High Adventure, day 1

Monday, July 21, 2025

Last week was youth camp and what a wonderful week it was. This year we combined all the youth into one camp and then separated to different activities based on their interests. The camp went from Tuesday, July 15 to Saturday, July 10. I will start with Tuesday, day 1 of the camp.

Tuesday morning we met at the church at 5:45am dressed ready for the temple. We drove to the Redlands temple and did baptisms. It was an amazing experience.

We have some amazing youth in our ward. Lisa had several names of her ancestors who she sent to be baptized.

As we were winding down in the baptistry, I came out of the dressing room and I see a familiar guy grinning at me. It took me a moment to recognize him as Randy Leavitt. Randy’s dad and my dad were first cousins and from what I can tell, pretty good friends. The first time I remember meeting Randy is after we moved to San Diego. Randy married Carol Hall who was the daughter of Elna Hall who was my moms first cousin. I think it is cool that my second cousin on my dad’s side married my second cousin on my mom’s side. We got to know the Halls pretty well when we lived in Rosemary.

Randy and Carol moved to San Diego a few years before we did and we celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving together for several years after we moved here. That ended once our kids got older and life got complicated. We need to hook up with them sometime.

We had reserved the church building that shared the same parking lot so we could change our clothes and eat our lunch. After we finished lunch, we headed up the mountain to Big Bear.

We headed straight to the Big Bear Community Hospital so we could sing to the residences in the extended care center there. There were a lot more of us than there were of them, but I think everybody enjoyed it.

We then headed to camp and set up our tents. The girls stayed at a camp called Pine Knot campground and the boys stayed at a group campsite called Buttercup campground. To drive from one campsite to the other was a five minute drive but we could walk to the other campsite in two or three minutes.

The activity Tuesday night was to sing songs. The teachers were in charge and they led us in some old traditional camp songs and the young women led us in some traditional girls camp songs and we also had some individuals share their talents with us.

We had a Ukulele, trombone and guitar.

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Russia's economy is now smaller than that of Italy

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