Stand in Holy Places Program

I’ve got a couple more goodies for anyone working on a Stand in Holy Places New Beginnings program. Above is the cover we are using for our program. Below are the food labels we will have at our refreshment table. They are formatted so you can print on carstock, cut vertically down the paper, then fold in half so it will stand on its own.

You can download the program cover and food labels here.

We are making mini cheesecakes (recipe below) with value-colored toppings on the side.

Mini Cheesecakes

3 8oz cream cheese (warm, out of fridge for a few hrs )
1 cup  sugar
1 tsp vanilla
3 eggs
vanilla wafers

Place 24 paper cupcake wrappers in muffin tins. Place 1 vanilla wafer in each. Beat together remaining ingredients. Pour cheesecake mixture on top of wafers, 2/3 full. Bake at 325 for 20-25 minutes. Refrigerate or freeze. The cheesecakes will sink in the middle, so will present better with fruit or a dollop of cream on top.

Click to see our slide show.

Click to see our shoe invite.

Click to see some thank you cards.

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On a ROLL

I made some of these Tootsie Roll treat bags to go in our Personal Progress Punch Board. I put a handful of midgees into a 3 x 4″ plastic bag, then folded the printable in half and stapled to the top of the bag. You can use any color paper for the printable to go with any of the values. Download it here!

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Personal Progress Punch Board

We have been mixing things up a bit with recognizing/encouraging our young women with their personal progress. We are doing something different each month, and February we are focusing on the value of Divine Nature. I made a punch board by hot gluing 28 paper cups to a foam core board, then putting surprises into each cup, and covering with pieces of tissue paper.

I stretched rubber bands over the lips of the cups to keep the tissue paper on. The girls can punch through the tissue paper and retrieve a surprise if they have completed a personal progress value or project, or if they are done with personal progress, they must complete one hour of service and read in the Book of Mormon every day. The cups are filled with nail polish, shoe key chains, pom pom bookmarks, jewelry, and other goodies – one thing per cup. I love that we can re-use the board with any color tissue paper we want. I shaped my cups into a heart, but it would be fun to see someone make a shoe shape for this year’s Mutual Theme!

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Friendshipping

For the February 2013 Visiting Teaching Message I took some inspiration from a Valentines Day card, and made friendship bracelets to share with my sisters, alongside some abbreviated quotes:

Elder M. Russell Ballard of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles: “Capture the vision that the Relief Society … can become [one of] the most powerful friendshipping resource[s] we have in the Church. Reach out early to those being taught and reactivated, and love them into the Church through your organization.”

“With the ever-increasing number of converts,” said President Gordon B. Hinckley (1910–2008), “we must make an increasingly substantial effort to assist them as they find their way. Every one of them needs three things: a friend, a responsibility, and nurturing with ‘the good word of God’

The three colors in my bracelets are meant to represent the three things mentioned by President Hinckley that converts need to find their way: friendship, responsibilty and nurturing. I used a tutorial to make a fishtail friendship bracelet, but you could go simpler and just make a braided bracelet.

You can download my printable below:

in English

in Spanish (whole post downloadable here.)

in Dutch

in French

in German

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New Beginnings Slide Show

I’ve made a slide show presentation for New Beginnings. It includes things like the Young Women theme, motto and logo, the class symbols, and personal progress highlights. It is formatted as a pdf, so you can run it in Adobe Acrobat and view it in Full Screen Mode, and use the arrow keys to go through the slides. You can download it here.

I’ve made another version of this slide show that has “The Worth of Soles” pageant included. There are additional slides for each value associated with a shoe. You can download it here, and also see our script here.

Click to see our shoe invite

Click to see our program cover and dessert table printables

Click to see some thank you cards

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Personal Progress Candygram

We will be recognizing two of our young women for having completed the Personal Progress program and received their Young Womanhood Recognition award. They both received their medallions a couple months ago, but I wanted to do something special for them at our New Beginnings – so made this fun collapsable candy gram to present to them.

I used these large 5 3/4″ x 8 3/4″ envelopes, sticking the open flaps of each envelope to the back of the envelope above it. I tucked the top envelope’s flap inside, then after filling with candy, folded the candy gram up from both sides.

After tying the candygram up with a pretty ribbon and a tag, it’s ready to be given with some words of congratulations and a big hug.

Here is a close-up of each of the envelope labels. You can download them here.

I am thinking of also including an Honor Bee tracking booklet, to encourage them to keep moving forward!

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Stand in Holy Places New Beginnings

Our young women’s New Beginnings theme for 2013 is Stand in Holy Places: The Worth of Soles! We are using ideas from this post, having the girls model a pair of value-colored shoes while an emcee talks about the value the shoe represents.

Our invites are paper shoes, which need to be unlaced to read the details of the evening.

There is a trick to getting the shoes to fold just right – and that is to line up the top of the shoe before pressing down the fold. These are so fun, and I love how the different patterns make each shoe so unique. You can download the shoe pattern invitation here.

Click to see our program cover and dessert table printables

Click to see our slide show

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New Beginnings Planning

The time for our annual New Beginnings program is rapidly approaching! To aid in planning, I’ve put together this sheet to consider all the things that might be included in the evening. You can download it  here.

I’va also added a new page underneath my blog header called, “YW leadership helps”, which has other agendas and things that I’ve made in the past. You can check it out here.

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February “Come Follow Me” unit at a Glance

I’ve got February’s unit for the Come, Follow Me YW curriculum ready to go! You’ll find the spiritual preparation questions under each subtopic, and a potential weeknight activity under that. This is meant for Young Women leaders to take to their class presidencies, and discuss which topics they feel are most pertinent to their groups. Some of the activity suggestions are taken directly from the outline, and a few are my thoughts. You can download it here.

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Road to Damascus teaching aid

The New Year is almost upon us! I hope 2013 will be a blessed year for you and those you love! The January 2013 Visiting Message, Missionary Work, references a talk by President Uchtdorf called Waiting on the Road to Damascus. As I read the talk, and felt delighted by its message, I decided to make a “cootie catcher” using points from it. There are four topics – only one of which is used in the VT message – that of, “share”. When discussing with the sisters you visit teach, you could focus on that one element, and encourage them to further consider the other topics at another time.

I printed the thought questions from the VT message in the center of the cootie catcher, but then on second thought (after taking photos and posting here) took them out, leaving a blank space for you to write whatever message you wanted!

To fold the cootie catcher, you trim the bottom portion of the page so you have a square. I then fold in half vertically, then open, and fold in half horizontally, then open, so the folds mark the center of the square. This makes it easier to position the remaining folds correctly. Details on folding are on the bottom of the printable, which you can download below.

English

Spanish (download entire post here)

French

Dutch

Portuguese

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