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.