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Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, of the Quorum of the Twelve, visited the Middle East and three European nations from Feb. 20 to March 4. He described the experience as a uniformity of faithful devotion of Latter-day Saints of diverse cultures and nations regardless of languages and geographies, says the LDS Church News. Traveling to United Arab Emirates, Netherlands, England and Germany, Elder Holland described the devotion of Church members at each place as being “in their hearts, their spirits.”“You hear someone bear testimony in a different language, or coming out of a different culture, or in a very distant part of the earth and yet it sounds like you are in your home ward,” said Elder Holland summing up his traveling experience with a testimony. “The ability of the gospel to unite us on common strengths and common truths is one of the great miracles, one of the great powers of the gospel,” he said. Elder Holland got to preside over two stake conferences in two different countries that are 3,000 miles apart on the same weekend. He presided at the stake conference in Abu Dhabi on Feb. 22, and then over to the Apeldoorn Netherlands Stake conference's sessions, Feb. 23 and 24. One thing unique about the trip is Elder Holland got to dedicate the Abu Dhabi Stake Center in the United Arab Emirates, the first building constructed by the LDS Church in the Middle East. While traveling to Britain, Elder Holland visited London's historic Hyde Park Chapel, which was recently remodeled to function as a church meetinghouse and a visitors' center. Elder Holland said, “I was in this building when it was dedicated, so my memories are very sweet today.” He referred to his experience as a young missionary in the British Mission during the early 1960s. During his visit to Germany, Elder Holland met with mission presidents and spoke to LDS members in several combined church meetings. He told the German members, “We truly are all brothers and sisters in the gospel” and encouraged them to continue meeting together to foster a spirit of love.Ben Howells, a senior majoring in ICS from England, said he was happy Elder Holland visited his country. “I served a mission in London and it is the same mission as Elder Holland. I feel the sense of connection with him,” he said. “When he visited PCC last year, I was lucky to be his tour guide. ”Tsz Yin Chan, a senior majoring in biochemistry from Hong Kong, said, “Since Elder Holland already visited the Middle East, I wish Elder Holland could visit China someday and dedicate a visitor’s center or a chapel in maybe Shanghai or Sichun. We have a lot of members in those areas.”

The week of the 25th to the 29th of March, the Women’s Studies IDS 310 class will put on ‘Women’s Week,’ highlighting the important contributions women make in societies as part of their final social activist project. Professor Anna Christiansen, who teaches the IDS course, said, “It’s a way to allow [students] to become active and enact change in their local communities. A lot of students feel that their impact is limited, but spreading awareness about these issues is incredibly important for bringing about gender equality,” added Christiansen. Caitlyn Nalder, a senior in IDS from Idaho and a member of the social activist project, believes this week will empower women and men to stand up for the inequality that exists between the genders. Nalder said, “One of my favorite professors once told me, ‘You can’t be had by something if you know about it’ and I think that’s what this week is about—raising awareness about the issues that face women and how they have overcome their trials.” The week begins with a screening of the new United Nation’s sponsored, ‘Girl Rising’ documentary, which tells the stories of ten women in different parts of the world and their struggles to overcome poverty, education gaps, sexual abuse, and unwanted pregnancy. For the Kuhio school holiday on Tuesday, students are invited to start their morning off at 9 a.m. with a 5k breast cancer run to raise awareness about the disease that affects thousands of women each year. On Wednesday, Kelly Andersen, an entrepreneurship professor, will speak to students about her journey as a woman climbing up the business ladder. Allie Lovinger, a senior in psychology from Colorado, was one of the leads in charge of planning Wednesday’s event. Lovinger said of Andersen, “It is our hope that listening to Professor Andersen speak about her own trials she has had to overcome will inspire other women to pursue business as a viable career.” During the 11 o’clock hour, the class will host an intercultural women’s panel to discuss how being a woman differs in different regions. Art, music, poetry, and dance will be showcased on Friday, March 29. The concert will start at 7:30 p.m. in the Aloha Center room 155 followed by light refreshments. “Personally I believe music is such a great way to bring people together and express emotion, and I think it will be a great end to our Women’s Week,” added Nalder. Khurram Solemon, a senior in information system from Pakistan, decided to join the class because for him, “learning about women is interesting.” Solemon is one of the team members working on the culminating music night. “This is the first time that we have done a full week of activities, so I’m excited to see how it turns out,” said Christiansen.

