YSA CONFERENCE AT TEMPLE VIEW

It’s Sunday evening and Mom and I just pulled back into town. We left work Friday afternoon around 3 p.m. and drove 2 hours to Hamilton for the New Zealand YSA national conference being held there.  First we drove to the bnb we were staying at that night.  It was in the home of Rosana Harrison, the LDS mother of one of the local attorneys that I work with.  She actually let us spend the night for free (her son and daughter-in-law had spent the night in our St. George house recently on a vacation). We unloaded our suitcases then headed over to the David O. McKay center at Temple View, where we had dinner, visited the health center where we would spent the weekend helping out, then went to the evening performance.  There were over 1,000 YSA’s signed up for the event that lasted from Wednesday to Sunday.  They had spent part of the day learning a dance routine from one of the Pacific island nations they each were assigned to.  For the program, each group got up and performed their dance routine.  For example, the NZ group did the haka dance.  There were some fire dancers, and some skits as well.

Saturday Alisa and I mainly worked at the health center.  We had supplies to treat those who got injured in the various activities.  I treated one girl who thought she’d been stung by a bee, and handed out aloe vera for those with too much sun or scrapes.  I even did a triangular bandage for one young man who thought he’d sprained his arm coming down a water slide.  Handed out a lot of ibuprofen. I also made 2 runs to the store to buy supplies for the health center.  I attended a devotional, and just hung out some. Pre-dance, I took Alisa out to dinner at a Mexican restaurant in downtown Hamilton.  Not super authentic but fun. The best activity I attended of the conference was the 50’s dance put on in the humongous cultural hall in the McKay building that evening.  They had decorated the place nicely, and even had a live jazz band of about 10 instrumentalists with a singer or 2.  Alisa and I danced quite a bit and showed some of the YSA’s some of our disco moves for those that asked.  We lasted until around 10 p.m. before going to our 2^nd bnb, this one we paid for, which was just down the street from Temple View. 

Today we mainly attended church services, where the area presidency spoke.  After Sacrament meeting I was amazed at how many showed up at our health clinic with miscellaneous health “concerns”.  I think some of them were hypochondriacs, many we had seen the day before.  But they all seemed to appreciate that we were paying them a little attention for their owies!  A fun weekend for the YSAs and for us.