Second Year of Youth Conference – Utah State University

In 2007 I worked for USU's Conference Services as a Youth Conference Counselor. I'd previously worked as a counselor at Snow College and I thought USU would be just as fun. I was wrong. I was miserable and I quit after two weeks. I should have known better than to apply for the job at all. Seven years earlier I didn't enjoy Youth Conference at USU as a participant.

At the beginning of the weekend it seemed we couldn't get to USU fast enough. All the participants from the stake met in the parking lot of the Stake Center. We waited there for a while and then we were able to load all our luggage onto the charter buses. Just when we were all ready to get on the buses ourselves someone decided that we all needed to go into the chapel for a few minutes. There was a lot of grumbling about this because 1. this could have been done while we waiting for the buses and 2. some of the adult female leaders didn't feel comfortable going into the chapel with pants on. Eventually we all were seated in the chapel and we had a short prayer. Then we could go get on the buses. As we left the chapel we were each handed a ribbon - or a sticker- I can't remember which. The color of the ribbon/sticker designated what group we would be in when we got to USU.

Once we got going the drive to Logan was slow. The buses had a hard time climbing the hill above Brigham City and navigating in Sardine Canyon. I remember thinking that Sardine canyon was very pretty.

I think we arrived late to Utah State University. We drove into the parking lot near the student building. It seems like we went straight from the buses to the Quad area on campus. We must have taken our stuff to our rooms at this point, but I don't remember. Maybe we were so late that we did that after the Quad. Our rooms weren't in a dorm they were in a hotel. At the time I didn't think anything of it, but years later I was very confused. How on earth did we stay at a hotel at a university? It wasn't until I took a tour of USU as a prospective student that I found out there is, in fact, a hotel called the University Inn on campus.

Once we made it to the Quad we were divided into 4 groups and the counselors taught us some games. They were really lame games. One involved throwing rubber chickens around. Seven years later when I was a counselor we sat in a circle and tried to come up with some games that the participants could play. I swear one of our prop options was a rubber chicken.

The one bright spot of the activities on the Quad was a climbing wall. I was excited to climb it because I had had so much fun on the ropes courses at OEFY. However, I was wearing sandals so I was told I couldn't climb the wall. No one had bothered to tell us that we would need close-toed shoes. Undaunted I went and found my dad. He has roughly the same shoe size as me and he was wearing tennis shoes. He let me borrow his shoes for a few minutes so I could climb the wall.

At one point I needed to use the bathroom. So did some other people from my ward. One of our leaders had a map to the building that had bathrooms we could use. (I don't remember which one, or why we couldn't just use the bathrooms in the buildings that surround the Quad.) It seems like we wandered around for several minutes while our leader tried to read the map. I finally took over, and found the correct building.

For lunch we had pizza served to us on the Quad. I remember sitting on some stone benches and eating pizza with my Dad. He pointed to the top of the Old Main building and told me there used to be an antenna or something for KSL up there. He told me about going to see it with his dad years ago. When I was a student at USU I would pass those stone benches and picture me and my dad sitting on them.

I can't remember if this happened on Friday or Saturday so I'll tell it here. We went inside Old Main for some workshops. We were divided into two groups. Each group was supposed to hear from one of the Kearns high seminary teachers, but only Brother M could make it. To cover the other teacher's spot the stake quickly put together a "Bishops Panel." Everyone wrote down questions that they wanted answered and the bishops took turns answering.

In the evening we all boarded the buses again and rode to Clarkston, Utah to see the Martin Harris Pageant. This was not the first time I'd seen the pageant. If you don't mind I'm going to do a quick segway and talk about the first time I saw the pageant.

A year or two earlier the youth in my ward went to see the pageant. Our leaders drove us up to Clarkston. I rode with Lessie K. When we got to Clarkston we went to the stake center there. There is a large recreation area next to the stake center and we were able to camp on it. We set up tents for the boys and girls and then went to eat. The Clarkston Stake provides a baked potato dinner so that is what we ate. After eating we played on a play ground that is also on the stake property. The play ground had one of those old merry go round type spinning things and we all got really sick by playing on it. Then we drove to the site of the pageant. It is an amphitheater built next the the cemetery. The cemetery is where Martin Harris is buried.

The pageant is about the first vision and other events that happened in and around Palmyra, New York. It centers around Martin Harris' interactions with Joseph Smith. His role as scribe, losing the 116 pages of the Book of Mormon, and becoming one of the 3 witnesses who saw the Golden Plates that the Book of Mormon was translated from. The pageant does a very good job portraying the events. However, in my opinion it is very very boring. The story of the first vision and the restoration of the church has been portrayed in film so often that to me it wasn't very cool to see it in a play form. The pageant feels way too long. And trust me, the benches are metal so after a while you really do feel it. I've often said that if I ever went again I would take the first volume of the Work and the Glory series (which covers the same time period) and read it during the play. I suspect I would be done with the book before the play was over.

On the trip with my ward we watched the pageant and then went back to the Stake Property. We read scriptures as a group and then went to bed. The next morning we made breakfast and then drove home.

On the trip with my stake we visited Martin Harris' grave, watched the pageant and then rode back to Logan. The ride back was really fun. Jeffrey A had brought his guitar on the bus. He played songs and sang. We all sang along.

When we got back to our hotel on campus we were supposed to sleep. But I don't remember much sleeping. The boys were on the floor above us and several of them were yelling out the window to some of the girls in my room. I think the leaders finally had to intervene to get us to be quiet and go to sleep.

Breakfast was served on the patio of the student center. There is a huge water fountain next to the student center. For some reason it was turned off so that is where a bunch of us sat during breakfast. I have no memory of what happened after breakfast. Maybe that is when we had the workshops, maybe we had a testimony meeting, maybe we just went home. I don't remember what we did when we got home either. We might have had a dance that night and we could have had a testimony meeting on Sunday. I don't know for sure.

Several months after youth conference I was asked what I thought of it. I said it had been okay, but there wasn't one thing we did up at Utah State University - aside from the boring pageant- that we couldn't have done on our own in Kearns. I still stand by that.