Lesson 1-26 "Testimony"

A few weeks ago I attended a small academic conference focused on higher education teaching and learning, specifically an educational concept called "integrative learning." The traditional model for learning at college is based on the idea of discrete departments and courses, which can result in disconnected skills, concepts, ideas, or theories. In contrast, the idea behind integrative learning is creating an environment where students can connect the learning they're doing, to tie it together.

The conference's goal was to help educators find tools to accomplish integrative learning at the level of a single class (e.g. through reflective writing assignments asking them to formulate what they've learned and comment on their personal learning journey), or at the level of a major (for example, through learning portfolios to showcase what they've learned and accomplished across many classes), or at the level of the college itself (by designing the curriculum so that it includes interdisciplinary courses and acknowledges "co-curricular learning" such as clubs, volunteer work, or study abroad). One of the most successful and basic tools for doing this is to give students many opportunities to tell stories about how they learned. As they do this over and over, they (hopefully) become more self-aware about their own learning process and own their educational experience more. They learn that knowledge is not passively received, but actively made.

I've never taken education classes or studied much education theory, so this conference was eye-opening to me about why certain things work well to foster learning and why others don't. It isn't that some students can learn and others can't (although in the classroom it sometimes feels that way, both from the professor's and the students' perspectives). Everyone can learn, and everyone can get better at learning. And the simple but powerful act of telling yourself what you learned and how you learned it--crafting a narrative--is one way to secure the knowledge, "fix it" in your mind, and make it stick.

I realized that testimony meeting is a model of integrative learning. We invite people to articulate their experiences, apply gospel principles to them, and formulate statements about their beliefs and what they've learned from their experiences. We say that a testimony doesn't become solid until it's expressed to someone else, spoken out loud, or written down. In other words, the power is in the process of putting gospel truths into your own words. And remarkably, testimony meetings give Saints opportunities to do that frequently and in emotionally safe settings. The entire congregation is witness to the process as it unfolds - since testimonies (usually) have little prior preparation, the speaker is making those learning connections as she says them out loud. Add in the Spirit which can testify to both the speaker and to the listeners, and that's a powerful recipe for gospel learning, personal revelation, and inspiration.

Fortunately the youth program gives young people many opportunities to articulate, state, and formulate their testimonies at whatever stage they are at: tiny seedling, hail-battered or weed-choken plant, flourishing tree. Think about how many testimony meetings are built into a single year's calendar for youth. Think of how many times they hear (or should hear) their Sunday School, YW/YM and Seminary teachers bear testimonies. And flip through the Personal Progress book and look at how many times a goal involves writing one's testimony or writing down what is learned from scripture study. All of this, it turns out, is best practice for testimony-building as integrative learning.

One sentence in the lesson really stuck out to me - I know I've heard this idea before, many times, but it seemed key to me this time around - "Explain that no one is born with a testimony and that for many, acquiring a testimony begins seriously at the age of the young women in your class." I think that's true. Look at Joseph Smith, of course, but also at many other teens and young people in the scriptures or in Church history who began to really hunger, seek, study, and turn towards God with personal questions and get personal answers. Kudos also to the manual for including a story of a young woman in Taiwan whose testimony ended up converting her father's entire congregation in the early 1970s. I'd never heard that story before, very cool.

trek diaries: Ma & Pa training #2

Saturday afternoon, 4 weeks before trek. All the Ma&Pa pairs (MPs) and the stake leadership meet on site. Our trek is along 21 miles of an unpaved gravel & dirt rail trail in New Hampshire, with culvert crossings under several roads. We practiced loading a wagon and securing it on the top with tarps and rope. The main question was, can we get 12 of the luggage buckets, 12 sleeping bags and pillows, and the other gear all on one wagon and keep it from being too tall to fit through the culverts? This was definitely a group project. In the real trek this task will fall to the Big Brother/Big Sister pair (BB-BS) each of the 3 mornings. The handcart is beautiful - really a nice piece of construction, well balanced and solid. I have no idea how much it weighs unloaded or loaded, but it rolls very smoothly and with little effort over level ground. We took turns pulling/pushing it about a mile, to a private-land campsite we'll use for one of our overnights, and there the food team prepared one of the dinners to try it out, and we practiced running a family devotional and had a briefing about the schedule.