FRIDAYDressed in long-sleeved white shirts and blouses and with smiles on their faces, the members of the Hawaiian Association opened the annual BYU-Hawaii Culture Night with a hula about famed Hawaiian church member Jonathon Napela on May 27 in the Cannon Activities Center. With acts from 23 associations, Culture Night showed what BYUH is all about, said Josh Wallace, one of the two masters of ceremony of the night and a senior in music from California. During the Fijian slideshow, dedicated to the victims of Cyclone Winston that devastated the area recently, Wallace said he thought, “I saw a lot of Fijians and also people from other cultures performing. I felt this is what this campus is working for: peace internationally. Culture Night is the perfect portrait of that. People from different cultures portray other cultures and no one is laughing at the dances. They never ridicule it. It is always positive. It was a beautiful, beautiful moment. This is another testimony of the school’s mission.” Following the host island’s opening, a single representative of the European Association sang and played the piano accompanying a slideshow showing the rich history of the continent as well as the current refugee crisis and terrorist attacks in Belgium and France. Wallace said as she sang, he held up his cellphone as a light swaying to the music. Following his example, hundreds in the audience joined in “and showed their support,” he said. Members of the Hong Kong Association delighted with their traditional instruments adapting the modern song “We Will Rock You.” After a parody on soccer and traditional theater, they highlighted the school’s mission with a choir performance of “We Are the World.” Mongolia’s performance referred to traditional horseback riding, archery and wrestling. The Hip Hop Association inspired with an extremely clean choreography using the theme of police and inmates. “Awe inspiring,” was what political science freshman Tim Saylor from China said about the performance. “I felt involved the whole time. The energy in there was so ginormous, so engulfing, you just wanted to go in there and dance with them on the stage.” Aotearoa, also known as New Zealand, didn’t fail to impress with its traditional haka and participants dressed in black and purple costumes and ferocious tribal face tattoos. They ended by singing in Maori “I Won’t Say I’m in Love” from the Disney movie “Hercules.” Both the Taiwan and China Associations danced traditionally but also merged modern influences in their styles. Fiji’s performance included dances by both women and men with the men concluding their dance by collapsing on the floor seemingly exhausted. The Kiribati Assocation women danced wearing black grass skirts and the men wore woven mats. The finale featured the “Happy Islands” of Samoa, as master of ceremony Lehai Falepapalangi called them. As the took the stage, he urged the audience to not give in to the impulse to go and dance with the Samoans but to remain in their seats. The Samoan drums shook the stage and the seats, as about a 100 dancers moved to the beat concluding the first night.SATURDAYThe Saturday evening edition of Culture Night started in a light-hearted fashion with host Falepapalangi having to call his co-host Wallace to find out where he was. The phone call was played over the CAC speakers until Wallace charged down the bleaches to join him on stage. After a prayer in Tongan, the first performance was by a new student association called Zion’s Community. It started with a video of the recent disasters in Ecuador, Japan, and Tonga, and was narrated by President Henry B. Eyring about trials of faith. Following the video, several families from different countries sat across the stage while Ana Nuku sang “Israel, Israel, God is Calling.” The families slowly rose and joined the singer at the rear of the stage to form a choir. Following Zion’s Community, the show’s hosts welcomed the Latin American group to the stage with a special ukulele rendition of “La Bamba.” However, due to technical difficulties, its soundtrack didn’t start and the Latin American dancers left the stage temporarily. To buy the sound crew time to fix the audio, the hosts revisited the tissue-pulling game from Friday night. After the race to the bottom of the tissue boxes, the Singapore/Malaysia Association was cued up to dance. It started by showing a video of the different cultural origins the two nations share, including Chinese, Malay, Indian, Filipino, and more. The multinational nature of the association showed through in the vibrantly colored Punjabi suits and precise hand motions, which are representative