Of Work and Wizards

This weekend was our church's yearly Youth Conference. It's a big event where, for a couple of days, all the youth (well over a hundred) get together and participate in a number of activities and spiritual lessons. One of the main parts of this year's conference was our service project. There is a small charter school in Raleigh that was in need of some serious cleaning and touch-up work before the school year started again. This school, Torchlight academy, teaches students from mostly poorer families in the community, and money is therefore harder to come by than it is for larger charter schools like Raleigh Charter or Franklin Academy. So it was a wonderful opportunity to help out this school in the many ways that we did. We did straight weeks worth of work-hours in only a five hour period. Washing walls, bathrooms, buses, chairs, desks, painting fences, heavy lifting and weed-cutting were among the many jobs we did there, many of which would have probably gone undone simply because the school wouldn't have been able to afford it. It was a pretty awesome experience! As King Benjamin from the Book of Mormon says, "When ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God."

On the final day of the conference we had several speakers talk to us, followed by an  hour for the opportunity for people to bear their testimonies. In our church, this is where people may share with the audience their personal convictions and faith about subjects like the truthfulness of the gospel and that God and Christ live and any number of other things that each person feels prompted to share. It's a wonderfully spiritual experience, seeing so many youth who are committed to living by His teachings and the experiences that have brought them their strength and conviction. 

Also this Friday morning, I saw the midnight premiere of the final Harry Potter movie, and it was pretty much fantastic! It was also a pretty sad time because the release of the Harry Potter movies have spanned nearly my entire "childhood." The close of such an epic story reminds me how my own adolescence is coming to a close of it's own. I'm sure I'll remain a kid-at-heart forever! But I still have to begin the new life of a young-adult as I go off to college and take personal responsibility for nearly every aspect and choice of my life. But enough of the sentimentality! My new favorite HP character is Neville Longbottom. In the last movie he was quite the champ as he blew the bridge taking out all the Snatchers and took off the head of Voldemort's snake with the sword of Gryffindor! So go see the movie! It was well worth my $7.50!