Sunday Conference & Primary Program

No pictures but this is my journal for these six months.

Yesterday was an interesting day.  It was the Primary Program at Church and they did such an excellent job.  They introduced everything in both Spanish and English.  If there were spoken lines they were in both languages.  Some of the songs were in Spanish and some in English.  I think that there were a few more American children than Guatemalan but it was a good mix.  They sang with their whole hearts.  One little Guatemalan girl had my heart the entire time. She may have been four or five but she knew every word in both languages and belted it out beautifully.

I told Mike that it is quite amazing that we have seen Primary programs in China and Guatemala in addition to in many US states. 

Later in the afternoon we had the annual devotional for Temple Workers at a Stake Center not too far from here.  It was the first chapel built in Guatemala City and I'm sure that it has been remodeled a few times.  Like the other chapel here and the one we saw in Mexico it had all tile floors.  Neither has an organ but only an upright piano.  It had a very large chapel area and an even bigger cultural hall that opened to make a typical sized Stake Building.  The interior area had a beautiful garden that the classrooms and offices were around. The fascinating thing, however, was the mammoth building attached that was being used as a parking garage for the event.  Cars were packed in so carefully, tightly and skillfully. It is apparently a multi-use facility where huge conferences with general authorities conferences, youth conferences, basketball and other sports competitions are held (it even had an enclosed booth for commentators, authorities, etc. would sit.)  It was quite the shock for us to just walk over to look at as we were waiting to go home after the meeting.

We were supposed to have the Area Authority as the guest speaker for the meeting but he was not able to get his flight back from another country where he had been that morning so John and Chris gave longer talks.  For me it really didn't make any difference because I don't understand anything anyway.  Some of the other missionaries commented about how excellent their talks were, however.

The Temple Missionaries were asked to sing as a choir for the meeting and I was asked to conduct.  It was fun to do it again and we got good results considering that it was a group with many non-singers and we were dealing with two languages.  I also conducted the congregational songs as they sang in Spanish. Well now I've conducted from the Korean and the Guatemalan hymn book and I know approximately what each line is saying although often in a different order.

When we were looking at the big facility a couple came up to us and the man spoke English and he said, "My wife wants to tell you that she likes the way that you conduct music."  She smiled and added something in Spanish but it is fun to have people appreciate something that I love doing so very much.  I have had many other come up to me at the Temple and make comments about my good conducting.