We recently had a very fun mutual night activity that the young women really enjoyed. They made "Share Goodness" posters for all the young men in our ward, where on each poster was a picture of the young man surrounded by sincere compliments that the young women had written. They made 27 posters and presented them at the end of church the following Sunday.
We kept the activity a total secret beforehand, so that the girls had no idea what we were doing and thereby couldn't accidentally ruin the surprise for the boys.
We completed the following prep work beforehand:
1. Bought white posterboard, half sheet per boy
2. got a bunch of colored sharpies
3. Took and/or collected pictures of all the boys (I took some at mutual, collected some from Facebook, and others from parents)
4. cut the posterboards in half
At mutual, we first watched this video:
Then we introduced the activity by telling them that we were going to "Share Goodness" with the Young Men by making them each a #sharegoodness poster. We talked about how to think of sincere and specific compliments that would build them up. We emphasized that they should not focus on physical or frivolous compliments, such as clothing or looks, but on character traits and talents. Essentially we asked them to think of the kind of compliments they would most like to hear.
Here is my son's poster:
We had the Beehives make the Deacons' posters, the Mia Maids made the Teachers', and the Laurels made the Priests'. On each poster, they hot glued on the picture, wrote the boy's name on top, and then wrote "#sharegoodness" on the bottom. Then with different colored sharpies, they went around the room and wrote compliments on each poster.
To add variety, we regathered together as a group for the last 15-minutes, so that everyone could write on anyone else's poster from another age group. I then took the posters home and, with the help of my daughters and husband, filled in a few compliments on those that needed a little something extra. For instance, one boy's poster was filled with compliments all about his humor and little else. I wanted to make sure that he had a few more that would be more meaningful. Additionally there was one boy that doesn't come often and the girls were less sure what to write on his, so we filled his in with a few more of our own.
It was a joy to see the young men's faces when we presented them their posters and I had a couple of young men's parents let me know how meaningful it was to their boys.
All in all, it was a very rewarding experience for the young women and they definitely felt the joy of sharing goodness and building others up, and that in and of itself is reward enough. However, I won't lie. I think a lot of them are secretly hoping the boys will return the favor someday.
