Conference update in Rockwall. It lasted two days and was overflowing with joy, inspiration, music, and a spirit of fellowship. Fifty-three friends attended, half of whom were from the wider community. The friends expressed so much joy and hope with Baháʼu’lláh’s vision for humanity. There were more families that wanted to come but had conflicts with their schedules.They planned lots of arts integration and family activities. They added a showing of the video “A Space for Spiritual Conversation” and the Baháʼí World News Service’s video, “Global Conferences: Fostering a culture of peace, contributing to social betterment”.
Each day they all started in one home with an opening time for fellowship and food, followed by a family devotional, songs led by the children’s classes and junior youth, an introduction to the purpose of the conference, family crafts related to the themes of the conference and cultural presentations. Following the devotional, arts and cultural presentations, the adults moved to the other home and left the CC and JY with their groups at the main home. Everyone regrouped at the main home at the end of the day so each group could share arts, insights and learnings with each other and have a closing devotional.
The first day of the conference they did a family art project which was a large banner with the words “Hope for our Community”. The adult program included several hours of study each day on the themes in large and small groups. They also prayed together, sang songs, and played “Community Building Charades” with all the words and phrases we acted out coming from the themes of the conference.
For the children’s program, classes were patterned after the Ruhi class model but included the same themes from the conference that the adults studied. The children’s class teachers were three youth and one adult who have been working together as a team for the past few months. Two of the youth are from the wider community and have been part of the JYSEP program for the past 3 years. The children in the weekly classes, most of whom are from the wider community, have been growing very close to their teachers and this growing friendship has been special for both the youth and the children. Two of the youth have had some struggles at school with bullying and even getting into fights. Becoming CC teachers has helped them to gain confidence through seeing themselves as mentors and understanding their life purpose differently through service to humanity and not just the changes and chances of daily life. They expressed this shift and how they are feeling newly empowered during the conference. One youth shared, “I love teaching the children and having an impact on them. I want them to learn about service and how they can contribute to our community.” A parent shared that her twin daughters love their teachers so much and they sing the songs so much at home that now the parents know the songs too.
The program for the CC included prayers, learning quotes, creating songs with the quotes from the Writings, collaborative parachute games, singing, drumming, and other collaborative games. The youth teachers were very interested in making music with the children and they ended up learning and creating many songs together which they performed during sharing time with the rest of the conference participants.
The junior youth studied the Human Temple and had conversations around the two-fold moral purpose, an exploration of spiritual and material reality, their own spiritual and material identities, and the forces influencing them from society alongside Baháʼu’lláh’s vision for humanity. They planned two special art projects which they worked on each day. The first project used mannequin heads to symbolize the material and spiritual identities of each youth. Identity has been a big topic with this group and so the animators thought this would be a good art project to think deeply about this topic. They used Mod Podge and paint to decorate each head and represented the qualities of their soul (spiritual attributes) on the head itself, while putting their material qualities on papers attached to sticks that stuck out of the heads. Their second art project consisted of twelve canvases, grouped together as one picture. The picture was of a tree and the roots of the tree look like a map of the continents of the earth. The quote, “Ye are the fruits of one tree and the leaves of one branch” was written on the canvases. The youth did not get to see the whole picture. They just received a single canvas to paint. Afterward they put all their canvases together like a puzzle to see what they had created. It was a physical demonstration of the power of collaboration and unity and the artwork was absolutely beautiful! The youth and junior youth had time for fellowship, played parachute games with the younger kids, and sang many songs together.
Overall, there was a strong spirit of fellowship and love at the conferences. One of the seekers shared that he has been having dreams of a set of golden doors opening and that he feels called to the Baháʼí community to understand his dreams and his spiritual purpose. Thanks to his sharing we were able to have some powerful conversations about dreams, the coming Golden Age, the new Nine Year Plan, and the Báb. Several families who had been engaged in the community building activities drew closer to the Faith and expressed a desire to engage more deeply due to their experience at the conference. Many families grew closer in friendship to other families. It will be exciting to see how these friendships blossom and what fruits they will bear. We also had some collaborators from other surrounding communities come to learn from our experience so they might pursue neighborhood conferences.
The story and picture is provided by: Naomi
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