FSY at El Guarda

Two of the couples who live in our building and who have become very good friends are finally seeing all of their hard work of the year coming to fruition.  They are the FSY directors for Mexico, the Smiths, from Idaho Falls, in the southern half and the Pococks, from Sugar City, Idaho,  in the Northern part.  Their jobs are to coordinate with the various site directors to make sure they know how to get things going, keep to a budget and be able to follow through.  One of the goals here in Mexico is become self-sufficient, not only in leadership, but financially too.  Next year when the two couples leave, they hope to be able to turn their work over to couples from this country.

















FSY is our equivalent in the states to EFY and stands for "For the Strength of Youth."  The councilors here have to be Returned Missionaries for the boys and to be temple worthy for the girls.  El Guarda is the Church camp.  It is southwest of Mexico City and up in the mountains where the air is more clear and it is cooler, almost chilly at night.




Last weekend we traveled with the Pococks and Smiths to help set up for the session from the Morelos (Morelia) area, north of Mexico City.  We met some wonderful people, great youth leaders and worked hard.









The camp is beautiful this time of year with all of the greenery and wildflowers. Sunday we attended a Sacrament meeting with excellent talks and felt the strong Spirit, not only of the Lord, but the enthusiastic spirits of the youth.

The youth leaders arrive

This is what we do on our P-day....set up 31 spring-bar tents from Kirkham's in Salt Lake City

Backpacks stuffed with t-shirts, pens, and notebooks etc.

These young guys can carry twice what we can!

Getting the name tags ready for registration on Monday

 A mountain of cots, cots, cots!

Richard and Jane Pocock, with Hyrum and Pahoran Guzman, from Leon, Guanajuato.  They are brothers who served missions at the same time and returned just two weeks ago from North Carolina and Oklahoma City.  They both spoke great English.

Things are all set to go. 

These are huge, temporary tents called domos, set up to accommodate  7-800 kids, plus 150 councilors and leaders.  These were the eating facilities, set up around the living trees...adds quite the touch, no?

One of the youth councilors had his own business of making banners and made this for the session.   Each picture represents a lesson or theme taught throughout the week.

Happy Birthday America!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA!

To celebrate the 4th we had hot dogs and potato salad today for dinner! Plan on having root beer and pop corn tonight!  Hope everyone back in the USA had a great Fourth of July. 

We spent the last 3 days, July 2,3 and 4 on a little trip with 8 other couples to Veracruz. There is a Temple there so we went to 2 sessions, one on Thursday evening and the other on Friday morning. 

It is a pretty Temple, a small one that is much like many other small ones the church is building.  We have been to the Columbus Ohio temple and it is much the same.

It is about 2 blocks from the beach in a nice business, tourist area. We even stayed in an American Hotel, Holiday Inn Express! it was just like being on a trip to California! We had a great time! 

Veracruz is a port city and has been the site of numerous battles over the years, from Cortez down to the USA invasion! We drove along the beachfront and walked around in the old part of town but really only had a few hours there. Luckily it was cloudy but still plenty humid and hot! We did miss the coolness of Mexico City but it was nice to breath air that you can’t see! It rained on us as we took a walk on the beach in the evening but it was still worth it. 

We had dinner in a nice seafood restaurant that opened up to the beach. It was a fun city, wish we had another day there.

On our way back we went to a town called Cholula. There are old Aztec ruins there and a “pyramid” that is larger area wise that those in Egypt! In fact when the Spanish Conquistadores saw it, it was covered in vegetation with just a small Temple on top. They destroyed the small one and built a Catholic Church, what else is new, in it’s place.

The whole complex is huge, there are tunnels that were dug out in the 1950-60’s that you can walk through,

more that 5 miles in all but they only allow you in less than a miles worth. Still it was a really fun time. Look up on the internet for Cholula and you will find better pictures than we took.

It is fun to get out of this big, huge city and see some beautiful county, some really lush green forests , farms,  etc.

Many on the little towns we went through still have a poverty feel about them and a difference about them. Some remind me of little dried up towns in West Texas. I can’t quite describe them though…

We had fun buying some little jewelry pieces while in Cholula, fun to talk with the people in their little stands, they are really friendly and are doing what ever they can to make a living. 

Marilyn said this was our reward for a couple of really grueling weeks! We had a lot of missionaries finish up in June, we had 18 go home one day, and 4 or five earlier. Then we got 12 new ones. Change cycles are just a lot of work!  We only will have about 4 leave this month but then August, Sept and October will be big groups and lots of work. Not complaining (too much) it just wears us old folks out sometimes. 

We are in the rainy season now and it can really rain…and lightning and thunder that just rolls! 

We do miss our friends, the enemies not so much!