The big thing today was the Iron Rod experience. This was months in the planning, hours in putting together and a couple of hours for the actual event. It was worth all the effort.
The idea was to create a physical example of Lehi's vision of the tree of life - complete with iron rod, large and spacious building, filthy river and mist of darkness - The Bishopric and wives put it all together. We had over 400 yards of PVC piping, attached to rebar (I didn't even know what that was until now!) We put it through the obstacle course leading to a tree lit with little lights. The fruit on the tree was letters from the girls parents.
We had to get rid of the girls while we were putting the route together, so we sent them to the wave pool all afternoon, while we started putting the rod together. The process was quick, but delayed by a nasty hail storm (must get the car repainted!)
The biggest job was putting together the "large and spacious building" and the "filthy river" and the "tree of Life" - all of that took a little longer than expected, the building was equipped with a disco ball, and a fog machine for the mist of darkness, and the tree was brought in (can you believe we couldn't find a suitable tree in the forest that we camped in!!) and we put strings of lights on each branch.
We kept calling Marcy and Stephanie and asking them to delay returning, so they went to Value Village and then for a Chinese buffet.
The end result was awesome. We didn't even start until 10pm and it was gone 1am before we finished. Bishop Steele was even there (still suffering from the effects of his broken leg and subsequent c-difficile problems) - we had some boys from the ward in the "large and spacious building" trying (unsuccessfully) to tempt the girls with crave cupcakes, facebook access, cell phone access etc)
When everyone had arrived at the tree Jody played the "Hold On" song, then had the girls come to the tree to take their letters, there were a lot of tears as they read their letters. Then we had a testimony meeting and Colin invited everyone to say something, which was perfect.
It was cold, about 5C, and when we finished just after 1am, we thought everyone would hurry to their tents to get warm, but they didn't, they milled around visiting and reliving the experience. Perfect. When we finished, the Reeds and our visitors took the whole thing down - I am so glad we didn't have to worry about that the next morning, but I did feel guilty driving past and seeing everyone working at 2am :)
This was an awesome experience that I know I will never forget, and I hope that's the same for the girls - there were so many parallels, that we could think through over the coming weeks, months and years.
Well worth all the planning and worry!
The idea was to create a physical example of Lehi's vision of the tree of life - complete with iron rod, large and spacious building, filthy river and mist of darkness - The Bishopric and wives put it all together. We had over 400 yards of PVC piping, attached to rebar (I didn't even know what that was until now!) We put it through the obstacle course leading to a tree lit with little lights. The fruit on the tree was letters from the girls parents.
We had to get rid of the girls while we were putting the route together, so we sent them to the wave pool all afternoon, while we started putting the rod together. The process was quick, but delayed by a nasty hail storm (must get the car repainted!)
The biggest job was putting together the "large and spacious building" and the "filthy river" and the "tree of Life" - all of that took a little longer than expected, the building was equipped with a disco ball, and a fog machine for the mist of darkness, and the tree was brought in (can you believe we couldn't find a suitable tree in the forest that we camped in!!) and we put strings of lights on each branch.
We kept calling Marcy and Stephanie and asking them to delay returning, so they went to Value Village and then for a Chinese buffet.
The end result was awesome. We didn't even start until 10pm and it was gone 1am before we finished. Bishop Steele was even there (still suffering from the effects of his broken leg and subsequent c-difficile problems) - we had some boys from the ward in the "large and spacious building" trying (unsuccessfully) to tempt the girls with crave cupcakes, facebook access, cell phone access etc)
When everyone had arrived at the tree Jody played the "Hold On" song, then had the girls come to the tree to take their letters, there were a lot of tears as they read their letters. Then we had a testimony meeting and Colin invited everyone to say something, which was perfect.
It was cold, about 5C, and when we finished just after 1am, we thought everyone would hurry to their tents to get warm, but they didn't, they milled around visiting and reliving the experience. Perfect. When we finished, the Reeds and our visitors took the whole thing down - I am so glad we didn't have to worry about that the next morning, but I did feel guilty driving past and seeing everyone working at 2am :)
This was an awesome experience that I know I will never forget, and I hope that's the same for the girls - there were so many parallels, that we could think through over the coming weeks, months and years.
Well worth all the planning and worry!
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