Zion's Army Night

A Visiting Teaching Conference

by: JOY in Makakilo, HI

Gratefully, our night turned out to be a BIG HIT!! The only clue given to the sisters on what we were doing was that they were all recruited by Zion's Army to be at Enrichment Night August 20. (I don't believe they had a clue it had to do with visiting teaching until that night)

For our evening everyone with a responsibility was dressed in camouflage fatigues. (Our husband's BDU's or borrowed).

First, we started with a dinner at 6:30pm. We had sloppy joes, salads, cookies and ice cream. We have no budget to speak of so all the food was brought on a sign up list. I wanted to use luau plates (compartment plates) to make it a little closer to chow line authenticity, but cost was a factor. The centerpiece for each table was a bush of plastic flowers inserted in an army boot. One sister brought her son's little army men with tanks and such to place around the boot. A bunched up white towel was placed on the table first then the boot and things. I'm so grateful to the HFPE group for the idea 'cause it looked really cute!

       As they arrived they were given paper-made 'dog tags'. On one side was to write their name, the other had one of four colors naming which team they would be on later. (Red Team, Blue Team, Yellow Team, Green Team) Later, when I announced to the sisters which team they would be on according to their 'dog tags' one sister said the DOG stands for 'Daughter's of God' I hadn't thought of that! Pretty cool!

       After dinner we went to the RS room for the Lesson (Latter-day Saint Women A, Lesson 14), Spotlight, and the Food Storage Minute. Then before I broke them up into groups I had them stand and repeat after me:

"We are Pa'lehua Ward, we are women who love the Lord"
"We will go and visit teach, there's no sister out of reach"
"We will serve with all our might to bring our families unto Christ"

The activities mirrored those suggested from the HFPE group.

Obstacle Course - Represents the different obstacles that we must overcome each month in visiting
 

Code Breaker Challenge - Represents time - that we are so busy in our lives that it was hard to find the time to serve.
 

Dart Gun Game - Represents that the more times that we throw the darts/an object at the target (i.e. make visiting teaching appointments) the better chances we have of successfully accomplishing our visiting teaching.

Get-to-know-you Game - shows that the more we know someone, the more likely we are to have things in common, and to also build friendships.

At the completion of each task the sisters were given a 'treat' that said something thanking them for doing their visiting teaching. (i.e. Almond Joy with a note saying "Bring Joy to the sisters in your watch care - do your visiting teaching")

If I were to do anything different it would have been to invite someone else to run the code breaker instead of me so I could more efficiently call people to switch rooms every 8 minutes. But it worked out okay because luckily the code breaker challenge took very little explaining. Oh, and I wish I remembered to have a whistle instead of yelling!


Then at the close we all met back in the RS room where I asked if they would tell me how they thought each activity correlated with visiting teaching. Their answers were great! I was happy it got them thinking.
Then I handed them a tea light candle with a note referencing Matthew 5:14 and saying "By being a visiting teacher you bring light to those you visit"