This was helpful in numerous ways: to get acquainted with the other MPs who are from throughout the stake and don't necessarily know one another (and who will be too occupied during trek with their various family duties to see much of each other); to see the wagon, trail, and setting all come together (in good weather); and to get ideas about what other things we might need to bring or think about. (I.e. rope, more rope, bungees - ok, not historically accurate, but I bet they'll come in handy). My husband and I got the idea to sew a "toolbelt" pouch with pockets to tie on to the front or back of the wagon to have place to stash waterbottles, flashlights, bug spray or whatever. That's my project this week, so I'll post a photo when it's done.

This week the stake had a big youth activity to make individual leather-bound journals to take on trek and to get their buckets and decorate them (I had to miss the activity, but if anyone from my stake is a reader, please comment & share how it went). Those will be dropped off a couple of days before the trek begins, fully packed, so that the luggage all gets transported up to the trail before youth conference starts - hopefully smoothing the logistics of Day 1, since all we will have to transport is kids, and not all their stuff too. Excitement is definitely building!

Lesson 1-25 "Sabbath Day"

Teaching teenagers about keeping the Sabbath is a little bit tricky. It is one of the few areas where instead of knowing what is off bounds, we're seeking out the better part. And that can look incredibly different from one family to another. I knew one family where the children, all under 10, stayed in their church clothes all day and were not allowed in the backyard, while Mom prepared sandwiches for every meal because she felt that turning on the stove wasn't kosher (so to speak).

And then there's my house where we change into pajamas and watch whatever reality TV we've TIVO'd from the night before while Jared and I trade off time in the kitchen because we both love to cook and we rarely have time during the week.

I would never presume to argue that watching reality TV is honoring the Sabbath, but if your family is completely contentious out of boredom and restrictions, that can be a problem too. Like everything else in life it's a balancing act. One that takes dedication and spiritual maturity to avoid the extremes of either end.

I'd say that the first quote should be tossed right out. The very good point of the blessings in preparing for the Sabbath is completely lost in a list of "Bad" behaviors that don't make a ton of sense, and which this very same lesson later goes on to explain shouldn't exist. In my opinion, sewing is totally a Sabbath appropriate behavior - it's personal progress! Watching television isn't anything sacred, it depends entirely on what you're watching. I think Sunday is a perfect time to engage in educational hobbies - something like art or cooking - something that is not required as work, but still enlarges our talents.

In looking around for the truest source of what is good for the Sabbath, I found a couple interesting things. All the prophets and apostles say essentially what the quote in this lesson from Marion Romney says: Don't shop, don't engage in commercial activities. Everything else is between you and the Lord.

But then in For the Strength of Youth we read:

Many uplifting activities are appropriate for the Sabbath. Worship the Lord, attend church, spend quiet time with your family, study the gospel, write letters, write in your journal, do family history work, and visit the sick or homebound. Your dress before, during, and after church meetings should show respect for the Sabbath.

And then this was in an Ensign article apparently written by a staff member:

Parents need to teach their children that Sabbath observance extends beyond Sunday meetings to the entire day. Sometimes, we come home from our meetings and change into clothes we would wear at the beach or to work in the garden. Of course, we need not continue wearing a suit and tie following Sunday meetings, but the clothes we wear ought to help us retain the spirit we enjoyed in the meetings.

So even though no prophet I was able to find made any such comment, somebody out there feels strongly about our after-church dress. I guess I don't really understand the distinction, but that may be the Southern Californian in me. We don't tend to have anything in between Beach wear and Sunday wear.

