Game Day Kids!

It has taken me over a week to gather my thoughts and feelings...

knowing that

it would be hard for me to convey

to those that might read this...

just how much

gratitude and joy

I have felt in being a part of the

Gilbert Arizona Temple Cultural Celebration

on Saturday, March 1.

I can barely speak about this experience without

choking back the emotion

of what I both saw and felt on this special day.

When they first asked me to be a

CAPTAIN OF 10...

all the way back to last year,

I excitedly said yes since it would give me the opportunity to spend the day with my oldest three children.

What I didn't expect was the 

"EXTRA RESPONSIBILITIES"

including weeks of practices, a full two Saturday's, the phone calls, text messages, the making of flags and anything else

that would need to be done in order to make the

FINAL PERFORMANCE

for our Prophet a success.

We spent the month of December and January in our church cutting and sewing flags...

or singing the songs that would be song...

or learning the dances we would dance to...
until February where we moved to Queen Creek High School
football field with
800 other youth in our Stake to practice everything we learned...

and to make sure we knew where we stood.
These kids were READY.
They had worked hard and were ready to show the community what they were made of.
I shared in this post the amazing experiences we had had the Saturday before...
and I knew these kids were ready to make this day happen.

But what we didn't expect...
especially in Arizona...
and especially since it hadn't rained in 70 days...
that there was a 90 percent chance of RAIN!

I have to admit I prayed that the Lord would show the kids a miracle...
and stall the rain for the day...
and I thought we had that miracle because the rain clouds were
all around us the entire day...
but we enjoyed NO rain and cooler temperatures.
I love these pictures that
SHOW
the clouds always looming...
and even got dark at times...
but the rain stayed away.

 I love how these kids would "run home"...

 and we would be waiting...
cheering them on...
helping them with flags...

 or with costume changes.

When we had our first "run through" with the
"real" horse...
I thought of our young men

 who have there own
TITLE OF LIBERTIES

and are willing to be just like
CAPTAIN MORONI
and fight for what is right in this world...

(Photo Credit: Curtis Cook)
and for what they believe in.
When they all TOOK their Title of Liberties out to the field to sing
Army of Helaman/Sisters in Zion medley 
and with their flags
held high written on each one of them what they believed in...
their was not a dry EYE in that park...
and it wasn't because of any rain.
I loved how our YOUTH showed their
LOVE
for each other this day.

 You could always find them "snuggled" together

 or helping each other with costumes.

 And I'm a little partial to
MY GROUP of GIRLS...
these girls were amazing in EVERY way.

These kids could NOT wait to show everyone what they had
ACCOMPLISHED.
So at dress rehearsal that afternoon...
they rocked their performance.

When the afternoon show was over and we headed back to our area for dinner...
I thought we had seen our miracle come TRUE.
We could literally see the clouds darken all around us...
but the park had remained dry.
We had just finished dinner and had to head to the field.
It was SHOW time and the Prophet would be their in only 30 minutes.  
You could feel that the atmosphere had changed.
The kids knew that this experience in this moment...
would change their lives forever.
You could feel that they KNEW this...
and that life for them would never be the same.
Hearts changed in that moment...
testimonies increased...
love of others and of GOD became REAL in a way it had never been before.
And just when it was time to go out on the field...
the rain came...
lots and lots of rain.
For 20 minutes while they stood on that field...
with no umbrellas,
no protection,
no jackets,
the rain fell...
and they did NOT move.
They were waiting for the Prophet of the Lord to arrive!
And when he did...

you would have thought he was a 
ROCK STAR.
And to these kids and to us adults standing there to witness it all...
HE WAS!
I will later tell the miracle of how the prophet made it to the celebration at all...
but I will save that for the next post.
The night became something miraculous...
because when the RAIN
kept falling...
these kids put on a performance of a lifetime!

(Photo credits: Facebook Gilbert Temple)
In Matthew 2:25 it reads,
"And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house, and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock."

As I've looked back on this experience I have thought over and over again about why the Lord allowed it to rain that night...
and I have come to the simple conclusion
that this will be a
NIGHT
these kids will never FORGET.
And when the storms of LIFE blow in...
because they will,
 they will always remember the night the RAIN descended...
and the flood came...
AND THEY DID NOT FALL.

NO THEY DID NOT FALL...THEY SOARED!

I will NEVER forget this night...
or the lessons I learned,
and neither will they!