Actividad Primaria (Primary Activity)

Last Saturday was my first Primary Activity (as the lame, non bi-lingual 1st counselor). This is the poster I made to display in the hallway at church. The afternoon was planned around ¨Service¨to Heavenly Father, family and community. I´ll just say it was quite different than the huge productions that we feel obligated to do in the states. Usually with 80 plus kids in attendance. I´d say most of the stress comes from entertaining so many children. Here we have about 15 active kids in our branch. When you take out my 5 and the president´s 3, that leaves only seven. We make up half the kids.

It was a pleasure having such an intimate group. Two of us could easily handle the little circus. We washed windows and cleaned the white boards. (Service to Heavenly Father) Then we played pictionary with phrases revolving around serving others (Service to neighbors). After that the kids colored books with service coupons (Service to family). I made these hoping they would take some ¨lame¨points away. The finale, the kids got to coat with colored sugar and paint HEART shaped cookies. That was a hit of course. Something you wouldn´t attempt if you had a 200 kids to 10 teacher ratio like many activities. It went so well and was so easy.

Until, the RAIN started. It´s difficult to describe the rain here. I´ll do my best.

It´s beautiful outside. Cotton white clouds, clean blue sky, warm and hot. You´re busy inside and a before you know it, CRACK, thunder SNAPS so loud the entire house RATTLES and you wonder if you just experienced an earthquake. The clouds are so close to the ground here that the loud VOICE of these CRASHING hot and cold clouds has nowhere to go but to our little town. Rain doesn´t start slowly, warning you to get prepared. NO. It comes down in BUCKETS. If you are caught outside without the necessary umbrella, OH WELL. I have a few pictures here but it can´t possibly do justice to the terror that enters my heart when the first BANG cracks over my head. It is quite impressive and I LOVE it. It is a reminder that I´m not as in charge of things as I think I am. That is good for me.

So as soon as our activity ended and I breathed that sigh of ¨whew, I made it¨, the rain and thunder arrived. I told the kids they could go out under the patio cover. I should have known they would all end up soaked. But they had fun. They were sliding all over the place. I think our next science lesson will be about why water molecules and tile mixed together become such a slick substance. When I asked the kids what their favorite part of the "actividad" was, they all answered, ¨sliding in the rain¨.
Dallin is actually sliding with rapid speed into poll on the left.

Troy and Dallin both showing off their different styles of "cool" in the pouring rain.
I took this of Paige and Aiden, sitting on my "nice" couch cushions on the muddy front porch in a storm. This was taken moments before their demise! We will miss them around here.


A funny story for my girlfriends
UPDATE: I had to write this post last night at an internet cafe. I was done before my honey so I decided to walk home. (I love walking) Anyway I had only been walking a few minutes when the "buckets of rain" started. I started speeding up my pace but being careful not to slip, see above paragraph. Suddenly I became aware that I was wearing a white shirt and missing an important part of the female clothing attire. Lovely!!! I had a white skirt on also. Boy did I look lovely by the time I got home. In fact after I made it past our guards (with my arms held in the most puiculiar position) I realized our front gate was locked. I couldn't get the kids to hear me because of the loud thunder so I had to scale the fortress in front of our house in this soaked condition. It was just lovely. I thought it was funny considering my above comments about the rain here. I guess I need to be more prepared. :)

This goes down as one of my top 10 most embarrasing moments. Right next to Dallin using my sweat pants to hold onto as he fell learning to inline skate. I just happened to be standing on a very busy street in Riverside talking to my girlfriend's husband. Yeah, that was fun too.