And thats a wrap...

Update 5/1/11 : Today we had the first stake conference of the Holladay YSA Stake.  I now know that my ward is the Winmill YSA Ward with Dwight Day as the bishop.  Its official!  Let's hope its just as good as the H3O was! :)


Well my friends, the words were spoken and I am officially part of a new ward.  I don't know the name of the ward yet, but I do know I am no longer a member of the Holladay 30th YSA Ward.  In fact, the 30th ward ceased to exist as of 19 hours ago.

Last night, I attended a big YSA Reorganization meeting held at the Conference Center downtown.  Elder M. Russell Ballard presided over the meeting and great words were spoken by leaders of our church.

The reorganization is as follows:
All university wards = disbanded
All YSA wards in conventional stakes = removed
12 New YSA Stakes = created
121 New YSA wards = created

Boundaries for the new wards will overlap with conventional family stakes for ease of transition, but will be part of a greater stake consisting of 10-12 YSA wards each. 

While I'm not yet sure to which ward I belong, I did learn that I will be part of the new Salt Lake Holladay YSA Stake, which will have 11 wards of about 150-200 members each.  This coming Sunday we will meet as a stake.  We will sustain our new stake leaders and will learn of our new ward boundaries and leadership.

The Bretheren shared many good things with us last night.  Elder Balland reminded us of our 9th Article of Faith which says,

We believe all that God has revealed,

all that He does now reveal,

and we believe that He will yet reveal

many great and important things

pertaining to the Kingdom of God.

We are part of that third line... "and we believe that He will yet reveal"...  This change comes not as a 'good idea' someone just had, but as direct revelation given to us through the Lord's prophet, Thomas S. Monson.  We are experiencing a great change that for some will be difficult, for others it couldn't have come soon enough.  I'm somewhere in the middle.  I enjoy meeting new people and making new friends, plus the idea of having a new calling is always good.  But, I made a lot of really good friends in the 30th ward. I hope to keep in touch with many of them.

Elder Ballard left us with a challenge.  Part the of the reasoning behind this change is to help this age group to avoid getting lost.  His challenge to us is to find someone in our boundaries that we can fellowship into/back into the church before the end of the year.  While marrige is an obvious topic of discussion when it comes to my age group, I am extremely impressed by the concern for the spiritual well-being of each indivudual, married or not.

But don't worry.  He did push marriage too. :)