News Release

India's YSA Gathered in Hyderabad for a Country-wide 2016 Conference

 

The 2016 Young Single Adult Conference was held in Hyderabad, India at the Summer Green Resort on October 27-29, 2016 .  Young Single Adults (YSA) are a group of single adults from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 

The conference was an all-wide India gathering. The conference hosted 430 participants, ranging in ages from 19 to 31 years old. 

The participants travelled for more than two day on trains from most of the major cities in India.  For example, from Delhi to Hyderabad takes 31 hours on a train.  One man traveled as far as Nepal to attend.

Vaishal Kilaparthi from Visakhapatnam attended “to make friends, meet new people and have fun at workshops taught by awesome teachers.”

Workshops were taught on a variety of subjects. Subjects ranged from self-reliance, dating and family history.  Each YSA attended all the workshop on a rotating schedule.  During the dating workshop, they were taught to “take group pictures to protect the reputation of all people in the group.” 

Good advice was given in all the workshops. Suresh and Salomya Natarajan also encouraged the YSA to “involve your parents with all of your decisions you make in life.”

Decision-making was a large part of the conference. The conference theme was “Decisions Determine Destiny” taken from a quote of Thomas S Monson, the leader and current prophet of the Church.

“The theme itself, explains everything. I know the decision I made to go on a mission  [for the Church] was right and my destiny will be wonderful”, explained Lavanya Botcha from Vizianagaram.

Group activities were organized to include everyone. Activities such as relay games, water slide relays and balloon bursts created unity and laughter with everyone. Family unity was felt whole heartedly as the members of the Church easily refer to each other as “brother” and “sister”.

With each activity, music was played through a large sound system. Spontaneous dancing happened, when a popular song was played.  In addition to the spontaneous dancing, a formal dance on Thursday evening help the adult mingle with one another.

“Everything was so fun”, said Karthick Mani from Chennai.

The conference ended on a spiritual note. Individuals shared their inter-most feelings of faith. 

“It was the best part of YSA Conference.  Where we shared our love and graditude towards our Heavenly Father and try to strenghten others through our words”, said Chandra Krishor from Pitampura.

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