EFY: The Long Short Week

Even though it seemed like just yesterday I was passing out shirts for the newcomers, I am exhausted... this has been one EXTREME week!

And there are still four more to go...

Sunday: Technically our week starts on Sunday with the session director fireside. All the counselors from my session would be there, as well as the coordinators and building counselors and all the high-ups you know. Our session director was Brother Ryan Garner. Has anyone heard of him? After this fireside, I knew he was everything we expect of an outreach speaker: passionate, funny, knowledgeable, always relating to scriptures and general authorities. I would even rank him among the veterans we all know and respect like Scott Simmons, Brad Willcox, and Shaun Chidister. And now my name is in the front of his scriptures... I'll get to that part later.

Anyways, that night I got to meet my fellow co-counselors. There were three of them, one guy and two girls. I was actually the oldest of them all, the other guy being only two months off of his mission from Canada, and one girl being 19 attending BYU and the other 21 attending hair school somewhere. Both girls had boyfriends, so don't even go there...

Monday: I passed out shirts for registration. It got kind of monotonous so we tried to spice things up in various ways like throwing the shirts at the youth or talking in Spanish. Just after noon we met with our youth. I lucked out here, seriously. Only six guys, all 14, all pretty chill and well-behaved as the week progressed. Some were sociably awkward, so the only difficulty was breaking some of them out of their shell. Other than that, I was really impressed with how far ahead of their time these guys are. One of my boys was from Houston, actually. And he was a Jazz fan... gyargh!
There were 9 other guys in our company, the Keys of the Kingdom. 4 of them were immediately recognized and "fun", which is my euphanism (spelling?) for trouble. I ended up being good friends with these guys.
Quote of this day: "Flip the Baby!" (Brother Garner as he flipped his 6 month old Court in his arms, it was sweet)

Tuesday: We had classes today... Brad Willcox was there and he gave me a giant hug when I found a scripture for him. That guy is like a spiritual comedian! I made sure my boys weren't going to classes by themselves, so by the time it was free time I turned them loose so I could go get some shorts from the bookstore because I had forgotten any sort of pajama pants to sleep in. That can be kind of awkward with a roommate... At the dance that night I suffered my first casualty during a particularly crazy dance... my glasses. I put them in my pocket so I could head-bang and stuff, and they didn't stay there.
By the way, we were eating meals in the Morris Center. That was NOSTALGIC! When I would get my food, I almost automatically would start looking for Justin or my other freshman buddies to sit by. Did I mention Justin is engaged?
For everyone who memorized Mosiah 5:15, the theme scripture, and recited it to Brother Garner, you got to sign the front of his scriptures. I did that on this day, as well as two of my other boys.

Wednesday: One of my boys took sick this day, and the special four were out of control at games night. Kind of a long day... Getting 35 youth moving and motivated, much less organizing a cheer which was entirely up to them, is much like herding cats. So I felt the pain of my poor parents. That night before we had our pizza, I had a special devotional with just me and my co-counselor's 4 upstart youth. We had a good time and talked about what was happening, and I suggested they write apology notes to some people, like the girls in our company who complained to their counselor, Chelsea. Here are some direct quotes from that note:
"Dear Hot Chelsea..."
"We're sorry for stalking you..."
"We promise to show more respect by excurting (that word is supposed to be escorting) the girls..."
If you knew the guy who wrote it, it was freaking hilarious. I'm sorry....

Thursday: This was basically the intensely spiritual day that you can't blog much about, but after this day it was hard to believe that this week was going to happen four more times this summer. How do you repeat an experience like this?
At the variety show, you had the usual... the guys who thought they were all that because they wrote their own song and played a guitar, the uni-cyclist, the dancer, the kid who was named Leviticus and turned his feet backward (both very unique talents)... but that was about it. It was only about 45 minutes long.

Friday: We all hoped to end the week on a good note, but despite my special devotional on Wednesday, 3 of our ADD candidates were still not co-operating during the service activity of simply cutting yarn and wrapping it on tongue dispensers. I wonder if I was too nice to them... It all turned out well because we were cool at the dance and everyone had a great time. I got the chance to practice my social dance with another counselor. She's a dance major and doesn't go to BYU, so I probably won't see her again. Sorry dad.

Thus it was, though what is written here is not a tenth of what I truly experienced. I'm sorry, I know people hate it when people say this, but you had to be there.

So now what? I get some much needed sleep, but return to a world where I have nothing much to do for the next two weeks. But after this one, I really feel this is going to be one of the best summers ever. Who knows what lies in store?!