New Beginnings

If you didn't know, I am the Young Women President in my ward at church. At the beginning of the year each year (we were a little late), we have a program called New Beginnings. The purpose of New Beginnings is to welcome girls who are new to the ward or new to the YW program (having turns 12 in the last year) as well as to talk about and recognize achievements in Personal Progress. Personal Progress is part of the YW program. It helps the girls learn goal-setting and achievement, and helps them grow and mature spiritually. There are eight values in the Personal Progress program, and there are specific goals and projects that the girls work on related to each value. Our New Beginnings was last night.


We chose Dr. Suess' Oh, the Places You'll Go! as our theme. It was a lot of fun to put things together. For each value, we came up with a "place" that the girls could go with the help of Personal Progress:

Faith: go get a testimony
Divine Nature: go experience womanhood
Individual Worth: go develop your talents
Knowledge: go get an education
Choice and Accountability: go to the temple
Good Works: go serve a mission
Integrity: go be a leader
Virtue: go prepare for a temple marriage

We had a few talks about the values, and the "places" the girls could go with them. We also had a couple of musical pieces, played by the young women themselves. Along the length of the room, we set up two long tables with displays of things representing each of the above "places."


Faith: Personal Progress book, Girls' Camp manual, scriptures, journal, picture of Christ

Divine Nature (where we chose to focus primarily on womanhood, but also some on motherhood): chick flick, cosmetics, mirror, dress mannequin, jewelry, Jane Austen novel, high heels, perfume, pearls, hair combs, baby bootie "piggy" bank, statuettes of pregnant woman and new mother

Individual Worth: tennis racket, cookbook, ballet slippers, photography, hymnbook, speech competition certificate, high school newspaper, camera (not pictured since it was in use)

Knowledge: college diploma; graduation cap; textbook; highlighters; book about Sacajewa, who learned everything she could about the world around her and how to make practical use of it

Choice and Accountability: picture of temple, white temple slippers, limited use temple recommend, family names, special copy of the Ensign on temples

Good Works: a mission photo album, missionary journal, missionary library, nametag, Spanish Book of Mormon open to 3 Nephi 11, Pass Along cards, Preach My Gospel

Integrity: YW, teaching, and leadership sections of the Church Handbook of Instructions; book about Esther, an example of a leader with integrity (and female to boot!); Susan B. Anthony $1 coins (representative of her, not of money); Conference issue of the Ensign; a compass; a copy of the For The Strength of Youth booklet

Virtue: a wedding photo; temple photo; sacrament tray; engagement ring; scriptures open to Proverbs 31; a temple recommend; The Holy Temple, by Elder Packer

Here's the whole table, before quite everything was on it:

To top everything off, we had rainbow cupcakes, which went with the Dr. Suess theme, as well as brought out the values' respective colors.


(I forgot to give credit for this theme idea. I got it from my friend Angela who used the same theme in her ward in Seattle.)