I think where this lesson really hits its stride is in the case studies section. Here they perfectly illustrate the point that it's not the activity that makes the Sabbath holy, it's the Spirit. I think you could probably make a case for most activities that given the proper context it would be OK, or for that matter, not OK on the Sabbath. The point is what the spirit behind it is. How we keep the Sabbath holy is determined by us and the sacrifices we feel most beneficial in strengthening our worship and relationship with God. We can go to church and get nothing out of it, we can spend hours in the garden and commune with God. The point is "Witnessing unto [him] that [we] do always remember him, that [we] may have his Spirit to be with them." Moroni 5:2 So it's far more important where our thoughts are than following some prescribed activities.

In my search through lds.org, I came across a lesson from the John Taylor manual.

The best of us are not too good; we all of us might be better, and do better and enjoy life better, having more of the Spirit of the Lord in our own homes and in our own hearts, and do more to promote the welfare of all who come within our reach and influence. To serve the Lord is one of the great objects of our existence; and I appreciate as a great privilege the opportunity we enjoy of worshiping God on the Sabbath day. And when we do meet to worship God, I like to see us worship him with all our hearts. I think it altogether out of place on such occasions to hear people talk about secular things; these are times, above all others perhaps, when our feelings and affections should be drawn out towards God. If we sing praises to God, let us do it in the proper spirit; if we pray, let every soul be engaged in prayer, doing it with all our hearts, that through our union our spirits may be blended in one, that our prayers and our worship may be available with God, whose Spirit permeates all things, and is always present in the assemblies of good and faithful Saints. - John Taylor

I just love the thought behind this. That in centering our thoughts and activities on the Savior on this day, it unites us as a family of worshipers. It connects our hearts all together in devotion and allows us to feel His presence more keenly. I think that's the message we should take away, not a list of do's and don'ts, but an understanding of what awaits our best efforts.

Lesson 1-24 "Prayer and Meditation"

What a misleading title, I have to say. For a moment I thought there would be interesting links between the Christian/Mormon practice of prayer and the Eastern practice of meditation. Alas. The Mormon meaning of meditation apparently is nothing more than "thinking about stuff," i.e. "pondering" - David O. McKay's 1969 definition is "deep, continued reflection on some religious theme," or in Boyd K. Packer's quote, a synonym for analysis.

How much we miss by only going that far with the concept of meditation! More on that in a moment.

Meantime, there are some great new materials available about prayer, and then there are some things I would choose not to include from this lesson. I like the RSVP "invitation" idea. But honestly I think it's time to drop the "approved" list, which only a Pharisee could love, of proper words and terms for prayer - I think people absorb this from Mormon culture plenty, and that it's off-putting for young people to scold them for saying "you" in prayer. Anyway, isn't it only in English that we insist on using completely archaic, stilted and formal terms of address, when in other languages (Latinate ones, anyway) the prayer form of address is the more intimate one?

I'd also drop the awful poem mocking various Protestant clergy for the way they pray (circa 1941). Just not necessary, people. What's the point of having that in this lesson?

I think on short reflection most of us will remember the thoughtful and creative approach that Elder Bednar took in his Conference talk about prayer in October 2008. The way he described it, as we counsel with the Lord in all our doings, we participate in the work of creation - creating the day spiritually before we create it physically. I loved that idea. He also gave the memorable example of a prayer that only expressed gratitude, even in sudden, severe trial. And he advised to ask in prayer fewer things for ourselves and more on behalf of others. This was actually a Part 2 talk, continuing his earlier talk about praying in faith from the April 08 conference.

