If you serve with the Young Men or the Young Women, then you will be in charge of planning one of the combined meetings sometime. It can be difficult to come up with ideas to keep these activities both fun and productive. Here is a list of five ideas for your next combined activity.
1) One fun idea for the winter is to have a beach volleyball party. You decorate the gym in a beach theme, hand out leis, and have fun beach snacks. You announce that the youth will need to come in shorts (knee-length of course) and to be prepared to have fun. You can play appropriate sixties music in the background (such as the Beach Boys). The main activity for the night is a game of volleyball using a big beach ball.
2) You can have an activity where each of the youth is assigned to give a two to five minute talk. This will help with goals for both the Duty to God and Personal Progress awards. You can actually have this cover two activities, by having a guest speaker come and speak on preparing talks. This activity is a great chance to help the youth become comfortable with public speaking.
3) Another fun activity is to have a cook-off competition. You can have the youth gather and split into teams and then make a dinner with a variety of unique ingredients. You may need to plan to use two different nearby kitchens, since you are not supposed to cook in the meetinghouse. You can meet together at a set time and have the dinners judged by people in your ward.
4) A service scavenger hunt is a fun way to perform service for members of your ward. You will need to gather service projects that need to be done in your ward and then divide the list up into two equal parts. You have the teams go out to perform the service, reminding them that the quality of the work they do will be taken into account in addition to the speed. You meet back at the church at a set time, and enjoy refreshments together.
5) It is also a fun idea to put together Christmas care packages for ward members. You could assemble the packages for the missionaries from your ward. You may consider making packages for the elderly in your ward, as well as any needy families. You can also consider donating care packages to a local homeless shelter as well.