Helaman's Encampment 2011

Dear Blog World.
This is what you've been waiting for I'm sure. The weeks of anticipation to finally see how many pony beads I actually needed to use for the honour bead activity at this camp.

Just a quick catch up:

• Byron was financial guru of big 3000+ people commemorative Scout camp



• Since I don't have work and Amelia is not here for me to take care of, I was invited to come along.



• I was asked to make 100 questions and create a game to get the Scouts studying the scripture stories at camp.



• Worrying about logistics of game



• Creating 100 trivia questions



• Having questions proof read



• Ordering 150,000 pony beads



• Ordering 2700 yards of leather lace



• Cutting said leather lace

And with that it was now time for camp.

On our way to Helaman's Encampment which was held at camp Impeesa near Pincher Creek, we stopped by Cardston to pick up some more bedding and camping stuff from Byron's parents. It was a beautiful hot sunny day. We had the luxury of staying over at the "Redd Hotel" overnight before leaving on our adventure. The car was completely and totally packed. I don't think we have ever had this much stuff if our car. We had our own camping supplies, 150,000 pony beads, 2 big red bins full of leather cord and other great supplies to make our lives go well at camp.


This camp was dreamed up to celebrate the 100th anniversary of LDS Scouting in Alberta. There were scouts, leaders, and volunteers from all over the province and we even had some from British Columbia and Saskatchewan. Byron being the operations management kind of guy that he is was in charge of running the command centre. We both had a busier job than we thought we would, especially before the camp and on registration day.

Thanks to Byron's excellent planning skills, we were able to have a whole cabin to ourselves. I think he mentioned that his wife does not love camping. I was grateful to have a shelter that kept the rain, wind, and bears out. The beds could have been softer, but they were better than sleeping on the ground.

The first night was long but fun. When we arrived at camp we sort of took the lead on gathering stuff for the registration envelopes and together with our wonderful supportive helpers, we stuffed envelopes till 1 in the morning on Saturday night.

This is us at camp on Sunday before going to the sacrament meeting held for the volunteer staff who had come early to set up the camp.

This was our busy second evening of stuffing envelopes. I can now put "assembly line guru" on my resume. We had many different combinations of tasks to be done and I was the one who got to think of how best to get all the right things in the right envelopes. Despite a great design, when working with humans there was some room for error. But it was cool to see my idea come to life.

I didn't get to see all the amazing fun activities the scouts did. I heard they were great and many of them very challenging. I heard great things about the firesides and got to attend 2 of them.

The Honour Bead program went very well. We had 22 contestants who got all 100 questions right by the deadline. We then had a tie breaker test to determine who were the winners in each category of participant.

I had fun being a part of this great camp.

And we used approximately 70,000 pony beads.