Find the Missing Peace {New Beginnings}

About an hour before my January Young Women's leader meeting, I was reminded I needed to be thinking of ideas for our upcoming New Beginnings. In a panic, I paced around the house trying to muster some kind of useful thought to present as a valiant effort towards the cause. I wanted it to be fun, fresh, unique, lively, and captivating. 

I desperately searched online and found few cute ideas to go with the mutual theme of the year, "Peace in Christ." I continued to pace, muttering words to myself like a maniac, trying to muster up something clever to make the theme "Peace in Christ" memorable. 

Holding Jonah while speed lapping around the house, I kept trying to pull from fun things I had done recently to see if I could turn any of them into an idea. I kept going back to escape rooms and our recent experience with Lockbox Mysteries. I love the interaction and thrill of everyone working together towards a common goal, plus they're really trendy right now, so I was confident the girls would be interested in something like that. But no matter how I spun it, I couldn't figure out how to tie it into the theme Peace in Christ! I paced some more. 

Literally minutes before I was due at my meeting, I yelled, "MISSING PEACE! FIND THE MISSING PEACE!" With my arms still full of Jonah, I ran over to Jeff and demanded that he write down the phrase I had just screamed before I had time to forget it. 

And so the idea was born. 

I instantly loved it and had such a fun time playing pseudo-criminal as I crafted clues and evidence to track my path. It had to have been slightly unsettling for Jeff to watch his wife begin to collect hoards of letter clippings out of magazines, but he faithfully stayed by my side. 

Allow me to take you through the night. It began with each girl picking up her badge at a table outside the door to the gym. The badges included a space for the girls to write down a code name just for fun, and a value they are "specialized in," in other words, a value they feel best represents what they focused on over the last year. These proved to be perfect icebreakers as the girls peeked at each other's code names and asked about them. 

We did the opening song, prayer, theme, and introduction of the new beehivees without any interruption of clues or a criminal chase. I got up to introduce camp, and with that, I jumped into the theme. I acted like we were at an agent meeting and needed to solve the case of the missing peace. I updated them on important certification dates (girls camp), and brought the new girls up to give them "evidence bags." These were just brown paper bags that said Evidence on them. Inside were their Personal Progress books, and all the pamphlets and manuals for youth. I explained that these were their tools to help them find the peace we were looking for. 

This is where we went full force into the hunt. After I explained everything in the evidence bags, I said, "There might be a clue in there too if you look very carefully." Inside each bag, I had a picture of a folding chair. We had 3 new girls, so there were 3 folding chairs. 

This led everyone to start looking under their chairs. Before long, 3 people had found envelopes under their chairs. They came up with their envelope which each held 1/3rd of a paper reading "Maybe you should check the box with many keys but zero locks." 

This led them to the piano. Get it? Many keys. Zero locks? Behind the piano there was a little suitcase I got from Amazon:

Secret Agent Spy Party Supplies - Empty Favor Boxes (4)

In the suitcase, there was a key. The girls immediately ran over to the lock that was connecting the two doors of the partition...only to discover that lock did not accept a key. We asked the audience if anyone saw something that required a key to open it. A few observant audience members pointed to a small safe hidden in the corner under the refreshments table.

The key opened the safe. In the safe, we found a list of the girls' names that explained, "The agents' names are listed here. To get the next clue they must share, Something that they did last year. Follow the order the names appear."

The girls each got up for 1-2 minutes to share something they worked on in Personal Progress over the last year. As each girl finished her speaking part, I handed her an envelope that read, "Do not open until the last girl has spoken."

The last girl got her envelope and sat down. Everybody looked at me, but I stayed in my seat. One of the girls said, "What do we do now?" I replied, "Has the last girl spoken?" I got a few nods. "Then you may open."

The girls ripped open their envelopes. Inside, each girl had a little magnifying glass, some with a letter written on it, and some blank ones. They went up to the front table to see what happened when they put all the magnifying glasses together. They soon realized they needed to unscramble a word, but the spaces were throwing them off.

I put blank ones in so each girl would get a magnifying glass, but they thought the blank ones were spaces. I had to hint to them the blank ones were throwaways, and then they were able to unscramble the word: Mini 2" Magnifying Glasses Plastic Pocket Children Detective Explorer Crafts Colorful Party Favors (72 Pack)

At first they were looking around the room for scriptures and then I asked them if it said "scriptures" or "scripture?" That was just the prompt they needed to look to the mutual theme scripture of the year. In a beautiful, unplanned moment, one of the girls read the scripture in front of the audience: Doctrine & Coventants 19:23 - “Learn of me, and listen to my words; walk in the meekness of my Spirit, and you shall have peace in me”

After a little pondering, they realized the scripture provided them four numbers and they needed four numbers to unlock the lock on the partition. Light bulbs went off and they began plugging 1-9-2-3 into the lock. All the girls were huddled around the lock, and I heard one of them say, "Well that didn't work."

This caused me to panic for a minute, because it was supposed to open the lock. They realized they entered the code wrong. *Whew!* And then we heard excited shrieks as they discovered they had cracked the code. The girls swung the doors open to reveal our "Peace in Christ" room.

The girls stood around in awe for a minute clearly pleased and reflective upon how our chase had led us to Christ. Then one of the girls said, "That was like an escape room!" Which was just what I was going for, so that was the moment I considered the activity a success. Then another girl said, "How did you get the numbers on the lock?" Then I turned to the parents and said, "The real mystery of the evening."

Then the Young Women President got up to introduce the theme "Peace in Christ." She explained how sometimes we find ourselves searching all over, trying to find peace, when the only true source of peace can be found through Christ. It was a beautiful message and it tied everything together perfectly.

We ended right at the hour mark which was my second indicator of a successful evening. We all enjoyed strolling along the back wall to get to know the girls better as we checked out their displays while scarfing down a slice of cheesecake.

I had such a fun time putting this together, and I think it was enjoyed by both the young women and the parents! It was fun to make the evening interactive and to play along with the theme. I love it when a plan comes together!