This post is a little late, I went to youth conference last week and our youth conference this year was called "Moroni's Quest". It was a realy great experience and I'm glad my stake did it.
On Wednesday, July 23, at 8 in the morning, my sister Ashley, my cousin Skyler, and I went to the Stake center. We had to go in our costumes, which were like togas. Some of them were pretty cute and I actually thought it was pretty cool wearing them, other than they made us more hot (not in the good way). We checked in, got our bags, and then watched the first reenactments. All I knew about Moroni's Quest was that they did tons of reenactments from the Book of Mormon. So we started at the beginning with Nephi's family and Lehi (played by my friend, Ethan Drake). I was on stage for about twenty seconds wandering around because I was a Jerusalem woman. It was exciting.
After all that was over and they decided to go to the Promised Land, we all left and drove to our "Promised Land." It was about an hour drive, and when we got there we were put into tribes. There were 10 people in each tribe, and the only people I knew in mine were Parker Taggart and Ethan Drake. Ethan and I were laughing about the odds of us being put together in the same tribe. We then got a flag and had to come up with a name and decorate it. We had a red and black flag. We wanted to be called the Celestial-ites at first, and I, naturally, thought that that was a great idea. But since our flag was black and red, we thought that it wouldn't look too good. We decided to call ourselves the "Ites", and then they had me write "ni hao" which is Chinese for hello, and then this other word "yi" than means righteous. After that, we all had to hike to our campsite place which was really long and hot. I had forgotten to fill my waterbottle so I didn't have much fun. The place we stayed at was a huge field. There were two big sections cut off for the boys' and girls' tents which were already set up for us.
Througout the day, we had reenactments and then got together in our tribes to discuss them. The reenactments were pretty cool. The voices were pre recorded so we didn't have any problems with not being able to see people, not going along with the music, or people forgetting their lines. They had really cool background music and noise to go along with it. We also learned to fight and built a tower. We got styrofoam swords and card board shields and we had our first war. It was so much fun, we got to run at eachother and attack eachother and we were dead after a certain number of hits. I didn't help with the tower, I just gave morale support. At night we got to hang with our wards. After hanging with our wards for a while the first night, we got back together with our tribes and had to hold hands and walk, single file, up the mountain to get to the "Tree of Life". I held hands with Parker Taggart and Ethan. It was kinda weird holding hands with Parker since we've barely even talked before. We happen to have the same birthday though, we were born on the exact same day. We had fun though, Parker, Ethan, and this guy named Dillon, and I all talked the whole time and had a fabulous time. The "Tree of Life" was a big pine tree with big white Christmas lights all over it. It looked pretty cool from a distance.
The next day was the same with more reenactments and discussions and we did some fun activites. We also had a flour war. We were separated into two teams, and we stood at either side of the field. When the drums started beating, we all ran forward to grab the flour bombs (flour wrapped in nylon), and we started throwing them at each other. It was so much fun, other than it kinda hurt when they threw them too hard. Everyone got so dirty and it was gross breathing it in, but it was so much fun. Everyone looked wonderful after we were done. That night, we played games as a ward. While I was sleeping that night, I couldn't breathe so I spent about a half hour in the middle of the night searching for allergy medicine. I couldn't find any and I got really frustrated and was seriously going to refuse to go back to sleep because I wouldn't be able to breathe if I did. Thankfully, my friend Joye Fulks woke up and gave me some allergy medicine.
On Friday, we had more reenactments and tons more wars since we were in the war chapters part in our reenactments. For one of the wars, it was when the people had promised to not take up arms anymore and not fight in battle. They had all the leaders and the oldest person from each tribe go and be on that side. So, when we ran to them to kill them, they just laid on the ground and died. Apparently they were hoping we would feel bad and have compassion once we realized what they were doing, but we didn't. We ran up to all the people laying "dead" on the ground and kept on hitting the ones that would move. One guy in my ward ran up to them and started hitting them really hard and yelled "How do you like your covenants now?!" It was realy funny. During one of the reenactments, someone was on a tower preaching, and so my tribe and a couple others got to be part of it. A little bit before the reenactment started, we got to go backstage (I felt so cool being back there with all of the actors and costumes and shade. I felt very priviledged). We were each given some styrofoam painted rocks. So, when the guy got on top of the tower we made and started preaching, we got to stand up and start yelling at him and we started throwing rocks at him. It was fun. Also during another one of the reenactments, we were divided into poor and rich tribes. The rich tribes got to sit in the shade and got tons of oreos while us poor tribes had to sit in the sun and beg for an oreo. I was poor, so I stole an oreo from my rich friend, Kailey Madsen, and then I offered one of the people giving out oreos a tick tack, so he gave me one. It was really hot the whole time at Moroni's Quest, everyone the first day we drank 150 gallons of water altogether before lunch. We hated the sun, yet it was freezing at night. It was annoying. That night, we went on a faith walk with our tribes. After that, we did some other stuff that I'm not gonna talk about on here, but it was very cool. That night, me and Kailey Madsen were planning on sneaking out of our tents at 3:30 am to see the eclipse. So, I stole my sisters ipod from her while she was sleeping which was very scary and set the alarm. However, when it went off. I told Kailey it went off and she said "okay let's go" and then I said "okay" and then we both fell back asleep. I heard the eclipse wasn't that cool anyway.
On the last day, we had our last reenactment and battle. It was the one where all the Nephites died. I was a Lamanite, and we were give 50 (basically unlimited) hits while all the Nephites were given 2. My sister was a Nephite, and everyone in her tribe were standing back to back to protect themselves, so I ran up to her tribe and killed them all. It was great. After the last reenactment, we all got into cars and went home. I was kind of sad to go, but at the same time happy. I hadn't showered in 4 days as there were no showers there. I had my hair in a ponytail the whole time, I was burned, I had barely any make up on, I hadn't brushed my hair at all the whole time since it's just curly, and I was sick of using porta-potties. They were gross. It felt so good to get home and shower and do my hair. It was great. Also, the air conditioning was wonderful. I was so tired though, and didn't really get to make up for it.
I'm so glad I went on Moroni's Quest, I'd give more details but I didn't want to make it too long. It was really fun though, even if my post doesn't make it seem like it. There was so much hard work that went into it. They had people come the day before us to set up tents and the stage. People were planning this for over a year. They had to find a spot and set everything up. They spent $14000 on the whole thing, and $10000 of it was for food. They had people come to cook for us and feed 250 teenagers. They had a medical tents and people to go and constanty fill up water tanks which took an hour to fill up each one so that we would have water. A lady in my ward was in charge of making all of the costumes for the reenactments. They had to build the stage, props, set up rehearsals for people with parts, record voices, add music, have sound effects and make everything go smoothly. They had to plan out all the activities, buy snacks, set up generators so we would have electricity for the reenactments, arrange transportation, choose what stories to reenact, choose people to be tribal leaders and assign the youth to their tribes, keep the youth happy and entertained, take tons of pictures and record it, and just plan and prepare for so many things. It was amazing. They do this every 4 years and I'm sad I can't go next time, but I'm happy my little sister, Hannah, will be able to go. It was a great experience and it made the people in the Book of Mormon seem more like people. I've actually enjoyed reading it more, especially since I read 100 pages in two days to finish it by the end of the school year for seminary. I read it for a couple hours straight to finish, and it was really cool and I felt like I was actually reading a story instead of just zoning off as usual. It was a great experience, and I hope more stakes do it.