Other terrific recent talks about prayer:

Russell M. Nelson, on what we can learn by patterning our prayers on Christ's prayers (April 2009 Conference)

President Monson, on prayer as an invitation to us (March 09 Ensign FP message)

President Uchtdorf's FP message in this month's Ensign, about how prayer provides "lift" above the clouds of life

Now, about meditation. I recently read a fascinating article from Sunstone titled "Mormon Mantras" (scroll down, #20) that shared one member's journey in making meditation a part of his spiritual practice, and adopting a mantra in harmony with Mormon doctrine and religious experience. Meditation, in the Eastern sense of the word, is about controlling the self and the thoughts, to access inner peace and calm and to point towards enlightenment. In that sense it's not simply a form of prayer or an appendage to it, but a separate, and extremely beneficial, spiritual practice which (IMO) can bless anyone's life. As one blog puts it, "Meditation can be a practical tool for relaxation, concentration and better health; it can also be an invaluable tool to self discovery." It's great for coping with stress.

The goal of meditation is to free the mind of thoughts, to quiet the mind, to still all those frenetic chirping thoughts hopping around in your mind, to make the surface of your mind like a reflective pond with no ripples in it. It involves quiet sitting (lotus position not necessary, but at least straighten your spine), and conscious and intentional breathing. As thoughts come, you recognize them for what they are, but you don't allow them to take over. As you get better at meditating, your ability to keep your mind "clear and lucid" improves for 10, 15 minutes or more. Over time, meditation offers multiple benefits to body, mind, and spirit. It can be a deeply meaningful part of Mormon spirituality.

I could envision introducing this idea to my Laurels, even doing a short guided relaxation in our partially darkened classroom - there are tons online, just google "guided meditation" - here's one example. This is what I miss most about no longer belonging to a gym and having a "mindfulness moment" at the end of a yoga class. If this seems too weird for a Sunday, it would make a great weekly activity on its own or as a warmup/cooldown to an activity - introduce the idea, talk about meditation's benefits and try a short session (allow about 5 minutes at the beginning for the self-conscious giggles to die down).

(Image courtesy of SaidaOnline)

trek diaries: Ma & Pa packing list

5 weeks and counting. In addition to our own individual "bucket lists," we have gotten a more complete supply list for each cart. Each Ma/Pa pair are in charge of assembling our cart's supplies & are instructed to borrow, not buy, if we don't own an item.

2 5-person tents (or larger) and 1 small 2-person (discussion went round and round on this, whether to camp in tents or just under tarps. Mosquitoes, I think, were the deciding factor in going with fully enclosed camping tents)
tarps for under the tents, as ground cover
5-gallon water jug to be replenished along the trail (by the way, Oregon pioneers used 5-gallon "India rubber" water bottles, kind of like huge hot water bottles)
portable camp stove
camp stove fuel
2 12" Dutch ovens
charcoal chimney (homemade #10 can with holes, or commercial, e.g. Lodge makes a good one)
Tarp to cover handcart, and rope to secure it
about 25' of rope to help pull the handcart - make sure it's not too rough
stakes
hammer
lantern
duct tape (ok, not authentic, but helpful anyway)
If weather looks poor, extra tarp, stakes & rope to secure it as a shelter

Kitchen kit:
10-qt pot
12" cast iron frypan
griddle that fits on a camp stove
2 cutting boards
chef knife, paring knife
serving utensils, ladle, pancake flippers
20 serving metal salad bowl
2 dish basins
wash rage & towels
biodegradable camp soap (e.g. Campsuds)
heavy-duty foil

Medical kit:
Will be provided by the medical committee (contents in a future post)
Sunscreen & bug spray

fill in the blank

I found this quote, perhaps you can identify it and fill in the blank:

"One effect of ________ is, that it dissipates the mind, and renders it averse to serious thought, and solid and profitable reading. It also has a corrupting influence. It feeds and nourishes the depravity of our natures, and quenches the Spirit's heavenly influences. Shun ________ as you would shun poison! It leads to death!"

Got it? It's a General Authority talking about p*rnography, right? Wrong.

It's the Presbyterian Board's magazine, Home and Foreign Record, in 1849, talking about the evils of... wait for it... fiction, which they called "light reading."

