Since my post, "Pirates of the New Beginnings" is getting so many hits, I wanted to leave some more ideas. Every year (for two years, ha ha) we have a "SPRING TREAT RETREAT" with the Laurels. Kind of a farewell since some of our girls will be graduating and leaving us, even though we have loved them and taught them and given them the best Sundays and Tuesdays and Girl's Camps and Youth Conferences and Friday Feasts of our lives. They just leave anyways. I'm the Laurel [16-18 yr. olds] Advisor. So before they go, we party. This time, Pirate Style.
This is called the "Cracken" at Pirate Island Pizza.
The manager fell in love with us because we were all dressed up. He gave us hats, balloons and coins to play in the arcade.
I made these "Claim" tags for the night. I had specific ones for Trees, Rocks, Grass and this general one for "This", which entitled us to claim whatever we saw that we wanted. We Plundered the entire night. The girls had a blast.
After dinner, we PILLAGED the ward. We set treats at different houses. They were to act like they didn't know we were coming. We would knock on the doors and tell them we wouldn't leave until they gave us food! We were usually able to steer them to the houses we set up. Sometimes we let them go to other houses, it was so funny, they came out with some good stuff though!
After we gathered the treats, we went to the dollar movie. Then the fun began. We went to the houses we had Pillaged earlier and tagged their lawns or driveways with a Jolly Roger. We made a stencil and spray painted the skull and crossbones on the grass, if we had permission, or used sidewalk chalk if we didn't. One of our cute girls wrote a few poems. It was about midnight!
We have a Pirate Enemy in the ward. It's name is "Young Men's president". Last year we toilet papered him really badly. This year, we claimed his entire house. We put the claim tags on EVERYTHING. We stenciled his lawn 3 times, and chalked his driveway. We also ripped up a black sheet, stenciled it with our Jolly Roger and made a black flag we hung from his porch. It is the highlight of our Spring-Treat Retreat.
After, we stay up telling stories, laughing and talking about stuff. The whole night the girls kept saying, "This is SO MUCH FUN!" I know this is totally not a spiritual activity, mostly, but we get girls out that we need to bond with, so we can get them to the important things. If they have fun and know they are loved, they also come when you can build their testimonies. We do find ways to slip in lessons here and there, while we have them captive. It takes place the weekend of the YW General Broadcast. We split up after everyone wakes up Saturday, then meet back together at the church to watch the broadcast.
I have the cutest invitation proclamation we taped to the girls' front doors but I couldn't get it to post here. I also have the claim tags and "Plundered" signs we put on the ward members' doors, if anyone wants to use them. You could adapt parts of this into a regular activity night.
