Enrichment

As some of you know, I am the second councelor in the Relief Society (women's organization for my church). That means I am in charge of basically all meetings that happen among the women that don't take place on Sunday (along with several other responsibilities that don't really apply to this post, so they won't be explained...) Every now and then we have a fun get together on the second Thursday of the month called Enrichment Night. These have been both fun and stressful for the ones planning them (aka me and my enrichment leader and the enrichment committee.)

July 9th we had an enrichment night that I put together without the enrichment leader or the committee because it all had to do with the mini-groups that are run through the relief society. Mini-groups are exactly what they sound like, small clubs of women with similar interests. I have started up many mini-groups for our ward... 16 to be exact... and the women wanted to know more about them. We had a small table for each mini-group leader to set up a display for her mini-group. Some of the mini-groups are food storage, outdoor adventure, knitting, book club, sprouting, dessert night, ladies' night out, children's play group, etc. The leaders that showed up did an excellent job, but the ones that didn't really disappointed me, since only one lady told me she wouldn't be there that night and made sure I had something to display for her group. A fair number of ladies showed up and we had a good time just talking and seeing the different displays. I wish it would have been a bigger crowd with more displays, but it all turned out okay. And I am proud of myself since I really did put it together and advertise it all by myself.

Our latest Enrichment Night was a ploy to get the ladies to know and serve each other more. We did this last year and we all had such a wonderful time and got such wonderful compliments on it that the Relief Society president asked us to do it again. We call it a service auction. What happens is the ladies show up and get a paper with a list of things they need to have done to earn points. (Example: If you said your prayers before you went to bed, 10 points. If you fasted last fast Sunday, 20 points.) However many points you have total is the "money" that you have to bid on the items that have been donated by the ladies. I won some yard work from one lady and a fall decoration from another. I donated a large homemade pizza to auction and also a fleece baby carrier cover. It is so much fun just to see how you are doing with all the commandments of the Lord by seeing how many points you get, and then to see how excited people get about the thing you donated, and then getting really excited to bid on everyone else's donations. It's fun afterward also to get to know the people that you are instantly connected with through the auction. We invited the Young Women (the girls 12 to 18 years old in my church) this time and they loved it. I think they were a little surprised to see how rowdy the older ladies can get!! It's fun to see an 80 year old woman coming out of her chair because she's so excited to out bid the 20 year old woman next to her. :D It doesn't get much better than that. And the whole event is fairly easy to plan for the committee because you don't have to come up with a theme or decorations or the money for anything extravagant. It's good all around!! I am just really pumped about it since we just got done with it this last week.