Regional Dance Festival

Yesterday the youth ages 14 - 18 in our Region participated in a Dance Festival.  For 3 months most of our Wednesday night activities have been spent learning the dances.  Our church is divided into Wards, Stakes and Regions.  Each encompasses a geographical area.  A ward has around 450 members, a Stake somewhere around 5000, and a Region is composed of 6 or 7 Stakes.  Our stake had several hundred youth dancing so there must have been more than a thousand young people out on the floor of the Boise State basketball arena dressed in bright costumes enthusiastically rocking out to "Can't Stop the Beat" from Hairspray.    Our stake did a Tango...other stakes did everything from the Swing to Cha cha to Salsa.  What fun!

I was so impressed with the girls from our Ward who stuck with it, learned the dances and were the pictures of virtuous young women.  The youth were assigned their dance partners and I know that many of the assigned partners were not who the kids would have 'chosen' if left to their own devices!   My girls were so gracious and so cheerful and just so like you'd hope they'd be!  They made it fun for everyone. I love them all so much and I'm so proud to have this time to be their leader.  In so many ways they lead me! 

The theme of the night was, "Be thou an example of the Believers and Dance to a Different Beat."  Before the closing prayer they sang a beautiful song called, "Holding Hands Around the World."  One phrase just stuck out to me and described the scene of those more than a thousand youth standing and singing together, "We are children glowing with the gospel light.  Standing tall, walking strong, choosing right."