had created this little journal page that had the church's theme logo on it, the scripture, and the conclusion questions we would discuss. I even made little pins for them to put on their backpacks to remind them of the theme.

 I literally made the pins out of Shrinky Dink. It is awesome. I used some to make Jordan some pins for his backpack for Christmas and they turned out so well. When we were asked to do this assignment I knew that I had a lot of the plastic Shrinky Dink leftover and it would be perfect to make some pins. All you do with Shrinky Dink is draw your image, paint or color it, and stick it in the oven. They shrink and turn into really hard durable plastic. I also attached Tie Tack blanks to the back.

Kind of amazing how they turn out.

I even made one for diaper bag. :)

In the end we had a little chat about different questions we could actually ask our Heavenly Father. We discussed questions that they could ask in the next years, and even down to every day. We ended with the question for them about how they think they would change as a person if they Ask of God everyday and act upon promptings they receive.

Overall, the activity went well. I wish we could work with youth consistently then they would get to know us and would be really comfortable sharing, those experiences sometimes take time and trust needs to be built. However, the best that could, happened. We had a little bit of crazy fun mixed with a tad of touching experiences. Hopefully we inspired a few to really ASK IN FAITH.