Youth Activity Centered on Christ's Atonement

This was a busy month for me as I usually have an adult advisor to help plan and carry through youth activities.  However, during the month of March I had not been blessed with Karyn yet.  She will start to work with me in that capacity starting April. 

One of the activities was for all the Young Men and Young Women of our congregation (ages 12-17) and I wanted it to be centered on the Atonement of Jesus Christ as that has been specifically what we have discussed in our Sunday classes in March.  But I wanted it to be fun and the putting fun and the reverence of the subject together was tricky but turned out great.

We had Bro. Bennion share his talent of working with materials to create beautiful writing pens.  He talked about what he looks for, what he does, and even demonstrated a bit.  The idea shared was that Bro. Bennion was able to create a thing of beauty by recognizing it's potential and taking it through a process.

Then we introduced the active part of the activity.  With some artful sculpting knowledge now in mind, we had the youth split into groups to ice cream sculpture.  They had a 5 minute planning session and then they were given two blocks of ice cream and access to a myriad of candies and decorations.  With gloves their very cold hands created memorable masterpieces.

Angel Moroni won most realistic

After judging was completed and winners announced, the youth served themselves from their sculptures and sat and ate while Bro. Bennion, likened the activity to our Savior's Atonement.  First, He sees our potential and is in the process of creating a masterpiece of each of us.  Our job is to stay out of his way (align our will to His).  He is taking away sin and sculpting us. His grace strengthens and helps us in our areas of weakness (molding us).  This is quite a process and although parts can happen over night, most of this takes quite a bit of time.  In the end we become sanctified, something wonderful, and prepared to live with our Heavenly Father.  He also quoted one of my favorites from C.S. Lewis that included in our 14 Dec 2009 post, "You are a Living House."

Overall, the youth had a fun time, did some good pondering and discussion on the Atonement, and hopefully walked away with a stronger testimony and perhaps a belly ache.