Cassia's Birthday

I know this isn't necessarily a 'vanguard' memory but I thought it would be a fun one to post on here! These are some pictures from the hike we went on to celebrate Cassia's birthday, we had a lot of fun!

Meditating in the water-fall :)

King of the rock!

Vision Hike

Here are some photos from Vision Day! :)

These are David's pictures (thank you, David!!!), I just edited them so they were see-able, and now we have them! :) Sorry it took so long for me to upload them.... :D

Love you all!

~Gracious

October 1st Week

Sadly, our Guest speaker couldn't make it so instead, we played a fun and inspiring game about our Journey through life! We are all so lucky to have agency on this earth!

Highlights

Devotional:

• We sang, "Behold a Royal Army"
• The prayer was give by, Megan!
• Pledge was by, Rachel!
• Mission statement was given by, Cassia!
• Unity Thought was given by, Ashley! ("Unity is strength... when there is teamwork and collaboration, wonderful things can be achieved." -Mattie Stepanek) "We are all striving to be a team and make things Wonderful!"
• John's writing activity! Write:
• What you want people to feel as they read, 
• What you want them to know YOU as when they read, 
• And your writing statement.

Journey Activity:

• Teams: Enoch, William and Adam, Ellie and Rachel, Jordan and Anthony, Ashley and Gracious, Grace and Megx, Spencer and Aaron, John and Isaiah, Megan and Cassia!
• Write something Good about each person in your family and give it to Sister Bates! Oh No! She's a Witch! We must get our Families back!
• Read the Quote and Choices, then you roll your dice and go on your way!
• If you get back to the center, you get your Family back! (Plus a cookie!:) Yum!)

Beautiful Girlhood and Mansfield's Guide:

• Lot's of Amazing thoughts!

Closing prayer was by, Jordan!

Feel free to comment and put any more thoughts YOU have!

September Week 4 - The Alchemist

Highlights 
 (I'm sure I'm missing great things, feel free to add what you remember. My mind is tired and I wasn't with one of the groups!):
Devotional/Skills

• Isaiah's sharing speech secrets: Presence and Power Point
• William sharing how Satan laughs when we are unhappy and how we need to be careful about laughing when others are sad.
• Megan sharing how our ancestors are looking to us and wanting us to succeed
• Isaiah's message about the monthly theme in a rap: Here
• David's insightful presentation about being united, bold and strong (and taking over the world :-) )

Music

• Gracious' beautiful song inspired by Vilvadi:  See it here
• Listening to Spencer sing a great solo while John played amazingly on the piano.

Government

• 3 groups with three skits about God as the foundation, having a moral people, and self government - prepared in 5 minutes and executed really well! We need to remember to film these things and get them on here!

Armor of God

• Jared beating everyone at memorizing the most of the poem (everyone has one more week)
• Spencer going 8 consecutive days in meeting all his goals!

Alchemist:
5 Stations:

• The Church - Where your treasure is, outline of treasure
• The Glassmaker's Shop - Detours in life - how to tell you are on the right path
• The Oasis - Working hard even when things are going well, seeking legend for others not for self
• The Pyramids- Gratitude for the treasures already around us
• Back to the Church - Shared inspirements
• Dallin programmed a cool game that represented obstacles in our journeys
• Jared programmed a neat map of Santiago's journey

Journeyman:

• Poetry makes you feel, like music
• Keep a word bank of favorite words
• The tender rabbit poem :-)
• Remember your submissions!

Feel free to add your memories or take-away message from today!

