"Peace in Christ" - New Beginnings 2018

This year, we let the girls plan EVERYTHING for New Beginnings. I've realized i've been an idiot for the past 2 1/2 years, because this was the easiest, most least-stressful event I've ever done. Each girl was put into a committee (refreshments, invitations/programs, and decorations) and given a job to do and follow up on. I gave the girls the option of using New Beginnings as their Integrity value project if they spent the 10 + hours working on it. A big part of Integrity is keeping and following through with commitments, so it worked....somewhat. We still had girls drop the ball, or not show up, but that was to be expected, and we had other girls step up and it still worked great.

Here is the invitation two of the girls made. Cute, right? I had to laugh at the thumb in the bottom corner...they ended up cutting a puzzle piece out of that corner, so the thumb was cut out haha. They did a good job!

They decided to base the program on this years mutual theme: "Peace in Christ." They decided to do a play on the word peace, and do a puzzle piece theme. My favorite part of the night was the value presentation. We designed and ordered a giant poster of Christ from Office Max (it was kinda pricey - $20 - but...it is beautiful, and we got SO many compliments on it, it was well worth the money) glued it to some cardboard and made a giant puzzle out of it. We cut 8 pieces, to represent the 8 values, and had each girl represent a value by wearing the color, saying the scripture and motto that goes with the value, and sharing how that particular value helps them to have peace in Christ. Then, they placed a  piece of the puzzle onto the chalkboard. Here is the poster pre-puzzle:

Here is the puzzle after they presented. It is seriously so pretty and I want one in my house haha. Each puzzle piece had strips of magnet placed on the back. I made the puzzle layout with the different value colors on the bottom, so it would be easy for the girls to know where their piece went, but my magnets weren't strong enough for the puzzle pieces to be placed on top (angry face) of the layout. Oh well. It still looked good as a decoration below the picture.

 We sang "Peace In Christ" from the LDS youth cd (All the songs and sheet music are free for download on the website here) and the girls made and cut out puzzle piece brownies for refreshments. They were so cute! (My cute counselor found this cute cookie cutter on Amazon)

I also ordered these puzzle piece necklaces from Wish, but the shipping was delayed and they didn't get here in time - bummer! I'll use the necklaces at camp this year, and instead, ended up getting roses from Costco instead. The girls LOVED getting the roses. I might actually give those out again in the future...they were THAT excited.

Aren't they cute?!