Gilbert Temple Youth Cultural Celebration "Super Saturday" Practice

Today 13,000+ youth from Gilbert/Queen Creek and surrounding areas of our new Gilbert Temple district had our enormous "Super Saturday" practice for the Gilbert Temple Youth Cultural Celebration. This was the first time we had practiced all together. My ward and stake was part of Region 4, the dark blue specks you see below. Our region was the largest and was made up of 4 Stakes consisting of about 3,000 youth! This is an overhead view that someone took of all of us practicing at Discovery Park, which is just kitty corner from the Gilbert Temple. CRAZY!!!

The theme of the Celebration was "Live True" which was about our modern-day youth who are fighting the greatest battle that has ever been fought on this earth. We celebrate each day that the youth LIVE TRUE to the faith. Whether it’s in choosing who they associate with, or what they wear, or what they expose their body and mind to, every time they make a decision to LIVE TRUE and follow Christ, they are to be celebrated! This is how they remain faithful and make the decision to stay on the road to the temple.

The Live True logo is made up of a capital L and T representing Live True. Together they form a rectangular viewing window through which we “set our sights” on the temple. When the “L” and “T” are made with the hands, it becomes a positive hand gesture we can share among other members of the church and nonmembers as a reminder to “Live True” to our personal standards and beliefs. The purpose of the Cultural Celebration is to encourage us all to set the focus of our personal viewfinder on the Gilbert Arizona Temple.

I was called to be the Dance Specialist in my ward to teach our youth the dance and sign language for the Temple Celebration. Throughout January, I was in charge of teaching all of our youth every mutual night the dance and also taught them the sign language on Sundays. Since the dance was a boy/girl partner dance, I convinced Benny to teach the dance with me to the youth. He so kindly agreed to do it despite his complete lack of dance training. The kids loved having Benny do the dance with me because they could see that "anyone" could do it...no offense Benny:) So, every Wednesday night, Christina would babysit our boys while Benny and I taught the youth. It was such a fun experience and Ben had a lot of fun doing it too! I have the video of Benny and I doing the dance, which I emailed to the youth so they could practice. Very funny and a must see!;) Here are some pics of us from the video so they are kinda fuzzy, but you get the idea;) Benny definitely has quite the moves! He was so sweet to do this with me. A lot of people in our ward asked how I got him to do it and they they were shocked that he so willing did it without any force! It was his way to be a part of this amazing experience and Benny is comfortable in his own skin and could care less if he looks silly! I love that about him so much!

After our ward practices were finished we had Stake practices where I was in charge of continuing to teach and guide my ward through all of the dance practices and sign language practices at a Stake level. It was crazy how difficult it was to figure out placement on the field and how to enter so many youth on and off the field in an organized manner. That was by far the most difficult part! The kids were troopers though as we worked through everything and they were doing great remembering and perfecting the dance moves. I was so proud of them and their willingness to dance since the majority of them have not had ANY formal dance training! It was really humbling to see them work SO hard to make this performance incredibly special for the Prophet of our church!

The dance for our region was dance was called the "Fire Dance" and our costuming was "Babylonian" for the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who in the book of Daniel (chapters 1–3) are known for their exclusive devotion to God. They are mostly known for being saved by The Lord from Babylonian execution of being burned alive in a fiery furnace...Hence our dance and costuming. The evening's celebration as a whole is focused on The Lord's hero's throughout history. This helped the youth to feel the power of heroism within themselves as our region celebrated these 3 great hero's. Our dance was the best of all the dances and had amazing tumblers (from the region) at the beginning and actual polynesian fire dancers in the beginning as well!

So, today was our big and long awaited "Super Saturday" Regional practice where we will practice for 12+ hours all together (13,000+ youth) for the first time!!! We met at the church at about 6:30am to load the busses up and head out to Discovery Park.

 

After the crazy parking situation (we had to park down the road at Costco and walk to the park) we had to make our way through security. Everyone had to have a name tag lanyard with a barcode that they scanned in order to enter the park. Due to the crazy amount of people coming to the practice they had to make sure that only authorized people were there. If more people entered than what the church had approved with the park, the park would shut everything down due to a safety violation. The name tags were our ticket in to the real performance. If you didn't have one you couldn't go in due to tight security for when President Monson will be there for the real performance.

After we set up camp, the kids were ready to get practicing!

We're still working on placement on the field and our entrance and exit. Everything keeps changing, but we are rolling with the punches and having fun:)

At first we just practiced just as regions. Our blue region was the biggest region in the Celebration. Crazy! Seeing all of the youth out there makes me emotional. I am so proud of their hard work, willingness, and desire to be a part of this amazing experience. Such incredible youth right there! 

Break time!

Such great kids! I love our youth so much!!!

Now it's time to practice ALL together! All 13,000+!!!

The weather was crazy! Hot then cold then rainy then sunny!

It took hours just to run through the beginning of the show. The kids were getting restless and it was SOOOO hot! As leaders, it was our responsibility to make sure that the kids were doing what they were supposed to do, but to also make sure they were doing ok. We went around and checked that they were hydrated, had plenty to eat, wearing sunscreen, etc. We sprayed them with water and kept tossing candy to them. It was a long day, but we did everything we could to help keep their spirits up...bless their hearts!

After dinner, it was time to run through the show from beginning to end. 

After all of the dancing and running on the dried out/dead grass, the entire field turned into and huge dust bowl! It was difficult to breath and many of the kids were having severe allergies and asthma. A kid even had to be ambulanced out of the field because of their asthma. So, because of the health hazard all of the dust had created, the leaders of the Celebration decided to end the practice a couple hours early. We didn't get home until about 11pm, so we were happy that we got out a little early. It was truly a blessing that it rained earlier in the day, which allowed us to run through the entire show at least once by controlling the dust. Definitely a tender mercy from our Heavenly Father today:) WOW! What an amazing day even though it was long, seeing the youth give it their all just gave me goose bumps and instant tears. The Spirit was SO strong as these amazing youth in incredible masses sang and danced with all of their hearts with the beautiful Gilbert Temple in the background. I felt so incredibly blessed to be a part of this once in a lifetime experience and I can't wait for next week when we perform for the Prophet!!! This is going to be the biggest Cultural Celebration to date, yet...sooo AMAZING!!!