Especially For Youth

     WOW was EFY amazing!!! It was my first EFY, but I was looking forward to it after all of the Best of EFY talks we went to as youth in Idaho. My trip started the day before EFY. I got on the train before church was over. It took 6 hours to travel to Oslo. There I met with a really nice family that would let me stay with them for the night, as well as at the end of the week before I came back home.
      The next day, I was up at about five to catch the bus with the rest of the EFY youth, traveling from Norway to Sweden! That took another few hours. Then I got to EFY and the counselors were dancing. I got signed in and went to meet my leaders. I had three youth counselors. It was a lot of fun to get to know them two of our youth counselors, we found out later, were married! We got to meet the rest of the group later too. We had nine girls with two leaders and nine boys with one leader. We were the most international group; there were kids from Spain, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Chile, America, Germany, and Africa. The ones from Africa and Chile were living in Sweden. The boys from Germany were actually Americans but their dad works with the family history program in the church and they are living in Germany for a year and a half. (I was the other American!) We did not however, have anyone from Iceland which would have been pretty cool. That would be cool because we then would have had someone from each of the four invited countries; Sweden, Norway, Iceland, and Denmark.

From left to right: Jeremiah, Dina, Straw Hat/Henrik, Maria, Mark, ME, Mikael, Beatriz, David, Jehoshua, Simin, Nicklas, Rebekka, and Ryan. (Nicolai, Gabriella, Tracy, and Paoline aren't in the photo.)

      We left as a group for the youth Family Home Evening. Where we played some games that would help us get to know each other. Thanks to the games we found out about everyone being from so many countries. We also set some goals as a group, for example we said our group, the Pillar of LIGHT, would be the Happiest Company!! (And I think we did that.) One of the goals that we set was to eat dinner together everyday, and we did along with breakfast and lunch. I think it really brought us closer as a group.
      The next day was Tuesday. We had a lot of classes on how to better feel the Spirit or how to feel more confident, a little different topics because I would miss the other one in the series. You could choose which ones you wanted to go to. I had to go to the ones that they would translate into English and they would only translate at certain times. You see, the speakers could be from Denmark and so for the non-danish speakers to understand they would translate it to English at 10:30 or whatever. I had some wackier classes because I would miss the one before that explained or the translation didn't quite make sense. :) Even though the classes were fun. I joined the Music Program/Choir on Tuesday and so that is what I did during lunch and free time in the afternoons.
      Tuesday was also the day of the first dance. The dance was casual dress and a lot of fun. One of the American boys, named Ryan, said he would dance with every girl in our group twice by the end of the week. (And he did he even danced with some three times.) It was a ton of fun. They taught us the EFY Line dance- which we got pretty sick of by the end of the week. Sadly the entire dance was over much to soon, it was quite a bit of fun.

This was the First dance. Ximena and Lee our Married leaders. :) They danced together, and I got a picture.

      All too soon it was Wednesday and we couldn't believe the week was going by so fast. The activities were a bit more focused on the Gospel. All morning was about Preach My Gospel and how to teach quickly and effectively to catch someones attention. After dinner we made banners and cheers. Our cheer was fun. We had a few 'bad guys' that would "steal our light" and we would all crumple, then Ryan (who had the deepest voice) would say "LIGHT" and we would jump up one at a time and say "Pillar!" meaning we had become a pillar of light! I helped to make the banner and a really amazing girl in our group drew the mountain and temple on it.

    Later we had a game night our group would go against another group. That was a blast. We played games like Noah's Ark, Tunnel, Arise- Shine- ZAP!!!, and Pioneer Trail. We did really well as a group but another group was always a little bit better. They gave us pizza for a second dinner. One of the girls had a great idea. We took the pizza boxes back to our rooms and then COVERED them in notes to the guys. They did the same for us. It was a lot of fun to just let them know what we thought about them with out them knowing exactly who said it, because we didn't sign our names.
     Thursday was Sunday dress...which was good. We did Young Women/ Young Men's activities. It was also the day of the music program so I was really, really busy the whole time. Everyone in the program gave up most of their dinner and lunch and free time to practice. It was a really great performance. Afterwards we had a testimony meeting.They split all of the youth into separate groups that were smaller that would help make everything go faster and allow more youth to have the chance.
      Day 5 Friday came way, way to fast. We had a Strength Of Youth activity and that was fun. They only offered four classes in English and you had to take four classes, so I had a really hard time deciding. ;) We just spent a lot of time with our groups saying good bye and getting ready for the next day when we leave.
       For a good finale we had our final dance that night too. It was elegant dress so we all got dressed up. It was really hard to say good night and go to bed, so we didn't, at least not until about 10:30 or later. We didn't even go to bed then! Our leaders had a meeting at about 10:40 and didn't get back until one in the morning. They brought Ice Cream for everyone! It was fantastic!
     We got up at about 5:45 the next morning to pack everything up and put the classroom that we stayed in back into order. The leaders took a picture of our class room before the furniture was moved around. Our class room matched the picture perfectly, every chair that was tipped in the photo, was tipped in real life. By eight o'clock I was on the bus and heading back to Oslo. It was a great week, and I really felt close to the kids I met there. I can't wait for the next one in TWO years. That's right two. Here in Scandinavia they do them every other year, which makes it a bit tougher but you will feel closer, at least that is what I think.

This is Jennifer, she was from Sweden and was my Counseler.

This is one of the Americans, Mark, during the dance compitition on Tuesday night.

Here you go it was a great week. I am really grateful for the chance that I had to go and I learned a lot. I am so grateful for the friends I gained there, and the fun I had.  Thanks to all my friends!!

We played Ninja! This is Beatriz and Straw Hat. (We nicknamed him that because he always had the hat on) On this picture it looked like they were dancing! We had a lot of fun just watching!