Youth and leaders from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Collin and Grayson counties gathered at a local chapel on Nov. 15 for an annual daylong Youth Conference.

The event was held at 2801 West Eldorado Parkway and involved about 190 teens.

It began with a service project for the city of McKinney. The youth, dressed for the cold weather and with paintbrushes in hand, divided into 40 teams of four to six kids. Within a few hours, they painted about 200 fire hydrants in four different neighborhoods.

They warmed up, were served lunch, and continued with a session entitled “Game of Life”. (“Game of Life” is the brain child of, Julie Poole, of Little Elm, Texas. She developed and directs the game for up to 300 youth at a time and travels throughout the Southern Plains region delivering the conference.) The kids were assigned spouses, occupations, children, job promotions and loss, sickness, and even death. They went through a life size game board set up in the gymnasium and had to make decisions based on situations they landed on. It was said that they all felt the impact of their situations and were truly enlightened.

In the afternoon they attended four workshops called “Sharing the Gospel,” “Proper Use of Social Media,” “Respecting Others,” and “Dating Etiquette,” then finished with dinner, talks, and a dance.

Xanne Morris, President of the area Young Women’s Organization said, "What really impresses me is how willing these young men and women are to get up early on a Saturday morning to start a youth conference off in the cold weather to serve their community. There was no complaining, no whining, just a lot of smiles and hot chocolate!"