Dakota Striplin singing for the crowds

19th January 2011

BRISBANE, Queensland – Fourteen hundred youth from Queensland were supposed to be having a youth conference this week at the University of Queensland sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Instead, they have been cleaning and cooking, singing and dancing to make productive use of their time after the floods caused the cancellation of their event.

The university, situated alongside the Brisbane River at St Lucia, was inundated by the floods.

The original conference, entitled "Especially for Youth" (EFY), would have included daily workshops and classes to build confidence and strengthen spiritual understanding in youth aged 14-18 years. Night-times were set aside for various social activities. Many worked all year long to pay their own way to the postponed event.

Because a large proportion of the youth had already arrived to Brisbane before the rains descended on south-east Queensland, Church leaders created other activities for them including a dance at the Church meetinghouse in Cleveland, a suburb of Brisbane, on Wednesday, 19th January. Hundreds packed the cultural hall to hear their Mormon friends perform on stage as well as 'DJ' the dance.

Singer Dakota Striplin, who played at the Lord Mayor's Christmas Carols program just over a month ago, was a featured performer, accompanied by his band, Waiting on Friday.

Brearna Mandla (pop/rock), Mikaela Ward (Jazz), Emmalyn Nicholson (Cello) and Josh and Dallin Williams (Indie) also entertained the crowd before DJ 'Blair' helped get the dancing underway.

A highlight of the night was when Danny Baptista, a sixteen-year-old youth from Capalaba, spoke about how his Church friends had been working at West End that day and had met Sally Doyle, whose house and yard they then cleaned up. Sally was at the concert and told the youth about her experience of being stranded at work at Esk hospital for days and then of her return to her home in West End to find that it had been devastated in the floods. She said she was really grateful for the Latter-day Saint young men who worked on her house.

A Mormon Helping Hands video was also shown with clips from the flood while the band played Don't Stop Believing. A big cheer was heard as a flood survivor in the video thanked the youth (in print across the screen) for cleaning her house. Entrance to the concert was a gold coin and a tuckshop of food was available with all proceeds going to the relief fund. The youth collected over $800. An announcement for the future dates of EFY is pending.

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