The Woodbridge Virginia Stake of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints joined with six other stakes in the Northern Virginia region to produce a magnificent Youth Celebration for three days in July. A giant Youth Conference plus Dance Festival involving about 1800 youth, it involved dance practices for the youth beginning in February, hours and hours of practice, sewing of costumes by volunteers (yes, I was one of those volunteers), building of sets, more practicing, and tons of other stuff that I am not even aware of. Dad, as the member of the Stake Presidency with responsibility for the youth, was intimately involved in all of the planning and preparations for more than a year ahead of time. The youth performed the dance festival/youth celebration three times for a cumulative audience of over 12,000 people! We're so grateful that Gregory had the opportunity to participate in this once-in-a-lifetime event--by all accounts, he had a fantastic experience!
Now it's time to play "I Spy Gregory Hilton", or "Where's Gregory?"
(I guarantee that Gregory is in each one of these pictures--see if you can find him!)
Hint: He's wearing a green shirt.
This was the show opener. Each stake wore a different colored t-shirt. Imagine hundreds of kids on the field at the Patriot High School Stadium all at once in all colors of the rainbow, all dancing to the same music at the same time. It was pretty exciting and amazing!
Here are the Woodbridge youth in the "Hoe Down". The music they danced to was from Aaron Copeland's "Rodeo", music which Celesta and I are very familiar with because we both danced to it in our ballet days. Bear in mind that Gregory is wearing black pants and a white shirt. :)
The Priests and Laurels of our stake learned to do the waltz, and here they are in elegant formation. Gregory is in this picture, but even I am not sure which one he is! These are the dresses I helped to sew for the young women in our ward, some purple and some turquoise.
