2004...Stand in the Light

Ahh....so it begins. And little did I know it would begin with a company like unto Consider the Lilies; the only Denton company where the boys outnumbered the girls 2-1…and we were the lilies. Fantastic. After being a coordinator, one who has the opportunity to assign the names to companies, I can truly appreciate the beauty and wisdom in that choice. Even after all these years, I can still remember the names of each of my ten boys...you have Jordan and Kevin, Chris and Cameron, Cam and Matt, Morgan and Quinn, and Jed and Ron. See, I still even remember who roomed with whom. I don't know if it was just because it was my first week ever and I was blown away with the awesomeness that was working with the youth, or if it really was one of my greatest groups ever. I'm leaning towards the latter. Even with having to leave the variety show early to go take my Economics of International Trade mid-term, I couldn't have asked for a better week or a better group of boys to kick off my EFY career. They pretty much sold me on EFY for years, and probably the rest of my life.

This is where the EFY ninjas made their début. It was actually a tradition borrowed from Spanky Hansen, my BC. It was Friday night, after lights out and I was telling a couple of my boys to go to bed when Spanky walks out from the stairwell and pokes his head in. Well instead of yelling or correcting them, he instead asked them to grab their participant shirts and then proceeded to instruct them how to turn themselves from 17 yr old boys into ninjas. A few minutes later, after retiring to my room, I hear a commotion from across the hall. Sure enough, there was Jed, Morgan, Quinn, and Ron still in their ninja garb doing whatever teenage boys high on pixie sticks and Oreos dressed up as ninjas do at 12:30 in the morning. Every single group of boys I had after that were apart of this fine tradition.

Denton was also where I realized how much the cheer-off meant to me, and the bitterness that comes with second place. I watched as my kids came up with an incredible cheer, one that involved four groups of boys encircling one girl. Each would, in turn, circle out and the girl in the middle would spring up and sing ‘Lilies’ all sweet and pretty like, harmonizing with the other “flowers.” It then proceeded into a rousing arrangement of Popcorn Popping changing the words to fit Consider the Lilies and EFY and then concluded with the ingenious chant:

(boys) Lilies!
(girls) Are strong and white.
Lilies!
Stand in the Light.
Lilies!
Have lots of fun.
Lilies!
Are number one!
(boys) Consida! (girls) Wha Wha!
(boys) The Lilies! (girls) Wha What!
(boys) Consida! (girls) Wha Wha!

(boys) The Lilies! (girls) Wha What!

As good and blissful as that cheer was, we were robbed by a bunch of ruffians bouncing around all over the place screaming “Focus on the Locus, put your money on the honey!” for three minutes. Starting the next week in San Antonio and continuing on throughout my EFY career, I made it perfectly clear to my boys each week it was my expectation we win the cheer-off. Yeah, that didn't happen that summer. We didn't even come close...quite a let down. My testimony in prayer was shaken….

This was the summer of the greatest counselor dance ever, set to Let's Get Loud by Gloria Estefan. This was also when Julia Rex preformed the memorable There Is a Green Hill Far Away on Thursday evening. I had the grandson of Elder Richard G. Scott in my SA II group. After Clint asked what I thought of Elder Scott, I remember doing a really poor impersonation of that special witness, to which Clint responded that he was his grandfather. Oh…well…that’s a little awkward…

And this was the summer for so many of us first met...Jeff Nicholas, Sandi Wright, Derick Lee Grayson, Donny Taylor, and many many more. It was also Richie's last as a participant. Did I have any idea where this crazy ride was going to take me? Nope, not a clue. One of my greatest memories was finishing up with my first week, on a spiritual high and everything, and I walk back into my house at 1000 W Hickory to find some strange girl in my bed...the nasty remnants from a party my roommates threw the night before. I threw my stuff down, called up the elders and told them we were going to have correlation a little bit earlier than usual cause I was so frustrated that I had to face the world so soon. I washed my sheets in the hottest water I could get and, no lie, got new pillows and scrubbed my mattress with carpet cleaner.

Did I have any idea that first Saturday afternoon training session on the fourth floor of the UNT Union what I was getting into?? My next six summers (and it would appear much of my time in between summers) would revolve around a program that basically pays about $2.50/hr before taxes. What happened in 2004 was EFY showed me that working with the youth of the church, my counselor partner(s), and everyone else involved with the program would give my testimony more room to grow than I could have thought possible. Besides the cheering and dancing and new friends and mocking my boys from the food they ate to the words they said or the clothes they wore...besides all that, just the spiritual benefits alone were enough to make it difficult not to be a part of EFY.