Farewell Young Women

After 5 year of serving in the YW organization in my ward I was released and it was such a bittersweet feeling. 5 years. That adds up to hundreds of Wednesday night activities and Sunday lessons along with tons of leadership trainings, 5 girl's camps, 3 years of presidency meetings, and 2 years of ward council and being the main lady in charge. And while I truly loved my YW callings, it had been a long time in such a demanding auxiliary, especially after another busy summer of camp and ward youth conference. I was certainly feeling pretty worn out and fresh out of new ideas. Joseph has also had a demanding stake calling the past 18 months and it was getting too taxing on the both of us in our church service. My bishopric knew things were getting crazy and they just told me to tell them when it was too much and they would replace me.

So I thought I was really, really ready to let go, but it was hard!! Not only hard to say "goodbye" to my beautiful teenagers but also hard to let it all go into someone else's hands — to give away that job of vigilantly loving and serving those amazing girls — that was really rough. I just felt like I had worked for so long and in so many ways to get to know every single girl, to find ways to connect with the less eager ones, to seek out the ones who were not really interested in church anymore but still YW I had camped and hung out with so much that it didn't really matter to me—I just wanted them to know they had a safe place and a loving friend in me. All of that was hard to pass on to other leaders who are all amazing and good women but also mostly really new in our ward and couldn't (yet) know the young women like I did. They will build their own relationships and find new ways to love and connect, I am confident in that, but my heart sure worried about it not being me who would take care of the young women in the ward. At the same time I knew it was time to let others have that awesome opportunity and to dive in and enjoy their YW callings like I did — I'm so glad I had that reoccurring thought in my head as I prayed about whether it was time to be released. It's such a pleasure to have all these energetic, hilarious, boy-crazy, smart, silly, beautiful girls to hang out with on a regular basis. I think they kept me young at heart! 

Of course I will always love the YW I got to serve and know I will feel forever connected to them, especially those who were in there with me for 5 years straight! And as I knew my release was coming up I took a few nights to write a letter to each of my YW and tell her how much I loved her, what special, incredible traits I saw in her, and which memories I will remember with her. I also tried to share parts of my testimony that I thought might help her in her life. That was incredible closure for me and helped me feel like I could share one, last part of my heart with them.

We were released over Labor weekend so about 1/3 of the YW were gone,
but still a fantastic group of girls!

And then my leaders—oh gosh that was hard too! We have had a lot of switching up in the past two years but I have really loved the ladies I've been privileged to work with and I'm so grateful for the friendships I've built and happy memories this calling has allowed me. I have spent more than half of my married life serving in YW callings and it will always be an organization I'd be thrilled to be a part of again (and again and again!)