we believe.

The Sunday before last we had our New Beginnings program for the Young Women in our ward.  It was a beautiful program, we had an amazing turn out, and the evening could not have gone any better.

New Beginnings is a program we have at the beginning of each year (with the switch in the presidency we were a few months behind) where you have the opportunity to introduce the mutual theme for the year and introduce any new young women that have entered the program the year before or will be entering the program that year.

The mutual theme for this year is the 13th Article of Faith which states . . . 

We believe in being honest, true, chaste, benevolent, virtuous, and in doing good to all men; indeed, we may say that we follow the admonition of Paul—We believe all things, we hope all things, we have endured many things, and hope to be able to endure all things. If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things. 

We based the theme of our program on both the 13th Article of Faith and this statement:

"In a world that is blurring morals and lines between right and wrong, the Lord's standards are clear.  There are no gray areas.  We don't believe in being partway honest.  We don't believe in being chaste only when we want to.  The 13th article of faith makes it clear what we believe.  The difference between righteousness and wickedness is black and white."

We asked all of the young women and leaders to wear black and white, the decorations were black and white, and the amazing dessert table was all black and white.

My amazing Personal Progress Leader, Beth, put the whole program together and did the entire dessert table.  She definitely went above and beyond the call of duty.  I could not be more appreciative of her efforts to make this evening as special as possible for all our young women and their parents.

Beth put together a program where each one of the young women had a speaking part, one young women sang a solo about being honest and all of the young women as well as the leaders sang a song called "We Believe" we have been practicing for over a month at the every end of the program.  

The spirit was strong and sweet and important lessons were learned by all.

"We know that we are daughters of our Heavenly Father who loves us and we love Him.  Though deceptions, temptations and trials are all around us, we will be honest.  We will be true.  We will be virtuous because WE BELIEVE."

My small contribution to the evening was this poster I made highlighting the most important parts of the 13th Article of Faith . . .

I know several of you that read this blog serve in the Young Women's organization in your own wards.  If you would like to use this subway art for anything during the year, here you go!  Just click on the image, then click on it again when it opens in the new window to bring it to it's highest resolution and then save it to your computer.  I had it printed at Costco as a 16x20" and I love how it turned out.