The American Tract Society's American Messenger was even more forceful:

"If [novels] shine, it is only as the rotting log, or putrescent carcase, which is phosphorescent because decaying; if brilliant, it is only as the will-o'-the-wisp, which is caused by impure and fetid gases."

Tee-hee. How times change.

Source: David Paul Nord, Faith in Reading: Religious Publishing and the Birth of Mass Media in America (2004), 118.

Crowning the Laurels

We talk a lot about how to recognize the achievements of our Young Women. The boys get all their priesthood ordinations and their scouting ceremonies, the young women rarely, depending on the ward, get the same pomp and circumstance.

Last Halloween I dressed Atticus up as a baby Spartacus, complete with an elastic headband laurel wreath, and that just made a lightbulb go off in my head. I wanted to smack my forehead that I hadn't thought of it before.

I decided that when the girls in my ward turn 16 and enter my class, we should have a little ceremony in opening exercises where we crown them with a laurel wreath and then all the rest of the Laurels give them hugs and air kisses. I thought it was just a fun goofy little thing to do until I found out that the girls were wearing their headbands to school and all the older Laurels started begging me for their own headbands.

So here's how I did it:

All I did was get a couple of different colors of green wool felt and cut a million little teardrop shapes out of them. If you can, avoid the craft felt. It's thin and will look cheap. Go for the real wool felt, you don't need much. A fat quarter will yield as many as seven or eight headbands depending on how you apply your leaves.


Then, starting at one end, I started hot gluing them on to a regular old headband so that they overlapped each other and covered up the color underneath.


Continue this way until you reach the middle of the headband, and then start again from the bottom of the other side.


You can embellish this with glitter or little flatbacked rhinestones, or just leave it the way it is. I think this would also make a great finishing touch for any of your upcoming toga parties.

Lesson 1-23 "Forgiveness"

Some lessons I walk in feeling like I could teach a graduate seminar on the topic. It's a lesson I've thoroughly learned, experimented on, put into practice in my life. And then there are lessons like this one that just seem so humbling to even think about teaching another person. This is one where I'm going to have to reason out with my students and learn together because mastering forgiveness is a lifelong process for all of us.

This lesson has a lot of good stuff in it, starting with the smaller acts of betrayal that teenagers deal with daily, and ending with forgiving the greatest evil man has ever seen. I think it's a nice structure to illustrate that the principle is the same, no matter the scale.

I also love how it stresses that forgiveness is an action. In our world of gang rivals and family feuds, it's often thought that forgiveness is the recourse left for people too weak to enact revenge. But how can anyone read Corrie Ten Boom's words and think she was weak? Forgiveness is one of Christ's central messages, and Jesus is not a wimp.

The supplementary materials include President Faust's talk where he recounted the response of an Amish community after a man went on a killing spree in their schoolhouse. It's incredibly touching, but two things stood out to me in this reading:
An Amish man went to the killer's father, wrapped him up in a hug and told him, "We will forgive you." I found that response not only deeply moving, but also so wonderfully illustrative of what forgiveness can look like in a willing heart. We *will* forgive you. It acknowledges that forgiveness takes time and effort. That an act, especially one as monumentally devastating as this one, cannot be overcome instantly, but offers the comfort that eventual forgiveness is attainable.

Later in his talk President Faust quotes advice given from a bishop to a woman going through a divorce. “Keep a place in your heart for forgiveness, and when it comes, welcome it in.” Again, that counsel just seemed so productive to me. Work towards forgiveness, don't refuse it, but don't expect it to happen overnight, either.

I'm in the process of coming to forgiveness with someone close to me, so I think that's why these statements touched me so much. I think that for most of my life I thought of it as a personal failing if I couldn't extend complete and instantaneous forgiveness no matter the wrong. I somehow believed that if I believed in the Atonement, then my responsibility was to forgive immediately. But of course that's not true. Even Christ himself doesn't always forgive immediately, and by forcing myself to do so my forgiveness usually became glib and shallow while I held on to resentments in my heart. Profound, sincere forgiveness is the greatest gift we can give to each other, but it does not come easily or without work.

