Horton Hears a Who!

I had been wanting to see this movie and so I dragged Matthew along to see it with me. Within the first few minutes he was glad he came to see it, plus we're big fans of Steve Carell. I MISS THE OFFICE!

Auguste Rodin

This weekend was supposed to be full of adventure but as we were on our way to explore the southern part of the island we received a call from the YMs President saying that we had inactive member visits in our ward that evening. As stake representatives, it is our responsibility to attend and support the ward. We decided to stay and just do something closer to home. We were pretty hungry so we stopped at the mall and ate lunch at Oriental Palace, as we walked out we noticed the Rodin museum advertisement. We decided to check it out and it ended up being a great way to spend our morning. Matthew actually studied Auguste Rodin's art at BYU and had the opportunity to see the actual sculptures in real life, after seeing them only in textbooks. I have a great appreciation for art and so I enjoyed it 100%. For those of you who don't know who Auguste Rodin was, he was a French artist, most famous as a sculptor. He was the preeminent French sculptor of his time, and remains one of the few sculptors widely recognized outside the visual arts community.

These are some of his most famous scultures.

"The Thinker"

Youth Confrence 2008-Day 3

The last day of youth confrence was spent with the 12 and 13 year olds. As the kids arrived, they ate breakfast and we got ready to play some fun games. We played a game called spider web where you had to team up and pass all your team mates through an opening on the spider web without touching the rope, trees, or crawling underneath the web. The last person to go through the spider web ran and then jumped as high as he could through one of the openings, with the rest of the youth on the other side of the spider web to catch him. All the teams were able to do this and get everyone through without toching the ropes.. It was a perfect get-to-know you activity because every group had kids from different wards and they had to work together and be creative to perform the task.







Another game played was this rock game. We told the youth to go find a rock, didn't matter what size or shape. So we had some come back with huge rocks and others with medium and also small rocks. Then you let them know that all the team members had to cross on each rock and you had to work as a team in order to balance people on the smaller rocks. It was tons of fun.



After these two games we had a speaker, Elder Lee, an area authority who actually spoke at our Stake Confrence.





While the speaker was going on, we set up for the water games. We played "Do you Love Your Neighbor?" but with a sprinkler in the middle of the circle so when the kids got up to switch chairs they had to run through it. We played some other games and then let them run loose with cups and hoses. We gave both the girls and the boys a trash can full of water so they can all take their cups and have a water fight. It turned out so much fun, they were going crazy and I just stood back to avoid getting wet.








After the water games the kids went home, ate, and then returned around 3:00pm to watch the slide show of all the accumilated pictures from the previous days, and we ended our confrence with a wonderful testimony meeting. The entire event was a great growth opportunity for all of us.

Youth Confrence 2008-Day 2

Day two of youth confrence was spent at the botanical gardens here in San Juan. We had a breakfast buffet and as soon as our first speaker arrived (President Deusnup, the mission president) we gathered together on the grass and listend to his amazing talk. He, of course spoke about going on a mission and the importance of being a missionary. He handed all the youth a Book of Mormon and challenged them to find a friend to give it to.

Here's the first young women to arrive, from left to right: Rosie, Lorraine, Jessica, Yendri, Lorena, Lynette, Ashley, Tamara, and Coral.







After President Deusnup's talk we split the youth up in 4 groups and had them rotate to various workshops where they had interactive speakers. We then had lunch and went up to the sculture garden to play games.

By the time they were done playing games it was time to go home, change, and go to the Carolina building for a dinner and dance. Everyone was so tired by then and the dance only lasted about two hours.








This girl Ashley is a brand new member. Her testimony grew a lot during youth confrence. The boy on her right is Gabriel, he was going inactive and now he wants to go on a mission. The growth that we see in these youth is miraculous.


Matthew was our DJ for the night

KC and Javier. Javier is a non-member, but he has decided to get baptized!



And that was day two.