Relief Society Sleepover

I belong to a singles ward. After having read many fabulous ideas posted by other sisters of the church, it seemed as though they all came from family wards. Here is one of my ward’s most successful Relief Society weekday activity. We held it at our bishops house with the bishop’s wife.( Our bishop was not present that night).Our goal that we wanted to accomplish through this activity was for the sisters to love themselves and love each other. We decided to have a sleepover for the sisters in celebration of the Relief Society Birthday. We thought the sisters would love it, and they did! It was like we were 12 years old again! This activity was an informal setting where there was no real agenda. We wanted for the sisters to be themselves, maybe come out of their shells, and hopefully meet new people. We knew the best way for that to happen was to make it seem like we were not trying to make it happen. We had the sisters eat dinner before they came. We provided them with snacks and drinks. We had three main activities. Our first was a cooking activity where we asked a sister to share her easiest appetizer. We all gathered around in the kitchen (very closely) and watched her as she demonstrated live how to create her recipe. It was so much fun. We then had her do a dessert, the cookie pizza. It turned into a fun contest to see who could decorate their cookie the craziest. This whole evening had a plan, but we thought it best to go with the flow. If it seemed as though the sisters wanted to talk and hang out more than do an activity, we waited to do the activity. For our next activity, we had another sister teach the girls new ways to do their hair and learn how to work with their hair. We ended up doing this activity for 2 hours! I can’t even BEGIN to tell you the conversations I overheard from sisters who had never talked to each other before. The sister invited the sisters to come up if they wanted and she would demonstrate on their head to the rest of us how to do it. By the end of the night, everyone was doing each others hair:) We then asked the girls to move into the family room because we had a special presentation for them. We all gathered around the t.v and watched a special movie that another sister created. She interviewed the brethren from the ward and asked them all what they are looking for in a wife. She also interviewed the two institute teachers about their opinion of women. Needless to say, every sister felt appreciated and worth someones attention. The video was only 10 minutes long and after we all just started in a discussion. In the middle of our discussion, a sister came running in saying that we were all heart-attacked. We ran outside to the yard and all the cars full of the hearts. Some of them said “Priesthood hearts Relief Society” and “Relief Society is great”. It was so sweet. It definetly topped the night off very well.We all stayed up till the wee hours of the morning and had breakfast outside. The timing of the event was too perfect. From the sleepover, the sisters carpooled over to the multi-singles ward activity at our local water park. This has been an activity that the sisters continue to talk about. It was definetely what our ward needed at the time.