Family History Library Field Trip

Highlights:

• Elder Reed was so fun in explaining the importance of family research to us and having us play a game.
• Our group was the first group he'd taught where everyone had done family research before
• His brain "tingled" at the audible gasp when he showed them the website rootsmapper.com
• He challenged everyone to add a memory from a grandparent or great-grandparent
• Sis. Price shared with us some sacred experiences she has had in doing family research and motivated us to help our ancestors - millions are looking to us
• Researching our ancestors - some youth found a common island from which several of them had ancestors, Jordan showed us pictures of his great-grandfather? who was good friends with Harry Truman, and missionaries helped us navigate the site.
• Great sale on posters at the Church History Museum
• Jordan proposed to a car

Ripples: September Week 3

Since our historian has no internet for a while, I will post what I learned from our Vanguard day yesterday.  Please add any comments or thoughts about what you learned.  And if you have pictures - post those too! I had my hands full with a baby, so I had to get the pictures from online and none of you are in them :-(

Highlights:

• Beautiful Fall colors and multi-colored leaves
• Hearing the groups present - each group shared their inspirements and collages they brought from home with one another and then made a visual presentation of the principles from the number 1 and letter Aleph as a group.  The rules were: Use something from nature, Use a scripture, Use an object lesson (groups were assigned a pencil, a compass, a straightedge or a paper).  You created some neat collages together and presented them to the group. I loved your insights and deep thoughts.
• Grid drawings - Spencer gave everyone a transparent grid to help us in our sketching of nature and showed us that any task is easier done when broken into small segments.  Jordan and Cassia shard that the grid is like the word of God and if we trust it and draw the lines we see in each square - even if they seem different than what we would think we should draw - the end product will be beautiful.
• Gathering in a circle, singing (you know I love to hear you sing!), and talking about getting back within the circle, with our Father, through the atonement.
• Reflections by the pond about the ripples we are sending out to the world and how to send out the ripples we want to send out.

Here is a blog post I wrote about what I learned:

I came to understand a profound truth yesterday.

I took some amazing youth to a pond. On the way up, as we hiked through the changing autumn leaves, I asked them to find a rock that represented them in some way.  At the end of our time there, I asked them to throw their rock in the pond and watch the ripples and then to sit somewhere and quietly reflect on what sort of ripples they were sending to the world.

As I sat on a rock, with my baby on my lap, trying to write down some reflections while she tried to grab my pen, suddenly the thought struck me:

"There is war raging around you.  Your heart is the price.  Unseen forces want to dwell there. You get to decide who wins the victory.  Your choices will invite one of the two sides in."

As I watched these youth throw their pebbles in the river. I understood why a heart is the ultimate price of victory for these veiled powers. If they can penetrate one heart - their influencing ripples will extend far beyond what we can see.  The heart is power. It's where ripples are made.

When I am rippling anger, frustration, annoyance, selfishness - I can know which side I have let into my heart at that moment.  Because Christ died for me, I have the power, at any minute in time, to repent - to clean my heart from any evil and fill it with God's Love.  What a power! Because of Him, I get to choose who wins each battle for my heart.

I want God's love to win.  I want it to be there so much that it can build fortresses, barricades, watchtowers and strongholds. I want to ripple love into as many hearts within my influence as I can touch.  It is up to others if they will let it in.

What did you come away with?

Porter Rockwell, Mocassin Trail and Family Stories! September Week 2

Highlights:

• Armor of God Discussion about being surrounded and REMEMBERING the "why" of our goals.
• Isaiah teaching the power-pause and speech opener tips "Four score and seven years ago..."
• Discussion on Moccassin Trail (I wasn't there so please post your thoughts about it if you attended)
• Discussion on Porter Rockwell - People talked about how they were inspired by his obedience and discussed how to set priorities (since his sometimes seemed like they may have been slightly off at times)
• Dallin's Porter Rockwell game
• John Teaching Cinematography - think in shots!
• Family Story Sharing or Stories from Heros in the Western Expansion time period
• Filming a story picked by the team while thinking in shots!
• If you have your finished movie ready, post it on here, or send me the link and I will post it.

Here is Spencer, William, Jared, Isaiah, Aaron and Dallin's team video
(Isaiah's ancestor had an ox miraculously walk into his plow after his ox had been killed when being stolen by Indians).  They had fun with the video :-)