Sunday, August 8, 2010

A Change of Heart...or Hearts Rather.

I was reminded of this by Ashley's last post. I remember when I was on group with her, as she began to allude to, our kids especially the guys, had a different view on relations with the opposite gender. I remember one night in particular, I was excited to get to bed. All of the kids were filing off one by one from the camp fire. Until there were a few of the young men left. We started talking to them. One in particular started a conversation with us that led to his life and things he felt about the choices he was making. He stated that he thought it was just too hard to act as a man should around women or at least they way we were talking about a man's responsibilities.
As Ashley said, we did well on group together because we had already built a foundation of friendship. We had a lot of fun. But I feel we were chosen that week to be where we were also because of our individual background.
"It's easy for you guys to make those decisions. You have grown up around members your whole life." was the effect of some of his responses to the types of things that we were saying that would make him happy in life. As we know, Ashley grew up in a small town in Nevada leading to not so plentiful amounts of Mormons. She did a great job instructing in a way that was very upfront without being uncaring. I grew up in a comparatively large diverse town in southern California also resulting in a lesser percentage of LDS youth. Who better then us at that time to be there to tell him that he can do it. Even if he felt alone. He really can be a man. We talked for a while. Needless to say, I was not sad that I did not get to bed as soon as I hoped.
I wish all could have been witness to the call we male counselors put out in the devotional at the top of the hill in the girls absence to the male youth to dare them to be men. In the testimony meeting that night as i was fighting sleep as usual until one of my own got up, I was energized as this boy got up and bore testimony that he was ready to be a man.
Thank you women for being examples and for teaching the girls to be something that the men should fight for. Even if they did think we were married, hopefully we were good examples of a higher interaction.

P.S.Willie is a better person than I. The a fore mentioned experience with our love birds made Willi remember their names but drove them from my memory :)

3 comments:

  1. That's really awesome JP. And...thanks be to all those priesthood holding heroes who have blessed my life and my family's lives. I hope to deserve a good one someday too :-)

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  2. Thanks for sharing. I missed out on all the awesome experiences with the youth that year. I love to hear those individual stories because that is what Badger is all about.

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  3. Thanks for sharing this, JP. Being the head chef, I didn't exactly have "kids" the way you all did.

    I love when you all share these experiences; Badger Creek really can be a place where people can change for the better.

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