By STEPHANIE BUNKER
Moapa Valley Progress
The LDS Logandale Stake held an Activity Day for local girls on Saturday where they organized a clothing drive. On Saturday, 158 girls, ages 8-11, and their adult leaders gathered at the LDS Logandale Stake Center on St. Joseph Street.
The theme of the activity was “I Can Be A Missionary Now.” The group participated in things a typical Mormon missionary does from day to day. Chief among those activities included serving others.
The young girls were enthusiastic about sorting bags of clothes donated from the community. The clothes are being sent to the local elementary schools for kids who need them. All of the excess clothing will then go to Whitney Elementary School in Las Vegas.
Whitney Elementary is the most impoverished school in the Clark County School District. There is an active volunteer program at the school that provides services for the students such as clothing and food.
Logandale resident Esther Lee organized the clothing drive. “At first, my worst fear was that we wouldn’t have enough clothes,” Lee said of the project. “Now my worst fear is: What am I going to do with all of these clothes?”
Lee spread the word about the clothing drive about a week in advance. She had only gotten 8 bags of clothes in the beginning and feared there wouldn’t be enough for all of the girls to do throughout the day.
But soon more bags began piling up. Eventually she became overwhelmed with 100 big bags of clothes.
Every 45 minutes throughout the morning activities, a new group of girls rotated through to the clothing drive activity where they watched a video highlighting Whitney Elementary School and the program that the girls would be assisting while in that station. The touching video gave the girls purpose and enthusiasm to help their impoverished neighbors both in Moapa Valley and in Las Vegas.
The energy in the room as the girls sorted clothes was filled with purpose and caring. Initially Lee had planned to sort clothes into specific piles of gender, size, and type of clothing. But as the job became larger and the day wore on, they had to simplify the process into a division of boys and girls clothes.
“This is a good service project that has been provided for these girls,”said LDS Logandale Stake Primary President Luann Mortensen. “They have made a difference providing Perkins and Bowler schools with clothes.”
Lee also asked specifically for donations of Bowler and Perkins t-shirts to give to kids that can’t afford a new one.
There were other activities the young girls were involved in throughout the day. The Stake Primary Presidency assigned each ward in the stake to be in charge of a certain task. Some wards took on a rotation activity while others were in charge of decorating, advertisement, or providing lunch.
“Everyone pitched in to help,” Mortensen said. “It was a joint adventure and we couldn’t have done it otherwise.”
The activities were designed to highlight the life of Mormon missionaries. One of the activities was to write a letter to a missionary or a relative. The leaders gave the girls ideas of what they could talk about in their letter. When they finished they could take it home and have their parent’s mail it.
Mormon missionaries are encouraged to take care of themselves and stay healthy, so there was a class on nutrition and teaching the girls how to take care of themselves.
Missionaries also spend a lot of time studying and preparing to teach people, so another class was focused on scripture study.
Missionaries get one day per week to prep for the upcoming week and do some physical activity, called a P-day. To represent P-day one of the activities was singing and dancing in the gym. Moapa Valley High School student Olivia Williams volunteered to teach fun games and a dance to the girls during their rotation. Many girls exclaimed that this was their favorite part of the day.
Mortensen hoped that this activity helped bring the girls together. “There has been a lot of reference to being kind and helpful, loving and serving others,” she said. “I think this is a good way to start the school year and learn to work together.”
