I was recently called as a family history consultant in our new ward. It’s a new-to-me calling and I’m learning a lot and enjoying it! We were asked to put on an activity for the youth in our ward and decided to do a Mission Possible theme. It was fun, pretty simple to put on, and the youth enjoyed it!
We were given the idea from another ward and then changed some things to make it our own. We wanted to have a longer activity so the youth could really get involved so we started the night with pizza. After all the youth were seated in the gym with their pizza we surprised them by turning off all the lights and the “mission impossible” theme song came on (we had someone playing it through a microphone so all could hear). As the music was going a “secret agent” dressed in a dark suit and sunglasses came running into the gym with a flashlight, searching for one of the youth to give the mission to. The mission was printed on a piece of paper in a large manilla envelope for the selected youth to read aloud:
Good evening 13th ward youth. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, involves participating in family history work with the goal to find a name to take to the temple. Your reward includes a deeper conversion to the Savior, a strengthened testimony, increased help from the other side and greater spiritual protection from temptation. Though the task may be difficult, the rewards are significant. For further instruction, each youth must obtain a packet from one of your leaders. Good luck. This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds.
From there we gave each youth a packet of seven missions that they were to complete that night. The goal of the night was to make the youth feel successful and introduce them to the various avenues to work on family history. After each mission was completed they would have it checked off by one of the leaders and receive a mini candy bar. You can find the seven missions here.
We had the youth and leaders bring laptops or tablets to work on. They were allowed to work on the missions in any order, but we did ask that they always check for duplicates before submitting a temple name and told them to never merge individuals without the help of a family history consultant.
This was a great youth activity, but would also be great as a family home evening with older kids! If you’d like more information on family history specifically for the youth, the youth website is a great resource!
Trisha
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Trisha,
This is so creative, I love it! My boys had such a great experience at last night’s combined youth family history activity! Thank you for all that you personally did to contribute to last night’s activity. It was a success!
Trisha,
So fun to see your blog about the Mission Possible activity. I created Mission Possible with the hope that it could help lots of people. We’re using it for our ward Family History Month in October, encouraging families to use it for Sunday activities or Family Home Evening. I blogged about our youth activity at http://familylocket.com/mission-possible-youth-activity/
I’ll add a link to your post so others can have access to the extra two missions. Thanks for sharing!
Best of luck with your new calling. My daughter, Nicole, and I blog about family history ideas of all kinds and will continue to post ideas for all ages so check back with us often.