Vonnie Call and Girls Camp

I have loads more fun experiences to share about Texas but I need to write what's now!

Mom called the other day and told me Vonnie Call had passed away.  She's a sweet lady who I met through Girls Camp (the place I believe I'll be exalted to!).  Over the years our paths have very rarely crossed but there was a time when they crossed more often than not and in those times I got to know one terrific woman.  I went through old girls camp pictures tonight looking for pictures of Vonnie and of course found myself crying and laughing and feeling very nostalgic.  That place, those years, those people, changed my life.  Everything I thought I ever needed to know I could find in those woods.  The very last moment of my 6th year I remember standing next to Amber Isbell while looking back at the camp site knowing this was the end and I wasn't coming back and then the Lord stepped in and for 7 more years I got the opportunity to serve as a leader.  There's a few things I've gleaned from those experiences, that place, those people.

1. Girls Camp isn't the only place you can feel the Spirit but it was the first time I REALLY understood how the Spirit spoke.

2. Girls Camp isn't the only place you can find sisterhood but it's one of the first places my memories go to recall great sisterhood.

3. Girls Camp isn't the only place you can renew your testimony but I didn't understand that for a long time as a youth. (hence the fear of never returning)

4. Girls Camp isn't the only place you can get no sleep and be happy about it in the morning because you visited with awesome girls and women all night long.  I found out recently you can do that with a bunch of women in a hot tub during any time of the year in San Diego! (as long as the hubbs doesn't mind you coming in at all hours, but you can only do that every once in a while because you don't want to take advantage of the hubbs ;)

5. Girls Camp isn't the only place you can see the gospel and the Priesthood actually in action but when your friends legs lock up and she can't stand and suddenly unlock with a Priesthood blessing or your friends get lost in the woods and you join together as YCL's to pray, then several long moments later they come walking through the brush, you tend to wonder as a youth if this happens any where else.

6. Girls Camp isn't the only place you get made fun of when your glasses drop from your face into the toilet by accident but it might be the only place it will get written into a skit and acted out in front of your peers on skit night and the only place the Stake leaders will wrap their arms around you and assure you they've done it too!

My very first year, the start of it all and yup that's little ole me with the arrow over my head!

Basically Girls Camp was where I learned the qualities of Sisterhood.  There are too many qualities to list but that's where I remember it starting.  It started with crazy ladies like Vonnie driving her car up the lane handing out meals on wheels tickets advertising bunny stew for lunch.  Or Vonnie's glasses falling into the toilet and then letting us make fun of her on skit night.  This is where I realized that being an adult is sometimes just as fun as being a youth and you can feel just as much sisterhood with the adults as youth or vise versa. 

DiAnna (Mashburn) Neilson and I our 5th year.  The 5th years and a few leaders got snowed in in Kolob Canyon over the weekend and we got to experience the pure joy of freezing during Sacrament meeting as snow came down to remind us a little more of exactly how cold we were!

My last time going to Camp was with a different Stake after I was married and after I had Emma.  I was nervous about leaving Emma as she was just two but I was comforted by a Priesthood blessing that because of my faithfulness I would be blessed by a powerful knowledge of sisterhood.  At the time I didn't think much of it, sisterhood, but now I look back and realize just how incredible that blessing was. My time may or may not come again for me to return to Girls Camp BUT I'm so blessed to have had those years, to have known such women as my dear friend Vonnie Call, and to be influenced by their wisdom, sisterhood and crazy love of life.