of India. Following Singapore and Malaysia, the plaid-clad Latin American dancers were welcomed back to the stage with thunderous applause and a now-functioning soundtrack. Their act started with a high-energy, all-female hip-hop routine accompanied by a strong reggae beat, followed by a couples’ routine danced to a traditional cowbell-laden salsa track. The final section had all the couples forming a semi-circle, unrolling the flags of Latin American countries and parading them around the stage. Performer Allison Tedford, a freshman political science major from Mexico, said, “Surprisingly, not a lot of people here know very much about Latino culture, so I feel like it was accurately represented tonight with the dances and the music.” After the Latin America section, the men’s golf team and women’s tennis team were recognized just before Indonesia took the stage. Indonesia’s routine was unique with its acapella chanting. Most of the dancers formed a cross-legged semi-circle around four girls dressed in orange as they danced up and down the center stage spreading flower pedals. Then a dancer dressed like a monkey god came to the stage from the audience. He symbolized the protector of the princess, one of the girls dressed in orange, said Ernawati Suharto, a senior from Indonesia. After Indonesia, Japan was greeted by a roaring ovation perhaps only rivaled by the Samoan group’s applause from the night before. The crowd only grew louder as the association celebrated Pokémon’s 20th anniversary by acting out a live Pokémon fight between Ash Ketchum and Team Rocket from the animated show. Following the fight, male dancers in silky happi festival jackets and girls in flower-printed yukata, or summer kimonos, flooded the stage in a display of Japanese nationalism complete with a flag-bearer carrying a 20-foot Japanese flag and charging around a three-story human tower raining flower petals from the top. Japanese alumna Migiwa Kameya of the Culture Night Committee, said the flower petals represented cherry blossoms, a much-beloved tree and symbol of Japan. The hosts followed Japan’s act with a piano performance of “Rude” by MAGIC! and most of the audience was singing along by the end. The next group to take the stage was Australia. The members danced to a cover of OutKast’s song “Hey Ya!” titled “Straya” following an aboriginal dance reminiscent of kangaroos. After a couple more games, the Cook Islands dancers showed off their signature fast knees and quick hips with rhythmic drum patterns. The following group was the American Sign Language SA. The members fused ASL with signature dances from pop classics such as Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and the whole opening sequence from the TV show, “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.” ASL President Logan Sprouse, a sophomore nursing major from California, explained, “The hardest part was appealing to both a deaf audience and a hearing audience… The main thing we drilled into people was the facial expressions. A deaf person uses their facial expressions more than anything, so we ran these exercises to really draw those expressions out.” Next was Korea where association members delivered what attendees described as a mesmerizing fan dance. The women used their pink fans to create “car-sized flowers, flowing rivers, and other enchanting shapes and patterns,” as Erica Greer, a sophomore from Virginia studying exercise sports science, put it. The Philippines followed with dances from the three major islands of the thousand-island nation, complete with reenacted royal ceremonies, bright religious celebrations, and three Filipino flags brandished at the end. After another game, a familiar drum pattern filled the CAC as Tahiti danced onto stage with Kamy Tekurio dressed as a Tahitian king conducting a sacred ceremony. Tekurio, a freshman TESOL major from Tahiti, described the opening act as, “The story of The Little Mermaid. It’s a legend from back home, so I was supposed to be the king who gives her her legs at the end so she could dance with the one she loves. It was part of the story I was saying in the beginning, but I said it in Tahitian so probably nobody understood it.” The Kingdom of Tonga, with nearly 100 dancers dressed in red and white outfits, closed the show and filled the stage to its limit. The group delivered a series of traditional Tongan dances, using staffs and sticks to create the beat they danced to. The group closed out with a drum ensemble at the rear of the stage playing with enough power and passion that only about half of the red and white tassels on their drum sticks remained by the end of the show.