I love how the lesson also points out that an essential part of true forgiveness is to mention it no more. Boy, is that an important lesson for teenage girls. I try to tell my girls that gossip doesn't have to be a lie to still be gossip, and I have seen countless lives changed forever because of what was said about them. In quite a few cases I've seen girls who were functionally not allowed to repent, despite their work with the bishop, because the stories swirling around them were so pervasive that their peers just kept shoving them back into their old choices. I wish those girls had been brave and strong enough to just leave, or go a year without friends so they could commit to what was right, but they weren't, so they went with the stoners and sleazy boyfriends who accepted them.

The one topic I think I'll add to the lesson is a discussion of forgiving ourselves after we've repented. This has always been a massive hurdle for me. As a young teenager I did a little shoplifting to fit in with a bad crowd, and I believed for years that since I couldn't make full restitution to the stores (since I didn't exactly keep receipts) then I could never be forgiven. It's kind of adorable to me now that my overly earnest 14 year old self was so heartbroken over stealing a few pairs of earrings that I truly thought heaven was closed to me, but my anguish was sincere. One night I was saying my prayers and pouring my heart out in deep grief about what I'd done, when the Spirit whispered to me, "Look up!" Being the earnest and overly emotional sort that I was, I thought for sure that there was going to be an angel sitting on the foot of my bed, but it was just my plain old empty bedroom. But there were New Era posters and pictures of the temple on my walls, my scriptures were open laying in front of me, and the Spirit whispered to me that I was forgiven because I had chosen to leave my sins behind and embrace the good. It took a heavenly hit over the head before I finally realized I had to just forgive myself already and move on.

micro-lending for a Mutual activity? a progressive spin on Integrity #7

This past weekend my stake had a YW conference, themed on small things we can do to make a difference in the world. One of the speakers happened to talk about microlending and the work of Mohammed Yunus and the Grameen Bank. Then (obviously not by coincidence), a couple of days later I got this email from Joanne, who lives in the MidWest. She writes:

One of the strengths of the YW Personal Progress (PP) program is its flexibility. Participants can literally write their own curriculum. From what I understand, for all its virtues, the Boy Scout program is not so flexible. So here I am, YW second counselor, trying to help the young women take advantage of that freedom. I tell them, "Put the personal in Personal Progress!" But it's hard for them to think outside the box and consider anything other than the dominant reading of the value experiences and projects. And it's hard for me to pitch something unusual; until I read Integrity #7 for the 10th time.

Integrity #7 invites us to consider the forces that weaken the family and home. It's easy to make a list of negative trends. One problem that is often left off this list is economic poverty. Maybe poverty is forgotten because we don't want to criticize wealth or capitalism. Or maybe poverty gets forgotten because we prefer to focus on individual sins rather than societal or institutional problems. Nevertheless, poverty threatens families throughout the world, and poverty has real causes that responsible, moral youth should be aware of.

So, in the spirit of Integrity #7, I would like to introduce fair trade and micro-lending during an upcoming Mutual activity. I want to take the girls to a nearby fair trade shop (think Ten Thousand Villages) and have the manager explain the moral dimensions of poverty and responsible buying. The girls could hold in their 1st world hands some cool handmade items from around the world, and hopefully feel a physical connection to their struggling sisters and brothers. They can shop and become educated at the same time. The manager may prepare a small ethnic snack. Afterward, we do a pseudo-fast offering: we take the budget money we would have spent on refreshments (plus spare change) and invest it in a micro-loan. Over the months and years, we monitor the health of the business we sponsored. To increase the impact of the micro-loan, we pool our money with money from young women from anywhere in the church.

