Sunday, August 12, 2012

Rubbing Shoulders with Elaine Dalton

On Friday morning, I dropped my girls off at Fitchburg State University (in my very own backyard!!--a 10 minute commute) for a first-ever Regional Young Women Conference.  There's a long back-story to this, but it really deserves it's own post, so MAYBE another day... Eight stakes were invited, and there were 700 beautiful young ladies roaming around (of all places!) Fitchburg for the weekend.  I saw the clusters of young women walking together when we drove through campus, and I got all verklempt thinking about them sharing amazing experiences together, like singing, and standing to recite the Young Women theme 700 strong.
 And hello, ELAINE DALTON spent the weekend with them!
 I got snippets of information from my brother Rich and my niece Hannah, who spent the night here on Friday (so they could return easily to the conference on Saturday morning) and then my girls filled me in on the whole experience on Saturday night.  Workshops, games, good food, tu-tu making, dancing... SO.MUCH.GOOD.
Rich is on the left below, with the red lanyard on.  He would never say so, but this conference was his baby, and with lots of help and inspiration, was an extremely uplifting experience for all involved.
 He arranged for each stake unit (Hartford, Springfield, Boston, Nashua, Providence, Cambridge, ?I'm forgetting a couple?) of Young Women to have their pictures taken with Elaine Dalton after their gathering on Friday night.  The girls were SO excited to just be near her!  I'm sure there will be eight stakes of Young Women rooms in each unit proudly displaying a picture of this special lady and the girls SOON.  My niece Stevie was with us for the occasion, but her stake had scheduled a Trek weekend for their youth at the same time, so their girls were not in attendance.  Stevie sidled up to Uncle Rich in her very sweet manner and asked "Uncle Rich?... since I'm the only one here from my stake, can I have my OWN picture with Sister Dalton?..."  He made it happen.  I'm sure that picture will be posted ASAP on a blog near you.
Young Women are FUN!  These particular young women are EXTRA fun and lucky to live in New England.

3 comments:

Jo Jo said...

She visited our 8 stake youth conference in Pittsburgh while we were with you, and they had photos as well ;-) She's one busy traveler

LL said...

Really wishing I was serving in YW right now...I would have loved to be a part of that!

Doran & Jody said...

Oh fun for them!!