Akron Ohio Stake News

by Elizabeth Nielson

The annual Stake Standards Night took place in January at the Stake Center. Youth ages 12 to 18 were invited with their parents to learn more about the moral values and eternal goals of the Church as taught in the For the Strength of Youth booklet.

The evening started in the chapel where those in attendance met to hear an opening talk from Brock Withers of the Wadsworth Ward.

The youth were then divided from their parents and asked to go to one of four interactive stations in classrooms around the building. The stations covered four topics: media standards, dating, choice and accountability, and repentance. The youth rotated from station to station.

The parents remained in the chapel to have a discussion led by President Talley. The discussion focused on practical approaches to working with the youth to help them stay focused on their gospel goals. Parents shared their methods for keeping lines of communication open with their children.

Daniel Garner, a member of the Teachers Quorum in the Akron Ward, said his favorite activity was the repentance activity, in which the leaders had the participants carry books on outstretched arms and walk through on obstacle course. The books represented sins. After being encumbered by the books, the participants walked through the course a second time without the books, which meant to symbolize a person who had repented.

“It was really cool to have a physical representation of repentance,” said Daniel. “It made it more real because it was tactile.”

Another activity that was enjoyed by the youth was a movie standards quiz. Before the activity, most of the youth reported that PG-13 movies were ok, and all of the youth said that PG movies were fine. The leaders shared a description of some content from a movie, and all the youth said it was unacceptable. It was then revealed that the movie was PG, which surprised the youth. The leaders showed clips of General Authorities talking about relying on the Spirit to make decisions about media. They then led a discussion about why we have standards in the first place and how the Spirit can guide us.

Stake Young Women’s President Becky Semus felt that the evening was successful. “We wanted to engage the youth in an active way in exploring why standards matter, and specifically why the standards in For the Strength of Youth are important,” she said. “We wanted them to look at topics they have heard about all their lives with fresh perspective.”