I think the benefits are obvious: cultivating a social conscience, seeing the power of small sacrifices, feeling a connection with like-minded young women. Some potential problems I foresee: Does this activity sound paternalistic or elitist or political? Does it instill guilt in young women who can only afford to buy made-in-China stuff? We don't do fundraisers anymore, but does this sound like a fundraiser? (It's not!)

So I have two questions:

1) How many of you would like to try this activity and contribute to an LDS YW micro-lending account, shared by young women across the church? (I'm shooting for August, but anyone could join at any time, I believe.)

2) How have you personalized PP in creative or progressive ways?

trek diaries: the shoes

We're about 6 weeks away from trek. One of our YW presidency members has started issuing weekly challenges to the girls, and if they do it, they get to choose a little treat the next Sunday, something they can bring along in their buckets - mints, lip balm, etc.

This week's challenge was to get the shoes you'll use on trek and start taking walks in them, several this week.

I shopped hiking shoes over the weekend and I went back and bought the pair that seemed the most practical and was the most comfortable. I'll be doing some hiking with the family later this summer so I've been meaning to get hikers for a while.

First I thought about Timberland leather "White Ledge"- they might look a little more authentic, and they were really comfortable. Leather hikers are classic.
I tried on a few other kinds in the store, too, and I couldn't decide. When I asked my husband for advice later he just looked at me and said no one does leather any more. It's so old school. Well, that almost convinced me to get them - "old school" is not an insult in my book, but in the end I decided on Gore-tex - a little lighter, will breathe better, and have a better-quality Vibram sole. If I were just shopping for trek all of this would be kind of obsessive overkill, but I was needing good hikers anyway and I think these will last a long time. So this morning I went back to the store and I ended up getting the others I liked, Merrell Moab Mid-XCRs (Zappos reviews here):

I'm wearing them around the house today with hiking socks and will take them on a road walk later & will wear them a few times a week to break them in.

trek diaries: what to bring

Here's the individual packing list for our trek. Everything will need to fit into a large bright blue plastic bucket - I saw one on Sunday but I can't find a photo online of something similar - it's a little bigger than a food storage pail, with a flat lid and a metal spring clamp ring that goes around the top. It could be a 6 or 8-gallon size. Remember, this is New England - your region may have specific needs different from ours.

General Clothing
1 pair of shoes for hiking, well broken in
1 extra pair of shoes
2 pairs of wool hiking socks, 2 pairs of polypropylene sock liners (examples here)
2 sets of underclothing
1 bandana
1 extra long-sleeved shirt
toothbrush and toothpaste (I guess, unless you're doing the old-fashioned "chew on a stick" thing... hey... there are actually places that sell those...)
1 rain poncho
1 lightweight jacket
1 pair work gloves
1 pair of sweats or modest pajamas for sleeping
swimsuit, towel, waterproof sack (second night camp has swimming hole)

Women Should Also Bring
1 long-sleeved blouse
1 just-above-ankle length calico skirt
1 pair "bloomers" (below-knee length, e.g. scrubs, or hemmed pajama pants - I found mine at Target in the pajama pants dept)
1 apron
1 bonnet
feminine hygiene items, hair elastics

Men Should Also Bring
1 long-sleeved cotton button-down shirt
1 pair cotton pants or khakis (no jeans)
1 widebrimmed western style felt or straw hat (no baseball hats)
1 vest (optional)
1 pair of suspenders

General Equipment
1 sleeping bag or warm sleeping blanket
1 metal pie plate
1 spoon and fork (or spork)
1 canteen, small water container, or Nalgene bottle
1 small hand towel
pocketknife (optional)

Personal Items
scriptures (ones that you don't mind putting through camping conditions - for fun & authenticity I got one of the Book of Mormon 1830 replicas)
deodorant, comb/brush, lip balm
insect repellant and sunscreen
personal prescription medications
Band-Aids
flashlight or small lantern (there are some cool ones on the market, like solar or crank-powered)

Optional: camera (again, beware: camping conditions), harmonica or other small musical instrument