Hello, everyone! It’s Lily here, to tell you all about the awesome experience that Derek and I were able to have last month! We had the opportunity to go to the San Antonio YSA Conference held by our church.

We started our adventure the evening of Friday the 10th by driving over to Adriette Indoor Karting & Games, a huge arcade and fun center. The activities started with a dinner of pizza and an introduction to Camille Johnson, the General Relief Society President. We even got a chance to take a picture with her!

We also got to both see some old friends and make new ones! I got to see one of my fellow former service missionaries, Evelyn, and I also got to meet another girl who has the name Lily! We had a ton of fun talking over dinner, while Derek also went and had fun introducing himself to everyone.

The main event of the night was how everyone got a chance, if they were physically able, to go and race with the go-karts. Derek and I were able to get the same time for our races, so we got to face off against each other on the track! My new friend Lily was able to help take pictures of us from the viewing area as we were out on the track, and I was able to get a faster average lap time than Derek (who decided to be funny and put “Dark Prince” as his name for the scoreboard). Take that, bro! XD

We also were able to go around and do a bunch of games, getting game cards that would let us do as many plays as we wanted (as long as they weren’t games that only gave tickets). I had fun wandering around playing some random games like Skee-Ball, Derek played over at a shooter game for a while, and we even went head-to-head in Mario Kart!

There were a couple other fun activities we got to do. There was a huge VR tower station where you could play different games either with each other or against each other, and we ended up facing off in a snowball fight against each other where we had to shoot virtual penguins for points. I lost that one, but it was still super fun!

Then we also got to do some Laser Tag before we left. We ended up facing off on different teams, Derek on Blue Team and me on Green Team. My team absolutely destroyed his team, taking the high ground early and firing full-force at the other team whenever they tried to get up to us! I even got more points than Derek individually. On the scoreboard, I’m Vision, and he’s Robin. After doing Laser Tag, we decided to call it a night and went home to rest up before the conference continued the next morning.

Saturday morning, we made sure to leave for the church building for the day’s activities early enough to avoid traffic. We made it perfectly in time to socialize for a bit before they brought in breakfast, which was breakfast tacos from Taco Cabana. I enjoyed the bacon tacos the most myself!

After breakfast was eaten and everyone was settled, we began doing several service projects. We were making Christmas ornaments for people, with a couple different kinds. I and some of the people made snowflake ornaments out of beads and pipe cleaners, while others made doors out of Jenga blocks and decorated them with wreaths and holly.

After finishing up the ornament-making, we had a delicious lunch of Olive Garden. Derek was especially happy about that, because Olive Garden is one of his favorite restaurants.

Once lunch was done, we all went off to classes! There was a great selection of classes focused on both spiritual and temporal self-reliance and strength. Derek went to the more spiritual classes in order to learn things he could do to strengthen his testimony, while I took the more temporal classes to help me learn stuff about investing and finance. Then, after the classes, we had a devotional with President Johnson where she gave a wonderful talk.

After that awesome spiritual experience, we had a BBQ dinner from Rudy’s! While eating, I ended up sitting at a table with a nice boy named Chris who asked me if I wanted to go with him to the dance later that night. I said yes, and hurried home so that Derek could get dropped off back at the house and I could get changed for the dance!

I ended up spending the whole dance having fun spending time with Chris and talking to him. We were getting to know each other quickly, and even did a couple slow dances together before I had to call it a night and leave. We swapped numbers, and made plans to sit with each other the next morning at the church meeting.

Sunday morning, Derek and I were able to go to a special church meeting with all of the other young single adults in the conference. I made sure to save a spot for Chris, who held my hand through the whole meeting! <3 It was a wonderful time and I could feel the spirit strongly from all the speakers. After that, we had a brunch of yogurt parfaits and muffins, and I sat with Chris and learned more about his family and his life.

All in all, this was an amazing experience that has ended up meaning more and more to me as time has been passing!